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?
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.
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.
Zojirushi bread makers are amazing
And rice makers!
Yes! I also have the rice cooker. Probably the two most used kitchen gadgets I have!
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.
Remember seeing this in Linux format magazine as it was one of the first early Linux native games
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.
My house lol.
TLDR: Unfortunate life event caused me to have to accelerate my house shopping by 2-3 years. Bought right before COVID hit and everything could not have turned out better (and I’d have been worse-off buying a house in 2022 than I was when I had to impulse buy on in 2019)
right before COVID hit
Isn’t that a year before house prices and mortgage rates dropped to all time lows?
Yeah. But it was hard to actually house shop due to COVID restrictions, precautions, and such. I did refinance my mortgage in late 2020 (less than a year into it), though, since rates had dropped so much.
Oh yeah, forgot about refinancing. So you were still able to take full advantage of that.
For me it was an extremely lucky circumstance that my company’s stock hit an all time high at the same time that mortgages hit an all time low (well, not entirely luck, both events were due to covid). I would have never been able to buy a house in my area otherwise.
I’m wearing a mask while house shopping right now. Idk how that’s any harder.
Not sure what exactly you’re saying, many places were not allowing real estate agencies to do showings of houses during COVID, it wasn’t about wearing a mask or not you literally could not get an appointment to look at the house.
On the flip side I sold my house in December of 2019. Then decided to rent for a year to figure out where to buy next. Didn’t pay close enough attention to the market before it was too late. I still stay up at night sometimes thinking of how bad that went.
Don’t beat yourself up over it. You can’t time the market.
You have made a solid impulse buy. I love my steam deck as does my wife. If you get a dock you can also use it as a regular laptop too.
A Casio G-Shock! It’s the only watch I’ll ever need. My Apple Watch has been relegated to being used for workouts only! It’s so nice to not have to worry about smashing my watch against a surface bc clumsiness, not having to charge it bc solar & no notifications of any type!
https://www.casio.com/us/watches/gshock/product.GW-5000U-1/ 🖤🩶🖤🩶🖤
If you sidegrade to a Casio F-91W, there’s a fun open-source project called Sensor Watch that repolaces the PCB to bring some nice features.
My watch can now tell me sunrise/sunset times, run 6 different count down timers, and act as a full dice set for DnD.
Full list of complications: https://www.sensorwatch.net/docs/watchfaces/complication/
Casio G-Shock
Real nostalgia hit with that one, I’ve never really liked wearing a watch, and haven’t really before or since, but for a few years in my teens, I was a huge Baby G fan, I had to beg my parents to get me one for my birthday lol
A donation to PragerU
Eww
This is a parody account. Do not feed.
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.
One concern I have with those things is people casually using them outside. I mean, I’m not a big fan of heavy regulation in general, and I also think that lasers are cool devices, but even if someone’s got eye protection – which I would be using if messing around with something at that kind of power – and is not trying to aim at someone, it’s damned easy to flash that across someone else’s eyes, and that’s way outside of the range where your blink reflex is fast enough to avoid permanent eye damage.
I mean, most people won’t take a firearm and go blasting the thing randomly in a city or something. They register that they can mess up whoever the thing is being aimed at. But there are people who will be dicking around with seriously souped up lasers without regard for who might be downrange.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_safety
A Class 2 laser is considered to be safe because the blink reflex (glare aversion response to bright lights) will limit the exposure to no more than 0.25 seconds. It only applies to visible-light lasers (400–700 nm). Class 2 lasers are limited to 1 mW continuous wave, or more if the emission time is less than 0.25 seconds or if the light is not spatially coherent. Intentional suppression of the blink reflex could lead to eye injury. Some laser pointers and measuring instruments are class 2.
Like, that’s 1 mW that’s listed as the max for safe exposure before the blink reflex is no longer able to protect a human eye against permanent damage. You’re talking about a 7,000 mW laser, almost five orders of magnitude up the scale.
And that’s not even considering the fact that there are various reflective surfaces that can be hit, can be riccocheting the thing all over.
Like, at that kind of power, if a laser isn’t in some kind of confined case or something, that’s something where I’d want someone using it a room with eye protection on everyone in the room, only adults present (so some kid doesn’t yank off their eye protection or something), an access-restricted door, and a warning sign on that door telling people that high-power lasers may be in use.
Here’s a laser engraver that uses less than half of the power of that laser:
https://www.amazon.com/Bisofice-Engraving-Accuracy-Household-Woodwork/dp/B0BVVRFN5L/
You’re absolutely right. I don’t play around with that thing lightly - it actually requires a physical key to unlock before use. I also don’t intend to mess with wildlife or whatever, or risk any kind of fires. It’ll be used indoors, in a shielded basement, while wearing the appropriate safety gear.
Many years ago, some guy was trying to impress my girlfriend with his super powerful laser pointer by shining it on a building a few miles away. He shoved it in his pocket very fast when she told him he was shining it at a hospital.
An unkind part of me was pleased when less than 30 seconds later it was revealed that he forgot to do whatever he needed to do to prevent it from turning on accidentally, and bumped it, burning his pocket/pants slightly, and getting soot inside the lens.
I got a robot vaccuum cleaner (Samsung Jet Bot), and while pricey it’s saved me so much time and effort keeping my apartment clean. Definitely worth the money.
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.
Hi-Point .45 carbine, total impulse buy but it scratched several itches.
For those that don’t know, Hi-Points are stupid cheap and stupid looking guns. But everyone says they work great, so I was Hi-curious, if you will. The design makes me think they took a gang of skilled engineers, showed them pictures of guns, and said, “Make one.” Everything about the assembly is bizarre, no idea how to take it apart.
Stumbled on this thing for $300. Love me some .45, wanted a PCC (short rifle that shoots pistol rounds) and it’s white, looks like a Stormtrooper rifle! True to their rep, it won’t misfire, even with the cheapest remanufactured ammo. Taking it out today, it’s a hoot. God help me if it ever needs cleaned.
I bought their 9 mil a while back and when I got it I took it out to the range to test fire it. Some decent Winchester ammo, fired through the first clip fine.
Loaded up the second clip fired five shots, misfire, turned the gun to the side about 30° and downward with my finger off the trigger and the gun clicked and fired at the ground.
That was the scariest shit. If I hadn’t had the small modicum of trigger and pointing discipline that I have I could have shot someone without pulling the trigger.
I never fired that gun again, and I am now radically against hipoint weaponry
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.
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.
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.
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.
I impulsively paid rent because I can’t afford a Steam Deck. I love not being homeless!
I hope that some day you have the means to impulsively do both ❤️
