For what it's worth Cap'n, once you have frames to play with, the other stuff will start to come in handy. You can use that one as a helpful reminder; until you have video, audio is worthless. Until you have footage in the can, editing and post is worthless. Until you've keyframed, rendering is worthless. And so on.

And except for exchanging Vue for Carrara, and SonicFIre Pro for scoring and Audition for general mixing instead of the Acid line, you have good taste in software..... :P . Assuming you have a rack. Do you? That was my latest timesink away from actually creating. Well, I still have to get a good microphone and pop screen. And save up for the Arena mocap rig... (which is so long term it doesn't enter into the 'Next Toy!' paradigm...)...but yeah, I know the prevarication waltz. But next year......