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 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)
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
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 🙂
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.
Haunted piano?
So far, no ghosts yet! Only haunted by the vague odor of the church it was in before, so it kind of smells like an old lady’s house, but it’s going away pretty quickly.
Even $5k is extremely cheap for a good 6’1" grand piano in good condition.
I went on the low side since it’s not in perfect shape and is an older (1985) Young-Chang built Wurlitzer. It was a church piano so it has some bushing wear in the keys, but still very playable, and had a broken string on D2 that was an easy $50 fix. I think after moving, tuning, the string, and eventually rebushing it in the next year or so, I’ll have about $900-1000 into it all said and done. Still definitely a pretty inexpensive piano overall, but understandable why they might not have wanted to put money into something that was probably a donation to begin with.
What an amazing story! Its always amazing the stuff you can find second hand 😁
I bought a Sunfish sailboat for $100 for an art project. I haven’t stopped sailing since, and though I now have a seaworthy 17 footer (it was a deal!) I spend most of my time on, the Sunny is still my favorite.
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.
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.
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.
There are so many you have to tell us which one you like.
A bed, and now I’m having gooood sleep
Never underestimate the importance of having a good sleep! ❤️
Now get a thick memory foam mattress topper and never want to leave bed again!
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.
That looks so cool. I might have to try that.
How has it been with staying place? Tension rods don’t always stay reliably. I’d prefer something permanently mounted
Most tension rods I’ve seen drop have been fixed up by just really making sure they’re really tightened up when you put them back up, but if you’re worried worried you could probably use a water resistant adhesive on both ends to give it a bit more hold up.
As for mine, it’s holding up pretty well on its own, even with me hanging shower baskets off it.
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
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
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 wanted to get those tiles but they seem a hassle to clean/maintain. How long have you had yours?
Cleaning is a non issue, some dirt accumulates beneath them but you never notice until you lift them up again.
Maintenance wise they do fade in the sun, but it only takes like a couple hours to apply a couple of coats of new stain to a whole deck (like maybe once every two or three years depending on your tolerance for fading). Otherwise they’ve held up great for ~4 years of constant, year long exposure.
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.
Spent a few hundred on a nice butterfly knife. I love the thing, it’s my favorite knife.
