"Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo" (akioohtori)
01/31/2019 at 10:36 • Filed to: New Year's Resolutions
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"Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo" (akioohtori)
01/31/2019 at 10:36 • Filed to: New Year's Resolutions | 1
| 10 |
What a sterile title... Anyway, as my only 2019 New Year’s resolution of merit, my goal was to reduce my Amazon.com usage by about 15%. I wanted to pick a reasonable number that wouldn’t impact my life too much.
That might not sound like a lot, but let me put my Amazon habit’s in perspective here. In all of 2018 I ordered 394 unique items from Amazon, 421 items total, with a total bill of [holy crap what no... redacted ] . A 15% reduction in orders would mean reducing my total order count by about 63 items.
Why is another issue that I don’t think is worth going in to on a car site.
[Edit for clarity] This is not to spend less money, though that might be a happy side effect. The goal was to reduce Amazon usage because they are becoming increasingly evil, customer service and on-time fulfillment are worse then they ever have been, and Jeff Bezos is essentially a Bond villain. Plus the whole HQ2 thing? My distrust and dissatisfaction with the company has grown over the last year or so and as a result I am trying to make them less of a presence in my life.
So how am I doing?
Well I am pleased to announce as of today I have ordered 13 items from Amazon in January 2019. Compared to January of 2018, in which I ordered 27 items, that represents a 52% order reduction. Interestingly my total spend was 27% of my 2018 spend, meaning not only am I ordering less stuff, I am also spending less.
Ok so I overshot the mark a little there.
Ok... I’ll give you a couple real numbers, for fun. In January 2018 I spent $988.51 on Amazon. Not sure why or how, but I did it. (I think cashing in gift cards?) In January 2019 I spent $269.94.
So why is this on Oppo?
CAR PARTS!
I figured to give this an oppo twist, I’d make it about the car parts I did or did not buy on Amazon.
Did
Actually almost all of my spend on Amazon this month was Civic stuff. I bought some Hella Supertones, a trial wheel center cap, some bumper restoration stuff, and a new dash cam.
Did Not
I bought some spark plugs from the local parts store, rather than order them through Amazon. I also bought a radio and speakers through Crutchfield instead, and a few odd and ends though eBay.
In most cases the price was the same at the alternative vendors, but the delivery was slated to be slower.
Overall
Pleased with the progress. Despite a lot of stuff was deferred to an alternate vendor, I can definitely tell looking at my bank account. This means more money for shop stuff, more money for car stuff, and more money in savings. That makes me a happy boy.
That said, truth be told I ran these number a couple of days ago, but since have needed a few thing. I put off the purchases, but they’ll be showing up on February’s Amazon bill. Still think I can keep to my goal of 15%, but... only just.
Fingers crossed February goes as well!
Interested in crunching your own numbers? Amazon has a how-to on generating history reports !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
01/31/2019 at 10:47 |
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I’m not sure if it really fits the purpose of this experiment if you’re still buying stuff, just from other vendors...
Thomas Donohue
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
01/31/2019 at 10:50 |
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I’m trying to do this same thing, but with a larger reduction in purchases.
Step one: Use, install, or sell half the crap I bought last year.
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Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
> BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind
01/31/2019 at 10:51 |
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It does. The goal was to reduce Amazon usage because they are becoming increasingly evil, customer service and on-time fulfillment are worse then they ever have been, and Jeff Bezos is essentially a Bond villain . Plus the whole HQ2 thing? My distrust and dissatisfaction with the company has grown over the last year or so and as a result I am trying to make them less of a presence in my life.
MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
> BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind
01/31/2019 at 10:52 |
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That’s what I was thinking...unless the goal is simply to not give Bezos more money.
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Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
> MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
01/31/2019 at 10:55 |
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Which it is haha.
Arrivederci
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
01/31/2019 at 10:55 |
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Bezos is certainly evil - I saw a figure that said if someone making $15/hr were to donate an equal portion of their salary to charity each year as Bezos does, it would be about $40.
InFierority Complex
> BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind
01/31/2019 at 10:57 |
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I think saving money is a secondary objective to not depending on Amazon as much.
Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
01/31/2019 at 11:00 |
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I've looked at that dash cam. I'm interested to see what you think of it
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Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
> Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap
01/31/2019 at 11:17 |
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I like them! That one is my 4th (joys of owning 5 cars), three of the 1080p version and one of the “4K” ones .
The 4K one is just OK as it is actually only 2K with 4K up- sampling . That said, you can set it to record in 2K and that is still twice the resolution of the regular ones. That said, I’ve not been able to bring myself to pay the extra for the 4K one again so... here we are.
I like the button layout (very simple), light performance, and FPS. The white balance and exposure are really quick to adjust, which doesn’t make for good cinematic video, but it good for making sure you can see an event in dynamic lighting. The audio recording is shockingly good. I did a track day in my Alfa with the top down and you could still hear me and the instructor clearly . It seems to really downplay what is on the radio... somehow. You can also plug in a GPS module to get speed (and maybe position?) but that feature wasn’t important to me.
It doesn’t have a large internal battery or anything, but runs for 5-10 seconds after you shut off the car, which seems like enough to capture any post crash madness. It can be configured to run off continuous power and automatically shut off when no movement is detected, I just don’t have mine configured in that way.
I did have a friend that had focusing issues with his right out of the box, where the camera seemed to focus on his windshield rather than the road, but I haven’t had problems with mine.
I think some of the super cheap ones are probably just as good, but I’ve sort of standardized on this one so... here we are.
facw
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
01/31/2019 at 12:46 |
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My Amazon spending is down from last year, but it’s really too variable to say it means much:
2018 was apparently an expensive year though:
