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I tend to agree with your attitude. As a teen I saved up around $50 over a year to afford broken components to fix up to assemble my first PC. I learned how to

by kokey 15y ago

I tend to agree with your attitude. As a teen I saved up around $50 over a year to afford broken components to fix up to assemble my first PC. I learned how to do this from books I got from the library. I used that PC to teach myself a lot more and it catapulted me into a career. I moved from a developing country to a developed one. I now support my mother and grandmother financially. It's tough being poor, the only way out of it is focus and self discipline, if you're lucky you can focus on something you enjoy. Fortunately we live in a modern world where obtaining information is relatively cheap and we have a market economy that does reward merit, not perfectly but it's certainly the opposite of slavery. The industrialized world is so good that our only real problem is too many options, like alcohol, cigarettes, unhealthy food, online games, consumer bling and consumer debt options. Unfortunately this means we still need self discipline, but there's certainly no lack of opportunity out there.

lurker19 15y ago
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 15y ago
  I wanted to get into electronics first, but my problem was that most of the books I could get my hands on were out of date, mostly dealing with old components like PNP transistors.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 Computer books were also quite out of date.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.

by kokey 15y ago

lurker19 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.