They also misspelled "vitamin". And I'm not sure I want to know what "Dairyplus 600" is.

If they don't want to say where they made it, they could probably just leave that line off.

‘

Not a great place for math, either.

Or maybe I just shop in the wrong stores.

Other than that, everything here remains steady. Always steady.

bkd

It turns out there’s a whole online community dedicated to safety razors. On the one hand of course there is, but on the other hand, it’s kind of odd just how active a community dedicated to safety razors can possibly be. This degree of interest was worrying, but the site (badgerandblade.com) also provided a lot of info about the advantages of safety razor shaving and how to get started in acquiring the rare skill of using one without inadvertently slitting your own throat. (Some of the posters there make it out to be much harder than it actually is.)

It turns out that using a safety razor is considerably more economical than using a “normal” one. The table below sort of shows that (it assumes that the average man uses two blades a month; using more blades speeds up the break-even, using fewer slows it down).

(Prices taken from Amazon on July 24, 2011; lowest price for each product taken. Blade packs were chosen by lowest price per blade regardless of quantity (safety razor blade price applies to 7 AM or Shark blades sold in packs of 100).)

That table’s a little deceptive in that I, like most people, already owned another razor. In that sense, you kind of should deduct the initial cost of the razor for the normal razor comparison subject since it’s a sunk cost. But still — even with that, the break-even versus the Gillette Fusion (which I owned) takes less than a year. Also, unlike a “normal razor”, you could conceivably get reasonable value back for a used safety razor via E-Bay. A good safety razor is built to stand the test of time (I’ve read); a normal razor might last you a decade or more, but even then you’re not likely to hand it down to your grandkids. I’m not saying you’d hand down your safety razor (that seems weird), just that the likelihood would be higher.

The table comparison is also a little deceptive in that, if you follow the advice of the Blade & Badger community, you can’t just use normal shaving cream in a can; you have to use a badger-hair brush and some sort of soap or tub-based cream. Also according to them, you have to buy some sort of after shave, specifically some sort of European after shave. As such, and in order to give the safety razor an ideal test, I followed the entusiasts’ advice and bought:

• The afore-referenced Merkur Classic razor ($31.50).
• A badger hair brush (Parker, I think; no longer available on Amazon, but $20 iirc).
• A 2.25-oz. tub of Col. Conk’s bay rum shaving soap ($4.75)
• A 25-pack of Shark blades ($9).
• Proraso aftershave ($9 on sale).

All total, then, the start-up cost for this experiment was $74.25. (As it turns out, I don’t think anything other than the razor and blades were required.) I’ve been using the set-up for a couple months now. Here, then, are my findings:

• Performance-wise, I get a closer shave with the safety razor. The difference is large.
• I don’t think there’s any greater propensity to cut oneself using the safety razor than with an normal razor.
• In fact, in daily practice, I don’t see any reason to necessarily do anything different with a safety razor than you do with a normal razor: it can go just as fast (or slow) and I don’t believe there’s any real functional benefit to using the brush and special soap/cream.
• That said, using the brush and shaving soap sort of gives one the feeling of connecting with past generations. Depending on how sentimental you are toward bygone eras, that might be a plus. (The old-school Proraso aftershave is also a potential plus on the same grounds.)
• Plus figuring out how to get the soap to lather offers a slight challenge that, once conquered, lets you know that you’re a better man than most.
• Finding “the right angle” at which to hold the safety razor is intuitive.
• I haven’t had to change blades any more frequently than with a normal razor; as with normal razor blades, I usually fare better with a blade after one sometimes bloody go-round.
• I can shave with the safety razor sans soap, just like I often did with the normal razor. Back then. When I still used one.
• The recommended Merkur razor is a solid instrument. The handle seems short at first (much shorter than the normal razor), but you get used to it quickly. The heft and build quality make it seem more like a serious tool and less like a toothbrush.

