Krash Coarse On Life

The Edge Of Reason

2011-03-03T13:53:00.005-05:00

I have been complaining about the price of shaving supplies for a couple of decades now. Shaving cream, not so much, but the blades... OMG! It seems ridiculous to me (and has for a while) to pay nearly $20 CDN for a few razor blades. Blades that, as a rule, only last me a couple of shaves, despite their super-fine edged multi-bladed glory. As a consequence, I end up not shaving a lot of the time, because:

a: I'm a cheapskate
b: I admit it, I'm lazy
c: no time

So I figure; if I can knock out one of those excuses, I'll be shaving 33% more than before, right? (Please do not correct my aspirational math.)

A seed was planted by my friend Bob, who came out of the wet-shave closet on his blog, and the comments there by other friends. Another friend, Joel, recently was extolling the virtues of straight razors, and I was intrigued until I saw the price of stuff he was looking at. Collector's level Solingen blades not made since the 1940's, etc... Whoa... But he did show me some intriguing Canadian websites to buy high quality shaving supplies really cheap. In the process of looking over his shoulder and talking about it, I remembered I had a couple of old safety razors inherited from my grandfather and his brother, hidden away with my old collection of Zippo lighters. Hmmmmm... this merited some investigation.

This weekend, I found the Zippo collection, pulled out some sad looking grimy old razors, and had a close look at them. A little scraping and scrubbing with an old toothbrush revealed that they were merely coated in a film of old shaving cream and dust. Water didn't seem to touch it, but vinegar did great! A little bowl of vinegar and a toothbrush had all three of them looking pretty decent, but still dull, and one had rust stains from a blade that had been left in when my great-uncle died, and was only removed when I found it in some cache of stuff years later. I was mumbling aloud about fine steel wool when Betty suggested baking soda: eureka! 10 minutes later, they were shiny and clean and looking like the included picture. Awesome! Three vintage Gillette safety razors!

Being a techie nerd, I was attracted to the fancy one with the butterfly-opening top. My first experience with that one made me look like a murder victim from CSI... I left more of my face in the sink than on the front of my head. That wasn't gonna fly.

I had to wait 2 days to grow my skin back before I could try again, and then I picked the brass one. It handled very differently, was much lighter than the last, and way easier to use. I got away without requiring a blood transfusion! With a little practice, this could be the one I use on a regular basis.

I haven't yet tried the other chrome razor, but the blade-guard is the same smooth "bar" type as the heavy fancy razor, and I think that was part of what didn't work for me. It's a nice looking razor though, so I intend to try it for my next shave, and hope for the best. It doesn't seem as heavy as the fancy one, so maybe it'll work out.

I spent a scandalous 8$ on a can of Proraso shaving cream, and 6.50$ on overpriced Wilkinson Sword blades, but I'm set for a couple of months. Now if I decide to pursue the "wet-shave way", I have time to try some of the blade samplers out there, and get myself a decent brush.

Also: maybe it won't be 3 years before I post to this blog again. :) I'm considering starting to write regularly, but it's difficult for me to discipline myself into doing it.

test post 2011

2011-03-03T12:59:00.000-05:00

test post 20110303

MAD Magazine Fold-Ins, Past and Present INTERACTIVE!

2008-04-02T10:12:00.001-04:00

Fold-Ins, Past and Present - The New York Times

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Video game console joke.

2008-04-01T14:48:00.001-04:00

ThinkGeek :: Super Pii Pii Brothers

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Tony vs Paul :: very cool stop-motion

2008-04-01T13:23:00.001-04:00

Embedded Video

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Dog's Best Friend

2008-03-18T10:55:00.001-04:00

Wow, this is awesome!!
I really got a laugh out of it.

Embedded Video

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Flock on!

2008-01-09T22:32:00.001-05:00

Hi there, just testing the Flock browser's built-in blog editor, to see if I have set it up correctly.

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Awesome Video

2007-04-23T21:52:00.000-04:00

This is really great, and it shows older people still have life in'em.
Go to the MySpace page to find out why they did this....

what I listened to today 20070309

2007-03-09T16:10:00.000-05:00

The AMP podcast (Association of Music Podcasters):
http://media.libsyn.com/media/amped/AMPed064.mp3

IT Conversations - Technometria:
http://www.itconversations.com/audio/download/itconversations-1740.mp3

Leo Laporte The Tech Guy
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcast.dslextreme.com/kfi/TTG20070303-331.mp3

Coverville episode 300:
http://backbeat.cachefly.net/coverville/audio/Coverville-070304.mp3

Not Lame Podcast #24:
http://www.notlamepodcast.com/audio/NotLamePodcast-024.mp3

Marvin Suicide podcast #110:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/marvinsuicidefeedburner/~5/99666089/marvinshow110.mp3

Process for Upgrading Windows 2000 Domains to Windows Server 2003 Domains

2007-03-01T14:09:00.000-05:00

This has got ot be one of the most singularly unhelpful help pages I have ever seen...

Process for Upgrading Windows 2000 Domains to Windows Server 2003 Domains

Chateau Montebello Pictures

2007-01-02T12:39:00.000-05:00

Pictures: as promised in my post from last night.

