"You've got questions, we've got dumb looks."
He used to buy all his homebrew components at RS. Now it's easier just to mail order them, because if you go into one of the stores and ask for, say, a 100 pF capacitor, they look at you like you have two heads.
They don't even know the Resistor Color Code any more. Shoot, even I know that. My husband did an entire EE lab that way - professor sent him round to check everyone else's answers . . . serves him right!