I have an older brother. I invested $1000 in his first show, lost it all.
He went on to win a Tony award.
Also, it’s likely I may one day inherit some of his wealth. He’s single and childless.
He never payed you back after becoming successful? What an ass.
Nah, he’s used his position to give me some exceedingly cool experiences. I feel more than paid back.
It must also be fun to see him in big time stuff and awards shows and be able to point and truthfully say “that guy owes me a thousand bucks!”
I’m so proud of him. He has a play he produced that’s currently planning a world tour.
We’re the sons of a poor roofer. I hope he makes enough that he never has to work again off his current show.
Too bad he didn’t consider that an investment in his future and not just explicitly that show.
Oh, he certainly did. That’s a big part of why I don’t regret it.
Got a couple of retro consoles. I definitely don’t need them but it’s really nice.
Boat
I spent front money on a guitar at Goodwill when I was buying My mom all kinds of stuff. I was tripping balls and had convinced myself people were sneaking money into my wallet. I just wanted to show my mom a good time. A year later I El Kabonged a home invader with that very same guitar.
El Kabonged
Le mao
I’m glad I got the experience to El Kabong someone. It’s a hindsight appreciation edition of ‘I wish a fucker would’.
Spent $800k on a house remodel. We gutted it and rebuilt it.
I did all the plans myself, I got them approved by the city, I made all the interior design decisions (my wife had veto power but left 90% of it all to me). In theory, in my area, the house has gone up in value by equal to or more than what we spent… but realistically I overspent. The amount I pay for loans is enough to make my very hefty salary seem low, but I don’t regret spending the money (It didn’t help that interest rates went up right before we pulled a $500k loan!). The house is awesome and it’s MY/OUR house since I did the design myself and I worked with the contractors throughout the entire process. I know every trade off we made and I can tell you why we made every decision. Doing this was a bucket-list item… but yeah… I overspent.
Mini-split AC for my office. My central air always struggled to keep the room cool with all the computer equipment. Work & gaming is so nice now.
I bought a Steam Deck. Irresponsible for the fact it mostly exclusively exists for gaming, and isn’t a very productive item to buy.
But gods damn is that such a fun device!
Mine has become my primary work machine.
Same. Middle of spring quarter at college and I decided what better way to spend financial aid then buying a portable gaming console?
I bought a warhammer. Then I bought a second warhammer. Don’t regret either purchase.
Keep going. Only 39 998 more to go!
Coin for the Coin God! Bucks for the Buck Throne!
An Xbox 360 with a VGA adapter and Dead Rising. My TV at the time was one of those gigantic old 90s video editing CRTs, the kind that take all sorts of analog inputs like RCA and S-Video and even did HD if you could convert something to BNC, but pointedly would not do Component or HDMI. A few days prior I’d learned that VGA can be repinned directly to BNC, and then when I was wandering through Best Buy I saw they’d gotten some 360 VGA adapters in. I stopped, flipped a coin, called heads, it landed heads, I bought it.
I’d figured I’d get some minor fun out of it, basically just bought it because I really wanted to play Dead Rising. Instead I wound up using the ever loving hell out of my 360. Still have it, still works, no RROD or anything.
$95 on a flashlight and then $50 to have it done with custom cerakote. To be fair, it’s a badass flashlight. Consequently, that led to the purchase of a few other flashlights with similar features but much cheaper and without the custom coatings.
See the attached image for more details and feel free to ask me any questions :P
Hah! I use my mf01s every night when I go to bed. I turn on candle mode, give it a timer, and drift to sleep. It’s an incredibly expensive night light but I love it
I originally came from Olights, I was a big fan of them. I never understood how people could complain about them until I finally had a flashlight with great CRI and tint. Also, the fact that these things use Anduril is incredible. After learning how to use Anduril 2.0, I hardly want to use any other flashlight!