First: a view of the hotel facing southwest. Best I can do from the ground to show the size of the place... honestly doesn't do it justice.

Second: a view down to the lobby from the top mezzanine. Dig the HUGE six-sided fireplace! It's literally the center-post of the room.

Third: A shot of the main coach entrance, showing some of the log detail.

Lastly: a closer-up view of the log construction.
FACTOID: The Chateau Montebello is the largest log-constructed building in the world.

To see more, including the chapel and the manor house click here.

Visit to the Chateau

2007-01-01T20:01:00.000-05:00

We went to the Chateau Montebello today to put our deposit down for the wedding, reception and for the horse & carriage. Below is some slightly blurry video (sorry, shooting with my still camera) showing the inside of the place. Largest log structure in the world... pretty impressive still, though I've been there dozens of times in my life.

Video!! HHhhhmmmmmm.... seems YouTube stretched the video kinda funny, as it was in a vertical position....

I'll post some photos too, when I sort through what I took today.

Ciao!

My First Microsoft Product Launch

2006-12-08T00:15:00.000-05:00

So being an IT guy, and my company going the Windows Way whole hog; I decided it was about time I went to one of these fabled Microsoft product launches where you get heaps of swag from booth babes and free beer and steak, and ... and...

Well that is just a load of crap, but I had a decent time anyway :)

While Microsoft and their partners still practice the "meat-grinder" sales technique (keep shoving the product down your throat until the money flows out the other end), the IT Pro track presenters had a sense of humor about it, and were able to laugh at themselves when things didn't go as expected onstage. One guy furiously typing on 4 different demo machines, the other "stretching" the talk so we wouldn't get bored and rowdy.

The keynote was the same drab "rah-rah" cheerleading I've come to expect from almost every keynote presentation. KEY MESSAGE: "This will be good for your bottom line, folks. Trust us, we're sure..."

The actual demo sessions were informative and even slightly eye-opening, the whole Vista/Office2007/Exchange2007 package looks pretty impressive overall. I was most impressed with the Business Desktop Deployment Workbench demo. Building a single operating system image to be deployed in a number of different manners including DVD, from an SMS server, directly from the workbench server, and others. The language options are pretty impressive too; Vista is no longer base-language dependent, but can be deployed with as many or as few "language packs" as you wish which can be applied very simply after the fact. That will make a lot of Quebec IT people happy. Most IT folks I know despise working in a "translated" environment like the French Canadian WindowsXP, but prefer the language of origin, US English. The users they support, however, have their own preferences of course :)

Lunch was a decent box including sandwich, chips, salad, cheese and crackers, a tiramisu cake, and an apple. Not steak and beer, but pretty decent for free :)

No "booth babes" although there were some attractive ladies in evidence.

And I got a T-shirt.

All in all, a pretty good day.

Ben's goes bye-bye?

2006-11-22T12:48:00.000-05:00

Workers at this Montreal landmark have been without a contract since February 2006. The first photo was taken coincidentally in February as I was walking to the train station after work. Ben's is one of the few places I remember coming to when I came on field trips to the city with my grandparents when I was little.

This is how it looks now, in November. The chairs and tables are all stacked at one end of the floor, the fondly-remembered lemon-yellow formica walls still covered by the autographed photos of celebrities who have come to this shrine to Montreal-style "Smoked Meat".

A sad day for our local culture when this family-run business goes away. I caught a hint of a headline about a new 28-storey building going up on this site when searching the Web, but couldn't actually find the article. I had noticed these signs going up, though.

These are the workers' demands, which seem pretty reasonable to me as a once (and hopefully future) customer.

a Chef (cook)
a meat cutting person
new silverware, glassware, and toaster
Repairs to the HVAC
Reasonable seniority rights and wage increases

Let's hope they can open these doors again!

Ben's Wikipedia entry

2006-11-22T08:57:00.000-05:00

Hey this is cool... You can use Writely to post to your Blogger account!

and it's a nice little editor too... Hmm... I may end up using this instead of emailing posts in from my Blackberry... or both; we'll see.

Ok, now for some real work!

Listening to TWIT#77

2006-11-22T07:42:00.001-05:00

http://www.twit.tv/TWiT
Oh no! Here we go again.... Microsoft has apparently scared Novell into coughing up money for intellectual property used in SUSE Linux. Bollocks!! What is this "deal" really about? Is it the whole FAT disk format thing again? Or is it just one more way for MS to undermine linux as a viable desktop?

Links :

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-20Statement.mspx
http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/community_open_letter.html
http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/54088.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/03/microsoft_novell_suse_linux/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000121
http://www.novell.com/linux/microsoft/

Ooooh, just found a good one:
http://news.samba.org/announcements/team_to_novell/

Just as an aside:
Digital Rights Management doesn't protect anybody. In order to get your money's worth for the media you buy, you have to turn into a "thief" and rip movies and music illegally.

Ok, gotta go earn some bucks.

FIRST POST!!!

2006-11-21T23:11:00.000-05:00

I've always wanted to do that, ever since I started reading SlashDot years ago...