No matter how big or small
A steam deck!
A dog. They need feeding, visits to the vets that get more expensive as they get older, they make holidays more expensive if they go with you or not, they need toys and time. But despite all that, they like any good pet, make life worth living.
As the OP I demand you pay the doggo tax.
One delicate flower
Wort every penny and more 🥰😍🤩
Wireless noise cancelling headphones.
Same hear ;) I used to be really adamant about the headphone jack on my phone, but now I don’t care. Wireless headphones are the way, for mobile at least.
I got a set of these for my summer 2024 trip across Canada. Initially it was for the flights, but it later proved really useful for the road trip too. Lovely purchase that was!
My noise cancelling headphones make me forget my disability sometimes, especially during bus rides, which used to induce migraines and leave me burnt out to a crisp when getting home from work. A mechanical keyboard made working so much more enjoyable, too
Are you neurodiverse too? I get sensory overload noise cancelling headphones are the best
I’m a mess. Autism, ADHD and bipolar :)
I’d like to buy a pair of those dampeners too sometime, the ones construction guys use. I feel the active noise cancellation strains my ears over time if I’m using them for hours
I paid a bit more for a bike than I expected. Nothing compared to a Dutch person’s weekend bike from what I hear. I got it used but the parts are all high quality, I think.
My life changed to being much more bike centric and I’m really happy with the purchase. The frame is carbon and I carry it up and down 5 flights of stairs 2-3 times a week.
Got myself a worldclass mountainbike for 100€, renovated it (in a shop) for 260€ more, use it to roam around in the city, it’s light, fun, and the breaks are from anorher world!
Why was it so cheap? It’s from like 1998…
But I mean if it was good for world champs then, it’s good enough for me today.
And there wasn’t an issue finding parts? Good work!
The repair shop has a 5 star only rating on google, the guy: oh yeah it was 26" back in the day, the three gears in front, the parrallax breakes, oh the bomber fork, the … and on and on, every thing with “they don’t do that any more” but he managed to find replacements for everything worn out. 5/5 !
I mean if it was good for world champs then, it’s good enough for me today.
Absolutely. The fetishization of “latest and greatest” among non-professionals is weird to me.
Larry, I’m on ducktales.
My espresso machine nearly 10 years ago. I think it was nearly $500.
I made drip at home and purchased lattes on the road. I bought the machine to make them myself in the morning and load up a tumbler with essentially 2 large lattes.
It definitely paid for itself within 2 years and I switched to work from home so I’m glad I have it today.
Besides using only distilled water in it I do basic maintenance of running coffee cleaner through it every 3 months or so. Never had a issue with it and it still works great.
Best purchase ever. Only downside is I make better “coffee” than most carry out places. I hunt for good coffee when I’m out. Found two shops locally that make great espresso drinks and pastries. I go a few times a year.
Good coffee is a dark black hole to get sucked into.
Do you roast your own beans yet?
'Cause when you do, that black hole turns into a full-on whirlpool.
I own a heat gun to do laptop and cell phone repairs…
I know about bean roasting and refuse to start!!
The “coffee bar” is ever growing in my home. I’m stopping at grinding my own locally roasted beans.
The siren’s call is there.
I was once like you. I had a supplier/roaster I trusted. And he did good work.
But he always roasted the beans just a hair darker than I liked. (I tend to favour so-called “city roasts” and he kept taking them to “dark”.) So I got him to teach me how to roast and to help me find a good home roaster. And I started to roast at home.
I never got into making my own espresso, thankfully, because the roasting stuff turned into a huge money pit.
I think my wife will keep me in check. She hated coffee before me and over the years I found her preferred taste. Decaf extra dark.
Local roaster hits it perfectly.
Dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant. It was an incredible experience and one I frequently look back on with fondness.
The back story: for our 25th wedding anniversary, nearly a decade ago now, my wife found a B&B deal at this wonderful hotel which was simply too good to pass up; the only catch was we’d have to pay separately for our evening meal. Well, how expensive could that be, I wondered, especially if we were careful. Reader, we were not careful!
It was wonderful, from the petit-fours, amuse-bouche and starter (a salad, the likes of which I’ve never eaten before or since), into the main course (“how did they do that to a carrot?”) through to dessert and the cheese trolley (“please have as much as you like!” we were told), and finally the petit fours, coffee and port from an ancient dusty bottle. The wine (we chose the second cheapest from the massive wine list, not that this saved us much) was similarly fantastic. I enjoyed every bite and happily signed off the bill with a smile using our emergency credit card.
It was a once in a lifetime treat but one I’ve never regretted.
I’ve always wanted to go somewhere with a michelin star so you’ve lived my dream! I’m really pleased you’ve got such a lovely memory and its a perfect way to honour your marriage
Thank you!
My Toto Washlet bidet. Heated water and fan, multiple settings for strength and position, this thing is amazing.
Split airco in spring last year. I live top floor, flat roof with the living room facing south. Summers get real hot nowadays here, so last year was the first comfortable summer in our apartment in years. In winter we paid a fraction for heating as well. Best purchase in a long time.
What is “split airco”?
Air conditioner. Split HVAC system is the kind that has an external evaporator that connects to a small wall mounted inside heater/air conditioner with just a small pipe. So you don’t have to give up a window, and it uses an extremely efficient heat pump to both cool in the summer, and heat on the winter. Some of them don’t heat.