In summary, then, I highly recommend the safety razor approach. It shaves closer, does not appear to be any more difficult than using a normal blade, and costs significantly less than using a normal razor system. If any of the esoteric benefits are a plus for you, then so much the better. I’m guessing that if the tide ever turned and a majority of guys started using safety razors then the Gillettes and Schicks of the world would be left no alternative but to lobby congress into making them illegal. Until then, though, this seems like a market inefficiency that everyone might want to exploit.

bkd

PS, Plus I’m guessing that about 75% of what you’re paying for with the Gillette/Schick systems is marketing costs. Merkur and Col. Conk don’t really have that kind of overhead with which they need to saddle customers.

Amazon is proud of its European-American heritage.

I think they meant that the love seat is just comfortable with itself. Maybe too comfortable with itself.

Will it be sneezing or how will I know?

This one’s just about the audacity of Major League Baseball — selling multiple ad units within their own advertising. Play ball indeed. And seriously, how big could the overlap possibly be between baseball fans and Evony aficionados?

So that’s it. Now I can drag and drop into the trash can.

bkd

bkd

• “Restore active desktop” button appearing on my desktop, behind my icons, for no clear reason.
• Recurrent “valkyrie.dll” issues.
• Normal.dot preventing me from shutting down.
• 20 minutes from turning the computer on until being able to do something with it.
• Daily emails telling me my “mailbox is full” (not exactly helping the problem, are they?).
• Receiving auto-generated emails telling me I should go look at the emails in my spam mailbox (?!).
• Not being able to reserve rooms for recurring meetings due to one over lap during the next millennium.
• “The data file ‘Mailbox – Dunn, Brian’ was not closed properly” and then waiting 5-10 minutes for Outlook to decide what to do about it.
• Launching an application, getting bored waiting for it, switching to a second application, getting in the middle of doing something (an Excel formula), and then having the first application take over again after deciding it wants to run after all.
• My (local) printer not working after un-docking “too many” times.
• Spotty wireless connectivity inside the building.
• Frequent hanging.
• Outlook taking 60 seconds to display the text of an email because (?) there’s a large file attached to it.
• The mailbox full dialog box offering to help delete emails in ways that don’t actually help. And then continuing to pop up after you’ve taken care of the issue.
• Having to attempt to launch Internet Explorer two or three times before it actually launches.
• Pulling an email back from the archive and having Outlook ask me whether I want to have the email retrieved “now” or “later”.
• Having Excel warn me Every Time I tried to open an Excel 07 document in Excel 03. Such clever marketers in Redmond!
• Attempting to close excel, answering the “do you want to save?” question for three of the four spreadsheets I had opened, then realizing that I needed to keep the fourth one open, clicking cancel, and having the first three spreadsheets reappear as open.
• Having emails sent from gmail addresses intermittently labeled “spam”.
• The “safeboot” security thing that increases boot time by five minutes for the sake of keeping someone from stealing the information on my laptop during all the travel I did in the last year.
• Emails disappearing into the either after six months of storage.

Wow — I’m getting mad just having to recall this stuff. Time heals all wounds. Time heals all wounds…

bkd

A (strike)B-24 Liberator(/strike) B-25 Mitchell comes in for a low pass while some guys work on an F6F Hellcat that claims to have shot down 29 Japanese planes despite being part of something called the "Commemorative Air Force".

Took 300 photos, most of which were awful. I blame the haze. And the number of people that were there. And my unwillingness to go stand in front of all the people for an unobstructed view. Plus, really, what kind of composition actually works for planes flying alone against a hazy-blue sky? Nosuch.

Air Show was at the Chino Airport, which is also the home to the “Planes of Fame Museum” I visited a while back. Was hot out there — 90 maybe. Got good and burned on my neck, most importantly.

The show was mostly old planes, mostly from World War II, although there was a brief Korea showcase with an F-86 and a MiG 15 chasing each other around. Also had an A-10 Thunderbolt, which is usually pretty fun to watch (IMHO, slow flying trumps everything at an air show), and a C-17, which isn’t necessarily fun to watch. And the tri-tip barbecue sandwich was way better than I expected I’d find at an air show.

Here’s a photo of F8F Bearcats flying in formation, in case you care:

Three aerobatic F8F Bearcats fly in formation, shaming one of their less well-heeled bretheren into folding up its wings.

