When did you realize you had the DIY/engineer autism? Are some just born with a mind for understanding mechanical tasks?Sometimes I feel like it's a curse but I can live so cheaply doing things myself and I prefer it vs paying some jewish retard who probably isn't near as detail oriented.
probably early on, i always took apart toys to see how they worked and my parents wondered wtf was wrong with me
>>2992703My folks claimed I took apart their walk behind garden tractor engine when I was like 4. Got yelled at for it, and proceeded to put it all back together again and it ran. So I guess I was born with it?
>>2992703Born with it I guess, but nurture was a big part. They gave me Lego from a very young age, in elementary school I received Lego Technic, which I loved and still love (although I don't like the current trend of extreme realism). Eventually I got my degree in aerospace engineering and the only thing holding me back from DIYing is the piss poor paying job that robs me out of my time and energy, but if I had the money and time I'd have a shop and I'd carry repairs for free of anything people would bring me.
>>2992703https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtOxCJqEHjYthis sums it up for me
>>2993159Good watch, thanks for sharing the video anon
>>2992703when I opened up our telephone with a butter knife to see what was inside. I was 7 or 8. I messed around with it and put it back together.when our home phone wasn't working correctly and I traced the problem to the wall box, found a broken wire, and rewired the box with no help. also around 8.when I got fed up with my mom not getting the evaporative cooler working on the house, so one day after school I went up there fixed the broken pet cock, got the water flowing again, cleaned and oiled the water pump, cleaned the spider, and removed the scale from the drip holes, oiled the squirrel cage, and got it all working before my mom got home (16).there were other things but those are the first that came to mind.this is why I have very little patients with people who come here wanting other to tell them exactly how to do X.I did all this before the internet and without going to a library or calling anyone.
>>2993159yup that is me as well.
>>2993159yes. I tell people all the time. if it is already broke why are you afraid of trying to fix it. it's already broken if you fix it good, if you can't... oh well. usually I can fix it.Someone threw out a string trimmer. it had 4 problems. I replaced the carburetor because it was faster and cheaper to do it. though I will rebuild it later. cleaned the clutch, replaced the fuel lines, and replaced the string on it. adjusted the carb and it worked.cost me $13. I donated it since I don't need one. I do this all the time.someone threw out a lawn mower that seemed locked up. it had a stone stuck between the blade and the mower deck.
Long before I was in high school. I grew up reading machine tool, motorcycle and automobile manuals and much more. My career and all my jobs involved working on machinery and DIY nearly everything I owned. That worked fucking superbly! I retired young and debt-free, easy when you mostly pay for goods not services. I only earn five figures but from a third to half that's discretionary and I lack nothing. Humans are a tool-using species. We die without tools however primitive. Failure to expand your mind by DIY is self-neglect. Choose to learn and revel in it. I should have bought more equipment early on instead of collecting motorcycles but that worked out fine in the end.
>>2992703If you have to ask this question, you arent part of the club. I was taking shit apart from birth, just like everyone else here did.
>>2992703Being poor will make you work on shit.I was just thinking about working on projects before the internet recently.My mom worked at the phone company so we got free dial up internet and modem, but we couldnt afford (or my parents wouldnt afford) to buy a PC. I frankensteined one together out of old PCs thrown away on the street, and continually tinkered with the hardware and software.I would always remember this very weird, stuck on a deserted island type feeling when you had pulled the computer apart and something didnt work right and there was immense pressure to get it done. You were sitting there staring at it, there was no one I could call, I had no manual, no access to internet, couldnt afford a PC repair shop if one even existed nearby. Either figure something out through trial and error till it works, or go without. And I did not want to go without.And that wasnt just PC work, that was any project of repair I used to do on my own. I just havent felt that feeling in so long because the internet is so accessible now, alongside the fact I have so much experience with stuff over the years. My parents rented dumps which had landlords who didnt fix anything, and we only had 1 car. If it broke down it was getting fixed TONIGHT even if that meant staying up till 3am on a school night.The trial by fire equipped me with tons of experience and I do everything myself now. But man, it would have been nice to be a kid nowadays growing up with the internet at their fingertips.The "maker" shit is so gay, but having fun instead of fighting out of necessity is nice, so I cant hate it too much
>>2993223FFcossag?
