"Gaming chairs" are a fucking scam. They'll either fall apart after a few months of use, or cost their weight in gold. Buy an office chair instead.
Waaaay long time ago one of my school friends was both a videogame junkie and car guy. This was before 'gaming chairs' were really a thing, but his solution was to hit a scrap yard and salvage the most comfortable seat he could find from a junked car. He mounted that onto an office chair swivel base.
To date, the most comfortable "gaming" / office chair my butt has ever had the privilege to occupy.
I have no idea what a car seat would cost from a scrap yard, but if your the tinkery type and looking for a new project...
I would like to point out that the or in this comment is not necessarily an exclusive or.
Fo sho. My buddy bought one and talked it up. I tried it out as I was interested in a new chair since my work from home ability had recently increased from 25% to 50% arouns 2018. My broke ass 10+ year old chair from college was wayyy more comfortable. Invested in a ~$250 office chair after that. Have had it for 5 years, work from home 75% of the time, amazingly comfortable and it still looks like new.
This is true. Gaming chairs are a scam. They're made in China and sold in bulk to wholesalers for $40 who mark them up and sell them for $600. I have one and hate it, it's hard as a rock and not adjustable.
a good office chair is a fraction of the price, more comfortable and will last far longer.
My wife has bought several gaming chairs over the years. None of them have any breathability and she just sweats like crazy whenever she sits in one for a long period of time.
Buy a used Herman Miller. I know someone linked a gamers nexus video before, but you really really do not realize how bad most chairs are until you sit for ten hours straight in a Herman Miller, and have zero pain afterwards. And then that chair will last you several decades. There’s a reason they are constantly for sale. Those chairs literally outlast businesses.
I use a wooden chair from a dining room set probably, never got the hype over chairs. I'm not hard-core gaming but I've sat in it for maybe 8 hrs a day before doing school stuff and it never gets uncomfortable
I once set an S3 lifecycle setting that accidentally affected 3 years worth of logs to Glacier. The next morning I woke up to a billing alert and an AWS bill with an extra $250k in charges (our normal run rate was $30k/month at the time). Basically I spent my entire add annual cloud budget for the year overnight.
Thankfully after an email to our account rep and a bunch of back and forth I was able to get the charges reduced to $4,300.
Yeah luckily Amazon is good about mess-ups that are one-time like this. Was the cost because you were pushing to, or retrieving from Glacier?
Deleting from. We move logstores and I added an ageout policy for anything over 1 day, to "easily" empty a bucket overnight. I forgot that I had been cycling stuff to glacier after 6 months, and there were 3 years of logs in there.
was hanging out with friends getting some drinks, we decided to walk through our old campus.
there was a roof I always used to climb up while in college to chill on, so I did that.
after finished, while hopped up on liquid courage, I decided to jump down.
did so and shattered my heel.
spent the entire summer immobile and required a surgery that ended up costing me about $5k out of pocket.
have mostly recovered now, but it's still not as good as the other foot, and I know it's going to hurt like hell when i'm old.
don't be like me, don't do stupid shit while drunk.
I was about to joke about the fact that you have to pay for health, but then I saw that you've never recovered. I'm very sorry, buddy.
It's not horrible, I can run and hike right now, just not at 100%.
what are you gonna do though
Alcohol. The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.
-Homer J Simpson
Did something somewhat similar. Got drunk after final exams. We decided we were special agents and were rolling over car hoods/bonnets (like they do in chases). There was a van (think A-Team), and since it doesn't have much of a hood, I rolled off the roof instead.
Pretty sure I cracked or broke a rib (there was literally a loud pop). Couldn't sit up, cough, sneeze, or breathe deeply for about 2 weeks without intense pain. I never went to doctor though because I thought, "well, it's a rib, what are they gonna do? Put a cast around my whole body?"
Now I have discomfort every day, and pain between 2-3/10 after any sports. Tough when your youth idiocy catches up with you! Felt so invincible back then.
I'll drink to that
If you have a four-year scholarship, for God’s sake, make sure you graduate in four years!
Or, as I did, don't drop a class mid-term because it's not going well and end up sliding into part-time status. Poof, scholarship gone. I woulda been better off taking the F.
