Vasectomy.
By far the best purchase I have ever made for myself. Seriously.
A computer when I was still a kid. I wouldn’t be the quant and maths PhD I am today without it, that shit literally shaped my life.
I just kept messing around with it when I was 7 years old. I learned to write
.batfiles and create DOS bootable floppy drives for my games at that age (you needed to play around with Soundblaster drivers and DOS extenders at the time). Then at the same age I quickly discovered BASIC thanks to the fact that MS-DOS used to include QBasic. Then learned some basic assembly using MS-DOS’s includedDEBUGtool. Then my father got me floppy disks with Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ on them and then I learned that shit again just by fucking around and looking at the examples, all at the age 7~8.I coded like a monkey but I still coded and at a very early age I already knew what people usually learn first in university computer science classes.
By the age of 14 I already knew how to write my own minimal bootloader in assembly and a basic 32-bits kernel in C. (then later on math ironically won me over, so ended up formally pursuing applied math with a tiny bit of computer science because I just didn’t need it and the whole exposure to programming at a very young age helped me a lot)
All of that was just thanks to the little spark I got when I first got that Pentium MMX computer.
This is an awesome story. I started early too but all that got me was into some sketchy early aol rooms lol.
yeah curiosity can definitely lead to different places 👀
That’s almost exactly how I got started, except instead of Turbo C++ and Turbo Pascal it was whatever free or bootleg programming language I could get my hands on. I remember when I first learned Java I used an online compiler where you just plopped your code in a text box, then I found some compiler called not
javac, butjc. I pointed it at the directory for the Java class library in Netscape and I was off to the races lol
A really nice kitchen knife. I use it daily and it makes cooking so much more fun, which translates into eating less junk food and take out, saving a ton of money and being more healthy.
What brand did you choose. I always want to get one but they are 200-300 bucks here.
Unless you want to learn everything about Japanese knives the victoriaknox fibrox is the best in terms of value for a western style chef knife.
It’s sharp out of a box, decent steel with decent edge retention, very comfortable handle and good geometry and thinness so it passes through ingredients very easily. I wouldn’t seriously consider most other knives unless they are Japanese style knives (what I use) or a certain shape that you want.
It’s only 30$. It sounds too good to be true but most of the characteristics of a good knife purely come from good design (comfortable handle, blade geometry, thinness, etc).
I started with a Santoku brought from a business trip to Japan, don’t think it was a special brand. It was 50 EUR (that was almost 15 years ago), but for me that’s how I got into it. Now I am lucky enough to have a friend who’s a blacksmith to get custom made knives.
I usually recommend the Haiku Chroma series as entry level, or if you are looking for a western style chef’s knife, I’d go with a Wusthoff classic. Both are a bit more than 100 EUR, so I’d always recommend to go to a shop and get a feel for them and what works best for you. Important thing is western or Japanese style handle (shaped vs. round), and a length and weight you feel comfortable with.
I’ll say right off the bat that my roomba i7 self emptying vacuum cleaner has been a game changer for me. 2 big ass dogs and the dirt/fur that comes with it made me loathe sweeping/manually vacuuming. $700 well spent.
I went back to college at 30. That set me up for a career I actually enjoyed and a wage that was double the dead end job I had at the time.
What subject/degree?
I didn’t get a degree. I got enough skills to get a job.
Database stuff. I write SQL for a living. Data analyst or report writer would be the generic entry level job titles.
End of 2008 start of 2009 I bought a house. It was VERY risky move for me at the time.
Not only has it been a temp house for others that needed help. But with the wild costs of apartments these days I simply don’t understand how people haven’t just flat out started a revolution over it. There’s an apartment complex that opened in my town very recently. The units are much smaller than my house but cost more than double my mortgage. And that’s just for where they actually list the price, there’s some I’m guessing are so expensive they don’t list the price they just say “contact us”.
Those of us who would revolt are too tired from working the hours to keep up with rent :( landlord raised mine another $380 this month. I was already using savings to pay for groceries. I’m almost 30 and move back to my parents’ home next month.
Sounds like amputees, need not apply to “contact us.”
A subscription to the now defunct children’s magazine 3-2-1 Contact. That magazine would sometimes include the code for simple BASIC computer programs. Eventually I figured out they would run on the (then common) Apple II classroom computer at school, tried one (a simple guess the number game with a preset answer), figured out how to change the answer and tweak the code, and got hooked.
