So I kind of impulsively bought a Steam Deck OLED this weekend, I hadn’t really done much research and I haven’t really played any games in about 15 years.
Now I have to wait for it to be delivered and, I’m worried this is something I’ll use a few times and forget about it.
What’s something you impulsively bought and fell in love with?
Espresso machine. I was spending 8 bucks a day on lattes, and now I make them myself and stopped going to the cafe every morning, saving time and money. I also think it’s a fun morning ritual to grind the beans, measure everything, tamp, distribute, steam the milk, etc.
Btw I also impulsively bought a Steam Deck and use it way more than I thought, it’s amazing and you’ll love it!
Nice to both. What do you find yourself playing on your steamdeck?
Its great for acade-y and mindless games, I’ve been digging Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Dredge, Balatro, Dave the Diver, and Talos Principle
I freaking love drg survivor game is so fun
Aside from smaller titles I’ve e been using it for sea of thieves, monster hunter world, and ffxiv with good results even though that last one took a fair bit of fiddling with. Impressed with it.
Espresso machines rock. I got one to cut costs, and I’m really happy with being able to make an Americano in a minute or two.
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A Moka pot is a cheap and easy way to make espresso. I got mine for less than $5. Of course a fancy espresso machine is going to make higher quality espresso, but for the price you can’t go wrong with a Moka pot
I got a Breville Dual-Temp for $350 CAD on sale, but you can spend less. You can always spend more if you want, but that’s where I top out.
I’m not sure about ROI. I guess I’ve had it three years, so that’s like $.33/day, but I don’t track what I spend on consumables.
I got a relatively inexpensive espresso machine for like $100 with the main downside being it’s not very tall (so putting a mug under it is out). It’s been perfectly fine for like 8 years, though. I’m sure for $500+, I’d get a slightly better espresso but I’ve found buying good coffee beans and grinding them fresh — basically getting the other steps right — makes more of a difference than the machine.
I imagine the expensive machines are more foolproof or consistent or flexible? But it was just me making espresso before work basically every day. It didn’t take long for me to get the timing and stuff down. (I have a De’Longhi one, for the curious, but I don’t necessarily want to steer anyone to that particular brand since it’s been so long. The brand might be owned by some Private Equity firm or something called like “Guangzhou Plastic Manufacturing Concern” and the quality parts were replaced by lead pipes with arsenic in them.)
Sounds like you’re doing a lot of steaming!
Right as Covid quarantimes hit, I found a deal on an old decommissioned Bird electric scooter for like $250. Snapped it up immediately. I have gotten SO MUCH use out of that thing just running out to grab takeout to save on delivery fees. I’ll also use it to commute to work nowadays when I’m too lazy to walk (I am lucky enough to live only a couple miles from my office) and don’t feel like biking. It’s probably paid for itself several times over at this point.
Honestly, steam deck lol
It’s an odd form factor that people don’t really have much experience with, hence they don’t really know how useful it’ll be to them. To be fair to myself, I had been holding back on purchasing one until maybe a year after the initial launch, so I think I would personally describe my experience as a leap of faith.
In any case, it turns out to be a great little thing. There’s a lot of games in my backlog that don’t feel “desktop-y,” and therefore I’ve never played them, if that makes sense. But with a handheld form factor, now I have more motivation to go through those games. Emulation on the steam deck has also been great, for a similar reason. And sometimes I just want to be in bed than on my desktop. Or sometimes I’m just on the bus or waiting for something.
I think SteamOS also taught me how usable Linux was, and that’s been pretty instrumental in getting me to minimize my Windows dependence
My wife and I have our own separate ones. It’s such a blast and we also got gog/itch working on them.
Emudeck is fun too.
Are you using a controller friendly front end for gog/itch? I haven’t found anything that’s comfortable for using them
My collection is small enough that I just hook into steam. You can add non steam executables so then you can use your controller. You can even set up mappings. If you find a more all in one setup let me know.
Same, it’s the holy grail of gaming, such a great device that keeps getting better.
This makes me feel so much better! Its kind of one of my thoughts, playing the steam deck in bed, those evenings where you don’t really want to do much but also aren’t fully ready to go to sleep!
You’ve definitely given me some reassurance 🙂
Steam Deck is definitely one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. And I don’t play a ton of games these days.
A $1 grand piano off of eBay. I had been looking around on stuff like FB Marketplace for a “real” piano after learning with a really basic keyboard for a while, and happened across a gorgeous 6’1" grand piano on eBay. It was reasonably close, the ad said it was in good working order, and they took very detailed pictures of basically every single flaw in the case. I called up a piano mover, and had them pick it up from the church, sight unseen. I was so worried that I’d made a mistake, given that the moving was still about $400, but I got insanely lucky, with a beautiful looking and sounding piano worth about $5k for basically just the cost of moving it.
Haunted piano?
So far, no ghosts yet! Only haunted by the vague odor of the church it was in before, so it kind of smells like an old lady’s house, but it’s going away pretty quickly.
What an amazing story! Its always amazing the stuff you can find second hand 😁
Even $5k is extremely cheap for a good 6’1" grand piano in good condition.
I went on the low side since it’s not in perfect shape and is an older (1985) Young-Chang built Wurlitzer. It was a church piano so it has some bushing wear in the keys, but still very playable, and had a broken string on D2 that was an easy $50 fix. I think after moving, tuning, the string, and eventually rebushing it in the next year or so, I’ll have about $900-1000 into it all said and done. Still definitely a pretty inexpensive piano overall, but understandable why they might not have wanted to put money into something that was probably a donation to begin with.
