Remember how I mentioned that we were trying to save some money for things like house purchases and whatnot? Well, quicker than even we anticipated, developments have… er, developed.

It seems that by the end of April we will be occupying a brand new (that is, never been lived-in) condo just up the street from our current digs. It seems kind of odd, I suppose, to mention houses and then days later find yourself on the verge of once again renting something that is decidedly not a house. But it makes sense, I swear.

Part of our wishy-washy talks of moves that coincided with my new job was the element of housing price versus commute. Specifically, we pay a pretty low rent (for California and especially for Bay Area-accessible California) right now. However, I commute for about 120 miles round trip four days a week so at first we thought the obvious thing was to move closer to where I work. The problem is that places that are very close to my work are either prohibitively expensive or, for those places we looked that were in our price range, shabby and potentially usafe.

There are places in between, but the price issue becomes a bigger factor there; many of the more eastern bedroom communities are nice and relatively safe but likewise demand higher rents. The tradeoff between the increased housing costs and the commute relief was generally a wash at best.

Now there are a couple of things that we looked at as sub-motivating factors. Things like the fact that in our seven-plus years of marriage we have had our own washer and dryer exactly once, for less than a year. Also, our rent is unlikely to stay as reasonable as it is now for much longer, especially since the complex has decided to move to a for-sale model sometime in the next year or so and while our apartment is nice enough, there is no way I would ever actually want to own it. There are a couple other minor considerations such as the atrocious parking situation and the fact that one of the buildings blew up not so long ago. You know, that kind of thing.

But with the pricing and the timing and everything else, it seemed like it was never going to quite work the way we hoped. So we more or less gave up and decided we’d stay as long as we could and hopefully find a way to save up and maybe buy something old or in need of many repairs.

As is so often the case, once we stopped looking the answer sort of fell into our laps. I happened to drive by one of those dancing sign people waving an oversized arrow that pointed at some condos down a street a block or two up the road from our complex that I never would have considered investigating for that kind of housing. I mentioned it to Nik and we had a little time to kill on Saturday afternoon so we drove by to check it out.

It turns out the condos are brand new and they’re trying to get them all leased out by the middle of April. It was a hurried time table, especially for what we were looking for, but we toured a couple of the units and found them to be really nice. We discussed it a bit and agreed to go home, fill out the online application, talk about it, sleep on it and return the next afternoon with a deposit assuming we hadn’t changed our minds or there were no problems with our application. Which is exactly what we did and the next day we were still a go although Nik had begun debating our initial thought of going with the three-story, three bedroom model for the smaller two-story two bedroom. After a couple more tours we decided on the two bedroom, and handed over the holding deposit.

Maybe you’re asking why I’d move from a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment to a two bedroom one and a half bathroom condo? Here’s why: For one thing, the place is new. Our apartment is probably twenty years old and despite a couple of renovations, it pretty much feels twenty years old. The condo also has more square footage, by a little bit. Another thing is that the condo doesn’t share a ceiling with anyone else. Two walls I can handle, but I don’t really care for tiptoeing around or dealing with the bowling-alley fun of being the downstairs tenant. The condo also comes with brand new appliances and allows interior decorating that includes the option to paint the walls. I’ve been staring at white walls for seven and a half years now while I watch my friends and family members do marvelous things with their rooms. I’ve even helped them in some cases. Well, I want a piece of that action.

Oh, and there is one other little thing. The condo has a garage. Did you catch that? I’m about to have a garage. This is big for me. Huge.

On top of all the amenities and so forth, the other positive factors are that the new place is offering a special that gives you the first month rent-free. Since we’re making the move on fairly short notice it works out that we can have two places through the end of April. We’d have to give 30 days notice at our place now and pay for April’s rent anyway, but since we’re not being charged for April at the condo place we wind up basically having a month to move in, at our leisure. And once we do start paying rent on the condo, it’s less than two hundred dollar more than we pay now. Dude, I would pay $200 just to have the garage.

And then there’s the small matter of the flexibility and opportunity the condo affords us. See it turns out the owner really wanted to sell the condos. But he had the misfortune of having the development complete during one of the crappiest housing markets in years. From what I gather, everyone bought houses back a couple years ago when the interest rates were ideal and now they aren’t selling that well. To compensate, the owner decided to rent the condos for a year or two and then offer them for sale to the tenants (hopefully when the housing market is better; one thing about California, you can pretty much count on housing markets to improve eventually). But they’re also offering a sort of retroactive rent-to-own plan where a percentage of the rent you’ve already paid for that year or two will be set aside and used as part of the offer for the condo purchase. And of course it will be optional at that time.

What that means for us is that our rent won’t necessarily be wasted money, which is a concept I can completely get behind. It also means that even if it doesn’t work out, it’s not a big deal since we’re technically just doing what we’ve always done. And if it does work, we end up getting what we had almost given up hope of ever having which is something tangible that we could hopefully leverage into something bigger down the road as needs warrant.

In any case, I’m pretty excited. I know it doesn’t much address the commute issue but honestly I’ve been doing it for three or four months now and it isn’t so bad, especially with my current schedule. If there is one positive thing about the grave shifts, it’s the smooth, traffic-less drive. Besides, at this point I might as well concede that this town is where we live and while not without its flaws, it has friends and family and a certain familiarity that make it perfectly tolerable.

