I’ve had a Gaggia Classic Pro for 4.5 years and my wife and I use it every day.

We would definitely purchase the machine again. It makes incredible cappuccinos and other espresso drinks and you can nail it in every cup. You absolutely need a good grinder with a lot of grind settings. I use a Rancilio Rocky Doserless and it does a great job grinding so I can get the shot perfect. Each click on the grinder equates to roughly 5 seconds up or down on the timing of the shot. Once we got that down it makes dialing in easy. It does have some quirks like the temperature control for the steam is handled through a thermal switch instead of an electronic control to stabilize the temperature. The steam wand valve needs to be replaced every 1-2 years.

The awesome part about the Gaggia is there is a large modding community so you can change your machine to have computer control with a display showing you information and settings.

We previously had a Breville machine and I would not get one of those again. Finding parts so you can repair the machine is impossible. It used odd sizes on portafilters so fitting most holders on grinders was difficult. The Gaggia uses a standard portafilter size so swapping for different parts is easy.

I recently quit caffeine but that just means I switched to decaf coffee. I thoroughly enjoy the drinks we make and expect that it will continue to work well for a long time.

Samsung appliances have been like this for a while. I got a Samsung dryer in 2015 and it is by far the biggest piece of crap I have ever used. Thankfully I’m good at repairing appliances but this was a next level piece of crap. It was constantly wearing out drum rollers, belts, belt tensioners, and other parts. I was having to repair it almost on a yearly basis. I ended up just stocking a bunch of parts in a cabinet in the laundry room so when it failed I was able to fix it the same day. There are some 3rd party parts kids where they provide upgraded parts that seem to last longer. The drum rollers and belt tensioner pulley use low quality bushings that I upgraded to a 3rd party ball bearing parts and that made a big difference in reliability. I gave it to my mom and warned her about the issues with it and stocked her up on parts so anytime she has an issue she calls me and I can repair it the same day. Thankfully it’s not too difficult to work on.

A friend of mine got an entire Samsung appliance package and he dreads that decision every day. He hates his fridge, dishwasher, washer, and dryer.

Years ago I got two Bosch dishwashers and those have been great. Only minor repairs like replacement spray arms and a replacement rack glide have been needed on those. Otherwise they have been solid units and have fantastic performance.

A few years ago I got a GE combo washer/heat pump unit and it is definitely more convenient than separate units but it does have some flaws. The drain pump filter needs more maintenance than a typical unit. Some of the gunk gets past the drain filter and has caused the drain pump to clog. The dryer filter lets some lint past which causes the evaporator coil to clog somewhat over time. Cleaning the evaporator is difficult as access is quite limited so I had to buy some special long reach cleaning brushes and vacuum attachments. Sometimes the door doesn’t unlock when it’s supposed to because of a firmware issue. And lastly it causes more wrinkles in clothes than a conventional dryer.

And use CEPH as your filesystem.

This was a tough one for me. One thing that helped was always having nail clippers and a file at my desk at home and work. Any time I felt the urge to bite a nail I would use the clippers and file instead. Over time I have been able to taper down the biting quite a lot and now I’m to the point where I can grow my nails out. The ring fingers are by far the toughest to quit as they’re the most satisfying ones to bite. ADHD medication also helped.

I can relate. I have 96 GB of RAM in my computer.

How is the modding on it these days? I have a modded one from a long time ago and I did a modded firmware on the dvd drive in the 360 so it would ignore protections and another mod on a Liteon dvd burner in an old Windows XP computer for writing the games.

Excellent recommendations here. I’d add Magic Sword, Thomas Barrandon, and Daniel Deluxe to go with these.

Check out the TV mini series Normal People (2020). Some main plot elements sound very much similar to your experience.

You’re quite a bit behind on BIOS version so I’d update that first and then run memtest86+ which you can install from the arch repo and it will show up in your grub menu.

BIOS update can be found at https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B450M-DS3H-rev-1x/support#dl

Have you ever read the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to heal from distant, rejecting, or self-involved parents by Lindsay C. Gibson? It helped my wife immensely with similar struggles. Your library should have a copy of it. She said it was like taking the blindfolds off and how once you recognize it you can’t unsee it.

Here’s a good article too https://www.additudemag.com/emotionally-immature-parents-adhd/

And people with ADHD will procrastinate getting help even though they may want it. A person who is finally getting seen will often say something like “I’ve been meaning to do this for years”. ADHD just be like that.

We run 2-5 loads of dishes a day as we do a ton of cooking at home. With a single dishwasher we’d have to immediately unload and load the next batch or we wouldn’t be able to keep up and it was exhausting. With two we can keep up with the dishes a lot better. It’s awesome to have another dishwasher available to put the dirty dishes in when the other is running. And when we host stuff at our house it’s awesome to be able to wash everything at once.

Congratulations! You got the job!

Dishwashers are definitely the way to go. They use less water than hand washing (source: https://www.popsci.com/environment/science-of-using-dishwasher-vs-handwashing/).

I’m so firmly in the dishwasher camp that I installed a second dishwasher in my kitchen a few years ago and it has been one of the best upgrades I ever made on my house. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to live somewhere with a single dishwasher again.

Also, there’s no need to buy any expensive pods or dishwasher detergent. The cheap store brand powder detergent works the best. Personally I use the Great Value brand powdered detergent and have been very satisfied with it. I do not pre rinse any dishes either. I just lazily scrape off my dishes in the garbage and put them straight in the dishwasher.

If you do go the dishwasher route, be sure to do your research and get a good dishwasher if you have a choice. I went with Bosch dishwashers based on reviews from Consumer Reports and have been highly satisfied with their performance. They’re so quiet my wife sometimes opens them mid cycle and gets a surprise. I find this hilarious because they shine a red spot on the floor to let you know that it is running.

Huh? Rechargeable AA and AAA batteries and chargers are highly affordable and work great. I only have a few items where I don’t use them like smoke alarms. For everything else I use rechargable and absolutely love having devices with easily swappable batteries.

I have a Zojirushi NS-ZCC10 that gets used 3-5 times a week since I got it 12 years ago. It’s an amazing kitchen tool and the rice comes out fantastic every time. Sometimes I’ll set it up to make steel cut oats so they are ready for me when I wake up in the morning.

So exercise with your kids. I got in great shape doing just that. And my kid is in such good shape he has broken longstanding fitness records at his school.

https://vimsnake.com/ is a good one for getting used to vim.

It’s the same for me if the music has words in it. If there aren’t any words in it then it doesn’t get distracting for me.

Go outside for 3 miles a day minimum 6 days a week. Can be bike, walk, run, ski, hike, etc. I usually do quite a bit more but this has kept me in great shape and it really helps with my focus and productivity.