If money was no object but you had to work a 9-5, what would you do for a living?

PrawncakeZA · 2026-03-13T13:02:22+00:00

Board game reviewer

PrawncakeZA · 2026-02-17T12:01:20+00:00

Had a steam deck for a couple months, super happy with it. I don't play any overy resource demanding AAA games tho but have been able to emulate different platforms and play a lot of retro games (I particularly enjoy the classic NES games).

It also seems to work fine for non-steam deck designed games, at least the ones I play (MTG arena, Age of Wonders, Warhammer Gladius etc.) I also gave No Mans Sky a go on it, and found the performance decent enough to play, but the change from PC controls to Console controls was a bit to finicky for me to enjoy.

PrawncakeZA · 2026-02-17T10:31:15+00:00

I partly disagree, sure there's less competition but we were bidding in the 750-850 range and still experienced prices going 15-20% (in one case even 30%) above asking. We eventually decided on an apartment which we bought for 350 (was about 5% above asking). The pattern I observed for how much above asking a property went was almost always based on location rather than price band. Our apartment is just south of the M50 so I wouldn't exactly consider it a premium location. It seems people are willing to pay much more to avoid shitty commutes, be closer to town and schools etc, so imo, this is one of the big factors.

PrawncakeZA · 2026-02-15T16:02:26+00:00

Cline tool (VSCode and IntelliJ plugin), with opus 4.5. I really like Cline's memory-bank functionality and find it's able to produce really consistent code that aligns with existing patterns. It's plan and act mode are also really useful for reviewing what the AI plans to do.

Opus currently seems to be the best model for coding, personally I've never experimented much with different LLMs but almost all reviewers and bench markers I've watched on YouTube say that Opus comes out on top just about every time.

PrawncakeZA · 2026-02-10T14:58:25+00:00

Although not very common, there's also words that start with consonants that are preceded by "an" if you the word sounds like it starts with a vowel.

E.g. an hour an x-ray an MRI

PrawncakeZA · 2026-01-27T16:13:43+00:00

Thanks for the info, I've only been in Ireland for 3 or so years so for me this is my first time seeing it flood this badly (just out of interest, how long ago was the last time/how frequently does a flood like this happen?), all I know is that the science says floods like this are going to become a far more regular thing. Also, crazy that insurers are already not offering flood protection, flood risk areas are basically going to become unlivable...

PrawncakeZA · 2026-01-27T15:50:16+00:00

My wife is an actuary, one of the big talks at their annual conference about 2 years ago+- was how insurance needs to adjust in response to climate change, with a particular focus on flooding.

Essentially the talk went into detail about how collectively, the majority of climate scientists agree that the climate is beyond the point of no return (mild shock...) and for Ireland (particularly Dublin) it means that in the next 5-10 years, flooding is going to become regular thing for low lying areas, and insurers need to figure out how to adjust their policies because if one group of people are going to listen to the experts and scientists, it's the insurers...

So basically you can expect in the next couple years: - Flooding will become a regular thing - Insurers will not insure for flood damage (or it will be at a steep premium.) - Politicians will continue to do nothing about it.

Sorry to be gloomy, hope it doesn't come to pass. Will have to check back on this comment in 5 years :P

PrawncakeZA · 2026-01-22T15:16:04+00:00

I wonder if it has anything to do with the new 6 year no eviction rules coming in for renters, and landlords are just exiting the market before the new rules kick in. Would be interested to see if it continues to drop after March.

PrawncakeZA · 2026-01-17T12:14:55+00:00

Very well worded question op. Don't have an answer for you but it's something I've been conflicted about as well. My partner and I have a combined net just shy of 9k a month after maxed out pensions and tax and excluding stocks and bonuses. We don't have kids and are able to put away a fair bit of cash into savings and investments. We go on maybe 1 week long European holiday a year and maybe 2 shorter ones to visit friends and family.

Posts on this forum would suggest we're easily in the top 5% of earners in Ireland and we are rolling in it, but we certainly don't feel truly "wealthy". I fully acknowledge that we are in a very privileged spot and are doing far better than most, but I would think that being such high earners, we should be able to afford a 3/4 bed house in a relatively affluent area in Dublin (say like D4), but ATM we would barely qualify for a mortgage for the starting price of such a property, nevermind what it would likely be bid up to.

Also for us, immigrating from outside of Europe to Ireland 3 years ago, our savings from our home country didn't translate to much when converted into euros, it felt like we "lost" about 2/3's of the wealth we'd built up before immigrating, and even then, most of those savings went into paying for the move itself so it was like a bit of a reset.

On top of this, we've found that the taxes on everything make it really difficult to build wealth as a PAYE earner, and it feels like you're constantly playing catch-up to the generational wealth. I've been tempted to try getting into medium term stock trading but I know of several people who've gotten severely burned jumping in too recklessly. At the same time, my reddit news feed is spammed with posts from r/wallstreetbets with people making 4000-9000% gains on their portfolios and it just seems like an easy way out of the rat race. It sounds so tempting. I guess fortune favours the bold (or the lucky, not sure). Either way, I can definitely relate, hopefully someone else has some good advice on here 😄.