As a second part of our busy day we also got our taxes done. Whether good or bad, we were pleasantly surprised by how much our returns are this year. I suppose that means our W4s aren’t as optimally configured as they could be but what is done is done so now it looks like we’ll be able to do some of the furniture swapping as part of the move and still have a nice chunk to put into savings as well. The key is going to be avoiding the temptation to buy the biggest HDTV you’ve ever seen instead of stuff like a couch that doesn’t cause active humiliation whenever other humans are forced to set eyes (or worse, posteriors) upon it, but I’m sure Nik and her icy stare will help sidestep that landmine.

In fact the only bad news I can even think of is that I guess the staircase is too small to allow one to maneuver a queen-sized box spring up the stairs so you have to have one of those split boxes instead, and from what I understand they aren’t all that cheap. Granted, the one we currently have has been frustratingly used by the cat as a secondary scratching post as we’ve operated without an actual bed frame for three or more years now which puts the box spring in easy access of Dixie’s claws, but it’s hardly something I’d replace if given the choice.

This pending move has also brought about an even greater intensity with the big “stuff we no longer need” fire sale. This includes a few items added to the list:

• Computer desk. For those who’ve been to our place, this is the big black desk with hanging file cabinet, roll-out keyboard tray and overhead bookshelf. We’re going to trade down to a smaller computer desk since I no longer have or use sixteen computers simultaneously therefore the behemoth is not needed. If you’re interested, I have a truck and will just haul it to the dumps unless someone wants it so it’s going for free, and I’ll bring it to you assuming you don’t live in Utah or something. If you haven’t seen it, I should mention that it currently has a bunch of really geeky Linux stickers and junk plastered all over it, but I can try to remove them or paint over them if that’s going to be a problem.
• Entertainment center. We have a new TV stand in the living room and the old one (which was a gift from HB) probably won’t make the move with us. I kind of doubt HB wants it back so if I can pass it along, I’d be happy to. Same deal applies: I’ll bring it to you gratis if you just say the word. It’s possible HB would rather have it back than see it junked, but he gave it to me free so it would just be wrong to try and make a buck off it.
• Microwave oven. We have a white GE microwave in perfect working condition but the new place comes with an over-the-counter one included so we have no use for the standalone. If you want it, lemme know. Microwaves are pretty cheap so I’ll just give it to ya, but if you want it delivered (it fits in a Civic, I mean… how lazy are you?), I’ll do it for the gas money.
• Green leather sofa. Hahahahahahahaha! Just kidding. I wouldn’t inflict that thing on my worst enemy.

Oh, and since we get to move in fairly leisurely over the course of a month, we probably won’t need to even rent a truck much less beg our friends to waste a whole Saturday on manual labor.

I haven’t posted many link-fests in a while. Now I will rectify that.

• You may have seen some of these court transcript excerpts before, but they’re still funny.
• Kind of a fun diversion cataloging 80s food. I think some of the submitters miss the point (Corn Nuts? How are those “80s” exactly?) but they do mention Chocolate Payday candy bars, which merits a link on its own. I would literally pay up to $10 for a fresh one of those today.
• I’m sure this BBC article about US fascination with British accents is true, but count me among those who think English accents of any kind are just as cool as can be.
• At this point I’m pretty much just counting down the minutes until I get out of here so I can go home and download Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I’ve wanted to play this game for so long.
• Are they taking recommendations? Because I vote for Niki/Jessica and Nathan. Just sayin’.

Nik and I have spent some time recently examining our finances and preparing a plan for future spending and, more importantly, saving in an effort to prepare for some down-the-road life events. You know, buying an actual house and that sort of thing.

Part of this plan involves a pretty strict budget and a pre-agreed-upon set of major purchases for things we need (or actually have needed for quite some time, like a sofa that isn’t a continuous source of humiliation and bedroom furniture that isn’t broken or nearly useless) so as to avoid putting them off indefinitely. Of course that means less money on hand to purchase things that aren’t as pressing but arguably more fun to buy. I mean, for me the choice between sofa aesthetics and HDTV is really no choice at all but I recognize that our current television set is perfectly serviceable while our couch isn’t.

However, I’ve got a hankering for some equipment that isn’t included in the plans for a purpose I’ll reveal later and my only thought for affording it requires getting rid of some stuff I’m not using or don’t really want. Now, I know I’ve tried to offer stuff for sale here before to little response but since my audience is comprised almost entirely from friends and family members, I thought I’d give you a last chance to claim any of my stuff before I hunker down on eBay and try to accumulate some un-earmarked cash.

If any of this interests you, please let me know by emailing me any point before the auction starts. I plan to start listing things one at a time beginning this weekend. Everything here is first come/best offer and if you help me avoid an eBay listing I’ll ship it free assuming the shipping costs don’t eclipse the offered price.

