Post Your Last Purchase

[Prototime]

As the thread title suggests, post your last purchase (or recent purchase) you have made + (if you'd like) a picture of it. It could be anything big or small. An energy drink? Cool. A new laptop? Nice. A yacht? Go for it.

With thanks to NBR user NBRUser0159099, who posted the original "Post Your Last Purchase" thread on NBR on December 6, 2009.

[cucubits]

Adding to my more and more excessive amounts of car care products. I find detailing therapeutic and a great way to disconnect temporarily from all the tech that's taking over our lives.

I like Ammo NYC products a lot and lately I've been getting more and more involved, including paint correction and applying his Enamel Coating.

The fact that I don't have a car now is just fuel to the fire and make me keep working on my wife's car all the time. I just traded mine in and the new car doesn't get here for another 10 weeks or so. The wait is killing me so I can't stop polishing my wife's Beetle 🙂

 

 

[toastofman]

Pokemon Legends: Arceus!  Been doing my own playthrough and watching my 2 daughters play through as well.  I have a few gripes with some things, but it is such a stark departure from Pokemon games of old that I'm willing to forgive what I perceive as "problems."  In short, I am enjoying the heck out of it.

[Custom90gt]

More Ruckus Wireless access points, not that I need them...  On and some Cat7 cable to have 10GBe at my desktop. 

[Prototime]

Last big purchase was a PS5. I woke up early and waited in line for a couple hours to get it. I got it while visiting family out of state a few weeks ago, and unfortunately, the PS5 is too massive to fit in a carry-on bag. My family will be mailing it up to me eventually, but it's a huge item to mail and they've had a lot to deal with lately. I've never really been a PlayStation gamer. Had a PS3 with all of like three games for it; I mostly used it as a Blu-ray player. But there are a lot of great looking exclusives that I want to get my hands on this generation. Looking forward to getting it. In the meantime, playing Mass Effect: Andromeda on my XSX (which, by the way, easily fits in a carry-on bag).

[Yotsuko]

Some new tech for my mom to bring on her deployment.  A Nokia G20, Netgear Nighthawk M1, and a T-Mobile SIM (for the Nokia).  Now to get it all set up.

[Sandy Bridge]

The last groceries before the ice-and-snow storm that's going on right now.  Fontina cheese, orange juice, a couple other things.  I forgot the milk though.  Might have to see if French toast still works with cream instead of milk.  I half suspect it might wind up being even better.

[serpro69]

Dell Precision 7560, should arrive on Monday and I'm not a very patient person... :D 

[HWI]

Nothing exciting, needed a new work jacket, picked up a Wolverine Fortifier, nice jacket.

[Jarhead]

Kaspersky AV 2022 1yr 3 devices. Newegg had it for basically free so eh why not.

[cucubits]

52 minutes ago, Jarhead said:

Kaspersky AV 2022 1yr 3 devices. Newegg had it for basically free so eh why not.

Is buying antiviruses still a thing? I've been using the default windows defender for quite a few years now without any issues at all... and I can't say I'm too careful. I mean I don't open obviously bad links but I do browse on all sorts of questionable websites and I'm not that rigorous about caches/cookies cleanup.

[duskw4lker]

My last purchase was a DeWalt hammer drill (made in china *cough cough*), sadly the chuck was wobbly and had to return it after a week of use 😞 I was so damn proud of it, it was cool as heck. I think now I will go with a Milwaukee impact driver 🙂

[Sandy Bridge]

2 hours ago, cucubits said:

Is buying antiviruses still a thing? I've been using the default windows defender for quite a few years now without any issues at all... and I can't say I'm too careful. I mean I don't open obviously bad links but I do browse on all sorts of questionable websites and I'm not that rigorous about caches/cookies cleanup.

I still have one, but it's as much because I've got an XP computer that I still use from time to time as for my main one.  What's it done?  Well, a few times it has flagged suspicious sites I'm unfamiliar with that showed up in search results.  And when I was browsing the GeoCities archive a month or so ago, it found a few trojans in the uncompressed files.  If I do download something I don't entirely trust, sometimes I'll scan the download before running it, though I could probably do that with malwarebytes.

In general it's more likely to flag things that I wanted, typically as Potentially Unwanted Applications or Potentially Unsafe Applications.  WirelessNetView, a cool utility for viewing details about nearby wireless networks, or Process Hacker, which admittedly does sounds suspicious but is not nefarious.  Jokeware, too, e.g. a Blue Screen of Death screen saver, or a program that will set the clock to random times, often is flagged.  I see why it flags the jokeware in particular, but sometimes I want a BSOD screensaver.

I'm not sure it's actually caught anything on the XP machine though.  I tend to be careful in general though, and more so on that machine.  But it does still get virus definition updates for a 20-year-old operating system, so I can't complain too much about support.

I run ESET NOD32 now.  Used to run Kaspersky.  Both are pretty light on resources, which is a must for me.  Kaspersky is cheaper but while I don't believe Kaspersky themselves has reason to infiltrate systems, especially after SolarWinds I don't have enough trust in the Russian government to install that low-level of Russian software.