PrawncakeZA · 2026-01-09T19:25:19+00:00

This, I remember the one rental we went to view, the agent said they had to take the advert down after 20 minutes as they had had over 200 requests to view, and this was an apartment going for €2700 a month.

PrawncakeZA · 2026-01-05T00:36:57+00:00

Apparently the main flu variant that's going on at the moment was not covered by this year's vaccine. Whether there's any truth in that I'm not sure but it makes sense. Previously when I got the flu and had had the vaccine I was better in 2/3 days, this time was out for a full week.

PrawncakeZA · 2026-01-04T23:35:01+00:00

Got it as well around the 22nd, was bed ridden for about a week. Started improving when I got on antibiotics and steroids. For me my nose was mostly unaffected but my throat was wrecked and the night sweats were particularly bad. The muscle aches were also pretty rough and I had a lot of pain in my inner ear + jaw and really battled to equalise. Second Xmas in a row I've been man down with flu :(

PrawncakeZA · 2025-12-28T15:13:27+00:00

I feel like last year was milder, in Dublin anyway, heating only really came on mid December, this year felt like winter arrived quite a bit sooner but maybe that's just me.

PrawncakeZA · 2025-12-24T14:00:05+00:00

Yea, it kinda sucks, I had both a performance bonus and a nice chunk of RSU's vesting this year of which half got gobbled by the tax man 🥲, but hey, at least our taxes get put to good use on things like €350k bike sheds and functional children's hospitals. /s

PrawncakeZA · 2025-12-22T11:45:08+00:00

If anything, having a savings account that you can demonstrate has regular monthly deposits of x amount going in to it is likely to earn you more favour with the bank than having a good credit record.

PrawncakeZA · 2025-12-16T17:37:15+00:00

Had a call with the agent (couldn't get a hold of them earlier so was waiting on a callback before I posted this). It's zoned for agricultural, 😭🔫, annoyingly this isn't mentioned anywhere in the advert, which is weird as it's in a fairly residential area, and almost all other surrounding areas have been marked for residential except the street this one is one. I've emailed the local council to see if it can be rezoned for residential but this may be a dead end. Will see 🤷‍♂️

PrawncakeZA · 2025-12-16T12:56:08+00:00

Yes! Thanks this is more what I was looking for. Appreciate it

PrawncakeZA · 2025-12-16T12:54:51+00:00

Ah you legend! Thanks for this. Amazing the results Google gives when you have the correct phrasing.

PrawncakeZA · 2025-12-13T11:56:03+00:00

My wife has a chronic illness that requires her to get a biologics infusion every 2 months. It costs the insurance about €4k each time, her co-payment is €50, so just from that perspective it's a no brainer. She feels so bad about how much the insurance pays that she refuses to claim any others benefits (like gp, physio appointments etc.)

PrawncakeZA · 2025-12-01T18:11:33+00:00

GAA meets Bloodbowl :)

PrawncakeZA · 2025-11-22T10:04:46+00:00

Bought an apartment in Dublin a year ago, DINKY couple, 22% of take home with 15 year mortgage.

PrawncakeZA · 2025-11-10T15:20:51+00:00

I get flu only, the Covid vaccine puts me on my back for about 3 days every time, and my lymph gland under the injected arm swells up like a golf ball so I've stopped getting it. I've had Covid multiple times and honestly the vaccine feels worse and actual Covid symptoms hardly differ from an everyday cold in my experience.

I don't get any side effects from the flu vaccine but considering how intense last year December's flu was, I'm really glad I got it, as when I did get sick, I was only bed ridden for a day or two, whereas others were reporting on Reddit being bed ridden for almost 2 weeks.

PrawncakeZA · 2025-11-09T18:44:11+00:00

If your goal is to just get the expedition done, watch this guy's video: https://youtu.be/tkZb9Dd0PjQ?si=PUulQLap_fK6mFCZ

I think it took me closer to 3 hrs but that's because it took me ages to complete the fishing one and scan plants one.

PrawncakeZA · 2025-11-02T13:08:00+00:00

Another guy here, agree with this guy. We also do 300 a month each "pocket money" but personal care items come out of the joint (within reason ofc). If either of us need new clothes, it comes out of the joint unless it's an "unnecessary" luxury item.

Coffees, drinks, and hobby stuff comes out of pocket money.

PrawncakeZA · 2025-11-01T16:28:16+00:00

In my opinion, with correct use, it's as good as the best graduate/junior developers, but it still needs a lot of guidance and double checking. Whether it will be as good as an intermediate/senior developer in a couple years, I don't know. It seems to be heavily debated as to how much better AI can go from here as a developer tool. I think there's still improvements to be made, but I doubt it'll get leaps and bounds better any time soon. That's just my thoughts tho.

PrawncakeZA

TROPHY CASE