• Comic Book Collection. I have hundreds of old comic books including lots of Iron Man, X-Men and Batman books. I’ve read them all several times over and they’re just taking up space at this point. Practically all of them are in good condition and have been kept in bags with cardboard to preserve the condition as best I could. I have a list I can dig up that catalogs the whole collection and I’ve estimated the value at somewhere north of $700, although I’ll pretty much take what I can get for them. It would be a pretty good gift for a budding geeklet/comic collector.
• iBook. My laptop is showing its age especially for the kinds of things I need it for like Photoshop and Final Cut. Also, it has a problem with the sleep feature which seems to cause the display to freak out more often than not which requires a cold reboot. I haven’t investigated how much repairs would cost but I’m guessing not that much since the display still works it just gets goofy sometimes. It’s probably a wire that gets pinched when the lid is closed. In any case, it’s a G4 PowerPC 944 MHz that has maxed out RAM (I think something odd like 640 MB) and even without repairs would probably work great with an external monitor as a nice intro machine to the world of OS X (I’ll include a fresh install of 10.4). Similar items on eBay seem to go for around $500.
• GameCube. It’s a nice system but I’ve played all the games for it that I was interested in and it’s just hogging room in the entertainment unit. I have a few games I’ll toss in as well including Zelda: Twilight Princess (which lots of people love but I didn’t care for) and I have a WaveBird wireless controller. Similar packages go for around $50 on eBay.
• Dreamcast. Yeah, I still have my Dreamcast. There are some really excellent games for this system that you can find really cheap so if you’re into the whole bargain gaming thing and don’t mind being several years behind the curve, it could offer some good times. People ask for around $50-60 on eBay; that’s too much in my opinion, but whatever. It’s your offer.
• Warhammer 40K Chaos Space Marines Army (Partially Painted). Okay, okay, this is a tough one. On one hand, I don’t want to give it up because, well, it’s cool and I put a lot of time and money into it. But several forces have conspired to make my time and desire for the game wane so I’m willing to entertain offers for it. This is a massive army (2,750 points worth at least, if you’re already familiar with the game rules) and while I confess the quality of some of the painting shows my learning curve, it is probably only in need of 6-8 hours worth of work to be tournament-ready and maybe twice that if you want to touch them up and make them look really nice (assuming you stick with the original palette). I’ve done some stripping before and it isn’t that hard if you wanted to start over. The thing is, I don’t want this to go bit by bit, it’s gotta be the whole enchilada. But I will throw in the Codex ($20-25 in stores) and some sample army lists I made plus the base color paints I special ordered from the UK because no one in the US makes the color anymore (grr). If you bought all this stuff retail it would be worth well over $1,000. Lesser pre-painted armies go on eBay for $600 or more. I won’t even indicate what would strike me as reasonable, it kind of depends, but if you’re interested let me know and I can provide specifics on what I have and the state of the painting and we’ll take it from there.
• Atari 2600 and games. I have a functioning Atari 2600 system plus a slew of great games, which are fun for some non-emulation retro fun. This kind of listing on eBay runs in the $30 range.
• Sony DVD player. I re-shuffled some entertainment center components and ended up deciding to use the XBox as the DVD player in the living room. The standalone player it replaced is less than two years old and quite good: I’ve never put anything in it that it wouldn’t play, including Video CDs and weird burned DVDs in funky formats. It isn’t region-free, but it’s probably worth $30 or so. I can get the exact model number and other specs if you need them.
• I have a copy of Dawn of War and the Winter Assault expansion for PC. I no longer have a PC available to me so they’re kind of useless. Let me know if you want ’em. I’d be willing to simply give these away to someone who wants to pay for shipping since they’re no good to me anymore.

I may have more stuff available once I start cleaning up, but these are the main items I know of right now.

Somehow in the hours between my final grave shift and my first official swing shift a decision was made behind the scenes to not change the schedule. My week concludes with a “grave shift” meeting Wednesday morning and the parting words from my supervisor were something to the effect of “Oh, and we’re not going to change the schedule after all so you’ll just work your regular graves next week.”

That’s all I’m going to say about the work part of it because I risk dangerous territory if I start talking about how that makes me feel and what I think about the way the news was delivered so I’ll neatly sidestep that.

The truth is that my room to complain is narrow because I decided to be all accommodating and easy to get along with during the interview process to try and secure a position at the company. Even since then I’ve exuded this air of nonchalance when questions of scheduling come up. Specific instances of this have typically been followed by a mental self-berating rant but intentions aside, any evaluation of my external demeanor would give no indication of how badly I despise the shift I’m on.

Not that any shift would be much preferable. Day shifts involve making the long commute in heavy traffic, swing shifts clash harshly with Nik’s schedule so we completely—completely—miss each other for several days when I work those hours and then of course there is grave which has me sleeping vampire-style. Schedule-wise the only thing my job has going for it are the ten hour days which affords me enough weekend time to partially make up for the crummy schedules.

As it is I’ve been flip-flopping my schedule from the vampire-like to the regular prey human. This means that once I wake up on Tuesday evening I don’t go back to sleep until around 9:00 Wednesday night when Nik calls it a day. Then on Saturdays I wake up like a normal person at around eight or nine in the morning but then I have to go back to bed late in the afternoon to get enough sleep to carry me through until around noon on Sunday when I finally get home.

The problem with this is twofold: 1) I stay up for at least 24 hours at least once a week and 2) If I don’t get to sleep on Saturday evenings (which isn’t uncommon because I’m rarely all that tired then) it throws me off for the rest of the week. That’s not even taking into account how tweaked it is for me to be sleeping on Saturday afternoon when most people are hanging out or running errands that are harder to handle during the week. This week for instance I wasn’t able to get more than an hour’s sleep Saturday so I dragged through work all night, had a miserable drive home and arrived cranky and only interested in getting to bed.

