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?
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 everyway 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
Sounds awesome (except the stealing part)!
My local government is pushing for people to bike more instead of driving, but if you have a decent-looking bike it will be stolen. Bike theft is so bad that there is a satirical movement to oppose biking until the bike theft situation has been dealt with.
Yeah my current bike is literally just an abandoned bike that I repaired, so I doubt anyone’s gonna want to steal it. If I get another E-Bike I’ll be a lot more particular about where and when I leave it, and use multiple locks
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.
Don’t beat yourself up over it. You can’t time the market.
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.
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.
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.
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
Same, it’s the holy grail of gaming, such a great device that keeps getting better.
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
Heroic launcher supports gog
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.
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.
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.
I bought the official dock and have struggled a bit with it. It sometimes doesn’t recognize my TV and has other connectivity issues that seem to only be solved by repeatedly restarting it. I had an extra HooToo adapter lying around at work and holy crap that thing is such an awesome adapter for cheap that connects to the TV or my monitors and peripherals so easy and I’ve never had issues.
Meta Quest 3. I had been saving for a Valve Index but I was getting impatient. Turns out it was an amazing buy and (for me personally) having an untethered headset was more important than I realized. My computer room is small but my living room has plenty of space. Plus the Steam Link app works so well nowadays I can still play Steam VR games but wirelessly anywhere in my house. Pretty awesome deal for something that costed half the price.
Well, I wouldn’t call it a strictly impulse purchase, but I did get a steam deck because I was missing gaming and I’m glad I did. I haven’t played in maybe a week or so, but I’ve put a good number of hours into BG3 so far. You’ll enjoy it. I’m glad I got it.
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.
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!
We bought the machine with most functions that could make the smallest breads. Freshly baked bread 2-3 times a week. We fight to get the 1st slices ofthe bread.
Steam deck.
A bed, and now I’m having gooood sleep
Now get a thick memory foam mattress topper and never want to leave bed again!
Never underestimate the importance of having a good sleep! ❤️
Same bestie. Steam Deck OLED is genuinely an awesome gadget. I don’t really buy things much, especially not something so expensive and new, but the steam deck is just so worth it.
A puffco peak pro and 3DXL chamber. It felt insane to spend as much as an Xbox on a vaping device but honestly I fucking love this expensive little guy. He slaps lol
While back I randomly got a little over a thousand bucks from the state and I used some of it to buy a PS5 just for Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls but I ended up really loving the adaptive triggers. Motion and gyro controls are kinda lame. I can take or leave rumble/vibration. Adaptive triggers, however, are actually fucking awesome. I want to see it adopted more; maybe it’ll be something most consoles have next gen.
The system itself isn’t bad, either, I guess.
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
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.
