I have been putting off buying new SSDs to replace internal HDDs that I’ve had for at least 5 years. They’re starting to fill up with crap I’ve been hoarding over the years and quite frankly, I don’t want to pay x3 or x4 times the amount for something I know doesn’t cost that much.

It’s all just flash NAND. That shit is everywhere. They can’t tell me it costs $400 to make one 4TB 'cause I know it doesn’t. That’s utter BS price fixing.

I’m praying to Primus that my HDDs can outlast this hell hole we’re in rn and at least give me the chance to replace just one of them.

Don’t even get my started on NAS like Synology. That’s a whole different rage bait.

A DSLR Camera with decent zoom for astrophotography. I don’t want anything too modern, I just want one like what I used to have.

Or a cool computerized telescope with decent zoom that hooks into my computer and automatically tracks things and can take photos.

I do like nature, landscape and city scape photographing to though, so DSLR is good for both.

Oh hundreds of things.

The new Framework Desktop with 192GB unified memory, specifically for LLM inference. I’ve looked at the numbers and there’s no scenario for me in which it’s economically sensible to upgrade from 20GB gpu vram + rent EU API inference for larger models. Even if the tokens became more expensive by factor of 10 overnight, by the time the hardware paid for itself it would already long be obsolete.

It’s an impressive machine, but I just can’t justify the purchase.

I was supposed to take my first real vacation with my wife. We had a honeymoon, but it was mostly going to the US for her to meet my family in person. I am almost certainly losing my job, so even a hot bath (many in Japan take one every night) and heat/AC have become a luxury now. The problem is, I need the vacation because my mental state is bad, but I can’t take it because I need to save all of the money I can to hopefully not lose the house. If I lose the house, I die.

5 years ago, I’d be out every night systematically removing flock cameras. I have the skills, the tools, and the experience avoiding getting caught. Instead I told myself these things weren’t going to happen and these skills will ever bring me joy. So I cleaned up, got married, finally went to college. I have a career I’m dedicated to and it isn’t even dubiously legal.

I see why we aren’t out burning things in the streets now. I can’t drive 5 over without worrying that a traffic stop will land my wife in alligator Auschwitz for being the wrong color. I can finally afford to buy food for my kid and it’s subject to the whim of people who want my kind dead. I don’t care about everyone else enough to risk what little I actually have.

A FUCKING HOUSE

Healthcare

A fighter jet would be really cool for bringing to the daycare

A modern PC build. Can’t afford a new GPU or RAM. Mainly so I could actually get some use out of a monitor that isn’t fifteen years old.

I wanted to upgrade the RAM and maybe the storage in my laptop, but I kept putting it off because I was being cheap.

A car. I live a few kms away from the nearest town and drive a borrowed one (with a horrendous gas mileage…)

A Fairphone when I have a fully functioning but old crappy Samsung phone.

Motorcycle. I had my previous one for 17 years and travelled many kilometers with it. However, it has worn down up to the point of the replacement parts being more valuable than what the bike would sell for. In other words, it was a write-off. As I ride my bicycle to work and I have too little leisure time already, I simply cannot justify buying my own motorcycle again.

Fortunately, my FIL has several and will lend me one if I want to.