Oh. That’s the norm here. They’re wonderful devices.
They probably mean mini splits which are usually attached to heat pumps which I think they implied by the savings in the winter
I have no idea what the jargon you’re using means.
I have a semi-cylindrical box stuck on the wall near the ceiling in my bedrooms. They each, when in operation (and thus with the vent open) has a small set of radiator fins visible. Each has a pipe that goes out through a hole in the exterior wall. On the outside is mounted a larger box that has a large fan, a compressor, and a larger set of radiator fins. In the summer they cool. In the winter they heat.
In the living room I have a large stand-up cabinet in place of the thing stuck on the wall. It otherwise performs the same task, with a (larger) pipe going out to a (larger) box with a compressor.
Is this what you’re talking about?
Yup, that compressor and tubing and fins is describing a refrigeration cycle. In the summer you are using it like a traditional AC where it soaking heat in your mini split and sending it out to the heat exchanger outside built around your compressor to dump that heat in a hotter environment than inside your house (amazing I know!) due to the change in properties of the refrigerant when compressed (or expanded). This process is effectively reversed in the winter to take energy which exists in the cold outside air and pulls it in to your house by expanding it outside. Compressing or expanding the refrigerant effectively makes it colder or warmer (whatever is advantageous for the situation) to be able to extract or dump heat into it.
A smartwatch. As a formerly fat guy with insomnia, the sleep and fitness tracking have been life changing.
Replaced all the screens in the house with 4K 144Hz HDR OLEDs. Once you go true black, you don’t go back.
A 4090. Stayed up for the midnight launch so I could snag one at MSRP. People mocked me for spending $1600 on a GPU, but given recent events, turns out that I actually got a good deal instead. This GPU will easily last me a decade; hopefully long enough to ride out all this tariff and inflation bullshit before I have to build a new PC again.
The first thing that comes to mind is my computer mouse. Shelled out a bit more than I usually would for a more fancy mouse with multiple buttons and it has lasted 10+ years. The middle mouse button died pretty early but I just remapped that to another button close by and it feels awkward and wrong pressing the scroll wheel on any other mouse now. Although it is finally coming to the end of its days now and doing random disconnects and shit.
Also, just in general, shoes are pretty much always worth forking out a bit more cash for. Especially as someone that does a lot of walking, if you buy cheap shoes, you’re going to be buying another pair every 6 months.
Other than that, haven’t made a purchase that’s good for the soul in a while. And I’m envious of your £200 picture lol. It really sounds like you’re taking a lot of steps to make yourself happy, however big or small and that’s awesome. Hopefully in about a year from now, I’ll be able to answer this same question with some cool shit.
New car. You remember those infomercials with the grey unhappy “before” video followed by a colored and cheerful “after” ? Yup, that’s pretty much me nowadays.
My old car was durable as hell, easy to maintain and all that. But my new car has so many creature comforts that I cannot imagine myself without them anymore.
Plus with 7 seats and AWD the entire household finally fits inside, and the mountainous terrain where we live is no longer a problem when the roads start icing up 8n the winter.
Sounds good! What creature comforts does it have?
Off the top of my head: Leather seats, AC, scheduled preheating, cruise control, modem and wifi, loads of 12V and USB outlets throughout the interior, sun roof, seats that all have more adjustment points than I have joints, HUD, steering wheel heating, automatic high beam dimming, lane assist that actually works, good sound, ability to save and recall presets for seat and mirror adjustments, 360 degree camera view, Bluetooth that isn’t a PITA to use,
And most surprisingly: An app that is actually useful - it let’s me remote start and lock/unlock the car as well as upload navigation destinations to the infotainment system. And it notifies me if I forget to lock my car (which I now have started caring about for the first time in 20 years). It also automatically logs trips with addresses, making it convenient for when I need to file an expense claim for work.Which make/model?
Old: Volvo 940, 1996
New: Volvo XC90, 2019Nice. I bet that was like night and day. I was considering the EX30 for my last purchase but ultimately went with the VW ID.4.
Why would you need a modem and WiFi in a car? I bet it uses cellular data anyway so why not use it directly?
Antenna on the roof is better than an antenna in my pocket. And now my kids can autoconnect their phones and tablets without me having to activate a Hotspot. And cellular data is pretty cheap here anyway.
Omg please drive me places. I’ll literally go anywhere if I get to be driven in that car 😍
Beyerdynamic DT-770 through Custom Cans (v3 acoustic mod and detachable cable). It’s the best pair of closed-back headphones I’ve ever owned both in terms of audio and build quality.
On the flip side is the AKG K240. I bought it because of its legendary status as a neutral open-back, but the bass and low-mids are crushed. The cheap knock-off Samson SR-850 smashes it to bits. Then I learned that Samsung bought and then murdered the original AKG in 2016 and use the brand name to peddle their cheap landwaste products. Fuck you, Samsung.
Seconding the samson SR-850. Fantastic budget ($35 usd when I purchased a few years ago) open back headphones. I would look into getting aftermarket ear cups, the stock cups hurt my ears with prolonged use.
I bought a fancy picture in a proper art shop that was around £200. Expensive but it’s brought me lots of joy! I’d always loved those pictures and I finally had the money to buy one. No regrets
Picture? (I mean would you post a photo here?)
It’s a Douglas Hyde one! Similar to this
Niice!
Thanks! I love his stuff and also cats so it’s win win for me
