Did you know that there is a National Fenestration Rating Council? They rate windows.
Archive for December, 2008
Fenestration comes before Defenestration
Monday, December 29th, 2008I must be pretty sentimental
Monday, December 29th, 2008Just a bit ago, I was performing a quick search of my blog for monkeys, because that’s the kind of thing that I do sometimes; got a problem with that‽ Anyway, I happened to come across one of my old posts, which happened to remind me of my dear old friend, Mr. Tickles. Good Lord, he was a great fish and I, absolutely, still miss him. Ditto, if not more, for Browder. Thankfully, Baldr’s probably got 7 – 9 more years in him.
Sometimes my sentimentality really catches me by surprise; I would have thought that I was colder hearted than all this.
5.11B bitches
Monday, December 29th, 2008Not that it really matters to any of you but I successfully climbed a 5.11B route at the gym today. I may have fallen a few times along the way but I am still mighty impressed with myself. Booyah!
Welcome to the Infinity Maze
Sunday, December 28th, 2008Dear Intarwebs,
I feel that it behooves me to bring the existence of the Infinity Maze to your attention. Infinity Maze is the webcomic of my brother, Dave. As might not be surprising for the work of one of my kin, the comic is rather bizarre. The art is somewhat crude but the writing is usually pretty top notch, in my opinion. I may be biased by the humor matching my sense thereof but, that said, I do highly recommend the comic to you, my good Intarwebs.
–gwax
Going oldschool on my face
Friday, December 19th, 2008Recently, a particular xkcd comic got me thinking about shaving equipment. I, shortly thereafter, purchased a Burma Shave soap/mug/brush set from amazon at a very reasonable price. Very quickly, I came to realize that the soap and brush approach is vastly superior to the shaving cream or gel approach. The soap and brush lather gives me a closer shave with less razor burn; so much so, in fact, that I am now able to go over my face twice every morning without razor burn.
My Burma-Shave soap puck was running out last week, so I turned to the wonderful ClassicShaving.com, purveyors of old fashioned shaving supplies, to get more soap. Choosing to go with Jasmine and Lavender, I ordered two pucks of soap and then moved on to looking at the available razors. Though I think it would be awesome to use a straight razor, the cost of straight razors and the necessary implements to keep them sharp are simply too much for me to justify right now, so I focused on the double edge safety razors. Choosing a rather nice double edged razor and a pack of high quality blades, I completed my order.
Shaving for the first time, this morning, with my new soap and new razor, I find two things: 1) a brush and soap puck is absolutely the correct way to lather for shaving, and 2) I need a lot more patience and practice with using a traditional razor. It’s pretty awesome to shave with a double edged razor and where I did it right, I got a great shave but there are a lot of places on my face today that got nicked or poorly shaved this morning.
Another detail worth noting is that really good blades for a double-edged razor cost about 60¢ a piece and are good for about 7 days, which is much better than the ~$5 a piece for modern multi-blade razor cartridges.
Comfort: No longer a scarcity
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008Living in San Francisco really is spoiling me on weather, so much so that I’ve actually had a paradigm shift.
Having primarily grown up and lived in Massachusetts, with a short stint in Minnesota, I’ve been trained to treat comfortable weather as a scarce commodity. In Massachusetts, one gets some nice time in the spring and fall; the summers provide hot and muggy discomfort, which must be fought with water or A/C; and, the winters provide cold, sleet, ice and more cold. Minnesota offers similar weather to Massachusetts in the spring, summer and fall but, for winters, merely provides pain, lots of pain. The scarcity of warmth and comfort in the winter often leads me to wear as little winter gear as possible to get by, saving as much as possible for later. By saving the heaviest of my winter gear for when the winter is the worst, I am able to maintain a relatively constant level of discomfort throughout the season. Thus, by accepting discomfort as inevitable, I am able to ramp up my tolerance to the cold.
Here in San Francisco, however, the weather doesn’t really get that bad so there is no reason to tolerate discomfort; abiding discomfort doesn’t prepare me for anything. The realization came to me while mopedding to work, when I had the thought, “Man, my face is chilly; I should wear my balaclava next time.” This was followed by a train of thought along the lines of, “but then when it gets colder, I’ll just be more uncomfortable.”, “Wait, this is probably as cold and unpleasant as it’s going to get.”, “Clearly, I should man up and suffer because it leaves me better prepared.”, “Wait, so what?!” All of my reasons to be uncomfortable are founded on the premise that comfort is scarce and one can be best prepared by accepting discomfort; when comfort is not scarce, that is wrong.
Sure it makes me weak and you’re all more hardcore for having to put up with the cold but, you know what, I don’t care because I’m going to be nice and comfortable wearing my winter coat when it’s in the low forties instead of holding out until it drops below twenty.
Find the Rein-dog
Monday, December 15th, 2008
This past Saturday was SantaCon here in San Francisco and, for the second time, I attended. This year, I dressed Baldr up as a rein-dog and brought him along for the romp. We had a fantastic time and Baldr was unquestionably the star of the day, with dozens upon dozens of people taking photos with or of him.
Baldr’s popularity on Saturday brings me to a challenge: I challenge you to find as many photos of Baldr as you can; leave links in the comments. I have attached a particularly cute one that I found to get you started, but I have seen others out there.
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