6d ago

whats your dumb purchases?

148 comments

I always dreamed of having a fast food pop machine in my house as a kid. It took me about a year of owning a SodaStream as an adult to realize that I do own a slower and smaller scale pop machine and I can make as much pop as I want.
- Does it taste different than what you get in cans/bottles for home use?
  
  Yeah, it tastes pretty different. It's either the carbonation or the fact each SodaStream is haunted by the thousands of people killed and displaced for settlers to put a factory in the West Bank. 50/50 on which is a bigger factor
  
  If you want it to taste as close to identical as possible, you can usually find name brand bag in box syrups if you search around. So I guess in theory you should be able to get the same taste as real fountain soda. Idk how that compares to bottled though. I had a box of dr pepper syrup which made great tasting dr pepper.
  
  A little bit. The carbonation and syrup amount changes each time you make it. But overall it's the same idea.
- I got this bad boy when we needed a new sink anyway. It's definitely overpriced, I could probably diy a system for way less, but i use this every day and it is awesome having sparkling on tap.

I bought a used rusty school bus. Six years later, at least I know how to weld now. Sort of. I also learned how to survive hitting my head on a large steel C-clamp nine times without suffering any brain damage. Additionally, I learned how to survive hitting my head on a large steel C-clamp nine times without suffering any brain damage.
- Six years later, at least I know how to weld now. Sort of.
  The most important part of the Dunning Kruger curve! And welding is a fantastic example. You go from "this hot melty thing is scary" to "dang, I can make metal stick to itself!" to "that weld looks kinda professional" to "holy crap there's a whole science and art to this I will never have the time to fully learn".
  Is your school bus now something usable? Would love to hear about a successful impulse buy!
  
  My skoolie is semi-usable, basically just needs the utilities (electric, propane and water) hooked up. I bought a house two years ago and that has suspended work on the bus completely. Someday ...

Does a Hello Kitty bandsaw count?
- No. That’s the coolest shit I’ve ever seen
  
  I actually did the paint job myself. Bought an old saw that needed some new paint, so I decided to have some fun with it.
- Are you actually a wood scientist, and, if so; can I pick your brain?
  Nice saw, BTW!
  
  I'm actually working on a PhD in the field. Whether that officially makes me a "scientist" I cannot say. But I have actually studied and done research in the field. Ask away!

A blank 10cm by 10cm square piece of aluminium. About 2 cm thick
I think I wanted to know how it felt. Like, the vibe of aluminium
- Add a tungsten cube to begin a collection.
- That sounds completely logical to me. Did having a hunk of aluminum answer the question for you? Or did it only drive a more insatiable desire to hold elemental materials?
- I did a coop at IBM many many years ago. My project used a 1" thick slab of aluminum that was about 3' x 4' and it was so much fun to just touch that thing. We also had CADCAM which was not at all widespread in the '80s. It was so much fun to design parts and send them to the machine shop electronically and have them show up on a cart outside the lab the next day. Quite a shame how far IBM has fallen since those days.

I bought a pallet of computers at an auction at a local college for $250 a year or two ago. HP Elitedesk GenIIs specifically (4th Gen i5, 8GB of RAM, 256gb SSDs, and space for add in cards and more drives if needed) I did not expect my throwaway bid to win but it did. So now I have a bunch of computers. I have some projects in mind, but honestly I've mostly been tossing them to friends and family when they need a computer for something. Eventually they'll all be allocated, sold and given away but it's certainly taking a bit
- You can't like connect them together and make an AI server with them?
  
  I've not seen freely available software to split such a workload across multiple machines, but realistically if I did I'd be looking at less performance that if I just got a single used datacenter card (like one of the Nvidia Tesla cards) off eBay for the same price and popped it into a computer, or if I got a single much more modern server.
  I can however cluster them in fun ways for redundancy! Most hypervisors support clustering so that VMs can be migrated to another host if one needs to be taken offline for anything, or if one unexpectedly powes off the others will continue the workload. Or clustered storage where it spreads the storage across multiple hosts for redundancy as well as speed. I definitely want to get some of those old 25GB or even some of those 40GB infiniband cards and run a glusterFS or Ceph cluster to really see what clustered storage can do (I ran a Ceph cluster in a lab in college but it was over a gigabit network so everything was painfully slow)
  But those projects will account for only about a dozen computers at most, so I have to find more projects and more willing people to have these systems foisted upon

I bought an old pachislo machine from a garage sale because ... I'm not real sure, but I have one of those now.
- Looks fun. How much was it?
  
