>Of course, I am looking forward to the day that I can bring on a couple of guys with me who I can trust, like my sons. But, I don't feel any strong compulsion to surrender my independence and join up with a firm.

There are so many aspects to the business now. It may be difficult for a great applications interface developer to understand the tetonics of an ever changing infrastructure infra-scape. Yet, there are still products like TurboTax and Quicken that sell rather well without the user requiring terabytes of switches, a DBA and miles of phone wire. Maybe Independent developers are people that will give the world it's next Quicken or TurboTax shrink wrap.
Keep the dream alive.