I bought a pallet of computers at an auction at a local college for $250 a year or two ago. HP Elitedesk GenIIs specifically (4th Gen i5, 8GB of RAM, 256gb SSDs, and space for add in cards and more drives if needed) I did not expect my throwaway bid to win but it did. So now I have a bunch of computers. I have some projects in mind, but honestly I’ve mostly been tossing them to friends and family when they need a computer for something. Eventually they’ll all be allocated, sold and given away but it’s certainly taking a bit
You can’t like connect them together and make an AI server with them?
I’ve not seen freely available software to split such a workload across multiple machines, but realistically if I did I’d be looking at less performance that if I just got a single used datacenter card (like one of the Nvidia Tesla cards) off eBay for the same price and popped it into a computer, or if I got a single much more modern server.
I can however cluster them in fun ways for redundancy! Most hypervisors support clustering so that VMs can be migrated to another host if one needs to be taken offline for anything, or if one unexpectedly powes off the others will continue the workload. Or clustered storage where it spreads the storage across multiple hosts for redundancy as well as speed. I definitely want to get some of those old 25GB or even some of those 40GB infiniband cards and run a glusterFS or Ceph cluster to really see what clustered storage can do (I ran a Ceph cluster in a lab in college but it was over a gigabit network so everything was painfully slow)
But those projects will account for only about a dozen computers at most, so I have to find more projects and more willing people to have these systems foisted upon
This subject is dear to my heart, because I realized that part of my conservative upbringing taught me money is the important thing and that emotions are worthless and dumb. If you spend money on something that makes you happy but does not provide commensurate utility or return on investment, it is by definition a dumb purchase. Treating yourself is a waste of resources and therefore makes you a bad person. Maybe unless you are debt free and fully funding every retirement and college account you got. (note the unspoken implication that it’s cool for the rich to do whatever they want)
As I have spent decades reverse engineering the instructions for my brain, I have recently concluded that not only do I thrive when building and creating things, but having the perfect high-quality tool that is great at what it does right down to the sensory feedback can really enhance the experience for me.
I’ve spent a bunch of money expanding and upgrading my collection this year, and I haven’t regretted it once. But I’ve spent even more on the materials just in the months since!
That’s not a conservative upbringing/mentality… That’s a capitalist mentality.
The only thing I can really say about capitalists is that they’re some of the worst people I’ve ever known, and I’ve known a few of them.
Very religious people (usually conservatives) are generally quite kind and generous. If they follow their religious book, that tracks. Since most religions teach about tolerance, acceptance, and understanding. Like the legend Fred Rogers; May he rest in peace.
Usually very liberal people are about basic social services for everyone, and programmes that support DEI. They want everyone to be on an equal playing field and they want that playing field to be, at a minimum, allowing all people to independently be able to live, have reasonably good health, food to eat, and somewhere to live.
Meanwhile capitalists always focus on the money. Who is paying for all of this? They don’t want their money (via taxes) to go to people that are less than them. Anyone who makes less or has less is “losing”, and they’re “winning”. All capitalists want to be on top, and they don’t care who they have to trample to achieve that.
There are exceptions of course, on every one of these groups. For example, Bill Gates who donates a lot of money for good causes. He still has plenty of money, but honestly, he gives away a lot. By no means do I mean to imply that any billionaire is good; in this case Bill is just using the wealth he has to do good. He’s clearly someone that made a lot of money doing capitalism things, and yet he believes in helping others.
The capitalists I have met are some of the most argumentative, vocal, and toxic people I’ve ever met.
Good on you for getting away from that mentality and finding enjoyment.
Agreed, and your wording is excellent.
I really enjoy Ramit Sethi’s take on this; he encourages what he calls living a rich life. Yeah you should look to your financial future but you have to balance it with your life now. It’s sad when you’re limiting yourself out of fear. He’s an advocate for spending where it brings you value (and only you can decide that), and aggressively cutting out the things that don’t.
He’s an advocate for spending where it brings you value (and only you can decide that), and aggressively cutting out the things that don’t.
That’s an excellent way to put it! Sometimes I feel like a weirdo for actually pursuing the things that bring me happiness. Like that makes me the eccentric one. So many seem to be on a boring yet miserable autopilot, trying get the things they’ve been taught they SHOULD want.