Never let the car run out of gas. I was on the highway and the destination gas station was in sight. Well, even after putting more gas in from a Jerry can it wouldn't start because debris clogged the fuel filter. Getting it towed + repaired was like $1000 when I could have just stopped at a gas station earlier.
Before buying your fitst home:
- bring someone with more experience than you to have a look at it, maybe even a professional
- scout out the area (on foot) during the day, evening and night
- visit local businesses like cafés, restaurants, bakeries etc.
- look at statistics like crime and air quality
- have a talk with the neighbors, get a sense of the community if you can, otherwise just observe while taking walks
- if applicable, call the home owner's representative (or whatever the equivalent is where you live), ask them about the home, neighborhood, community, expenses, plans for the future etc.
- have a set budget of how much you want to spend on it before you move in, don't overstep that amount
Nowadays if you do all those steps someone else will have bought the house before you're done
That's basically why you need an outstanding real estate agent.
Look at mister fancy pants who can buy a home.
Not all landscapers can "landscape". Hired a guy to build a pad for a shed which included a small retaining wall. The guy doesn't own a level, and the end result is visibly not level. I showed him with my laser level what was going on, and he didn't believe me. He started adding MORE material to the high spot.
He was aggressive about needing to be paid. Very aggressive. I paid him since he knows where we live. Unless we sue him and win, we're out $4800, and to have it done correctly (with a fancier wall) will be $6500.
TLDR: Don't hire a lawn service company to build anything.
That sucks, I'm sorry that happened. But landscapers are not concrete people. I will say that any of either profession I've dealt with were aggressive about payment. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy tried to give you a change order for additional money?
It didn't need any concrete, I hired him to do a stone wall. I didn't want anything fancy, and had the whole thing been level I would have been happy enough with it.
thats when you take a fraction of the money you would have paid him, and buy security cameras for your house. High quality security cameras, with night vision.
Then contact a lawyer for damages to undo what he did.
That starting the work is half the work. I wasted a lot of time procrastinating, it took me shamefully long to realize that if I could just start an activity for 5 minutes, taking it to completion is then relatively easy
Damn bunch cynical people saying don't get married. Maybe don't get married to someone unless you're sure, and get a prenuptial. There are advantages, legal and financially, of being married.
Everyone tends to extrapolate from their own experiences. My wife and I got married about a month after we met, for complicated reasons. We've been married for just over 20 years now. Mostly very happily! I don't recommend our path to anyone, but the fact is that you just never know.
I wanted a newer car, so I rolled my existing auto loan into the newer vehicles loan. So easy right?
I was upside down on it for years and years. It's so disheartening to drive a vehicle that's falling apart and stranding you everywhere but still owe $10k on it. It was an awful decision that took years of pain but that was my lesson on buying things I can afford.
Not to buy a game's merchandise from the other side of the world (shipping price was around the same price if not more expensive than the product itself)
All my friends know: The moment I get a zombie apocalypse or similar confirmed, I'm ransacking and then burning down the customs building. They're criminals and I want them to die first with the fall of society
I was in vacation in Japan. We ended our trip in Tokyo because my partner and I are into gaming and I knew we'd buy stuff. One thing we bought was bigger and a bit of a hassle to pack. I wondered how much it would have been if I had bought it online and shipped it. Turns out I lot of the newer stuff we bought we could have bought from Amazon Japan and shipped directly home for a reasonable rate (probably less than the cost of the overpriced duffle bag we bought).
Art school isn't worth it, period. I got a far better art education through my local community college by far, from instructors who weren't incrediblely stuck up and full of themselves.
That was an 80k expense that I'm still paying off almost 20 years later, and I didn't even finish my degree.
I went back to get my AS at a CC and took some art classes there. 10/10, far better instruction for a fraction of the price.
When I was a student I kept my books beside my bed on the floor. Got hammered one night, went to bed, felt sick and ended up being sick on all of my books on the floor. Probably about £500 worth of books which is a lot when you’re a broke ass student.
As an IT-worker, it's not uncommon to test technology and scrap it due to bad results or unfit implementation. Usually this isn't considered a waste, since there are a lot of things to learn in the process.