Needless to say, I’m done with Olight. I’m actually looking to sell them away lol
I hope this isn’t blatantly obvious, and I have a guess, but which is the expensive one? I really like the lit up buttons
Edit: I feel it is the large one due to the similar textures on the others. Mind explaining a bit what makes the light special? Super bright, fun colors? I enjoy them, I just have never looked into the hobby
The expensive one is the white-ish one all the way on the left! That one is made of titanium (with the exception of the copper head). All the other lights are made of aluminum. Also, the cerakote coating is special because it changes color with heat! At rest it’s a dark navy blue, but as it gets warmer it turns into the greyish white you see in the picture :)
The special thing about each of these lights is that they’re almost semi-custom made, you get to pick certain things such as the color and material of the body, the actual length of the battery tube for different types of cells, and most specifically the type of LED that gets put inside. They also use an open-source and insanely complicated user interface called Anduril 2.0.
The fancy colors you see the lights putting out in the image are just auxiliary LEDs that look pretty. You can change what color they’re producing or even have em do a little light show if you set them to do that.
There’s one guy who actually makes them, his name is Hank Wang. You can find his store at intl-outdoor.com. Considering the amount of customization that goes into these lights and the quality of the LEDs themselves, the value of them is actually rather amazing.
In this image you can see how the beams vary in color temperature across these lights.
All of this is super neat, thank you for sharing! I enjoy knowing about them, but I wouldn’t have any practical use
Pellet grill, the larger size, and I got WiFi. If I’m smoking something fir hours, I can see grill status and meat temperature remotely
I’ve made so many outstanding meals and the WiFi really is useful for something that cooks that long
I remember when Leica released their first digital full frame camera. I was excited cause I had a m4 that I used for a decade with a bunch of lenses. Searching thru estate sale after sale to compile them. The M9 came out on 9/9/9 and I was on vacation in Tokyo at the same time. figured if I waited a few years I could get a used one maybe.
So my wife and I went to the Leica store to look at it on the release day. When we went in there I chatted the guys up and they told me a preorder fell thru and gave me an opportunity to buy it. I wasn’t even really considering it when my wife told them we will take it. I had half the money and she gave me the other half. I got to spend the rest of that week taking photos in Japan with my digital Leica instead of my film one. Traveled all around the world with that camera. It was the most expensive thing besides a car and house I’ve ever bought.
You have a great partner.
That would never happen again, no longer DINKs and now I drop more than that per year on my house just to keep it together :D Ended up selling all of my Leica gear except my M4 and a 50mm Summilux. Back to all film, medium format on a $300 mamiya, complete opposite from those days.
This is hard because of I like it then I don’t think it was irresponsible. Generally the irresponsible things I purchase are more like monthly things or meal deliveries. I can’t point at one thing and say “that’s it!”
Subscriptions, those must be the only things I reflect on that feel irresponsible.
Particularly anything around Apple because they’re impossible to cancel
Possibly a year subscription to Incogni and Discord Nitro Basic then.
- Incogni: I love the idea of this service but as soon as data brokers get more info on you they can keep it again even after the deletion request (as far as I know). I hate that this needs to be a service and I hate that it is a subscription model instead of a one time fee.
- Nitro Basic: I just wanted to use emojis lmao. Nitro Basic is cheap but still, it was giving a company money just to use fancy emojis 🤣. Also I sort of stopped using Discord.
Six motorcycles in 2 years
How many do you have now?
After selling one and borrowing a dirt bike for my kid, 6 are in my possession, but the one I’m borrowing is grown out of now.
I have an 82 Kawasaki that needs minor engine work, and to get sold, a newer retro sport bike and an older klr650.
I’m thinking next year I’ll sell the sport bike and klr and consolidate on a larger adventure bike, taking my fleet down to 3.
One mx bike, one klx300 that is capable on dirt and road, and one sportier adventure bike. That way my kid and I can ride trails anywhere and I can do some nice trips too. We can kinda trade off depending on how we feel like riding.
I thought I was crazy with a beginner bike into a fast naked bike within 12 months lol. What are they?
I still think of myself as a beginner but I am obsessed with doing everything I can to be as safe as possible, thankfully I also think learning safety is fun!