>>2993268>couldnt afford a PC repair shop if one even existed nearby.I worked on my computers for years with no help at all. then one day I went to some out of the way place to pick up a vga card that was really cheap (for the time) and asked what they did there. it was a PC repair shop...I was like "these exist?" I just thought everyone fixed their own computers.
>>2992850legos started it for me too. playing outside, digging holes and building bridges across trees. then computers became a thing when i was 12 or 13 and dos, pirating music and software, fixing, upgrading. my dad was always a /diy/er too and we've always built stuff together. been a swe since i graduated in 2008, own a home in san diego, wfh, woodwork most days, can't complain. should've went the software route it's comfy. today i'll close a few jiras and be done around 1-2pm
>>2992703Always had it, didn't realize until I was older and realized that other people didn't though. I've always enjoyed the whole loop of learning, improving, and using new skills in general and the problem solving that happens with mechanical work. It's interesting because I seem to have it more than even the other self-selecting people in the mechanical/trade world I'm in, when I was a mechanic in the motorsports world I quickly became the shop's "figure shit out" guy and now that I'm back in school for machining I've ended up doing a lot of shit nobody else has, I was the first student in years to use a fly cutter and the rotary table for the mill, and I think the only current student in the whole program who's used a 4-jaw chuck on the lathe.
>>29927038 bit guy. Years pass and I follow his advice and I'm in a pretty good situation. Not perfect, but hey I have learn some stuff the hard way.
>>2992703When I grew up poor
>>2992707>>2993169I am putting my screwdriver anywhereI am a hidden scientist
>>2994494found the retard.
>>2993159>ai sloppac'mon man
>>2994777maybe AI slop but what it says is spot on.
>>2992704This. I did this a lot plus fucked with electricity a lot. Never did anything with it. Got into computers at a young age and learned as much as I can. Got a degree in IT. Could never get a job. Wish I went in for Engineering instead. Wasted years working dead end factory floor jobs getting treated like trash. Started a new job after getting let go in December from a different factory. 38 now. Doing the same old crap. They had a position open that they had a hard time filling mostly because pay was not that great. Applied and got the job. Now I work in an engineering department being an engineering assistant and doing some IT work (do it because no one does it and the 3rd party guy we pay takes a week just to do simple shit).As >>2992703 said, being able to live cheaply.This is because I can fix most of my own stuff and make it last longer. Plus stuff I can pick up for cheap or free that needs fixing or something basic done to it. My home lab is built up mostly of computers that I got for free mostly because they cant "run Windows 11" or people think something major is wrong with it but its a simple fix.
anyone else sour about living in the middle of nowhere as a child and not having enough shit to learn
>>2992703Honestly learning to rebuild my truck isn't worth it since megacorporations are simply going to stop producing the parts, I need to go a step further by maching and 3d printing my parts but California is already banning it, so next step is buying a plane ticket out of this country
>>2997656Living in the middle of no-where is where you can learn the best...
>>2997751nah you'd still need some tools at least and you'd have to be interested in mechanics mostly or simple structural crap me i liked ee so couldn't make heads or tails of any discrete components simple wiring yeah i even developed a vague idea of transistors and stuff in abstract no resources anywhere libraries just full of humanities crap autobiographies of random political fucktards
>>2997756sorry you had a shit librarian i remember giving the librarian a list of shit i was interested in and a few days later thered be a stack of all sorts of books from other libraries sent over to check out plus the family poverty entertainment was going to junk stores back before it was cool. so hundreds hours were spent in the book sections reading anything and everything t. pre interwebz rural child
>>2992703i was raised by my grandparents and my grandpa ran a handyman business for most of his life so we did everything from framing houses, doing roofs, decks, etc, to fixing cars ourself. he brought me along to jobs to keep an eye on me when i was really young, and that eventually evolved into me helping him out with stuff and working on the families cars and houses.it's kind of insane to me how helpless the majority of people are, a lot of construction and mechanic stuff just boils down to screwing the right shit into the other right shit.
Since I was a little boyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8vHhgh6oM0
