I was in NYC for Pride the other year and got a sample of a cannabis drink made by a new-at-the-time company Cycling Frog. Flavor is good for a seltzer type drink, and the inebriation level is tailored to be about equal to 1-2 alcoholic beverages, which makes it easy to dose. Hubby and I loved it and bought a couple of cans on the spot. They are now available in dispensaries near us, and we still pick up a case every few months.
Cycling frog is lit. I don’t think I’ve had any of their seltzers but their huckleberry gummies are great.
Costco samples sometimes. Doesn’t happen often though. I think the last time was this huge bag of popcorn that was actually really good.
The Chicago style popcorn?! 🤤
Does marriage count?
/s
I definitely did at a BBQ place near my old office. If you give me a bite of good BBQ, I’m buying what you’re selling.
Protonmail yes
I signed up for the basic version of their VPN, but having their other services like protonmail or drive or pass has been great.
In this vein, Fastmail and Kagi Search as well.
Plasticity (3d software)
- Cracked Minecraft Beta 1.7.3 to full Minecraft Beta 1.9 Prerelease 5. (I don’t like Microsoft and Notch is a Nazi)
- Cheese (before I was vegan. I kinda miss free food sampling)
- Monthly countrywide public transit ticket (well 9€ wasn’t free, but for a net of 39,000 km railway alone plus every other PT except HSR, it basically is). 49€ now, 58€ in 2025 (=> Subsidy regimes are not on parity to motorised individual traffic)
- Library subscription
Yea, snacks are the most likely culprit for me.
Ooh, kettle corn and kettle chips are my kryptonite right now.
I don’t go to Costco but every few years and I went hungry with a friend who has membership and bought too many of the samples I had
Sometimes when I go into the big booze store for wine. If they have samples of a type I’m looking for and it tastes ok, I might buy. They’re usually sampling wines at very acceptable price points.
I always test drive cars before buying.
I change hobbies like I change my clothes. So to keep from sinking way too much into every new hobby, I try to borrow or rent for a bit before buying to make sure it’s a hobby that I will stick with. Example, I picked up dragonboat racing this summer but declined to buy my own $120 paddle and used the clubs slightly heavier, older, paddles that are a little big for me. If I keep going with the team next year, I might buy a paddle. But first will buy a new PFD so I don’t have to wear one of their “one size fits all but it’s going to ride up halfway to u/Vanth’s ears” lifejackets.
I played the free demo of Factorio for about 10 hours and got hooked. Waited a bit to see if the price would go down, but it didn’t and I didn’t care. Bought it at full price and sunk a few hundred hours into it, which is some of the best entertainment ROI from a cost/hours perspective. It turned out to be a bad ROI from a general life perspective since I didn’t do much else during that time, so be careful to not get too addicted.
Just a warning, the big factorio 2.0 update and space age dlc are coming out on October 21st. My supervisor is taking the whole week off for it
Thanks for the heads up, I didn’t have any plans for the next month anyway.
FYI, the Factorio devs have stated that the game will never go on sale
Which is fine be me. First the game receives constant updates to this day. Second they’re asking reasonable price to start with. Third the amount of content…
Back in the 90s when PC GAMER magazine would include demo CDs, there were a handful of games I liked enough to go buy the full game.
I got a 90 day “sample” of Ableton in 2020 with a midi keyboard I bought. At the end of it I had a few songs out and they gave me another 3 months for some reason. Now I’ve been using Ableton for nearly 5 years, full license.
Winrar and mIRC are pretty good but I’m not quite sure yet…
Usually beef jerky
