Definitely agree on the used idea. Ebay is full of used previous gen parts at great prices (stick with sellers with a deep history of 99% and higher feedback, avoid those with accounts less than a year old and/or single digit feedback. Avoid single digit sellers with suspiciously cheap prices for recent hardware like the plague - these are likely scammers.)

Personally, I’d avoid laptops if gaming is your primary interest. Performance does lag behind similar spec desktops, but more importantly, if something that isn’t ram or a storage drive breaks on a laptop, the whole machine is probably done. Not necessarily because the whole machine is unusable, but many if not most repair parts are model specific and can cost more than the laptop did.

Desktops can be repaired and upgraded per assembly, which makes them pretty kind to your wallet if gaming on a budget. I just scored an excellent condition 1080ti for around $150, and I know with absolute certainty that very robust off lease workstations from a few generations back can be had for $200-ish or less if you know what you’re looking for. Pair them with that 1080ti and you’ve got some decently capable hardware to play with!

I’ve got several gaming machines that I use to run everything from old stuff to heavily modded Skyrim VR and many new titles, and I pretty much only buy storage amd cables new. Everything else is purchased used on Ebay.

Nah, I loved that movie. Great music and a lot of fun lines here and there. Definitely not an academy award contender, but still pretty fun.

Thanks! About 5 hours into a new playthrough of BL2 with my wife, so this is awesome!

Could be - tbh it’s been a minute since I looked into those. Either way, a low mileage pull is an excellent option and will last the life of the car if well maintained…

Meant to mention those and forgot! As long as it’s got some kind of decent guarantee that’s a great way to go. Should be plenty of them out there, as I’d imagine most of those vehicles end up getting totaled in accidents of varying severities rather than dying from engine problems. I do believe the Japanese engines are available as a result of their having stricter emissions requirements, BTW…

As someone who is seemingly constantly working on computers and has done a ton of engine building and other deep car stuff, in addition to the garage mentioned previously, I’d recommend buying a buildable engine core for your subaru, getting that built (either do it yourself - recommended, or by a machine shop - will probably work well, but will cost a lot of $$) and having it ready to install rather than trying to pull the existing engine out and rebuilding it - especially if the current engine still runs.

Unless your plan is to make a hobby of having exploded cars in the yard, this’ll go a long way towards putting an end in sight for an engine rebuilding venture.

Also fuck all car subscriptions - that’s some gross profiteering right there…

A) I applaud you for your masterful continuation of the pelagic theme of this discussion about Elon porpoisely allowing this project to flounder into Davy Jone’s locker.

B) TIL that an anglerfish lure is called an esca and that a sufficiently literate person can seamlessly weave such an unusual word into this net of fishy discourse… Bravo!

Back in the day I used to love many of the fantasy novels by David Eddings (e.g. Belgariad, Mallorean) but after learning about the terrible child abuse he and his wife were prosecuted for, I can’t look at them the same way.

Personally, unless you really love the house or location I’d walk away. I’d also be super surprised if issues found by a structural engineer can be fixed, particularly if you have to hire someone for a significant amount of that work, for just 15k, as after the structure is correct there’s a bunch of other aspects of the building’s construction that will have been disrupted and need fixing. If you need to hire a contractor for repairs it’d probably be more realistic to budget 50-80k for repairs.

If nearby homes exist in turnkey condition for 100k that’s your better bet. Not being willing to turn the electricity on in order to help a prospective buyer check out the place is a huge red flag with sirens attached as well. Structural problems can be very bad, electrical problems can burn the place down and kill everyone inside.

Walk away would be my suggestion.

Same. I love my Plex server - I rip all of my physical media audio and video to it and can watch/listen on all of my devices. Music is especially fun on Plex, as it pulls in great bio info for most of the artists, which makes organizing my decent sized music library a fun bit of zen…

Same. I am a huge fan of curb-alerting large items that I can no longer use. Always a huge relief when a broken table saw that’s not worth fixing or some other large item disappears from my garage into the trunk of someone’s car.