In October 2022 I bought a 2001 Kawasaki w650, that was my first bike since I briefly tinkered with dirt bikes about 10 years prior. I sold that this spring.
That same year in November I picked up an 82 Kawasaki ke100 and a 2004 KLR650.
This spring I picked up a 2019 Kawasaki z900rs and a 2017 KTM 125 SX.
A few weeks ago I picked up a KLX300, which is the first new thing I ever purchased, and I just finished putting the 650-ish break-in miles on it yesterday, so I’m really excited to take that on the trails now.
I think what I’m finding is riding very different bikes in different ways teaches you all kinds of different skills that are transferrable to all of them in subtle ways.
What are you riding on now?
My first bike was a 2006 Suzuki GZ250, a little beginner cruiser bike with just enough power to keep up on the highway with it pinned in top gear. Comfortable and fun, especially around town.
After 3500 miles on the GZ, I made quite the jump to a 2012 Triumph Street Triple R. I wanted something sportier but still fairly comfortable (vs something like an R6, where there were plenty available near me). I didn’t want something heavy or something that I would grow out of soon. I’ve only had it for about a month but so far I’m loving it! It’s incredibly fast (to me ofc; can’t even imagine what a literbike feels like), I really need to be careful with it lol
The funny thing about bikes is they’re all so fun. I put over 300 highway miles on my klx300 over this past weekend and that hardened my nerves way more than the capabilities of my z900 did!
The great thing about higher performance bikes is that, while they can certainly go way faster than we should ever ask them to, they can also maneuver way better than we should ever ask them to.
They all bring me so much joy in so many different ways. I absolutely appreciate my sport bike like an engineering marvel (I’m pretty simple), and getting slightly naughty on it when no one is around is definitely thrilling, but honestly the bike rides so nice that even low speeds feels so good, and high speeds don’t actually feel so high. The little bike is kind of the opposite in a way that’s also fun anyway. It feels naughty even when it’s not haha.
Anyway I hope you’re staying safe out there. It’s the best way to have fun for longer!
I get the thrill of going fast on a slow bike like the GZ250. I have dragged pegs and asked it to do ridiculous highway trips (once 80mi of highway in one go, on a bike that can barely do the speed limit), and I even tried offroading the poor thing. (I dropped it a couple times lol)
The Street Triple is a whole different beast. One that tempts me to go way too fast. Luckily, I can (usually) resist those temptations and just cruise along.
I am being safe. I keep any slightly naughty things away from traffic, and I am ATGATT. It’s weird how unsafe some riders are, just today a bald man on a cruiser passed me on the highway with no helmet.
Ya a lot of folks make a lot of poor choices. I’m sure I do too.
I like to take note of any way I could have done something better in a ride, even if it’s just something simple like getting passed by a car before I knew it was there – a mild reminder to always be checking the 360.
300 euro’s worth of cocaine that I smoked in a day.
I’m not proud of it, and I don’t often smoke it, but it was a fun day.
Not to judge you or anything, as I really don’t, but I think it’d be more accurate to say “crack”, as in order to smoke cocaine, you’d have to freebase it. And freebase cocaine is crack.
When consumed, cocaine can be found in two primary forms:
A water-soluble hydrochloride salt, which is typically snorted
“Crack” cocaine, a water-insoluble base form that is smoked
That being said I’ve inhaled a few hundred euros a night at times as well so again, no judgment. I’m just pedantic.
Crack comes from the crackle sound you get when smoking if you use baking soda to make the freebase. I use ammonia. Nowadays they just use the name crack for freebase cocaine, which isn’t really accurate. Where I live we just call it smoking coke because almost everybody uses ammonia, and most people don’t buy freebase directly.
So to be accurate we should call it “freebase cocaine” and not “crack”.
So to be accurate we should call it “freebase cocaine” and not “crack”.
I agree with you. Unfortunately most drug users I know (both recreational and problem users) aren’t too strongly into prescriptive language use.