I bought an old boat in Amsterdam (3000€), did some reparations (500€), replaced the engine (1500€), paid the local tax (600€ x 3years). I had fun with it. No regrets. Then I was moving back to my country, I couldn’t find a buyer… so I lowered the price to 1500€.
You were great, old boat. But not a great investment.
I once asked my dad if he’d ever buy a boat. He asked me why he would want to buy “a hole in the water to throw money into.”
I heard this 1000 times, together with “the two best moments in the life of a boat owner are the day you buy it, and the day you sell it”
AND don’t forget that B.O.A.T. is actually an acronym for ‘break out another thousand.’
Vehicles are notoriously not investments except for some incredibly exceptional cases. Glad you enjoyed your time with it. That’s the best you can hope for.
I bought healthy food that rotted away, and took a significan’t amount of my income. I now only eat slop again.
Most of it I just didn’t know how to prepare proper, was stored badly in the shop itself, and I could not find all the ingredients for. It was expensive as fuck too.
The Tofu tasted like fish, and made me feel nauseous.
So, don’t try to min-max your diet if you live in a shithole I guess.
At least the slop is cheap, and caloric. And I still have peanut butter left over.
I have a few more: A solar battery called blue wave that does not charge from the sun. The panels must be fake!
A solar lamp with the same problem, a working portable solar panel that is only useful for battery packs/mobile devices and I never have the time to actually use (although it will be good in emergencies).
A plastic bike helmet that would probably increase injuries due to awful design.
Bought a small fridge with no freezer compartment when there was one of the same size, with a freezer compartment that was just objectively better for the samepeice.
Gmod, years after it was no longer popular, just because I finally could.
So now, all my money is devoted to basically pleasing my brother, and bailing out my mother. After that, I will hoard like a dragon, after he has his PC (not buying alat after), and her debt is settled (plus a few small things to make life easier).
Eat the healthier slop.
Add leaves to it, eat a fruit sometimes.
$19K in watches. Now I have a kid, and I am straight salary. In hindsight, I would be perfectly happy with the least expensive one. I’m a mechanical engineer, and they really interest me. But they were not smart purchases.
That’s a rabbit hole I managed to avoid. I lived in Shanghai in the 00’s when you could still get nice counterfeit mechanical watches there. Then I got a nice Seiko mechanical watch but no matter what I did, I just didn’t love the auto-winding function. Then came the solar watches from Seiko and Citizen which were relatively cheap. Now I’m here with a smart watch and never looking back.
Edit: also an engineer.
I admire the engineering of the solar, too. It’s really cool that the Eco-Drives don’t even look like they have a panel. Are the dials like, micro perforated or something? I’ve never taken one apart. And the fact that you can store them for like, 6 months and they’ll still have a charge is very nice.
me sitting here with five Casios, a Ball, a spring drive Seiko, a Bulova Precisionist, a Brew, and probably one or two I’m forgetting about: yepppppppppp
Hell yeah! Nice collection.
My co-worker has something similar. I wonder when he will figure it out?
Probably around the time they need to get serviced and it costs as much as a Seiko dive watch and takes like 6 weeks.
I never liked Breitling too much. If you want a good cheap mechanical watch, just go with Seiko, you get a good amount of quality for your money. Everything more expensive is an asset just like buying gold.
Oh, let’s not add the Seikos to the list. I have plenty of those. SKX007, SRP775, and like 5 or 6 I’ve built with Seiko NH-35 movements. I have a watch with a Seagull ST19 movement. I have some vintage ones, like a Timex Viscount and an Elgin Sportsman. But all of those are $500 and under (mostly under 200) and I don’t look at them as dumb purchases.
As a watch and mechanical enthusiast and fellow engineer myself, I read your comment and well you are certainty right, you gotta live a little haha
You sure do! And I love them all. I love modding them, I love wearing them. Love learning about them. I’d say my Seagull chrono gets equal wrist time to the Breitling. I try to keep everything in rotation. Except the George Stockwell trench watch… I’m afraid it might be a touch radioactive due to the radium.
Oh yeah that one I probably wouldn’t wear haha. Would you care to share some of your mods?