  $75, and it works. Well ... worked, it's being weird now, but I'm sure it's mechanical, I just haven't gotten to looking at it.
- Damn I've always wanted something like this! Jelly
  
  If you manage to find one, there's a modification you can do to it so that it will also take US quarters. Mine seems to have already had that modification before I got it, so I can't say how involved it is, but I don't think it's too hard.

Despite the site screaming left and right that one should not count on a proper keyboard's worth of keycaps at all, much LESS a matching set, and despite years of forum and reddit posts declaring their underwhelming nature, I still bought a 5-pound (2.27kg) sack of random keycaps from Signature Plastics in Washington state.
I just have to know, and I'm kind of unironically looking forward to sorting them like so many Lego bricks. I may even get a few that are useful for my projects.
- Surely there's enough for a macro pad in there? It's like the makers version of a scratch off lotto ticket lmfao
  
  Most likely, yes. I think most people do end up finding one or two smaller boards' worth of "unicorn barf," which is to say everything is the right shape and 95-99% have the right thing written on them, but the colors are totally random and visually jarring. I also have a few ideas that might benefit from some of the weirder caps, (like a big square that uses four keybaord switches... people seem to end up with some of those) and occasionally you'll land on something that someone in the hobby actually does need and you can help them out. A lot of it is simply indulging a certain need to examine and categorize.

Wayyyyyyy too much tea
- Get on my level lol
  I tell my kids "if I'm not tea-ing I'm peeing". It's truly my only vice.
  
  Lol let's go.
  Tea is easy to pretend it isn't a vice. Just keep telling yourself its healthy. Even if it may be a bit more borderline at our levels lol.
- what kinds :D
  
  Thanks for asking :) WARNING: I got excited to respond. I've gotten into a Puerh kick lately. For those that don't know, Puerh is a very dark fermented tea. My current one taste predominantly like leather with a hint of wood and dirt. High quality dirt. I adore this tea.
  I've got a huge white2tea.com sampler order that hasn't been shipped yet. I'm trying like 21 different teas spread across the following categories: white, ripe puerh, raw puerh, haungpain.
  FYI haungpain is known as "Farms Tea". It uses broken leaves and leaves lower on the tea plant that were/are considered lower quality. But I hear the lower leaves have a nice robust flavor, and most tea I buy tends to avoid the lower leaves. I'm excited to try it.
  I'm thinking of reviewing all the tea I get posting them all on the tea community or something.
- No such thing.

Espresso machine A nice double boiler one
- I bought an entry level espresso machine and i thought that i want a really fancy one, if i keep using it and this one breaks. That was like 8 years ago and i use it almost daily and don't really want another one.

A convertible that I had have tuned to the max and foiled and re-seated to my liking in my favorite colors. It looked awesome in my head.
Then my pimp-mobile came. And I always was the center of attention. Which I, a very private person, highly disliked but gloriously failed to predict.
Also it was horrible to drive for >30mins because you basically had your nuts on the ground and felt every Lil pebble on the road.
Few months later I sold the car and bought one which basically made me invisible. One that only >70yrs olds drive here 😁
- I drive a roadster myself. Recently I've noticed that to get out of it, I have to lift my left leg up with my arms and set my foot on the ground, otherwise I get a sartorius muscle strain. I now understand why used roadsters are so cheap: there is only a tiny window where you're old enough to afford one but young enough to actually get in and out of it.
  
  Lol yes. That too. It was no fun to get in or out. On top of that enjoyment I'm 2m and ripped two jeans while getting out. Up to that point I never saw the appeal of SUVs 😁

My pregnant wife asked me to get her a fountain Coke Zero from Costco the other day.. I paid for the thing and waited patiently for my empty cup. When I approached the dispenser, I found that all three Coke Zeros were out of order. I had no choice but to fill it with Diet Coke. It was the lowest Costco experience of our lives.
- I realise that it's probably a highly technical question, but is there a difference?
  
  Coke Zero is a newer diet option formulated to taste similar to original Coke, with the presence of a mild artificial sweetener flavor that is more recognizable to those who are sensitive to the taste. Diet Coke, on the other hand, was created decades before they had decent sweeteners. While it still has a sizable following of people who like it, Diet Coke tastes nothing like original Coke, and has a flavor more akin to the smell of hot plastic.
  This is pretty consistent across all brands now, at least from those that I've tried so far. The new Zero versions are much, much closer to the original formulas.
  