I don’t really have a solution for any of this nor do I expect sympathy considering my very active role in er, making the bed in which I must now sleep (if ever there were an inappropriate cliche, that was it). I just thought I should complain a bit about it.

And see? I feel a little bit better. Still tired, but better.

I guess I’m doing the bachelor thing this week since Nik is out of town until Thursday on a business trip. Normally I’d sort of welcome the opportunity to have the place to myself and shake things up a bit, but I’ve been working this lunatic shift of mine for a couple of months now in which I get home in the middle of the day and have the place to myself for hours, plus my weekends are skewed as well which means my “alone time” is maxed out at the moment so there is no novelty here.

On the bright side the end of the graveyard shifts seems nigh (as soon as next week, if all goes well) so hopefully that will make things a bit easier.

The weirdest thing about the solo living thing is not having anyone to tell my hideously boring this-is-my-life stories to. I know I used to get on ironSoap and write it down; you know, the old “I had Cap’n Crunch for breakfast and then I scratched this little itchy spot on my back” posts. I decided eventually that those were as boring to write as they were to read (ha! I’m joking of course. Put the knife down), but there is still a desire to discuss sometimes mundane things with another human. I think in retrospect it may have been appropriate to include in the wedding vows something about “in sickness and in health and through a bunch of really boring stories about work.”

When I told a guy at work about this week he immediately asked, “What are you doing?” I realize that it may be common for other guys to sort of feel like having the wife out of the house for a week is kind of like “freedom” or “party time” but it never occurred to me that I should “take advantage” of this in any way. I suppose that means I’m not feeling like my style is cramped when she’s around and come to think of it, whatever I end up doing outside of my usual around-the-house stuff like playing video games, messing around online, painting miniatures or reading and watching TV is typically initiated by Nik herself. Or at least facilitated by her. It’s kind of a running joke between HB, Gin, Nik and myself that if you want to know what’s going on, ask HB or Nik because Gin and I are always just along for the ride.

In any case I have no schemes of any sort except that I plan to get all of my boring chores and commitments out of the way today so that starting tomorrow when I get off of work I can sit on the couch and play video games/watch TV uninterrupted for like 48 hours straight. Also, I may order a pizza. Maybe chinese. It depends what I’m in the mood for.

Big plans, big plans.

A few nights ago I wandered out to my truck to collect a case of drinks that I’d left in there. I had to park a bit further from our apartment than usual so I was sort of shuffling along, paying attention primarily to my thoughts and the dim concrete for fear of tripping over a curb or something. Suddenly I heard a terrific boom, which echoed noticeably across the field adjacent to our apartment complex. My initial thought was that a car had just hit a building, somewhere up ahead. With our apartment behind me, I didn’t have much concern other than the generic thought that I hadn’t noticed any squealing tires so whomever had just hit something didn’t seem to have bothered to brake.

I wandered back to the apartment and Nik greeted me with information that the sound had actually shook our apartment. That didn’t sound like the result of a car hitting a building some ways off. Then the sirens began. They seemed to be coming right to us, but they then trailed off as they passed, presumably somewhere down the street toward downtown. Having been up at that point for almost 30 hours in a row, I decided it was my cue to retire for the evening.

Nik, on the other hand, could not contain her curiosity and went to investigate. Upon doing so she quickly discovered that a building in our complex had caught fire following an explosion that was tentatively being attributed to a gas leak. The papers would later report that the explosion caused a three alarm fire that spread to a second unit and took over an hour and a half to contain.

The man whose apartment the explosion had originated from has, in the following days, been the topic of much speculation in the rumor mill of our apartment community. Some say he was trying to commit suicide, others say he was just the unlucky guy with the gas leak who flipped on a light switch. However, his luck may not be that bad since he suffered only relatively minor injuries (burns, mostly) despite being reported as having been tossed over his balcony by the force of the blast. Another woman was treated for smoke inhalation and released and a dog was the only casualty of the incident.

Having very little information other than that I can only say that I’m thankful to be unaffected by any of it despite its uncomfortably close proximity. My personal wild speculation is that I wouldn’t be surprised to find it had something to do with a meth lab since that is the kind of thing that goes on in this area quite a bit and the nature of the wounds reported on the primary victim seem suspect. However, other apartment dwellers have suggested that they smelled gas for hours prior to the explosion and even reported it to maintenance who told them they were crazy but called PG&E anyway. PG&E came out and gave the all-clear, saying their equipment could not find any indication of a problem.

Again, I don’t know exactly what is true or not, but the PG&E angle has been reported by actual news outlets so it at least smacks of truthiness. Other residents claim that another neighbor smelled gas the next day and called PG&E who arrived to find a leak in the stove and told them they were lucky to have caught it in time. That story is not reliable in any way, but underscores the point here.

I think it’s pretty clear that regardless of what the investigation turns up, this is a pretty tragic incident despite having the potential to have been much, much worse. It has, understandably, shaken up a lot of the people who live in the complex, Nikki included. In the days following the incident I have seen no fewer than five units being vacated: Whether they are fleeing as a result of the explosion/fire or if it is merely coincidental I again don’t know but I imagine at least one of those families is thinking they might be safer elsewhere.

