HD-DVD - The Betamax of the 21st Century.
Not me, but Panteneman Snr.

He just couldn't wait to get his hands on the latest, shiny hi-def disc format. Impatiently, he ended up buying an Hitachi HD-DVD player.

I waited to see what was going to happen. I reckoned (at the time) that Blu-Ray would win, despite the fact HD-DVD by nature can play back DVD's and are backward compatible by default, while Blu-Ray players are made with DVD compatibility at this current moment in time (until the day DVD gets phased out) - apparently it's not a necessary requirement by default. Not forgetting that Sony had conjured up the Playstation 3 which uses Blu-Ray for games.

I was correct, and Panteneman Snr wasn't. I remember him ringing me up in work ranting about it. He ended up getting a Blu-Ray player anyway, but on the plus side he hoovered up tonnes of very cheap films, and even box sets on the format from Game, and eBay/Amazon.

Personally, I wanted HD-DVD to win due to no regional coding and backward compatibility by default. I then chose to buy a Hi-def player when Blu-Ray won. Thing is, it's only marginally better than DVD, and isn't the quantum leap in quality from VHS to DVD. Acquired for £150, when players were still at least £250+ from eBay. Score.
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 22:25, 13 replies)

Fat fucking waste of money
Renovating your bathroom? Don't buy a whirlpool bath. The novelty wears off pretty sharpish because after you've got out, you have empty the bath, refill it and leave it running to flush the pipes out with clean water.
If you don't do this, the soapy scummy water will sit in the pipes and go all foetid until one day you'll be in the bath and think "ooh, I haven't used the whirlpool function for a while". You'll switch it on and all that filthy water suddenly gets pumped into your bath and you end up lying in what looks like a sewage treatment pool.

This happened to me. The only way I could've leapt out of that bath any faster would be if I saw a plugged in toaster arcing across the room and heading towards the water.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 21:46, 18 replies)

CCGs.
Cardboard Crack.

Magic: the Gathering
Battletech
Mythos
Middle Earth, the Wizards
Dune
Warcry
Warhammer 40K
Pokemon.
(kitescreech still here, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 21:02, 5 replies)

a car
A guy in my town is at this very moment selling one of the biggest 4 wheel money pits I've ever heard of.. and I want it.
It's a saab 900 that looks fucked.. its tatty and It's been brush painted white.. but.. hes also over the last 5 years spent 25 grand on tuning parts for it.. it has a fully forged engine, a 3 grand gearbox.. ect... the guy paid for all of this on loans, because he was seriously ill and was expecting to die and not have to pay the money back... then he got better.. cars up for 1500 quid.. cos he's bored of it..
(factoryrat, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 20:56, 2 replies)

Commodore Amiga A1200's...


Many moons ago, a teenage Panteneman hounded his parent's to death for one of those sniny new 'AGA Chipset' Commodore Amiga's. After much skimping and scraping, I was bought one for my 16th birthday. And lo, it was a most meritorious time – as I was a lowly no mark for not owning an Amiga and now I had the best ones you could get (short of the A4000/A4000T) your hands on. I even overlooked so called 'Friends' that suddenly wanted to know me because I owned an A1200.

10 Months later, Commodore went bust in spring 1994. I had read in Amiga Format that they were in trouble, but thought that they would pull through somehow and find some investor of some form. Another two months later, support for it ended – as in, the local 'computer club' held at a social club at the opposite end of town. It sat there to gather dust, and I lost heart with computing. Only to use Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 machines in college for coursework, and later on Windows 95 in work. Commodore doing tits up, was like the loss of a good friend.

I didn't envisage Commodore going tits up (like many Commodore users), in all honesty. I naively thought I would get a good 3 or 4 years worth of life out of my Amiga, like I did with my Commodore 64 (which had a nice game collection, and a 1541 floppy disk drive and Action Replay 'freeze cartridge'). Neither did my folks, and I got earache for several months at least because they spent £400 on what became an elegant white door wedge.

A month ago, I found a Commodore 128 on eBay and I had to have it, with original box, manuals and CP/M 3.0 disk still sealed. Despite the fact that, as nice as it was, it had barely any software support even back when it was out. I blame the purchase on 'Nostalgia', because I always wanted one from when I was a kid. Oh, and because VICE isn't 100% perfect at Commodore 128 emulation, according to online posts. *facepalms*
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 20:32, 16 replies)

The original Toxic comic and shit loads of Judge Dredd (2000AD)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic!