However, this one system which was designed for testing applications was a bit different. From the day we were told about it, basically every developer knew that this would be unfit. However the customers were firm on that it should be implemented. I'm not sure if it was because of the looks of the sales person or if it was a genuine incompetense that the decission was landed, but I felt a bit too junior to stand up against it. So about a month of work with 2 developers went down on something that every other developer knew would be scrapped. 2 devs at ~$100/hour, 4 weeks of 40 hours, so roughly $32,000.
The lesson was that I need to be more direct and firm when things like that is decided.
If you got paid, it's not your lesson to learn.
True. It was an expensive lesson, but not expensive for me.
Don't invest in crypto.
Not me personally, but one of my career mentor's friend's took down the entirety of Google Ads as an intern for like 10 minutes. Apparently it was a multi-million dollar mistake, but they fixed the issue so it couldn't happen again and all was well afterward.
In my first couple months, I broke Amazon so that no-one in Europe could buy video for a few hours. On a Friday, right before going on a week's vacation.
The way that the ensuing investigation and response was carried out - 100% blame-free, and focused on "how did these tools let him down? How can we make sure no-one ever makes that same mistake again?" - gave me a career-long interest in Software Resiliency and Incident Management.
Junior dev: "I fucked up bad, I'm so fired"
Senior dev: " I have 3 production outages named after me lol"
Source: https://twitter.com/CarlaNotarobot/status/1481458190722207747
Yep. And every time there's a thread about an Internet service having an outage, there's some kid saying "oh, someone's getting so fired for this one!"
Yeah, the competent business folks know that if you fire people for outages, you lose everyone who even stands a chance of preventing outages. And you tell the rest of your staff to hide problems. Businesses that do that kind of thing tend to end up with a valuation in the single digits.
If an intern (or damn near any employee) can be in a position to single handedly take down that scale of system it’s not the intern that should be fired - it’s the architect that baked that kind of weakness in the first place.
The legal system.
After having 3500 dollars worth of stuff stolen by my shit landlord. I went to court. Again And again And again And again.
Not accounting for my time, gas, parking, I spent over 5000.amd even after I "won" I still wound up goj back to court several times because this scum sucking asshole claims to be 100000 in debt to the government.
I hate the legal system more then I hate the guy who stole from me!
Looong long distance relationships are not worth it.
Personally I disagree. They come with their own set of problems and admittedly probably require specific character traits on both sides, but they can be worth as much as any other relationship!
And you can buy those Bluetooth dildo/fleshlight combos that work over the Internet.
It really depends. I did long distance for years during college and we got a place together after college and have been happily together for a very long time now.
Don't buy salvaged vehicles unless you are dead sure you gonna keep it for life. And don't cotumise it if you intend not loosing that money. I've bought my Harely salvaged 10 years ago, put a lot of work and money on that. Now I want to sell it and I just can't, even taking a 20% loss on the market price. And that is without adding the parts money I've spent. Bike original goes for 40K. I've put around 12K on parts and upgrades. I'm asking 32K and can't sell it. Furthermore, the dealership don't accept that bike on a trade cause of the salvage mark it has.
Frame swap it.
The VIN is on the frame. If you swap it to a new frame that doesn’t have a salvage title, it’s not the same vehicle anymore. You need to make sure you get a clean title with the new frame, but that’s actually not as hard as it sounds.
There are also ways to launder rebuilt vehicles. Some states don’t track rebuilt title, and will give you a clean title (but a digital check will reveal that it’s rebuilt)
Whasing it is Highly illegal where I live. Furthermore, it's extremely unethical. I'd not like to buy a vehicle that was salvage without knowing it previously.
Changing frames would be OK, but I'm pretty sure that a new legal frame in good shape plus documentation and labor swaping it would be more expensive than the amount of money I'd be able to recover upon selling.
Explain salvaged vehicles to me pls.
Salvage vehicles are those that wore at some point Involved in some kind of accident that has inflicted considerable damage to it. It has different degrees of damage, going from minor to severe. Although the vehicles are able been repaired to it's full functionality and safety, they'll have it's documentation marked as salvage forever. Mine was marked as minor damages, I got it already repaired, if one is curious.
Anything that's been damaged past where insurance would pay to have it fixed. Water damaged/flooded vehicles, frame damage etc. Serious damage that was more costly than insurance wanted to deal with.