  Coke Zero is the formula marketed to males who do not want to be on a "diet".
  It's got some extra flavor extracts as far as I can tell; a more robust and "spicy" taste v Diet Coke

This subject is dear to my heart, because I realized that part of my conservative upbringing taught me money is the important thing and that emotions are worthless and dumb. If you spend money on something that makes you happy but does not provide commensurate utility or return on investment, it is by definition a dumb purchase. Treating yourself is a waste of resources and therefore makes you a bad person. Maybe unless you are debt free and fully funding every retirement and college account you got. (note the unspoken implication that it's cool for the rich to do whatever they want)
As I have spent decades reverse engineering the instructions for my brain, I have recently concluded that not only do I thrive when building and creating things, but having the perfect high-quality tool that is great at what it does right down to the sensory feedback can really enhance the experience for me.
I've spent a bunch of money expanding and upgrading my collection this year, and I haven't regretted it once. But I've spent even more on the materials just in the months since!
- That's not a conservative upbringing/mentality.... That's a capitalist mentality.
  The only thing I can really say about capitalists is that they're some of the worst people I've ever known, and I've known a few of them.
  Very religious people (usually conservatives) are generally quite kind and generous. If they follow their religious book, that tracks. Since most religions teach about tolerance, acceptance, and understanding. Like the legend Fred Rogers; May he rest in peace.
  Usually very liberal people are about basic social services for everyone, and programmes that support DEI. They want everyone to be on an equal playing field and they want that playing field to be, at a minimum, allowing all people to independently be able to live, have reasonably good health, food to eat, and somewhere to live.
  Meanwhile capitalists always focus on the money. Who is paying for all of this? They don't want their money (via taxes) to go to people that are less than them. Anyone who makes less or has less is "losing", and they're "winning". All capitalists want to be on top, and they don't care who they have to trample to achieve that.
  There are exceptions of course, on every one of these groups. For example, Bill Gates who donates a lot of money for good causes. He still has plenty of money, but honestly, he gives away a lot. By no means do I mean to imply that any billionaire is good; in this case Bill is just using the wealth he has to do good. He's clearly someone that made a lot of money doing capitalism things, and yet he believes in helping others.
  The capitalists I have met are some of the most argumentative, vocal, and toxic people I've ever met.
  Good on you for getting away from that mentality and finding enjoyment.
  
  Agreed, and your wording is excellent.
- I really enjoy Ramit Sethi's take on this; he encourages what he calls living a rich life. Yeah you should look to your financial future but you have to balance it with your life now. It's sad when you're limiting yourself out of fear. He's an advocate for spending where it brings you value (and only you can decide that), and aggressively cutting out the things that don't.
  
  He's an advocate for spending where it brings you value (and only you can decide that), and aggressively cutting out the things that don't.
  That's an excellent way to put it! Sometimes I feel like a weirdo for actually pursuing the things that bring me happiness. Like that makes me the eccentric one. So many seem to be on a boring yet miserable autopilot, trying get the things they've been taught they SHOULD want.

I am currently surrounded by empty cardboard boxes from all the jars I bought because I wanted to make a bunch of preserves because I have a supply of free apples. Slow cooker is currently on warming up 5L of pureed apples that I will make into chutney.
If this was a dumb purchase or not depends on who you ask.
- I don't think you'll make a profit, but maybe you'll make some friends.
- That counts as a great purchase in my book!
- I would trade sourdough starter for homemade chutney.

I keep buying more synthesizers while I already have more than enough. I buy more than I play with them.
- I grew up obsessing over synths in the '70s and '80s (I listened to Yes, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis etc.). Now I'm a programmer who writes (more accurately wrote) software synthesizer apps, and I find it amusing that my cheap smartphone from ten years ago has orders of magnitude more sound generation power than those keyboard-based beasts from my childhood did.
  That being said, I would probably be willing to kill somebody to get my hands on an original Moog to play around with.
  
  Yeah those Moog's are insane. But the Behringer clones are also super nice. And imo nothing beats the sound of an analog synth. With those new Behringer clones you also have a USB connection supporting midi, so you can mix them very well with any DAW.
- Something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vjAeTh4DnY&list=RD1vjAeTh4DnY&start_radio=1 ?
  
  No I don't have money for the real ones. I mostly have Behringer clones.

My dumb shit is all homemade.

