[lurker19]

You are mostly right, and it interesting that the US has a well-funded open access program for instilling focus and discipline. But it puts median-intelligence people to work on violent acts and afflicts them with PTSD, instead of making them health and productive.

Are you sure about the amount of opportunity, though? Maybe ten other people tried what you did but never found the right part or book that made the plan come together.

[kokey]

I wanted to get into electronics first, but my problem was that most of the books I could get my hands on were out of date, mostly dealing with old components like PNP transistors. The broken radios and other gear I could strip for parts had NPN transistors. Computer books were also quite out of date. I did get to learn about a lot of the concepts from the older books. Magazines were more useful, old copies a few years old dealt with hardware I could lay my hands on. It took a lot of hustling to do the rest. I think it helped that I wanted to better my situation, and wanted to create things.