I had every single toxic comic (in relatively good condition) and a LOT of 2000Ad magazine stored 'safely' in my old room in my parents house.

Until my Mum decided to have a clear out and get rid of the 'tatty old kids comics' - binned the lot.

:(
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 20:27, 7 replies)

An Austin Ambassador Y-Reg
Don't keep asking my why, Reg.
(Iggy Pop's Teeth, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 19:39, 7 replies)

Since I was about 14 or 15 years old,
there have been two main passions in my life (not counting the tireless pursuit of alcohol and members of the fairer sex who don't make polite excuses before running away), and these have been physics and music.

My specific tastes in both changed - despite being brought up with, and still enjoying, the sounds of The Who, the Beach Boys, The Doors and various others I had, around that time, discovered a lot of more 'contemporary' music which, looking back, was largely shit. But at the same time, I was starting to read a lot of popular science, and finding curious fascination in the oddities of physics. (I dabbled briefly in chemistry but soon thought better of it...) By the time I was 16, maybe 17, I was enthralled by the peculiarities of quantum mechanics and particle physics, and gradually became convinced that I wanted to work at somewhere like CERN.

Simultaneously, my musical 'career' was developing. I had been asked to join very bands back at school, on account of being one of the few kids who took up the bass guitar rather than the normal one. However, most of these never lasted more than one rehearsal before quickly fizzling out into nothing. But shortly after joining a sixth form college, I was invited to join a band which rehearsed fairly regularly and began playing gigs around the local area, to a reasonably warm reception. Nothing quite matched the exhiliration of standing boldly on stage and playing my bass in front of a throng of people.

Physics, on the other hand, I began to have a more mixed relationship with. After the band dispersed and I went to university, suddenly the exciting physics I had read about, and been teased with by my A-level course had been replaced with an incessant grind of mathematics. I began to struggle, and it quickly became apparent that I probably wasn't mathematically-minded enough to become the Higgs boson-chaser I had once dreamed of being.

In the meantime, I kept busy musically, where I could. I joined a jazz band, formed a blues trio and felt my skill and understanding with the bass guitar improve.

In my final year, I took on a project which rekindled my interest in physics. A completely different field from the particle physics that had driven me to this place four years before, but something which stimulated my older and more cynical mind, and which finally gave me the satisfaction that had largely been missing since I'd started the degree. Maybe it was the love of the project. Maybe it was just because I didn't have a clue what to do next. But something made me think I wanted to do a PhD in a related area.

Total cost of building up a career in physics: four years' worth of undergraduate study stumped up by my parents, the student loan company and, ultimately, the taxpayer.
Total cost of becoming a competent bass guitarist: a couple of budget basses, a couple of amps and several sets of strings

And now, three years later, I find myself coming to the end of the PhD. Trouble is, for the last couple of years my average mood has been the same: I hate it. I want out. There seems to be an expectation on the part of several people around me that I will use this qualification to follow the path of an academic career. I intend to finish the PhD (I'm a bit stubborn like that), but I'm starting to have real doubts.about staying in this field.

In parallel, I've been putting myself out a bit more as a bass player, going to jam nights, joining other bands, receiving a lot of positive feedback and, on the whole, really enjoying it. There is a part of my brain which wonders whether it's worth fleeing physics and making a career out of this.

Additional cost (physics): three years' bursary from a research council
Additional cost (music): a few more sets of strings. And I did treat myself to a new bass last week.

Question is...have I been a complete waste of money?

/long and unfunny post is long and unfunny
(LongJohnBaldry, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 19:03, 21 replies)

Mullets, hahahahahaha!
I was getting married a few years ago and being a penniless student, I went to the hairdressing department at my local college the day before.

I asked the student for a nice short bob, being a bride-to-be of matronly aspect, and she gave me instead a striking mullet.

She took so long that it was too late to get someone senior to sort it.

Next morning I rushed to a proper hairdresser and and had the long bits lopped off, leaving my head looking like a bog brush.

Well, better that than floating down the aisle to my eager groom looking like Rod Stewart.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 18:24, 3 replies)

Dragon Dice
I mean seriously. Why the fuck did I bother? Nobody else did, that's fo' sho'.