It's pretty well known not to touch one. Which is why this person is having trouble unloading it.
The insurance will figure a value for your car if it's been involved in an accident, stolen, or gets damaged by some crazy storm or something. They use the cars age and mileage to figure this out. If the appraiser looks at the damage and sees that fixing it (parts and labor and paint) is going to cost more than the value they gave it...well then it is totaled.
A totaled car will retained by the insurance company and they pay you out according to your policy.
Those totaled cars can be sold for a residual value (see copart.com). And be built back up and driven. But the title is now branded as a salvaged vehicle. Anyone who buys a totaled car will get a branded title either salvage, flood title, idk what all different states have for the name of it. That branded title is tied to the vehicle by its vin number forever. That's why you see the commenters saying they should frame swap the motorcycle to get a different vin number on it.
Not to go to the strip club when drunk. I blew like $5k in one weekend, never going back again (at least, not when I'm drunk).
Always wear a condom. Never get married.
And by always, it's always, not like, halfway in people
As Eisenhower said,
beware the engagement-wedding-genderreveal-kids-mortgage-divorce-childsupport-legal-industrial complex.
I may be mis-remembering exactly what he said. but I think that was the gist.
College only makes sense economically if you have a plan.
If you’re a naive, idealistic, scatterbrained, autistic, traumatized, brainiac redneck raised into terrible character by a spineless single parent who drove off the good one, like I was, then your best bet after high school is some entry level job, heath insurance, and therapy for a few years.
I had an emotional system the equivalent of a broken pair of legs. I basically signed up for a walking journey with broken legs, because (a) I had no conception of what the “legs” were that carry a person through college successfully, and (b) I had no idea they could be broken, and (c) I had no idea mine were broken.
I was like “sweet! big journey!” and the kids from healthier backgrounds and I got along fine, and they got their shit done and I mostly tore my hair out and cried and took super long walks and experimented with drugs. I had been led to believe that the journey through life was like driving through a country. I didn’t realize that traveling in this journey meant transforming the self. I had no conception of self transformation as an aspect of life, of directed growth, of evolving consciously. All I had was this feeling that life was like a river and I was kayaking down it seeing new stuff.
I don’t really know how to say what the lesson was. It was the most expensive lesson I ever learned, because not only did it cost me a huge amount of money, it also cost me about twenty years of my life.
I have similar experience with you, and boy do I waste so much money on that. Wish I could afford therapy, because managing myself emotionally was a long, expensive and heartbreaking experience I wish I could skip over.
Not a massive expense. Turned 500 € into 250€. Learned a lesson nonetheless.
I followed the GameStop (GME) hype to late and halfed my money in 4 easy steps. Follow and don't repeat.
- invest (feel like robin hood ... hehe)
- panic (notice why I shouldn't daytrade and why I was in therapy
- withdraw my money at an awesome 2:1 ratio
- not fall for internet hype that quicky again and delete my invest account
There's an old saying that "Time in the market will always beat timing the market."
You just didn't hodl long enough ;)
Stock market is all gambling. You just gotta choose a bunch - some indexes, like Dow/S&P, some bonds, and then a few stocks you "like". Then hold them for decades, and check in only a couple times a year. Otherwise you'll most likely lose money.
VTSAX and chill
Don't email a solicitor to confirm I've made payment. Apparently it costs me 36 quid for them to read my email confirming payment.
sounds like you have a shitheal scumbag solicitor for that.
and I would have told him to take the bill and shove it up his ass, if he could find room with his head taking up most the real-estate.
What am I meant to do? I need this boundary shit sorted ASAP.
Our mortgage brokers, we had a broker that told us it would be best to go with variable because you always end up paying less. We had a choice between 1.35% variable or 2.05% fixed. We had 1.35% for 2 months and it is 6.1% now. We could be putting so much against our principal but instead we are paying 3k+ in interest and 1200 in principal.
First car. I had no idea about anything or how to cars or anyone providing good advice.
I put e10 once as the only other option was 98 and too expensive.
About a month later I get a rattling sound from under the car. Replacing the catalytic converter was really expensive.
Not to lend money to anyone and expect to ever see it again.
Very true, but doubly so if it's family.
You have to approach loans to friends and family members as straight-up "gifts" without anticipating ever seeing the money again. If you do ger repaid consider yourself very lucky.