Here’s my problem with the whole thing: Accidents happen. We all know that. But what we also know (which helps us sleep at night) is that accidents are, in many cases, entirely preventable. This one wasn’t prevented byut it got peopel edgy. Now if I’m the owner or manager of the apartment complex, here’s what I would do:

1. Release a notice to all residents stating the facts and only the facts known as of printing time. There was an explosion in building whatever at such and such a time, two people were injured but no one was killed, etc. Then I would state clearly that the early indications suggest that it may have been a gas leak which caused the problem and then list some reminders for hazard response procedures if you smell gas. Note that nowhere in here is a statement of responsibility or blame assignment, it’s just a indication that the office knows what happened and they don’t want it to happen to anyone else. Acknowledgment and reassurance first.
2. A day or two later I would coordinate and set up a series of in-unit safety inspections focusing on the gas lines. I would announce this as a voluntary procedure to anyone who was interested and offer it free of charge within the next two weeks. I would also state that residents who wished to opt-out would still get the peace of mind that the gas system would be inspected in less than a week without entry to each unit for leaks or safety defects. In this note I would also suggest that when the official cause of the explosion was known it would be made public, regardless of liability.
3. I would follow through by releasing the results of the fire inspection and safety inspections to all residents. Full disclosure.

It seems reasonable to me and would work to show residents (essentially the customers for the business) that you are proactive, open in your communication and willing to work to ensure the safety of those customers.

Instead, the office sent out a notice to all residents… reminding them to update their parking permits or else they would face possible tows at owner’s expense.

Oh, that I were making that up.

I Don’t Know… Stuff?

• Here’s a pretty funny video of a guy trying to use Vista’s voice recognition system to write a three-line perl script. Note, he starts cursing briefly about halfway through, but the video itself is really way too long anyway so you may have shut it off by then. I mean, it’s funny but it ain’t ten minutes funny, you know?
• We stopped by the President’s Day game convention briefly on Saturday. We played a couple of good games and picked up a few more in the dealer’s room. Unfortunately I had to work and Nik wasn’t feeling all that well so we didn’t stay as long as I might have liked. It was the first kind of half-hearted con in some time, although with Lister’s imminent departure for his great European adventure looming, at least we got to get in a small last hurrah.
• Was that out loud?
• We’re supposed to have CNN on one of the monitors at work. Here’s why I hate CNN: They just interrupted a breaking story about a bombing in Iraq for—so not making this up—tips on how to shovel snow. I understand that not every part of the country is experiencing weather like we are (sunny and warm in the mid-70s, thanks for asking) but snow shoveling? Pretty self explanatory. Their biggest tip? Don’t climb onto the roof to shovel off snow… especially if you live in a multi-story home. Genius.

If you’ve ever actually met me in real life, chances are I appeared at that time unshaven. Not that I have a heavy beard or anything—although I have on occasion sported various styles of facial hair—but specifically whatever areas of my face that would reasonably require regular maintenance in the form of shaving (even full beard wearers shave some parts of their faces to keep the beard looking neat) have far greater than even odds of being unshaven at any given point in time.

The reason for this is not actually (well, not completely) attributed to laziness. Truthfully, shaving is and has always been a problem for me.

There are a couple of reasons why shaving has been a pain ever since I matured to the point where not shaving was something that had a noticeable effect. And really that hasn’t been all that long. I probably first shaved a few wisps of facial hair around my Sophomore year in high school, but it wasn’t until I was twenty or so before I could claim any sort of legitimate facial hair that might require regular shaving. It probably wasn’t for a year or two after that before I could let it grow and the result would appear to be something akin to a real beard.

But even now my full “beard” is pretty sad: It grows uneven and inconsistently hued. It doesn’t grow much on my cheeks other than in a few select patches and the whole thing is plagued by the same affliction as my (lately ever more absent) head hair, which is what my dad always called “cowlicky” but really means that the grain or direction of growth is not uniform. I’ve experimented with various styles of facial hair in the past to varying degrees of success, but any style is still going to suffer from its composition of thick, coarse hair that pretty much does its own thing regardless of other neighboring hairs. Plus my mustache is really pathetic with the hair along the ridges of my philtrum growing far, far darker than anywhere else across my upper lip so that in anything save direct natural lighting I have a vaguely Hitler-esque appearance. I’ve tried many combinations of mustache-less beard configurations but the end result is almost always that I have more surface area to maintain than growing facial hair would suppose and, indeed, is designed to prevent.

The really unfortunate part is that I don’t particularly care for facial hair. It’s uncomfortable to me (although I inherited my father’s penchant for tugging my facial hair when I’m deep in thought which is why I almost always leave at least a little soul patch under my lower lip, just to have something to play with while I think—I never was able to fully mimic my father’s preference for the corner of his mustache, probably due to the fact that my mustache corners consist of about four wispy strands). I would prefer to be mostly clean shaven, which returns from my digression so I can finish telling you why shaving has been a pain.

The primary factor is that I received a genetic gift from my dear maternal grandmother of intensely sensitive skin. I have to use certain kinds of soap, both in the shower and on my laundry. I generally have to just be really careful about what kinds of deodorants, lotions or ointments I use because I’ve had some pretty rough reactions to things on occasion. I suspect that heavy dyes and perfumes are the worst offenders which is why things like All Free & Clear laundry detergent work pretty well but fabric softener sheets are big negatives. Even when using “sensitive skin” shaving foam, the mere act of scraping the hair off my face is generally enough to give my skin fits.

