I follow the idea of r/BuyItForLife: buy quality things once, keep them for years, and enjoy using them.

Hardware

Every day carry

  • iPhone 13. Two years of usage, one battery swap, and it works flawlessly.
  • Casio A168WA. A 10-year battery life and an aluminum build. Never touched it.
  • 2020 AirPods. I got them “free” for buying a MacBook Pro back in 2020. The battery isn’t what it used to be, but they still hold through a gym session.

Peripherals & Home Setup

  • Bose 700 headphones. Honestly my best tech purchase ever. Bought them in 2019 and I use them almost every day. One side occasionally makes a strange noise, but they work fine 99.99% of the time. I’m on my third set of earpads.
  • 2019 iPad with the Apple Pencil for handwritten notes, though as you’ll read later, I mostly take digital ones.
  • Blue Yeti Snowball, a standalone microphone I bought during the pandemic for remote uni.
  • MX Master 3 mouse. My second best purchase ever. I use it every day, the battery lasts ages, and it’s a bit worn out — nothing a bit of super glue can’t fix.
  • Lucky65 V2 keyboard with KTT Kang white switches. I’m into custom keyboards, so I built this one myself. It’s aluminum, so it weighs quite a bit. Everyone who has tried it loves the sound it makes.
  • Ultrawide Dell U3415W monitor. Love this thing — 21:9 is a must for working. Paired with a vertical Asus one, it makes the WFH setup much more enjoyable.
  • Flexispot E7 Plus standing desk paired with a WalkingPad (which I should use more). Topped with a custom-made white tabletop.

Computers

Well, this is going to be a bit long. I have more PCs than plants at home:

  1. 2x Intel N100 NUCs running Home Assistant and a couple of other services.
  2. AI PC for local models (6750 XT, 16GB RAM, 5800X) for self-hosting AI models and agent services.
  3. Retro gaming and sim PC with an 8th gen Intel and a 1050 Ti. I use it to stream from my main PC and do some retro couch gaming.
  4. Main gaming PC: 5800X, 32GB RAM, 9070 XT. Plays whatever I want.
  5. Intel MacBook Pro 2020, still on Catalina. Honestly, I should have waited for the M1 MacBooks that same year. But considering how much software didn’t support ARM at the beginning, it worked just fine.
  6. Work PC: MacBook Pro M4 Pro with 24GB RAM. The best work computer I’ve ever had. I’ll probably buy one for myself if my employer changes the fleet or I move to another company.

Software

I love tweaking, so I’m always discovering new tools that help me every day, at work and in my personal life. I try to prioritize open-source projects when possible.

  1. Obsidian, my second brain. I use it for note taking, and it’s synced with GitHub so I never lose anything.
  2. Neovim, my one and only text editor. Paired with tmux, I do all my work there.
  3. Home Assistant, Proxmox, Nginx Proxy Manager, AdGuard Home… the list goes on. Basically all the well-known self-hosting apps to replace SaaS products.
  4. Spotify, for obvious reasons.
  5. 1Password, my go-to password manager.
  6. 2FAuth, an open-source 2FA authenticator.