My stupid, ugly lizard.

I had my eye on a beautiful female leatherback bearded dragon with great genetics! She was around 200$ and I was so ready to buy her. Contacted the breeder and was told that she had been sold just a few hours earlier. Absolutely crushed.

Then the breeder offered up a defect dragon. It was going to be culled due to a genetic fuck-up that caused it to be born without spikes or scales. They're much much much much much more difficult to care for into adulthood, due to their special needs. 20$ adoption fee + shipping.

He was the opposite of what I had wanted.

So naturally, sucker that I am, I adopted him.

He's turning 5 this November.

I love my stupid, ugly lizard. 💕

(here is what a standard one looks like:)

Someone I don't really know all that well, last spoke at school, has an autistic niece. She lost her toy and was distraught, so her aunt put up a post on Facebook to say it was discontinued, and to ask if someone could locate a second hand one somewhere. I'm not really sure why, but I felt bad for her and thought that maybe I'll use my Google-fu to help.

I did a reverse image lookup, found the original manufacturer, looked up one of the main execs, found their contact details against their personal domain, and asked them if they could help out. They said they'd be happy to help, and I said as a gesture of good will that I'd pay for the new toy - perhaps several so that she'll always have one if it were to break.

After speaking to the owner, I had paid for several toys for an autistic girl I had never met - probably around £500 worth. The exec went a step further and flew to the UK to give her and her aunt the toys, probably for some good press. I never told the aunt it was me, and I told the exec to keep it between us. They put out a press release where I was referred to as a "mystery hero", and said that for her they would resume that line of toys, with her receiving a custom version with her name attached. To their credit, he said her aunt and mother kept asking who the person was so they could thank me, but they stayed firm and said that it was up to me to reveal myself.

So, for £500 I made an autistic girl and her family happy, and got a nice photo of the workers with a note that said "thank you". That money was supposed to go towards car repairs, but I decided that a month of walking and leftovers for lunch to make someone happy was worth it.

During COVID, I went a bit mad and got really into collecting Transformers action figures. I'm still not entirely sure why. One day I just bought one on a whim, and before I knew it my closet was full of unopened, mint condition toy robots.

Anyway, Christmas rolls around and I see a flyer for a local toy drive. A sudden compulsion hit me, so I loaded up my entire stash and donated the lot. Just like that, the spell was broken. Not even Soundwave was spared.

To this day, nobody in my life knows that I spent thousands of dollars on plastic crack, only to foist my addiction on some poor, unsuspecting kids. I like to imagine the War for Cybertron rages on in their hearts.

Steamdeck. Had some cocktails and bought it, got it and had buyers remorse. Figured I'd give it a shot anyway.

Love of gaming rekindled, now I don't doomscroll during downtime at work.

Installing bazzite tomorrow if I get around to it.

edit: installed bazzite in a few hours this morning, zero to hero. If you fuck with the penguin you're going to want to do this. Very simple and straightforward as far as linux installs go. My deck is a 64GB LCD that I upgraded to 2TB and it worked fine, so the 64GB limitation is just the SSD, not anything to do with the deck itself.

Don't forget to backup your saves for games that don't do cloud save. I have fast internet and most of my games are also installed on my desktop PC so I didn't worry about backing up any of that.

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.

A round blanket with the pattern of a pepperoni pizza on it. Bought it as a funny treat for my wife and me. Our, now, 5yo sleeps with it every night. It's his pizza blanket!

My first parrot Johnny. I purchased him for my husband as a surprise Valentine's gift when we were dating/living together. While we had done our research and made sure we were ready to handle the responsibility, we were not financially in a great place at the time. My credit card was almost maxed but I made the impulse decision to call the company to get a limit increase so I could make the purchase. And while it did take me some time to get out of my young and dumb credit card debit I never once regretted getting my little turkey bird. He passed away from old age almost 2 years ago but I still miss him everyday.

Bought a Steam Deck during a fit of depression despite not traveling much and having a full gamer PC.

Turns out it's really nice for the few times I do travel (especially on long train rides) and when laying in bed after just waking up.

I blew way too much money on a stuffed dog at a hotel general store for my wife. We were driving a Uhaul during a snowstorm to move in together. The roads became very slippery so we decided to sleep through the storm. It was our first hotel stay together and money was very tight, but it was a romantic gesture. She cherished it until our son claimed it as his own personal "security blanket."

Me dropping $1350 on an impulse purchase of a 3D printer was probably "irresponsible" when I got my first engineering job paycheck.