Shitty biscuits.
( Undercovercarrot got done for gross misconduct on..., Tue 5 Oct 2010, 18:12, 2 replies)

My dad will not get rid of his
Betamax player AND Laserdisk player. Both still work and imo the laserdisk is better than dvd for sound quality. He still checks the odd sale for some movies for both as well. Both are in superb working condition as they've not had much actual use. He spent about a grand on each when he bought them, and neither one lasted long.
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 17:52, 5 replies)

Minidisc
Now I liked Minidisc- it was great for compilations (it was digital! it told you how much was left on the disc! it allowed you to skip tracks!) and it sounded better than even chrome tapes, but when I look back on it, I spent a chuffing fortune on the format. I bought at least one hundred blank minidiscs three Walkmans over a five year period and two full sized seperates- one of which was a Sony JA-20ES which cost £500. Yes. Five. Hundred. Quid. Do I still have this masterpiece? No. The disc mech (which wasn't a pop eject but a lovely slidey tray) cracked a piece of plastic worth about a penny which rendered it scrap. Sony then announced there were no more mechs.

The other day, I found a minidisc lurking folornly in a draw of cables, the sole survivor of at least a grands worth of money spunked on it. Still could be worse- could have been DCC.

Length? 74 minutes 59 seconds extended to 80 minutes later in the life of the format.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 17:28, 5 replies)

Three things not to mix: Broadband, cocaine and credit cards
My flatmate learnt that the hard way. He had got in a habit of coming back from a club and, twisted out of his tree, start buying things. There was lots of things he would get, most days we’d get random parcels delivered through our door. My favourite was when he pre-ordered an ipod. Yes, do you remember the days before ipods? He was offered, for a mere £30 more, to have it engraved. As a bit of a wannabe gangsta he had “cash money, high rolling” put on the back of it and ordered it.
It was only the next evening the rest of the house was disturbed by a shout of dismay from his room. Now this was quite normal, as it’d often be the next day when he’d find out what crap he’d bought the night before. This one, however, was a little bit worse. We went to see and it turned out he’d paid £300 for an ipod with “Cash money, high Rooling” on it.

Real Gangsta.

Debt? £5000 on the credit card by the end of the year…
(ab1kenobe, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 17:21, 1 reply)

Warhammer
I was bought a set of Warhammer Elves for one birthday (12th or 13th I think) and didn't realise that you had to paint them yourself. Within the hour I was back to my N64.

In my defence, they looked awesome in the catalogue.
(welshyboy, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 16:44, Reply)

Luxor, Egypt
As a big strong (and stupid) girl, I decided to take a holiday by myself to Luxor in Egypt. Wisely, I gave myself a 'no buying stuff' mandate, and stuck to that awfully well.

After a long day of looking at old stuff using my Aweface, I found myself in a market. Browse. Ignore. Get hassled. Get bottom pinched. Repeat. I took refuge in a perfume oil shop and struck up conversation with the man who ran it.

The chat was awfully good, and he offered to give me a foot rub for free. What with me being a bloody moron with sore feet, I agreed. The foot rub turned into an arm rub, then a shoulder rub, and finally into a full back massage. I made the requisite 'GURRRRRURGH' noises.

I finally had to be on my way, so swiftly stood up to profess my thanks, offer a token of gratitude and make my way out the door. The shop owner blocked me. £3000EGP, he said, only the foot rub was free. After a short tussle, I handed over everything I had.

This was when I noticed that he had an erection. I was duped by an Egyptian with a boner. I had just paid £230 to a pervert.

However, £230 to a man with The Horn certainly doesn't make you feel worse than anything over £0.01 spent on an ex, let's be honest.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 15:20, 9 replies)

Remote Heli....
One of the guys in work had invested alot of time and effort on the marvel of aerodynamic science, and decided as a treat for himself he would invest...in a minature helicopter.

So as this is a little bit of a fad for some people, he was swayed into splurging out a couple of quid on the hobby.

He comes into work one day, all excited.

"The missus has just texted me, it's all been delivered!"
"What has?" asks I?
"Me remote control helicopter! It's a Raptor 330 and does fuck-to-the-dozen rpm (or something like that, can't be fucked to validate this with Google). I've ordered all the parts and the power supply and they have all just turned up...oh I cannae wait!"
"Oh, well done" mutters I with more that just a faint hint of boredom in my voice. But he seemed all happy, so I just left it as that.