Ungodly ammounts of ultra high power flashlights with open source, customizable UI
- A flashlight... User interface?
  
  https://github.com/ToyKeeper/anduril
  
  The diagram of the new (imho way better) Version is quite a bit more complex, but you should get the point.
  How do you interact with the UI? Well, every flashlight has a button. This is your input. And you have the LEDs which you can use as an output/feedback. Yeah, it's wild.

I bought an old boat in Amsterdam (3000€), did some reparations (500€), replaced the engine (1500€), paid the local tax (600€ x 3years). I had fun with it. No regrets. Then I was moving back to my country, I couldn't find a buyer... so I lowered the price to 1500€.
You were great, old boat. But not a great investment.
- I once asked my dad if he’d ever buy a boat. He asked me why he would want to buy “a hole in the water to throw money into.”
  
  I heard this 1000 times, together with "the two best moments in the life of a boat owner are the day you buy it, and the day you sell it"
- Vehicles are notoriously not investments except for some incredibly exceptional cases. Glad you enjoyed your time with it. That's the best you can hope for.

Not enough room here to show all my impulse purchases.

$19K in watches. Now I have a kid, and I am straight salary. In hindsight, I would be perfectly happy with the least expensive one. I'm a mechanical engineer, and they really interest me. But they were not smart purchases.
- me sitting here with five Casios, a Ball, a spring drive Seiko, a Bulova Precisionist, a Brew, and probably one or two I'm forgetting about: yepppppppppp
  
  Hell yeah! Nice collection.
- That's a rabbit hole I managed to avoid. I lived in Shanghai in the 00's when you could still get nice counterfeit mechanical watches there. Then I got a nice Seiko mechanical watch but no matter what I did, I just didn't love the auto-winding function. Then came the solar watches from Seiko and Citizen which were relatively cheap. Now I'm here with a smart watch and never looking back.
  Edit: also an engineer.
  
  I admire the engineering of the solar, too. It's really cool that the Eco-Drives don't even look like they have a panel. Are the dials like, micro perforated or something? I've never taken one apart. And the fact that you can store them for like, 6 months and they'll still have a charge is very nice.
- My co-worker has something similar. I wonder when he will figure it out?
  
  Probably around the time they need to get serviced and it costs as much as a Seiko dive watch and takes like 6 weeks.
- I never liked Breitling too much. If you want a good cheap mechanical watch, just go with Seiko, you get a good amount of quality for your money. Everything more expensive is an asset just like buying gold.
  
  Oh, let's not add the Seikos to the list. I have plenty of those. SKX007, SRP775, and like 5 or 6 I've built with Seiko NH-35 movements. I have a watch with a Seagull ST19 movement. I have some vintage ones, like a Timex Viscount and an Elgin Sportsman. But all of those are $500 and under (mostly under 200) and I don't look at them as dumb purchases.
  
  I nice steal-able asset you flaunt on your wrist, to boot!
  TIL about watch insurance. What a wacky world we live in.

I bought healthy food that rotted away, and took a significan't amount of my income. I now only eat slop again.
Most of it I just didn't know how to prepare proper, was stored badly in the shop itself, and I could not find all the ingredients for. It was expensive as fuck too.
The Tofu tasted like fish, and made me feel nauseous.
So, don't try to min-max your diet if you live in a shithole I guess.
At least the slop is cheap, and caloric. And I still have peanut butter left over.
- I have a few more: A solar battery called blue wave that does not charge from the sun. The panels must be fake!
  A solar lamp with the same problem, a working portable solar panel that is only useful for battery packs/mobile devices and I never have the time to actually use (although it will be good in emergencies).
  A plastic bike helmet that would probably increase injuries due to awful design.
  Bought a small fridge with no freezer compartment when there was one of the same size, with a freezer compartment that was just objectively better for the samepeice.
  Gmod, years after it was no longer popular, just because I finally could.
  So now, all my money is devoted to basically pleasing my brother, and bailing out my mother. After that, I will hoard like a dragon, after he has his PC (not buying alat after), and her debt is settled (plus a few small things to make life easier).
- Eat the healthier slop.
  Add leaves to it, eat a fruit sometimes.

A switch 2. No regrets on that fat PP tho love that thing.

Another synthesizer that I don't even have a stand for.
- I keep hearing about these synth hoarders but never meet them in real life.
  
  Think of how many YouTube channels have walls of games or books behind them. Or people that have 400 games in their stream account they never even play. Synth cost of entry is higher, so proper hoarders are rarer.
  If I had another digit on my income, I'd probably find an excuse to buy a used instrument at the pawn because it's a wicked rush imagining what you can do with this new tool.