That said, I've had a bunch of hours of fun with it, and am now starting to design possibly marketable items with it that I could make income with later, so it hopefully won't be too stupid. Could be worse, I could spend $1300 on alcohol a year and have nothing for it but liver damage.

I spent over 2k on this 2B statue but to me it's worth it since Nier Automata is one of my all time favorite games

I don't make big money irresponsible purchases, but I have spent money needlessly on Star Trek decorations for my house.

I have a picture of this one in my house somewhere, but I can't find it, but I do own it. If you press the button, it plays the fight music. And it plays... and plays... and plays... for like 60 seconds!

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.

right at the start of the pandemic I bought a nice projector and 135" screen, and converted our entire basement into a dark theater. It's really great for playing video games, watching sports, and obviously watching movies. Even with multi-view showing 4 events at one time like in the olympics it's still like having 4x 60"+ screens on the same wall.

Most of my photography gear falls under "well, that money could have been spent more wisely". But photography has been one of my major ways of dealing with depression, so I absolutely don't regret it. I can't really put into words how good it felt to finally get a Camera That Didn't Suck.

Motorcycles. All 3 of them. I miss them.

Early pandemic, I bought 4x 3D printers and started a print farm to make PPE masks for doctors. I was cranking out around 60-80 pieces a day.

After the shortage was over, I ended up donating it to my buy nothing group.

I bought a pick-up truck because I've wanted one ever since I was a kid and one day I just realized I'm an adult with money and I can buy whatever I want.

Well I started my own business a few years later so it turned out to be quite useful purchase in the end anyway

$1,300 on an OLED television. literally everything on earth just looks better

Ice machine

Infinite bedside ice

I spent almost 6k on my computer setup, 2k just on the 4090 no regrats

My house. I bought when the rates went up, but I’m so much happier than living in an apartment.

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.

My most irresponsible purchase was definitely a high end stereo system. I got into it in college after hearing some amazing rigs. It’s the irresponsible thing I’ve always wanted but really couldn’t afford (starting life, marriage, kids, school bills, etc.). Eventually we had saved enough where we had some $ leftover after getting lucky timing things in the housing market.

I begged my wife like a kid begs his mom in a toy store (I’m not proud). She didn’t get it, but was all “do it if you want it that bad.” It. Is. Awesome. It has gotten used everyday for like 7 years now. My wife has even become a big fan - she “gets it now, this is awesome”

I have to pry her music away from it to play mine! :) My kid’s friends like to come over our house and hang out watching movies and listening to music on it. Totally frivolous and way too much money - but no single thing has brought people together quite like awesome music.

100% would do it again.

We bought a new house in our same town because it was slightly bigger and closer to the downtown area. We didn’t need to move, but did it anyway. Offer accepted in February of 2020, rate locked at the end of March.

I bought a sauna. Second hand from a guy who had it in his third floor attic 50 miles away. Had to dismantle it get it in the van than rebuild it on my lean to.
I then got myself a big old whiskey barrel for a cold plunge pool.
No regrets, a sauna straight after coming off the hill in wet weather is the best.

Valve index vr set. It's incredible how into a game you can het. First time I played half life alyx for 3 hours straight I had to touch a wall after stopping playing because I simply got so into tje game my brain didn't know what reality was anymore.

My previous bass guitar had one of its machine heads snap off, and I had rehearsal that same day, so I looked online at the used instrument stock at local music stores and found a bass guitar used that was a very unique, discontinued model that I'd been essentially dreaming of for a while, and happened to be there.

What I probably should've done is replaced the machine head, which would've been a very quick and cheap fix, but I instead bought the new bass and then took it to use at rehearsal. Now it's my daily driver and I'm very glad I got it.

Edit: I fucked up and fixed the comment, somehow it double posted instead of just editing.

Boat

Probably our car. It's a great car, I spent weeks researching the perfect car for us. I love it and I'm grateful every time I drive it, but we bought it on credit and it's way out of our price range to buy. It'll take us about 6 years total to pay it off.

I still understand my decision at the time, but it was driven by a specific chain of events that made it make sense, and in principle I'm against buying a car on credit, just buy an older reliable car you can afford.

$4k on a classic luxury car that needed work.

I’m $17k into it and it’s been in my garage long enough that I can’t start it without draining all of the fuel.

It’s really lovely, but good lord luxury classics are expensive to restore. I restored and drive an old truck for $6k and a lot less heartache.

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.