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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
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.
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 ❤️
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Remember seeing this in Linux format magazine as it was one of the first early Linux native games
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.
You're in for a good time with that thing. Its also great if you want to do more with it as you feel comfortable doing.
As for my impulsive buy? Id say the same thing as yours, when the steam deck came out I immediately pre ordered it. I had been waiting for a good PC handheld experience for a very long time and Valve were the ones to show up unlike the very bad GPD Win I used a couple years prior.
The only thing I knew about it was that it was going to use linux so while I was waiting I started to learn about it and actually use it on my main PC over windows and I have never looked back since.
Haha same, after using the SD for so long, I started to question why I was still using the abomination known as Windows on my actual gaming PC. I switched 3 months ago and haven't used Windows since. I realized that all I really used it for was Steam games and web apps, and Linux can do both perfectly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A bed, and now I'm having gooood sleep
Never underestimate the importance of having a good sleep! ❤️
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.
Those Ikea snap together decking tiles. We rent but have a tiny all-concrete backyard, and for like $250, we transformed it into a remarkably pleasant deck between those tiles for the ground and planters for the perimeter.
The Govee Dreamview TV lights and Philips Hue lights are also pretty high up there.
3D printer is now, but it took it several years of occasional use and occasional CAD upskilling before it got really useful.
Automatic cat feeder for dry food. It's so nice to reduce cat feeding to just the wet food, and it makes it way easier to put them on a diet.
Dyson handheld vacuum, but only because I got it refurbished and on sale for substantially less than half the original price.
Edit: oh and the biggest one by far is my Onewheel. I hate the company and will never buy anything from them again (will be making an open sourced VESC board or buying a Floatwheel instead), but I bought the board at the start of the pandemic to have something to do during lockdown and I now have ~7000km on it. It's way more fun and practical then I was expecting. Even compared to like an e-scooter, a Onewheel still give you both hands free and is small enough to fit on the bottom of the grocery cart, making it surprisingly more practical for hauling stuff.
I bought an E-Bike, the impulsive bit was not getting a normal bike.
I kinda just figured it would be fun, and probably useful for some longer trips through the city. It ended up being one of the most empowering things I've ever owned, I have a pretty nasty health condition with lots of really bad fatigue and I live in a hilly area. I was able to look after myself to a whole new level, it was in almost every way a mobility aid for me, it made it possible for me to get supplies and meds on bad days it was a game changer.
Anyway it got stolen a couple of weeks ago so that's cool
Literally the same, what a great impulse purchase.
You'll love it!
I plan on replacing my laptop with it as well
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.
A cheap beginner bass guitar. I was like man will I play bass even? I’m a drummer mainly but I also play a decent amount of piano bc my main drum things are drum set and marimba and I played synth for 1 season in drum corp. I got a bass because I wanted to actually try playing bass parts for songs instead of clicking them in. It does sound better (well, eventually it did) but it’s just really fun to play. Like I had also bought a $100 used guitar and I just find playing that a chore. I can play a few songs but I’m a permanent beginner and have no real interest in growing. The bass though? I play that like an hour a day and it’s actually cutting into my drum and piano time
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.
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.
the steam deck is the first pc gaming console. Steam deck, 3ds, and original PSP slim were my 3 big impulse buys that went well. The PSP only because it rules when you install homebrew on it.
Steam deck.
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 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.
Spent a few hundred on a nice butterfly knife. I love the thing, it's my favorite knife.
I have power tools. I had like 7 batteries for them. I saw that they offered a USB adapter so I could charge my cell phones. $20. I quickly stopped using wall warts and standard battery packs. 5 amp hours, hot swappable, always a battery in the charger so I could never run out of power. Power tool batteries are built to higher specs than typical cell phone chargers so they didn't die after 10 chargers. The batteries are rugged so a drop doesn't destroy them.
My tools were stolen. I replaced all my Makita with Harbor Freight Hercules brand, their premium brand. Half the cost of Makita and actually better designed in a lot of areas. I quickly bought the USB adapter because I could never live without it again.
If you have power tools and always use them, I'm a handyman, then a USB adapter is a must.
