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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
Aren’t they prohibitively expensive? What’s the ROI timeframe and drink number going to be?
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.)
Its great for acade-y and mindless games, I’ve been digging Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Dredge, Balatro, Dave the Diver, and Talos Principle
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.
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.
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
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 🙂
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
