2018-02

I rarely buy things for myself, but recently I’ve been splurging. Here’s everything I’ve bought for myself from Amazon in the past two weeks.

American flag, 3’x5′, $16. The one that we had flying from the front porch was faded.

FM 75 ohm antenna and AM loop antenna, $14. I’ve been hooking up a home theater receiver that I haven’t used in a while, and it bothered me that I couldn’t listen to the radio on it.

8 gigabyte solid-state drive, $10. I was curious how this would perform in a netbook. An SSD for $10 was impossible to pass up. Verdict: the netbook now has near-infinite battery life, but even Xubuntu uses a lot of that 8GB.

LR44 batteries, 20-pack, $14. We have lots of stuff that uses LR44 and we never have enough batteries.

2-way HDMI port switcher (unpowered), $10; 3 pack of 3-foot HDMI cables, $9. We have more devices connected to the TV than the TV has inputs for. I’m trying to make the connections a little more logical and reduce the rat’s nest of cables.

RJ45 connector repair clips, 20-pack, $13. We have some Ethernet cables which have broken the little tab that keeps them fastened into whatever they’re plugged into. I snapped one of these clips onto a broken cable, and now it stays put! I don’t have to replace or re-crimp the cable!

1/4-inch air conditioner foam filter, 24″x15″, $10. The air filter on our ten-year-old LCD projector was disintegrating, and the OEM replacement was stupid expensive. This is cheap and effective and has enough to cut little squares from for a long time coming.

Men’s slippers, size 13M, black suede, $25. My previous pair were no longer fluffy inside.

Insulated collapsible tote lunch bag, $10. I’d been taking my lunch to work in the tote I bought when I started seven years ago. It was getting dingy;. Time to replace it.

Etekcity Lasergrip 1080 laser infrared thermometer, $19. I want to use it to find leaks around doors where our heating/cooling is getting out. No, actually, I just have always wanted to shoot things and see their temperature. Added bonus: it can read the surface temperature of food, too!

Set of 2 47″ bamboo kendo shinai, $22. I’ve been watching videos of people twirling lightsabers. I want to learn to do that. I tried with my lightsaber and kept dropping it. I tried with my red oak bokken and kept dropping it. I asked on Reddit and someone suggested trying with a shinai, as it’s lighter. For this price, I couldn’t pass it up. So far I keep dropping it.