Self-balancing electric vehicle gang! I have a VESC onewheel build and it’s the best waste of money ever.
- those are so much money, I'm so jealous lol
  I just got mine for 350 off Facebook marketplace
  
  You can do a vesc conversion on the cheap, there are kits out there. I spent two years amassing parts for my build and it made me feel like Tony Stark putting it together (and it worked).

salty licorice😈

A collection of Commodore and compatible disk drives. Useless, expensive, heavy, fragile, mostly non-functional, unrepairable in some cases. But they look good piled up at the back of my closet.

A 10 inch 300W powered amp/subwoofer... I already have a soul-destroying stereo with 8 inch sub and studio monitor speakers... and live in a 1 BR... I do NOT need a sub so powerful it will rattle the gypsum out of the walls, and yet...
- My Revel F208 speakers don't really need a subwoofer for music but having a 12 inch 500 watt subwoofer to support them for movies does add to the dramatic impact. My apartment neighbors haven't complained so I assume they are enjoying the music and movies too.
  
  I feel like subs are way overrated for music. A good 10 or 12 in a quality speaker kicks. I mostly use mine to round out the sound, because I listen to a shitload of 50's-70's jazz where the recordings are shite.

Some music gear that I haven't really used at all, and don't feel particularly inclined to lean in and really figure out how to use. like a drum machine (arturia drumbrute impact) and a sequencer thingy (arturia beatstep pro). I could sell both of those and not feel like I'll ever miss them.
Watch collection is pretty dumb and I really only ever wear one of them anyways. But damnit, they're neat, and I enjoy rebelling against smartwatches.
Arguably, purchasing a custom ordered Taycan wagon with nearly all the options. BUT, car depreciation only matters when selling, and no other cars out there tick all the boxes for me like the Taycan does, so I'm okay with it

Onewheels are so much fun.

So I might have gotten into Airsoft before my paycheck has arrived... Sorry wallet, you'll feel better in a few days time.
- How expensive is it? Isn't it just air compressed plastic beads?
  
  It's not an expensive hobby to get into, I did my first game in about 10 years, enjoyed it so much that I got hyperfixated and went all in because I know I love this hobby.
  £110 for Airsoft rifle
  £180 on starter clothing (undershirt, shirt, trousers, imitation plate carrier, ammo pouches, pistol holster, gloves, mesh eye mask, and large bag to shove it all in)
  £40 spent so far on BBs
  £40 for first site session (outdoor woodland)
  £20 for second site session (indoor CQB)
  £40 for third site session (outdoor abandoned base)
  £50 on a piccatiny rail mounted torch with pressure pad
  Petrol costs travelling to sites, food, drink not included, I've so far spent £480.
  Having said that, I have nothing else to buy right now so that'll last me a good while.
  Whilst I'm not in the shit financially from this spending spree, DON'T DO WHAT I DID, that was a bit reckless of me.

Just bought a Brothers B&W laser printer. I need to print something maybe twice a year.

RPG books I know I won't ever play. I ran D&D for two years during the pandemic and now I'm here reading Pathfinder, The One Ring, Legend of the Five Rings, Fate, Savage Worlds, and so, so many Mausritter crowdfundings.
- Would you play a game over the internet?

That fat PP looks a little on the short side.

Dumb? I just bought an IDE PCI card and a 3.5” floppy USB adapter. I have a bunch of old 52x dvd/Bluray drives, some are IDE. Thought about buying a new SATA writer, but the internal 5.25 are well over $100!? Shocking, they used to be $35. Nobody needs them anymore. I only bought the 2.5” adapter to avoid throwing away the drive, I don’t know where my 1.44mb floppies are. So now I have an old PC with IDE optical drives and a 3.5” floppy.
- What's a 2.5" floppy?
  
  One number away from the correct one.

I don't even know why

I love being poor and disabled in America.

A working PC would be nice, but I've learned to keep my hopes and dreams nice and low.
- Hey, I don't know if that's an option for you but here (GER) we have non-profit organisations which provide PCs and laptops for people who need them. Maybe there's one in you area, too.
  Alternatively many IT companies take client PCs back when customer companies get a new generation. Maybe you can save one before they get thrown out vor get one for cheap.
  Just my 2 cents. Best of luck!

Adjustable dumbbells.
I work at a place with an onsite gym and am afforded an hour of PT everyday.

148 comments