> He has relatively wealthy parents who let him convert a garage into a home fab, and talks about dropping $30k on a second hand ESM like it's no big deal.
The envy I feel when I see these guys with such equipment is enormous. I really would love so much to have a loaded electronics work bench especially oscilloscopes, LAs etc. and of course the time to actually play with it. :-(
Check if you've got a local hackerspace! There are a lot of good ones out there. By and large you will find excellent people who want to enable you to do amazing things.
The envy I feel when I see these guys with such equipment is enormous. I really would love so much to have a loaded electronics work bench especially oscilloscopes, LAs etc. and of course the time to actually play with it. :-(