My wife and I "loaned" a dear friend of hers $2000 at the start of covid. He hasn't mentioned it since. But we went in knowing this was the likely outcome.
Don't go with the low bid.
College isn't for everyone.
Do not trust financial advisors when they live from the contracts they sell. (Most do, don’t trust them).
They work for their own interest or for that of their employer, yours is only second to theirs.
Do you have any recommendations of who to trust? I'm in a good place in my career but mostly do everything myself. It's very basic stuff but I think I could be doing better. I just don't know what the next step is.
Their general advice about diversification is not wrong, but the products they sell are in my experience not good.
Where to get better products? Do the legwork, understand how the cost is structured and what the goals and risks of a product are, where you save or pay taxes, and then become frustrated, get a depot and buy a cheap world ETF.
Don't screw around with stock options on Robinhood. Also ideally don't triple your first purchase overnight because then you've fooled yourself into thinking it wasn't a fluke even when you know it was a fluke.
Avoid investing in things you don't understand.
Also avoid investing in things you think you understand.
Don't invest in Detroit real estate
They'll steal your stairs.
They literally stole the doors and windows
I knew someone who bought one of the $150 houses and lost her ass. I never got all the details but it sounded awful
College.
Houses are overrated.
Seriously, even if you can technically afford it, if you're not still flush with cash after close, it's just infinite stress.
The main issue is that you are now locked into the area around your home. Unless you're making so much to be able to afford a house AND appartment rent, your job opportunities have become that much more limited since remote job offerings are on the decline. Relocation assistance is a thing, but if your house purchase is at all recent, still a good chance that selling will put you in the red.
You also have to pay for any repairs or improvements in the event that the only house you could afford is old and not up to safety regulations. In my case, I also have interest rates to worry about. I bought my house while they were on the rise and locked in above my comfort zone (not in a "i'm about to bankrupt myself" kinda way, don't worry) in hopes that they'd go down and I could refinance, but obviously they havent, so what should be a comfortable payment for me at 3% (~$1100) is instead a "wow I can literally never have fun anymore" payment of $1850 at 6.5%, and will remain so for the forseeable future. Also: Because the only affordable place was like an hour from my job, gas money's eating a hole through my soul as well.
I get you, but the other option is to burn money every month on rent. I think a lot of your issues are solved it you can work remote and have a good home owners warranty.
But yes, interest rates make a HUGE difference.
Alternatively, buy a plot of land from an area less desired by the general public. Have the house built yourself, and move in. House buying is not smart unless you are pressed for time, which is not a smart way of handling it as you should take your time with houses.
Buying a house or land in an area that is saturated with demand is also unwise. Live within your means. Most who are able to afford land and house are more than capable of affording more time away from the job or remotely work. If your job requires a lot of your time, then it is more wise to just rent a small room and take vacations outside the area. There are a lot of factors in place when you consider a house, and you made great examples.
I am sorry about the interest rate. A 6.5% rate is not the worst but disadvantageous because, historically, most ROI for safe investments are 5%. This means it is more beneficial to pay off the house than it is to diversify while you are paying the house. Which is bad because you should be diversifying your portfolio. My sister has a 2% interest rate, she is so lucky and I tell her to diversify instead of putting all her money towards paying off the house.
Education? I guess I learned a lot from it?
Dining out isn't a substitute for therapy.
Fuck, all of this is depresing to read. I havent had had any mayor fuck ups like the ones in here so my only contribution would be to not lean into bathroom sinks since they are not as firm as they look, not even if they are welded to the floor via concrete, just wash your hands or your teeth or shave or wathever away from the sink, since the motherfucker breaks easly.
Don't ever trust a friend in business. Maybe it works out, maybe you almost lose everything.
never go into business with anyone you know, especially family, without 1) An iron clad contract explicitly stating powers, ownership, and responsibilities and 2) being able to walk away from your entire goddamn fucking family.
I have ADHD.
Practice/passion/skill > gear in music
And Gear Acquisition Syndrome is a real disorder
Don't get into modular synths unless you have serious $$$
Sky is empty
Is there a story behind it?
