> I still have a habit of touching likely grounds from time to time whenever I'm in a lab. Me too, it's such an ingrained habit. Before touching any "open elec

> I still have a habit of touching likely grounds from time to time whenever I'm in a lab. Me too, it's such an ingrained habit. Before touching any "open electronics", I quickly touch the earth lug on my lab PSU, or a screw from some other (grounded) metal test equipment case. I've been doing it so long and so consistently that my hands feel "wrong" before I do that. So much stuff has ESD protection nowadays, but some individual components at least still don't, and you only need to break one part to ruin your day (or at least some significant amount of time if you're so lucky that you can solder a replacement).