Ultimately this led to a degree in software engineering and a job in IT that I quite enjoy, especially when writing scripts or working with code.
10 LET A = CODESKILLS
20 IF A = CODESKILLS PRINT “MONEY”
30 GOTO 30
Now I’m hungry for spaghetti code
Phones are expensive but…
I mean I think my screen time is at like 5-6 hours a day. I can do almost all the things with it.
It is fragile tho. Probably won’t last more than a few years.
…still, landslide victory in the cost/utility category, despite the high cost.
I bought a $700 acoustic guitar when I was 17. That thing is now old enough to buy porn.
My doggo
My playstation 4, I’ve had it who knows how many years. Not only do I have countless hours of gaming, but it’s also my primary media device.
Have an original N64 from like 98, no idea how many hours of enjoyment I’ve gotten out of that.
Ceramic skateboard bearings I bought in 2001, as well as a pair of grind king trucks from maybe 97 that I still ride.
For me, my Steam Deck. I have been having a lot of mental health issues and it allows me to have an outlet for anxiety and stress while still spending time with my family. I use is most days and have enjoyed a good chunk of my extensive Steam catalog to boot. Honestly, the most bang for my buck I have ever gotten.
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and lost a lot of weight.
I like that you included value beyond just immediate monetary
My woodshop of 220v saws. They paid for themselves remodeling my house and building most of the furniture and all the cabinets in it. So, now they paid for themselves and I can make whatever I want. Saw brrrr noises are my therapy. I think I’m slowly becoming Nick Offerman.
The price of hardwoods is too damn high.
Just the other night my wife commented that I’m turning into Ron Swanson: after spending the day in the workshop making a bookcase for an oddly shaped nook in the house (carpenter quoted me a price so high that just with this project the nice miter saw amortized itself) I fired up the grill to cook a nice porterhouse steak, while nursing a nice dram of lagavulin. I even work for the government
Lagavulin really is that good.
My sewing machine. I (m) wanted curtains, my wife didn’t want to sow them (no sewing machine didn’t help).
Bought it last year (€270), made curtains troughout the house, monthly energy bill went from €630 to €230 a month due to savings on heating. (And I learned something new, always fun)
By Grapthars hammer, what a savings.
Thanks, especially the front door was a huge problem, lots of cold coming from there. Also the huge windows in the livingroom and kitchen on the 1st floor (ground floor is garage) were a huge advantage. Especially the gas bill went down a lot, not to much saving on electricity. The moment it starts to cool down, curtains close. (keeping the warmth in) Gas for heating costs loads more then the few cents extra for lighting.
That’s his I handle it, too - small flat, curtains closed most of the time in winter. Really easy and cheap was to save a lot. And it’s dark most of the dead anyway so why keep them open? 😉
HOW? I have a sewing machine I bought primarily to hem pants for my short-man legs. I’ve purchased the fabric to make curtains but after an hour of struggling to get it to lay straight and cooperate with me, I gave up. It’s just too big to deal with 😩
YouTube, man. Husband booked us a trip to the Star Wars hotel at Disney, and decided he and our son needed costumes. He taught himself to use it on YouTube.
He didn’t even ask me for help. “Oh, this lady on YouTube has been sewing for 30 years!” SO HAVE I!
Curtains are a lot easier, especially when you start with pre-fabricated ones that need to be sewn together for wider windows and made shorter.
- Fit curtains
- Get loads of needles and make the roughly to size
- Cut the bottom so you have more then enough fabric to correct mistakes
- Curse as you forgot that the fabric slides of the table while cutting (leaving you wiuth a few cm left in 1 corner)
- Hang curtains again to see what you can salvage and correct
- Decide the curtains in the kitchen won’t reach the work top, just the bottom of the windows.
- Sew everything together and hang the curtains
- The slight tilt is ‘by design’ and be done with it. (They cover the windows and keep the cold out, that was the main goal)
Curtains are visible for only me and my wife, so great items to start with. (I won’t touch clothing for a while, I know I’ll mess it up)
Dutch settlers purchased Manhattan from the indigenous Americans for beads and other goods valued at 60 guilders (about $1,000 today).