So I really didn’t rock it on the photography. Many life-lessons were learned, however. And the old planes looked and sounded cool.

bkd

Ferarris: 4 (2 NB PCH, 1 SB PCH, 1 Parked PCH)
Maseratis: 2 (1 NB PCH, 1 SB PCH)
Lamborghinis: 1 (NB PCH)
Bentleys: 1 (EB Bluebird Cyn)

Bonus: 3 Dodge Vipers in a row.

To qualify: No cars with MSRP under $100K in manufacturer’s current US-available lineup (thus: no BMW, Lotus, Mercedes, Porsche, et al); mysterious or one-off vehicles that probably retail at over $100K (e.g., Oscar Meyer Wienermobile) may be included at the blog author’s discretion.

As if I’m actually going to do this every week (?!).

Observationally,

bkd

• New Road Trip Itinerary (version 9!)
• Recurring Trip Themes (version 1)

So maybe check those out. If you want.

bkd

I also keep having people tell me I need to take up Twitter, at least for the duration of the road trip and now that I figured out how to get it onto my Blackberry (it was very difficult — involved downloading and installing an app!) I suppose that could happen (my Twitter account is bdunn02 if you’d like to watch that particular apocalypse).

That’s all I have to say about that. And now I can start loading the truck up for my new vacation lifestyle in Laguna Beach.

bkd

Therefore, my hypothesis: it’s better to be living better in a dump than other people who are also living in a dump than it is to be living in a palace but living worse than other people living in a palace. Assuming that dumps and palaces are themselves closed, discrete environments of course.

bkd

Was reading the first chapter of a book about the Battle of Wake Island last night and in that chapter was related the story of a marine who, when he was ten years old, got a too-big-for-him used bike for Christmas and was overjoyed. Kids today wouldn’t likely react similarly. Why? Because their friends are getting brand new bikes every couple of years. The difference for the marine, of course, was that he was a kid during the depression, when not every kid on the street was lucky enough to have a bike of his own.

Not only that, but also from a future employment standpoint, getting laid off when everyone else does is vastly advantageous. Looking at the resume of a person who got laid off in 2009 during the economy’s nadir will raise no alarms — plenty of companies are going belly-up or shuttering business units or making across-the-board cuts in staff. Looking at the resume of someone who got “laid off” in 2004? Red flag. What could someone have possibly done to deserve that in ’04?

Same with getting your house foreclosed on. Imagine the embarrassment someone would have to feel if they got their house foreclosed on in 2004. The house’s “value” increasing exponentially, economy booming, and yet… I mean, there seems little likelihood of someone who got foreclosed on in ’04 would ever admit having been foreclosed on in ’04. Foreclosed on today? You’re the hot new thing. Foreclosed on tomorrow? You’ll be one of the guys. Maybe you can get a class action suit together.

Just sayin’.

bkd

(Oh, plus it’s good to be on the take when the left is ascendant.)

A truly all-knowing Santa Claus should, further, have the ability to assess gift preference with a precision superior to that of the gift recipient. Just because Little Johnny *thinks* he wants an Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle, that doesn’t exactly mean he wouldn’t be happier if he instead received a full-on Stomper 4×4 set-up complete with styrofoam mountains. Why, really, is it incumbent on the poor six-year-old to make this assessment himself? I’m sure all of us remember a time when a Claus-given “gift” turned out to cause more trouble than joy, whether through jealousy, disappointment, or by unexpectedly exploding into shards of plastic.

Does anyone remember Santa Claus admitting culpability?

Given the unavailability — or unwillingness — to provide this superior gift-giving capability, the positive associations generally assigned the Santa Claus brand seem largely unjustified.

Beyond all this lies the other core concern regarding the jolly old elf. He’s set himself up as the ultimate annual judge of behavior, but has NEVER stated the actual criteria upon which children are to be judged. Naughty or nice? Sure, but is the scale relative or absolute? Upon what value system is it based?