The next day comes and he's walked into the office, a look of disappointment on his face.

"You know my Raptor? I spent hours after work last night putting it together."
"Oh...it didn't work did it? Did you send it back?"
"I can't."
"Why?"
"Um...this morning I had the entire kit assembled in the front garden. I turned it on and it took off ok...had it hovering on the spot in front of me for a few seconds, then gently landed it down."
"Ok..."
"I thought I would go higher...so I took off again...then..um...after it hit about 8 foot high, a gust of wind caught it and threw it over my neighbours garden upside down. It kinda smashed to pieces instantly."

So he'd essentially saved up all his overtime from the last two months, bought all the essentials and a load of addons and even some gloves for using his remote control, just to fly the fucker for about 8 seconds.

Cost = £250+

Grins in office = free :D
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 14:48, 7 replies)

Star Trek Fact Files
19 folders.

A little over 300 weekly editions at £2 each.

Currently rotting away in various boxes and not even filed away in the folders, vast majority unread.

£600.

Why?



Oh, and I didn't learn my lesson either when I heard the same publishers were doing a Star Wars Fact Files, spent the best part of £100 on that as well before it was abandoned by the publishers due to poor sales.

Did get a nice tea mug with the rebel logo on it though.


I did learn my lesson that time though and didn't go and spend what would have been £700 on a DIY Orrery, even though Sir Patrick Moore was recommending it.

Still, it would've been awesome putting it together.
(ParaSitius is an Optimistic Pessimist, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 14:44, 6 replies)

The story below
Reminded me of when I joined a couple of Surrey girls on the Criminal Justice March in London. We had barely walked a mile when the girls spotted Fortnum and Mason. "Ooh!" they exclaimed "Fortum and Mason!" and the march for us ended there - they spent @£80 on loose tea and chocolate truffles.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 13:45, 5 replies)

Back in the early 80s
before I learned that you get nothing for nothing, a friend and I were in London for an anti-aparteid march. However rather than wasting our time demonstrating against a backward and barbaric regime we thought we'd just nip down to Soho ... see what all the fuss was about.

After an hour or so trawling sex shops we decided to up the ante and visit a "topless bar". Obviously our yokeldom led us to believe that it was just like a normal pub except all the birds went around with their norks out. What's not to enjoy ?

We were soon disabused of that idea though. As soon as we got in a large gentleman showed us to (separate) booths where we were soon joined by our respective hostesses who of course invited us to buy them a drink. Said drink cost me £20 which for an 18 year old student in 1982(ish) was pretty damn salty. However I coughed up and was the recipient of a quick genital rub for my investment (and when I say quick, I mean about 10 seconds.)

When it came to light that there was no more money left in the coffers we were summarily escorted from the premises some £30 each lighter and with fuck all money left to last us the next day and a half.
( Ramsay Tupper, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 13:34, Reply)

McGyver

I had some money in my pocket so I decided to go to one of those fancy heairdressers rather than my normal barber.

It cost £25.

They gave me a mullet.
(Thebigfella, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 13:30, 2 replies)

Back in the early to mid-90s
I had a penchant for part-works magazines. Back in the days when you actually got a magazine, rather than a bit of free tat with a glorified pamphlet.

The greatest waste of cash was about 60 issues of one called Pro-File, a DIY skills one that was of no use to me whatsoever. These went for about £1.50 a magazine and I could've got the same content in some big book from a publisher's outlet store for about a tenner. I had 5 full folders of them in the understairs cupboard for almost 20 years before I gave them away.

There was also the Treasures of the Earth which included a free pebble of something or other - gypsum, quartz, magnetite etc. I think I spent more time walking home from the shop than I have actually reading the damn things. This magazine has just been recently re-released at many quids per issue.

I must've spent nigh on a grand on all the various magazines, the majority of which I never finished.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 12:34, 11 replies)

Magic The Gathering
Got into MTG in a really big way in the mid-nineties. I have literally thousands of cards still sitting in indexed folders (big, fuck-off A4 colour-coded folders) on the bookshelf as I type this.

Despite the fact that I only played competitively for less than six months, I conservatively borked somewhere north of three grand on my card-playing hobby between 1995 and 1998.

Highlight? Twenty quid on ONE card (Jester's Cap) which I played in only one league game - a game in which I was utterly annihilated by a spotty youth playing a cheap red destruction deck (I know, I know. The term 'geek' doesn't even begin to come close.)