The other factor is less easily identifiable but I suspect has something to do with the weird growth patterns and thickness of my hair which is that if I try to shave stubble, that is hair that isn’t at least a few days worth of growth long, I get the worst razor burn ever.

Now, I’ve tried for the past ten years or so various methods of having a reasonably presentable face (such as is possible with a mug like mine). I heard that the key was to just shave every single day at the same time and eventually the razor burn would go away. I don’t know exactly how long that regimen is supposed to happen, but two weeks later and I was basically just shaving off scabs from the previous day every morning so I figured that was both really gross and pointless. I’ve tried electric razors that are generally less close shaves thinking that might be better since it may not get the blades on my actual skin as much, but it doesn’t work because I both don’t feel like I really shaved that much and I still get razor burn. And each time the razor companies add another blade to their disposable or cartridge lines, I give it a shot thinking it might be better. It isn’t.

The only routine that sort of works is my current regimen which involves literally shaving only once per week. But again, I really would prefer to be clean shaven much more often, not to mention the fact that I’m sure Nik would appreciate it and her own fairly tender skin is often razed a deep red after even mild smootching by my almost permanently sandpaper-like face. Not ideal.

And a couple of weeks ago a new problem appeared that started me thinking about shaving options again: I rushed home from work and had a short period of time to shave after having gone for nearly two weeks without. I grabbed one of the generic triple-bladed disposables that we buy as the best option I’ve yet found and started in. About two-thirds of the way through I noticed that a few clumps of my thick beard had gotten lodged in the tiny gaps between the blades, which essentially rendered those sections of the razor’s head useless at best and painful at worst, and no amount of rapping the razor on the edge of the sink would dislodge the clogs. Ouch.

So it is curiously timely that I happened to run across this article on old-school style wetshaving today. Basically wetshaving is the method of shaving used in the past with the lather brush and either a double-bladed safety razor or a (gulp!) straight razor. According to this guy and a bunch of other people whose writings I tracked down after reading it, wetshaving is the way to go for smooth, burnless shaves especially if you’re among those with coarse or thick facial hair.

My first instinct might be to dismiss these people as lunatics because in a certain mathematical sense the modern multi-blade razors seem more logical. But on the other hand I’ve long suspected that Gilette et al are really not too concerned about the closeness of their customers’ shaves and just want to have something new to peddle to a blindly accepting population. Hi, my name is Paul and I’m kind of cynical.

But one thing that does give a bit of anecdotal support to the assertions these people are making is that I’ve actually had a real barbershop shave with a straight razor in the past (back when visiting a barber wasn’t completely pointless for me) and I have to say, it was the most comfortable, closest shave I’ve ever had before or since and, as the article mentions but which is otherwise apropos of nothing, it was possibly in my top five most relaxing experiences of my life.

After some additional thought I decided that it is perfectly reasonable that old style shaving may be just the ticket for me, and I have to try something different since my once-per-week method may be okay for some hack working the graveyard shift but doesn’t become someone who might ever wish to appear professional somewhere down the line. As it is I try very hard to schedule my weekly shaves around events where it is most appropriate to be fully shaven and if it falls that I need a shave before my allotted time has past, I resort to the half-shave where I clean up my neck and cheeks and appear as though I’m in the early stages of growing a full beard. A questionable workaround at best.

But before I dive in I needed to evaluate the relative costs. I may have shaving issues, but I’m also a cheapskate, especially when it comes to annoying personal grooming expenses. So I figured that it costs me roughly $1.60 per week to shave. Of course that is with me shaving once per week, and one of the ideas here is to shave once per day instead. For the sake of simplicity I’ll round the numbers to about $1.00 per day with my current set up stretched out over six days (I probably won’t ever consistently shave on Saturdays) for a weekly total of $6.00 using the cheap sensitive skin formula shave foam and the generic triple blade disposables that have been my staple for three or four years now.

Now if I go with the recommendations from the article, the Merkur Safety Razor (I actually think I’d prefer the “Classic” model over the bigger “Hefty” one) is $26.00 plus shipping. A pack of 10 double edged blades is roughly $5.00 and a jar of nice European shaving cream runs about $15.00 plus shipping. I’ll assume the total shipping costs are fairly small and infrequent since only the razor and the shaving cream need be shipped (assuming I can find someone who sells the blades at a brick and mortar somewhere), so to compensate I’ll just add an additional dollar to the blade costs.

I can’t be sure how many shaves you get out of a double edged razor blade but I’ll go with the same formula as the disposable and say once per blade (double-edged blades then get two uses each). The total therefore comes to $0.85 per day for the razor and blades which leaves the cream. Unfortunately I have no idea how far a 5.3 ounce jar of European shaving cream goes. Is that five shaves worth? Fifty? The amount is slightly less than a tube of toothpaste and those usually last a month so I’ll guess it’s roughly the same. After the math that means the daily cost for wetshaving would be roughly $1.50, so obviously there is an increased cost factor for wetshaving, by about a half a magnitude.

So here is the question: Is it worth it? Are these people on crack? Have you ever tried wetshaving on yourself? Does it make a difference?

