Well you certainly have started out with the one of the best engines, so I would imagine you can push that Optimizer pretty far, I am anxious to see how it goes, especially with the ATT. I am pretty much in the same boat, I would like to see what I can do for as little money as possible but unfortunately it has added up quickly. I have never told anyone online this yet but so far I have a little over $8500 poured into this thing, including the truck itself. $2000 alone comes from only three things: when the stealer fixed the fifth gear loss in the tranny, when the stealer inspected the truck for the first time in my possession (hadn't been inspected in a while, and they raped me pretty bad), and licensing and registering the truck.
I have been meaning to get pictures up of the rebuild, I took a ton of pictures. The block already had a large crack in the #2 main journal and at least two pistons had very small hairline cracks in them, but they went back in haha. Maybe someday when I have more money I will do it much better, but so far so good knock on wood has almost 4k miles on the rebuild. Also forgot to mention I converted over to solid flywheel with new clutch, as well as year 2000 water pump, and Duramax fan.
EDIT: ha and oh yeah, college is a huge drain, I am not even half way through yet. I think I spend more time on this site than I do studying though. I usually sit in class and think of the next thing I wanna do on the truck