Fortunately, not long after that I turned my attention to women and beer. Far be it from me to carry on with pursuits that waste my time and hard-earned...
(Billy The Fish wants to gargle with Lucy Pinder's bath water, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 11:34, 6 replies)

UK Hot Tubs
My Dad got my Mum a hot tub from the company UK Hot Tubs earlier this year as an anniversary present. We waited more than 6 months for it to come, redid a portion of the patio for it to go on when it got here, had lots of tradesmen waiting to connect the plumbing, electrics, final pieces of floorlaying.

It turns out that UK Hot Tubs has a habit of taking the various thousands of pounds that people pay them and effectively running off with it. Whenever we phoned them to ask when it was coming they fobbed us off with a reply like "it's waiting to be shipped from country x".

Then recently we discover that they are being investigated by Watchdog for definite, possibly by another party as well. UK Hot Tubs has received complaints from the vast vast majority of its "customers" about the distinct lack of a hot tub, and Watchdog got wind of it.

As long as Jeremy Vine's on the case...
(welshyboy, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 11:19, 1 reply)

My mate used to claim housing benefit.
But rather than having it paid straight to the landlord, it was paid into his bank account for him to then make up the difference and then pay the landlord.

However, he misappropriated it and spent the vast majority on eBay. About £2500 on guitars, including a Les Paul gold top.
A shitload of IT gear. First Dell, then IBM and then Apple. A load of Sony Hi-FI components and then replacing it with B&O stuff.

Essentially, he bought a load of stuff that he needed less than a roof over his head. He's his own worse enemy.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 10:39, 4 replies)

Following on from KiteScreech
In my early teens I probably spent about £200+ in the end on Games Workshop figures. That was a lot at that age, pretty much all my birthday money and pocket money.

For those who have half an idea what I am on about:

Initially, some friends convinced me to get in to Warhammer 40,000. I built up a large Tyrannid army, bought a number of the large lead figures as well as the plastic light troops, painted everything (I did enjoy the painting at least!) When we finally sat down and played a game, and spent 20 minutes at a time, rolling various dice, and arguing whether or not something counted or not, I had a dawning realisation that I had wasted all that money, on a game where you roll dice and argue all day.

"Fuck this!" I thought "Throw me a playstation controller!"

So, £200 odd quid on figures and all that shite for maybe a 3rd of an actual game.

Didn't stop me buying a new edition of Epic 40k later on, which promised streamlined rules. No one I knew was interested in Wargaming after that. £60 odd for full game and some extra figures. Number of actual games? Absolutely none. Didn't really enjoy painting the figures either.
(stubbledchin, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 10:28, 5 replies)

Really, really annoying stripper
£800 for an hour in the VIP lounge at a lap dancing club for me and a colleague. His stripper was quite nice. Mine was the most annoying person I have ever had the misfortune to spend an hour with. She spent the whole time telling me how amazing and rich she was but forgot to actually take off her clothes. I felt like a proper twat in the morning, especially when my credit card company called to ask whether it was me who spunked (fnarr) that much money in said establishment. 'Yes' I answered sheepishly, praying the girl on the end of the phone didn't know exactly where it was.
(Tom Jones's Mojo Hasn't had any since, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 10:03, 4 replies)

Hmm
Thanks to this QOTW I have spent a while thinking about the money I wasted during my life and so far I have drawn up a bit of a blank.

I was going to mention the time I spent a shitload of money on recording equipment when me and my mate went through the phase of trying to be something big in the music industry and maybe revolutionise the whole scene but to be honest we were a moderate sucess and made the money back before we decided to move on with our lives.I also could have mentioned the art competition we tried to set up but it was a one off and in my opinion it did achieve what we set out to do.

All in all I can say that I may have burnt a bit of cash in my past but nothing too excessive or wasteful.I’ll be lurking until Thursday.

Love Bill Drummond

(Apologies for sloppy spelling I’m doing this while being bugged by some kids asking for a 99, I have told them we are bound for Mu Mu land but they aren’t listening…why the hell did we choose to travel in this vehicle I don’t know)
(mon bison powered by magnets, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 9:32, 2 replies)

I just got back from Munich
With a receipt for a 200 Euro pair of lederhosen in my pocket. When will I EVER wear those again?

EDIT:

( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Tue 5 Oct 2010, 8:33, 16 replies)