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.

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:)

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.”

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!

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.

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.

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.

3 gm/3 ml of oud oil for $650 plus shipping. Was amazing! No regrets whatsoever.

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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

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.