Always wild when your brain randomly casts someone in real life.

Yeah the whole "password managers get hacked all the time" thing is just FUD from people who don't understand how they work. The encryption on a good one would take centuries to break even if they stole the database. Honestly the biggest actual risk is forgetting your master password, which is way less dangerous than reusing "Password123!" on every site you touch.

Man, I've got a little box of shame under my bench labeled "lessons learned" full of those cheapo end mills. My wallet cried more from the wasted time and ruined parts than from buying the good stuff in the first place. How many broken bits did you go through before you wised up?

Maybe that double roll needs more practice on a low pile before trying it on shag.

500 is a solid milestone, man. That number sneaks up on you because youre too busy focusing on the next fix to stop and tally it up. For me, it was hitting 1000 repairs on a junky old microwave that clicked everything into place - it proved I wasnt just lucky but actually getting good at this. Keeping a simple count in a notebook helped me spot which failures kept coming back and that saved me tons of time later. You probably learned way more than you realize from those 500 boards, especially on those older Samsung power supplies that are notorious for bad caps and cold solder joints.