But I'm not passionate about it.  From probably about 2011-2015 I didn't really run anti-virus.  It's more of an insurance/supplement to lack of security updates on older system item for me at this point.

----------

Bought a FLAC/mp3 album last night.  Yeah, I know most people have Spotify nowadays.  But I buy 3-8 albums per year, which without a subscription that saves me money, and I get to keep the music forever.  I'd say it more directly supports the smaller bands too, but in reality the one I bought last night is one of the few that's actually from a smaller band.

[saturnotaku]

The touchscreen on my 10.5-inch iPad Pro is starting to act up. This is a rather common problem, and Apple wants $450 to fix it. I grabbed an iPad Gen 9 from Costco instead. The screen is a downgrade, but it will still work just fine as a casual content consumption/gaming device. The Pro will be handed down to my kid so they can use it for video chats and such.

[Jarhead]

On 2/4/2022 at 9:33 PM, cucubits said:

Is buying antiviruses still a thing? I've been using the default windows defender for quite a few years now without any issues at all... and I can't say I'm too careful. I mean I don't open obviously bad links but I do browse on all sorts of questionable websites and I'm not that rigorous about caches/cookies cleanup.

One of my hobbies is to archive / datahoard stuff, so having something at least a bit better than MS / Malwarebytes Free imo is something I'd rather have than not. Plus the points that Sandy Bridge mentioned, including the buying AV from time to time instead of having it continuously. 

[Yotsuko]

Outside of groceries, I picked up an open-box HomePod mini for $80.99.  It ended up having a missing power adapter, but I have extras.  For such a small speaker, this thing sounds pretty good!

[Prototime]

Sushi

[ryan]

never tried sushi, it well doesn't seem appealing but my sister loves it might have to just say......and try it maybe ill love it..what does it taste like anything similar>?

[Custom90gt]

I love sushi, too bad time for date night with the wife is hard to find.

 

Last purchase for the PC was Oloy 6200mhz CL32 DDR5 ram.  So far I'm happy with it even if I haven't had much time to tune it.

[ryan]

6200mhz geez im at 3200 with my laptop and I thought that was fast. does it improve responsiveness what did you notice when you got it? do games go up in FPS

[Custom90gt]

2 minutes ago, ryan said:

6200mhz geez im at 3200 with my laptop and I thought that was fast. does it improve responsiveness what did you notice when you got it? do games go up in FPS

 

It's not really a huge difference, so far DDR5 isn't really panning out on being much better than DDR4, but that's common with new ram technology.  It'll probably be a while before DDR5 really helps in things.

[ryan]

always good to be ahead of the curve. I think that DDR5 will help windows 11 performance eventually as microsoft has been using tighter restriction on hardware requirements like tpm 2.0

[Sandy Bridge]

On 2/21/2022 at 1:40 PM, ryan said:

never tried sushi, it well doesn't seem appealing but my sister loves it might have to just say......and try it maybe ill love it..what does it taste like anything similar>?

Well, the closest thing is something that most people haven't had until after they've had sushi... a poké bowl.  But aside from that, the flavors are high-quality fish (most often tuna or salmon), high-quality rice, seaweed (not sure what really tastes like seaweed, and it might be the biggest wild card in whether you'll like it, but it doesn't taste like your generic yard weeds), and the other items depend on the type of sushi.  Cucumber is common, avocado is common.  Sometimes crab (often imitation).  Most often sushi is dipped in soy sauce, but I find that whether that improves it depends on the quality of the soy sauce.  If it's cheap store brand, I'd just as soon skip it, but if it's a good Japanese sushi place they'll usually have soy sauce that complements the flavor.

 

For the first time, I'd recommend something like a Philadelphia roll (salmon + cucumber + cream cheese), and a straight-up tuna roll.  The California roll (crab, cucumber, avocado) is another good starter choice.  Skip the spicy options; some places do it well but others overdo the spicy sauce, and the focus should be on the main ingredients.  Of course, really, the best option is probably to split a few rolls with your sister as that way you'll have more variety, and if you don't like some or all of them they won't be wasted.

 

I'd also recommend eating out for the first time.  Supermarket sushi is usually not as high quality, in part because it's been sitting out.  And if you have qualms about seaweed, find a place that serves them American style (with the rice on the outside) instead of Japanese style (with the rice inside the seaweed, which is on the outside); I think American style is more common here in the Midwest, but it's not unusual to find either.

 

Edit: Also the fancy options sometimes have fish or avocado on the outside.  They're great, but tend to be pricier since you get more fish.  I often include one of those with one or two more traditional rolls.

 

I almost bought some sushi today.  Wound up going for a gyro instead though.

[Jarhead]

Humble Bundle Data Engineering (O'Reilly) book bundle.

[serpro69]

CoolerMaster Notepal U3 laptop stand. Planning also to get some fans some day and customize it a bit.