My inclination is to give it a shot. I figure one month would be reasonable and would more or less recoup the investment cost in the razor and shaving cream. Plus that would give me a better idea of how often the materials need to be replaced which might adjust the cost factor up or down and give me enough time to get used to adding a few extra minutes to my daily routine.

If you have insight or suggestions, by all means, leave a comment or drop me an email. My face thanks you.

Yes, yes, I’m old. Har. I turned 30 on Saturday, with mercifully minimal fanfare although I did get a chance to talk to my brother and a few friends who called with warm (and welcome) birthday wishes. I spent nearly the entire day playing XBox which was as much of a celebration as I wanted so even if from the outside it looked like I didn’t do anything, I spent the day more or less exactly as I wanted. And, you know, clearly turning 30 has not sparked any sort of spontaneous maturation so I dodged that bullet.

The real downside of Saturday was the passing of Gin‘s father after a long struggle with heart problems. He had been undergoing some treatments to try and get him healthy enough to get on the heart transplant list but sadly his health was just too poor to get to that point and he passed away sometime in the wee hours of the morning surrounded by his family.

Now I didn’t know Dan all that well, although I met and spoke with him on a number of occasions. He came to our wedding and as he danced with Nikki during the obligatory “money dance” she thanked him for coming. His only reply was, in his typical deadpan simplicity, “Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” But I do know that he was a genuine war hero, having served in Vietnam and been awarded the Purple Heart, which is now displayed with honor in Gin’s home. I know that Gin was very close to her dad and she is suffering a great deal right now. I also know that Dan will be missed, for all the world.

If you’re of the disposition to pray, I know Gin and her family could use some prayers for strength and peace. If not, perhaps take a moment to reflect on your own family and how precious they are. Take the time to call them and say, “I love you,” without self-consciousness or ambiguity. Let ’em know for sure. Give them a hug if you can. Make a point to appreciate the everyday heroes all around us who sacrifice on our behalf. We all owe them that much, at the very least.

Sleepless in Silicon Valley

I started my regular shifts at work this week. I, of course, use the term “regular” extremely loosely. I start at midnight and get off work at ten o’clock in the morning so there is pretty much nothing regular about it. One odd thing I didn’t really think about before starting this schedule is that when I used to work from home (way back in the very beginning of ironSoap, remember that? Anyone? No? Okay, then) and I’d work through the night, I would technically be working a similar schedule to what I have now except that even then I would go to bed early in the morning, usually between six and eight. That meant I was up sometime in the early to mid afternoon which isn’t all that different from just sleeping in really late. But now I don’t even get home until almost noon and Nik and I have sort of agreed that in order to spend at least some time together every day I get up around the time she gets home from work.

But that’s like six o’clock in the evening so it’s this truly bizarre state where I go to sleep when it’s all light outside and when I get up it’s dark.

I was given a couple of extra days off last week to try and get my sleep schedule adjusted but I had the hardest time making that happen so instead I’ve been kind of zombie-like all week. Mercifully today is my Friday so I should be able to catch up a bit and continue to adjust and hopefully by next week I’ll start to settle into a groove.

Other Bits

I realize this post is kind of all over the map, but I haven’t done much updating lately so I’m just kind of brain dumping. Sorry.

• Nik’s car got broken into last night and they ripped out her new stereo that I just got her for her birthday back in October. This, you may recall, is the second break-in at our apartment complex in about a year and is the third car-related theft (including the swiping of the entire vehicle last summer) in the same time frame. It’s getting really old and while part of the fault lies with us (we’re not always the most diligent about keeping our cars free of enticing bait), it annoys me that car crimes are at the absolute top of the list of incidents in our otherwise pretty safe little community and yet the police seem generally uninterested in doing much about it such as increasing street presence.
• We also lost both of our iPods which were stashed in the center console where the adapter for the stereo interface runs, and annoyingly our insurance is threatening to cancel our renter’s policy as a liability if we file a claim. Which makes me wonder, if they’re going to do this the first time we file a claim, what’s the point of having it again?
• By the way, for those keeping score, that makes all three iPods that we’ve owned, stolen. Someone must sure like our taste in music.
• In a strange twist of fate, the same day Nikki’s Sirius-capable stereo was stolen, her birthday gift to me arrived via UPS. It is a Stiletto portable satellite receiver and it’s really slick. It has built-in WiFi so you can connect to Sirius’ internet feed when you’re indoors (the satellite signal doesn’t work too well when the antenna isn’t outdoors) and it has a 2GB storage feature and TiVo-esque recording/scheduling function so you can load MP3s on it or queue up radio content to listen to later. Which should work great for Sharks games since Sirius gets all the NHL feeds.
• The only problem with the Stiletto (okay, two problems) is that the portable antenna is integrated with the special headphones and they’re a it bulky and dorky-looking. Not that I really care, especially since I’ll probably be using it mostly in the car, but it is kind of funny. Also the software for loading music files is Windows-only so I have to fire up Virtual PC which is just dog slow on my aging iBook. Fortunately I prefer iPods for digital music anyway (stop laughing, it ain’t funny) so it doesn’t really matter it’s just kind of a hassle.
• So Apple announced the incessantly-rumored iPhone today. As much as I usually like what Apple does, I’m pretty underwhelmed by this one. I’m sure it’s a very nice phone but what about some scoop on Leopard? Nothing? Anyone? Is this thing on?
• Meanwhile, TiVo finally, finally announced that they finished TiVo2Go for Macs. Hoorays and street-dancing all around, right? Well, no. See, here’s a snippet from the announcement in TiVo’s newsletter:
  

  We’ve partnered with Roxio to enable TiVoToGo in Toast 8 Titanium, available TODAY! Yes, you can now transfer your favorite TiVo recordings to your Mac, watch them in a player, burn them to DVD, and convert them for
  playback on iPod or PSP. […] And yes, Toast is the standard for disc burning software on the Mac. The new version 8 is truly awesome.