Sure!
Here is my SKX and an Invicta Pro Diver.
SKX has new hands, dial, chapter ring, crystal, date wheel, bezel insert, and crown. And I ended up doing an NH-35 swap on the 7S26. So basically, just the case is original now.
The Pro Diver has new hands, dial, bezel, bezel insert, high domed acrylic crystal, and I ground the crown guards off.
Thank you very much. Its a shame that you are the only person posting into MechanicalWatches lol
I nice steal-able asset you flaunt on your wrist, to boot!
TIL about watch insurance. What a wacky world we live in.
True, but they are all insured and you can always report the serial number to a database so it gets flagged if it pops up somewhere.
Yes what I meant by saying it’s an asset is that you should not wear it. The Seiko is already expensive enough to get stolen. Either way when you have watches in the price category shown above, you also have insurance for your watch. Especially when you wear it.
RPG books I know I won’t ever play. I ran D&D for two years during the pandemic and now I’m here reading Pathfinder, The One Ring, Legend of the Five Rings, Fate, Savage Worlds, and so, so many Mausritter crowdfundings.
Would you play a game over the internet?
A collection of Commodore and compatible disk drives. Useless, expensive, heavy, fragile, mostly non-functional, unrepairable in some cases. But they look good piled up at the back of my closet.
Just bought a Brothers B&W laser printer. I need to print something maybe twice a year.
Some music gear that I haven’t really used at all, and don’t feel particularly inclined to lean in and really figure out how to use. like a drum machine (arturia drumbrute impact) and a sequencer thingy (arturia beatstep pro). I could sell both of those and not feel like I’ll ever miss them.
Watch collection is pretty dumb and I really only ever wear one of them anyways. But damnit, they’re neat, and I enjoy rebelling against smartwatches.
Arguably, purchasing a custom ordered Taycan wagon with nearly all the options. BUT, car depreciation only matters when selling, and no other cars out there tick all the boxes for me like the Taycan does, so I’m okay with it
A 10 inch 300W powered amp/subwoofer… I already have a soul-destroying stereo with 8 inch sub and studio monitor speakers… and live in a 1 BR… I do NOT need a sub so powerful it will rattle the gypsum out of the walls, and yet…
My Revel F208 speakers don’t really need a subwoofer for music but having a 12 inch 500 watt subwoofer to support them for movies does add to the dramatic impact. My apartment neighbors haven’t complained so I assume they are enjoying the music and movies too.
I feel like subs are way overrated for music. A good 10 or 12 in a quality speaker kicks. I mostly use mine to round out the sound, because I listen to a shitload of 50’s-70’s jazz where the recordings are shite.
I would disagree since getting a speaker with a “good” 10 or 12 inch driver is difficult or very expensive and impractical since those large drivers don’t do well with mids and upper mids. The Tannoy, Klipsch heritage line, and similar old school designs with large drivers all measure like crap.
Difficulty obtaining a good speaker doesn’t detract from my point though.
Also yes every Klipsch I’ve heard is shitty.
e And I said “overrated” not purposeless
Dumb? I just bought an IDE PCI card and a 3.5” floppy USB adapter. I have a bunch of old 52x dvd/Bluray drives, some are IDE. Thought about buying a new SATA writer, but the internal 5.25 are well over $100!? Shocking, they used to be $35. Nobody needs them anymore. I only bought the 2.5” adapter to avoid throwing away the drive, I don’t know where my 1.44mb floppies are. So now I have an old PC with IDE optical drives and a 3.5” floppy.
What’s a 2.5" floppy?
One number away from the correct one.
The correct answer was “the reason you’re single”.
I love being poor and disabled in America.
A working PC would be nice, but I’ve learned to keep my hopes and dreams nice and low.
Hey, I don’t know if that’s an option for you but here (GER) we have non-profit organisations which provide PCs and laptops for people who need them. Maybe there’s one in you area, too.
Alternatively many IT companies take client PCs back when customer companies get a new generation. Maybe you can save one before they get thrown out vor get one for cheap.
Just my 2 cents. Best of luck!
Adjustable dumbbells.
I work at a place with an onsite gym and am afforded an hour of PT everyday.
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