That's pretty much what I was like when I was a kid, only I always had people giving me electronic junk to scrap parts off of, I didn't have to garbage pick for it.
Same here. High school years saw me get some Radio Shack "assortments" along with rudimentary test gear but everything before that came from salvage.
"Everyone wants to be an AM Gangsta until it's time to start doing AM Gangsta shit."
The kid is a genius. I did a lot of creative recycling of junk when I was a kid but nothing on that level. Just keep the smart-assed little bastid off my lawn—if there's one thing I hate, it's a precocious child.
All the world’s a stage, but obviously the play is unrehearsed and everybody is ad-libbing his lines. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to tell if we’re living in a tragedy or a farce.
Impossible! He not only is from Africa, he's also black. ;)Originally Posted by KJ6BSO
(I wonder if he's interested in Politics. Let's see... He's 15? So he would be eligible to run for USA POTUS in 2032!)
P.S. After elimination of the USA born requirement.
Last edited by NY3V; 11-26-2012 at 01:36 PM.
My parents pretty much tried to break me when I was 5 years old. One example is getting a paint by number set at age 6 and then only being allowed to paint the black sections because I wasn't going to get a 14 cent bottle of paint thinner.
Who does that to their kid? These days, would you give your small child an electronic toy without batteries or a charger?
I guess I should be grateful that I was even allowed to paint the black sections.
I have to give props to this kid's parents or guardians. They obviously care enough to let him explore.
My parents pretty much let me do anything. I was pretty young, maybe 7 or 8 when I had a Chemistry set complete with alcohol burner. My folks had no problem with letting fill it myself,use matches to light it and use it. They also had no problem with me playing around with 120 VAC electric motors, gears and switches. In my teen years I had a fully equipped home laboratory equipped with gas bunsen burners, glassware, balance, and an array of chemicals, some of which could be pretty nasty alone or mixed with other chemicals. My father got a little concerned once when my brother was telling him about an array of interesting experiments I demonstrated for him. It wasn't that my brother was being a tattle tale or trying to get me banned from the house, he was just fascinated by it all. Nonetheless I was allowed to keep my laboratory. My home lab dissolved when I enrolled in college as a Chem major and had a full professional university lab at my disposal... well, not exactly at my full disposal.. Gradually I became interested in safer things like Math and Computers. I eventually switched majors to math/Computer Sci.
I keep my 2 feet on the ground, and my head in the twilight zone.
That African kid is smart to say the least. Many scrounge having to be resourceful to survive but he goes one step beyond into the world of science.
The chemistry set and alcohol burner sounds familiar, trouble with mine was denatured alcohol at the hobby shop was too expensive and rubbing alcohol gummed up the wick. Dad gets an idea, working for Schering he brought home a few bottles of grain alcohol. It worked great in the burner and as a belly burner too, White Lightning USP. Then there was my laboratory monstrosity that produced a hot, brown liquid I demonstrated for mom one day, she freaked when I drank it and almost destroyed the apparatus. She stopped with a puzzled look on her face when I yelled IT'S COFFEE MOM, here, try some. She walked away bewildered preferring the coffee pot on the stove.
"The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."
Neil deGrasse Tyson
73 de Warren KB2VXA
Station powered by atomic energy, operator powered by natural gas.
That's nothing. At 3 years of age, I built a clock radio from some pieces of chalk, string, a discarded shoe, and a dead cat I found in the neighbor's pasture. By the time I was 5 I was writing essays for the Modern Language Association on the Codex Regius while conceptualizing some of the fundamental ideas in M-theory. The mere fact that you're using the internet comes from work I did before age 10.
That kid's got nothing.
I'm stealing these last two posts. People will be bewildered when they read them without context.
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