  Standard for disc burning? O RLY? That’s so funny because OS X Tiger supports system-wide disc burning on the OS level. I’d say that’s pretty durn standard. So in order to get the same functionality as a Windows PC I have to spend at least $40 for software that does something the system does natively? Unless I’m missing something I’m gonna have to say thanks, but no.

• Nik and I continue to discuss the possibility of moving closer to my work, but after looking at some affordable places in the area we were pretty underwhelmed. Also I forgot just how stupidly expensive moving is so we’re still kicking the idea around, we’re just not sure if it is still going to happen or when. At this point, we’re taking a sort of wait and see approach and keeping our eyes open. The commute isn’t all that bad when I don’t hit any traffic (which I don’t, typically, for this shift) but I wouldn’t mind finding a better use for those hours than driving and burning through my paycheck gas.

Not much time today but at least I’m on a quasi-normal schedule this week so hopefully I’ll have an opportunity for a real update later, during my weekend which will last from Thursday until Saturday. You might be tempted to be jealous of me, but recall that I work 10 hour shifts and drive two hours each way so my days are probably close to twice as long as yours.

Anyway, I need to dig in here and clean up a few things anyway so expect at least something relatively soon.

I’m sure you’ve just been beside yourselves without me, and for that I sincerely apologize. I recognize the responsibility that comes with being such a treasured part of your daily surfing, and I won’t let you down for long.

PS – If anyone happens to have found a decent WordPress 2.0.2-compatible plugin that will disable comments on old stories so I can stop some of the flood of comment spam I’m getting, I’d appreciate a heads up.

I realized today that I haven’t been very post-y for a while, so I thought I’d offer a quick update. Bullet-style, natch.

• A couple of weeks ago I had my first week-long vacation since my honeymoon seven years ago. Nik and I spent a night in Santa Cruz with a hotel room that overlooked the ocean, had a nice romantic dinner and spent a very long time the next day trying to find a decent place to eat lunch. Later in the week we headed down to Southern California for several days where we met up with Lister and Whimsy. We went to GenCon and spent some time at Disneyland as well.
• GenCon was fun but a touch disappointing, probably because most of the events were expensive (which meant they were pricey on top of the already hefty registration fee just to be an official con attendee). We had fun and I am certainly glad I went but I don’t know that I’ll make it a habit when the cons we have locally are just as fun plus they’re cheaper and don’t involve lengthy car rides down I-5, also known as “The Boringest Highway Known to Man.”
• Disneyland was amusing as usual, although my previous conclusions that Disneyland is, at this point in my life, probably best enjoyed somewhere down the line when children are involved. California Screamin’ is still one of the most well executed roller coasters around though so I’m not really complaining, but a lot of the rides feel like they could use some fresh ideas. Even when they do try something different like with the Space Mountain makeover, the end result is sorta underwhelming. The bottom line with the new SM is that it’s faster, darker and some of the space-age stuff in the main loading room has been updated (but not changed drastically) but the actual ride itself is missing some of the more thrilling dips and turns. Lacking any serious drops or loops or anything else it’s only claim to fame above a ride you might find at a cut-rate park like Santa Cruz’s Boardwalk is the darkness and some nifty light effects at the beginning and end of the ride.
• Immediately after returning home from vacation I started my new job at LiveOps. Granted it has only been four days so far (last week was cut short by Thanksgiving) but I really like the new place. Most of the jobs that I’ve had in the tech industry involve co-workers who go on and on about how great the job used to be; here I feel like I’m finally working somewhere that the good ol’ days are now.
• Speaking of Thanksgiving, we had a nice one with Nik’s family. But can I just say how much it drives me insane when people insist on calling it “Turkey Day?” We were listening to some idiot DJ the other day on Sirius who went off on a Thanksgiving tangent wherein he must have used the phrase “Turkey Day” about thirteen times. What makes that remarkable is that what he was saying didn’t require him to use any specific proper noun after about the second time because it was perfectly clear what he was talking about so it was almost like he was drilling the phrase into listeners’ heads. To what end that might have been I have no clue, but it was so annoying that even Nik (who was trying to nap in the car at the time) caught it and knew exactly what I was talking about when I brought it up later on.
• My schedule is going to be full on lunacy for the next few weeks as I train for this job; I’m supposed to shadow all the various engineers at the Network Operations Center (NOC) for a week each but since the NOC is technically supposed to be open 24/7, the shifts range from regular 9-to-5 style to crazy swing shifts. Adding to the madness is the 4×10 schedule (four ten hour shifts) so updates may be few and far between for a while. I mean, I’m currently writing this at 2:55 am, so you know something has got to be weird right now.