It was a long journey of belief into someone unknown. My whole family is worshipper of god. So for me also first it was god of some sort. Then it shifted into guru. Then the universe, existence. Then it became self, Atman. And now ... Now this journey is all over.
I did not want to marry but I fell in love and married on her request. I never ever wanted to have child, but that too happened, thanks to her. After being a parent, the least I wanted was to be with my child and that too has been very difficult till now.
I wasted about a decade of my most productive age for nothing. I asked for some guidance, looked above almost all the time. Not seeing any better option, i chose the one that gave me easy job. But I denied taking help from others/family who did not respect my choice of my life course... I have been working from ground up without help from anyone. It is difficult.
I started questioning very fundamental belief that I have been taking as granted, which have been clouding my perception. Once I shrugged off those dusts, vision became clear. It took me twenty years to realize that there is no place of any grace or a guardian figure in the events of a life. Things happen. There is cause and effect relation. Or things happen randomly and there is none to look after each individual. You are on your own. I know my story is not very painful or extraordinary. But I have readjusted my standpoint after 5 years of constant observation and contemplation. Now I am ready to face any adversity. I will not be blaming anyone imaginary.
I also ask the meaning of a life and the world and I don't find any. I feel I have no existence of myself apart from being a tool to fulfill the work of nature - to reproduce. I have been used by nature, the brutal almighty force that made me fall in love so deep. I never wanted to have my gene transferred. I don't know from where this desire has emerged, but it has been constantly present since my childhood. Being a parent was a turning point for me. I know I cannot be a good guardian, and he, my son, will not like me much the moment he starts seeing things. I wish he would have been born in some other world, where nature and existence would not exploit an individual. If I may dare to dream...
Enough of babbling. Sorry if this is too personal and not interesting enough.
Don't know if it is that expensive for others or not but just sharing cuz it might help someone.
You don't need to be a dad in order to make dad jokes.
Wear a condom.
Don't try to update the BIOS of a generic x86 mini-server if the manufacturer does not offer it on its website. I didn't learn the lesson the first time but I certainly did the second one. $200-ish down the drain that way
It's not that bad, bios is stored on an eeprom chip that can be programmed with some special device. On some motherboards (usually older) the chip is socketed which is really nice. On others, you need to desolder it. If you can find someone doing electronic repair, they might be able to fix it.
If I ever find someone with enough hardware and electronics knowledge to revive those two boards (in Central America I should add), I'd just give them up for free for all I care.
I should never have been born
Be aware of your own finances and don't blindly trust your family.
Don't bomb it down a slope you don't know (snowboarding). Someone pointed me to a "hospital" which turned out to be a private clinic and my insurance didn't cover the ridiculously overpriced CT scan.
@TheImpressiveX I will die one day.
Credit cards and drugs do not mix well.
Yeah, I use an old ID card to break up my coke instead
Don't take 4 pills of molly in one night. And don't make that mistake more than once.
Monitor the temp gauge in your car. Overheated my civic's engine when radiator leaked :( had no warnings until it's too late (2008 one). had to replace it, now always trying to have an eye on it
Volkswagen's are no longer reliable cars.
A reddit link? Rude.
Sorry, the timing was just too convenient.
Don't get married
Why not?
If you must get married, don’t have kids.
And if you must have kids, don't.
Don't buy a house.
I'm curious why you say that, unless you mean in today's market. Sure, it's expensive and often something needs fixed. But it sure beats paying inflated rent to someone else to live surrounded by methheads, folks with kids that literally bounce off the walls all day, and/or older folks that go to bed at 6pm and complain if you make a peep after 6.
Personally, I like my house, as spendy as it is. I'd amend your statement to say "don't buy a house you can't afford, do your homework and research".
Buying is not always cheaper than renting. You're on the hook for closing costs, ongoing maintenance, property taxes, insurance, HOA dues, PMI, etc. Then if you're only living somewhere for a few years you have to pay real estate agent fees to sell. Depending on length of ownership it can very easily be cheaper to rent. Plus you can't just up and leave like you can at the end of a lease. Renting is far more flexible and that's attractive for some people.
There's also something to be said for paying more to live in a house rather than an apartment for the reasons you listed, but the same math above applies to renting vs. buying a single family home, or some other standalone housing.
I admit I've gotten pretty lucky, but so far buying a house has been great for me