An old RTS game called Darwinia, that caught my eye because of its box artwork, and wasn’t very expensive.
Turned out to be loads of fun. I really need to get that installed on my PC again actually, been a while.
Ooh that also reminds me of an RTS I impulse bought once and ended up absolutely falling in love with for a long time.
It was called Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends. What I most enjoyed was it’s unique factions: a clockwork/steampunk faction, an Arabian Nights inspired faction, and a Chariot of the God’s inspired Mayan/alien faction.
On the same note, I bought into the breach because it’s from the same studio as FTL. I played a few games and forgot about it.
I recently picked it up and I’m having loads of fun.
Bread maker. A guy I worked with said he loved his and I just bought one with no research. It’s my favorite specialized appliance next to my popcorn machine.
Zojirushi bread makers are amazing
And rice makers!
Yes! I also have the rice cooker. Probably the two most used kitchen gadgets I have!
Serious question. What exactly does it do to save time? My wife treats making bread like boiling an egg. Something you can do quickly and easily whenever you need it. So I’m wondering which part of it can be simplified.
It depends entirely on the type of bread. Soda bread/biscuits/etc. can be as simple as mix and bake, but yeast breads usually require multiple steps over the course of a couple of hours. Usually something along the lines of:
- Mix ingredients
- Knead thoroughly for several minutes
- Let rise for ~1 hour
- Press the dough flat again and knead again
- Let rise again
- Bake
- Let cool
The intermittent rise periods are what allows the loaf to expand and gives the center its fluffy texture. It’s not a terribly difficult process, just requires intermittent attention over a fairly long period of time. You may have heard talk about bakers starting their job very early in the morning; people traditionally wanted fresh bread in the morning, and it takes several hours to actually make (even if most of that time is just waiting), so bakers need to start several hours early.
A bread maker turns the long process into basically just “put in all the ingredients and press go”. It still takes a while, but doesn’t require any attention once it’s started. You can also just put the stuff in at night and have it start on a timer so it’s ready in the morning.
Portable projector. I don’t have a TV in my room, but I use the projector all the time. I can point it on the ceiling or the walls. I can connect my hard drive to it, or stream to it. It even has access to apps so I can log into, say, YouTube directly on the device. I love it. It’s was something I kept saying I didn’t need (and it’s true, I would have survived), but it’s been a swell experience.
There are so many you have to tell us which one you like.
Over COVID I bought a new guitar. It had been probably a decade since I stopped playing and suddenly found myself with a lot of free time. This absolutely was the best impulse buy as it reinvigorated my love of playing and I’ve since made it part of my daily ritual. It’s done wonders for my well being and mental health.
A bed, and now I’m having gooood sleep
Never underestimate the importance of having a good sleep! ❤️
Now get a thick memory foam mattress topper and never want to leave bed again!
Tandem Showerhead, you can slap however much you want on it to luxurify the whole setup, and just seeing it installed was enough for my SO to start doing the thing where they start just leaving their stuff behind at your place to stealth move in.
That looks so cool. I might have to try that.
How has it been with staying place? Tension rods don’t always stay reliably. I’d prefer something permanently mounted
Most tension rods I’ve seen drop have been fixed up by just really making sure they’re really tightened up when you put them back up, but if you’re worried worried you could probably use a water resistant adhesive on both ends to give it a bit more hold up.
As for mine, it’s holding up pretty well on its own, even with me hanging shower baskets off it.
7 watt blue laser I bought for shits and giggles. Didn’t realize just how stupid powerful that is. Now I feel like I have a highly effective long range weapon in a country that bans almost all kinds of weapons. It won’t blast through skin but I guarantee if someone points it at you and keeps it on you’re going to run, and FAST.
If I ever get bothered by illegal drones, I can also use it to destroy the camera from far away. One fraction of a second and any optical sensor is 100% toast.
A gaming computer that was the most expensive one they had. Beyond a faulty wi-fi adapter, it’s held up incredibly well and I can run pretty much anything on maximum settings and achieve a frame rate of 60 fps or more, even on RPCS3, which is a PS3 emulator that is known for being rather slow on most systems.
Literally the same, what a great impulse purchase.
You’ll love it!
I plan on replacing my laptop with it as well
Neir: Automata and Nier: Replicant were on a steam sale recently and I picked them up.
Automata had been on my radar for a while and I assumed it was just one of those annoyingly difficult souls-likes throw the controller at the wall type games that also (feat.) a Waifu—color me surprised with how in-depth and bizarre the world building and game design was.
Replicant had its issues but the remake was equally fantastic.
Both were wonderful surprises. Considering you just got a steam deck I’d say get both.
Fun fact: NieR:Automata is the sole reason DXVK (a huge source of Proton’s performance) exists. The avatar for it on github (or its developer) is fanart of 2B
My HP ProLiant DL380 Gen8 (awesome name, ik)
Was randomly scrolling through a local 2nd hand marketplace and saw it for an absolutely killer price and just bought it.
Thing’s been great as a homelab/VM server/ Local dev server/NAS.
I went from DL380g6 to DL380g9 they are quite powerful for what you get. Also very noisy though. I have installed two p40s. I love it.