Say, for example, that Girl X, through her incompetence, drops an anvil on the head of Unsuspecting Bystander Y. Then let’s say that Boy Z, while he would very much *like* to drop an anvil on the head of Unsuspecting Bystander Y and wishes all sorts of harm on Y, chooses not to do so because his opportunity cost of dropping the anvil is *slightly* higher than the utility value of Y’s crushed head. Which of these two, X or Z, is naughty? Nice? My point exactly.

So with the thought of making this post a *constructive* exercise and to ensure the loyal readership that this post is not just another pile of anti-Santaist rhetoric, here’s what I’d propose should happen to resolve the issues set forth.

1. An open, public response from Mr. Claus explaining the selectiveness and mechanism behind his “knowing” powers and a full investigation into how these powers, if verifiable and found objective, could be further used for the betterment of society.
2. Complete transparency within the system; black boxes are in no way acceptable.
3. An established means of consistent two-way communication, including the availability of to-date judgments and FOIA compliance — given the volume of transactions Sant Claus completes within the United States, his status as a non-citizen should not absolve him of the obligation to allow people to understand their status under his system.
4. An annual independent audit of evaluations to ensure fairness and objectivity as well as compliance with best-of-breed privacy standards to protect the interests of the judged.
5. Establishment of a means of appeal for all decisions made by Santa Claus.
6. Creation of a binding service-level agreement, including agreed-upon language regarding consequences of failing to meet the requirements of the SLA.

Barring the above, I don’t see any reason why humanity doesn’t pursue other holiday-related figurehead options. While I don’t necessarily think the incumbent’s intentions are impure — I truly have no idea what Claus’s motivations might be — surely we’d be better off with an objective, transparent gift-giving apparatus that can easily be held to high standards of accountability.

Until it happens, the establishment of an acceptably better regime will remain my fondest holiday wish.

Defiantly,

bkd

I’m on vacation. The vacation’s a week long. It’s day six and I realize I haven’t done anything yet and I start getting panicky about how I can cram enough into the last two days of the vacation to not feel like I wasted it.

I had a class at BYU on Dreams, Archetypes, and Myths (in German Literature) wherein it was suggested that repeated dreams probably mean something. I could draw some conclusions, but unlike the dream, in real life, I’m not sure what I was supposed to have done over those first five days. Oh well.

bkd

bkd

If I manage to find all the photo pages I used to have on the ol’ BootlegSports side, I’ll post ‘em there. Otherwise, I may or may not. Only time can tell.

bkd

This is, in a way, a dream come true.

And it turns out there’s no T-Mobile location on the island of Kauai. So if you need to reach me, email and I can send you the number for the place where I’m staying. Meantime, I’ll be trying to decide whether I want to embrace the pure evil that is the Googlephone.

bkd

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother

Wait till they merge with the Feds. You’ll see.

bkd

It’s pleasantly unnerving. And I suppose it’s more of a line segment than a triangle.

bkd

Got this last fall off of eBay. I still don’t get why you capitalize days of the week but not names of seasons. Another post. This was/is part of my WW2 life-as-homage project. Not sure if it’s just the yearning for a past that, due to its being over and done with, seems less problematic than the present or if it’s my yearning for a more symmetrical star-pattern (cuz brother, I *do* yearn for such) but I prefer this older flag to the current one. Seems truer.

For the bored and curious, here’s the box it came in:

Worryingly, the flag on the box has 50 stars, which makes it tough to date my flag. I’m guessing it must’ve come out right around the same time Hawaii was admitted. Or else this isn’t the original box.

I love the “Be American” admonition — talk about coming from a less-convoluted time period. Further, there are no warnings about what the manufacturer does or does not recommend users do with the flag (“not for internal use”, “keep flag away from open flame as it may catch fire”, “avoid jabbing flag into eyes”, “use only under adult supervision”, “flag may not be valid in all states”). I can only imagine what a mess the 1959 court system must have been without such CYA messages on all consumer packaging. Also appreciated is the box’s failure to tout a cross-promotion with NASCAR and/or the Disney Channel.

It seems like, in the modern day, individuals should have the choice to live a 1940s-style life if they so choose. We know what it was like back then — am I the only person out there who’d enjoy spending a week’s vacation in 1946?

Probably.

Out,

bkd