Ask Lemmy

Cargo e-bike. Errands are fun now and I get way more exercise. It's hands-down my favorite way to get around town.

Linux.

Solitude.

I appear to have had extraordinarily bad luck in my life, as nearly every significant friend or lover or family I've ever had is consistently some.combination of abusive, exploitative, duplicitous, violent, criminal, hypocrite, never willing to hear my side of any story.

Been by myself with a new phone number in a new state for some months now and I've never been less stressed out, never felt less burdened, never felt more free.

Took me 35 years to figure out... wait, what if I did what I wanted to do, enjoyed things because I enjoyed them instead of pretending to like some other thing because someone else does, what if I stopped bending over backwards to solve everyone else's problems when they usually just go out of their way to cause more problems for me, and never give anything meaningful back, and in fact usually blame me for things I have no control over, and then spread unfounded rumors about me due to their own massive neuroticism and guilt complexes?

I am quite happy now. I've never needed much to be happy, and nearly no one who has ever claimed to care about me has ever once been able to handle my honest opinions about what they have put me through.

Its been astounding to realize that actually, I make friends quite easily and get along with most people I meet great, whilst everyone I used to know has spent decades convincing me I am an unlikeable asshole who is merely to be tolerated.

Password Manager. I use Bitwarden, which is open source and free.

It's probably the single most significant quality of life upgrade I've had since I started on ADHD meds 5 years ago. I wish I had started using one sooner.

A lot of things could go there i guess haha, here's some things I'm thinking of at this moment:

1. a dishwasher. I will never go back this is the best invention humans created since the wheel
2. AC. Same as above it changed my life
3. keybar. This is a nice tool to manage keys and some other tools in a swiss-army like format.
4. a good usb-c docking station. I need to jungle between multiple laptops for work, this really helped doing that.
5. Going full public transit, bike and carsharing (communauto). Less traffic, and between these options it's rarely more difficult than a car. And muchhhh cheaper, with gas, maintenance, taxes and depreciation it's a bit crazy how much you put towards a car. It really helps to live comfortably with my budget.

Finally setup up my smart home. Lights coming on at dusk across my whole house with varying levels of brightness, from nightlight to lighting up the living room. Shutting down everything in my house and arming my security system all with one phrase. Temp automatically adjusting throughout the day/night for better energy savings. It really just made life a little easier in multiple ways. Especially once you realize there are smart IR blasters.

The Lance of Longinus has its uses.

No joke, implementing automated MMO style daily quests on my smartphone harnessed my brainrot for productive means. I struggle with depression and ADHD among other things, so before l pretty much never made my bed or worked out, etc. I do all of that consistently now, and I feel all the better for it.

I've been looking for a way to invert that and make a number go up instead, and maybe implement gacha, flashing lights and FOMO into my daily routine to really exploit my busted psychology to its maximum.

PlayStation 3. Yeah, it was a games console, and had lots of awesome games (such as the Uncharted series, LittleBigPlanet, Ratchet and Clank, Journey, Warhawk, I could be here all day), but it was the extra features that really made it appealing in my opinion.

This was the cheapest and best Blu-ray player you could possibly get. It even stores media files on the internal storage, rips CDs too, upscale DVDs to 1080p resolution, not to mention the XrossMediaBar user interface was just so easy to use, and aged quite beautifully. It even has funky themes. It can play your PS1 games (some models can even play PS2 disks, but all models have some PS2 games downloadable from the store), you can manage files on your PSP or Vita. It had remote play, but it was... pretty limited to say the least.

It quite literally only does everything.

A spine. Got tired of doing everything for everyone, so I started setting rules. It's shifted the energy from physical to social/emotional, but the house is cleaner.

Electric wheelchair. After my 2nd heart attack, it became harder and harder to do things in the world. Grocery stores were impossible unless they had scooters of their own, which were usually in use or out of service.

Now I just bring my own.

A longer cable for charging my phone

Got rid of (most) social media. Even only reading about its toxicity makes me uncomfortable.

A NAS. Godsent when you're dealing with multiple machines.

Selfhosted VPN, another godsent for bypassing network restrictions or using public wifi.

An electrical potato peeler.

My girlfriend loves potato purree ... I just couldn't do it anymore

Electric wire strippers (I do a lot of electronics).

And a low power large work height microscope

A $1 backscratcher from a local pharmacy. Makes scratching my own back effortless. 10/10 investment. And way more affordable than the full-time backscratching assistant I was paying all those years.

Corrective eye surgery

For me this meant PRK not LASIK.

Money, makes life easier (as in surplus to your immeadete needs)

I was always frugal and started investing small amounts in the stock market when I was 19 , started reading the financial news when i was 18 and never stopped doing both. Still invest my surplus income now (still live a frugal life) and still read.

Quit work at 35, been mortgage free for decades and am 58 now. Allows me to live where I want, which is a quiet small rural town well away from everyone.

20lb blanket. Better sleep means better everything!

A Fatboy Lamzac.

My wife really likes the beach, but I hate the sand and I find laying flat in a towel very uncomfortable.

This thing fits in my backpack and folds out to a very comfy air filled bed. It does lose some air over time, I expect to re-fill it every 2 hours or so, but filling it is just a matter of catching some air by moving the Lamzac around. It only takes a couple of seconds and doesn't require a pump or anything.

Gold Bond eczema relief cream.

Costs a good bit more than "normal" moisturizer lotion. But when I have a flare up that stuff is a life saver.

Definitely gym membership. Yes, there are plenty of exercises I can do at home or outside, but having a dedicated place that I go just to workout is nice.