Hair, balding and the clipper shortage of 2020
Men should not be afraid to buzz their hair, be it for hair loss reasons or ridiculous barber prices. And do you remember the hair clipper shortage thing that happened before?
In 2020, a lot of barbershops and hair salons were closed. If you forgot why, just look up what happened that year. I'm sure you'll remember.
There was a genuine shortage of electric hair clippers in '20. Oh sure, you can find them easily now (and if you haven't bought clippers in a while, you seriously should), but there was a point in '20 for a few months where absolutely nobody had them. All the hair cutting places were closed and everybody rushed to anywhere hair clippers were sold and bought one or two. Nobody knew when the barbers and salons would open shop again, so oh yeah, hair clippers sold out real fast.
Since '20, the price of men's haircuts has gone to insane levels. Some places have increased prices as much as 300%. That's not a typo.
What's even worse is spending the high price and receiving a bad haircut, especially if you're losing your hair.
Even before '20 happened, I did experiment with buzzing my hair a few times. I do have some hair loss going on. I'm middle aged, so whatever, I've earned it. The hair loss I have is what most other guys would consider mild, but yeah, it's there.
At this point in my life, I don't go to barbers anymore and buzz my own hair for two main reasons. The barber price is too high and barbers around here give bad haircuts. I am literally better off just buzzing my own hair with a #1 or #2 guard.
The craziest thing is that a hair clipper set pays for itself after just one buzzing. It used to take 2 to 3 uses before that happened, but now it's just one.
The internet always says if you're losing your hair, just work up the courage buzz it off and do it. That advice is correct. Yes, you can try hats or hair transplants or minoxidil or wigs or whatever, but for most guys it's just better to grab the clippers and go for it.
When a $20 watch looks like a $7500 watch
I like luxury watches, but being I'm not about to spend the cash necessary to get one, I buy stuff like this instead.
Take a Chenxi CX-068. It is meant to emulate a Cartier Tank MC.
Before continuing, yes I bought my Chenxi from AliExpress, but I did a search to see if it's available elsewhere. Yes, it is, or at least similar to it. A search for "tank" watches does bring up some affordable stuff. While not exactly the same I have, it's a start.
Here's a little secret concerning luxury watches:
Nobody cares.
Seriously, absolutely nobody cares.
What matters where wristwatch luxury is concerned is the right look and not brand. As long as what you have on your wrist looks the part, that's all that matters.
Watch collectors would tell you different, but they're wrong. The collectors can snob it up all they want, but the reality is for two watches that carry a similar style, both look the same from more than two feet away. Absolutely nobody is going to put their face within two feet of your wrist just to read the watch brand logo.
All that being said, the Chenxi is an all-plastic quartz timepiece that is styled similar to Cartier Tank MC. The only thing that's metal is the strap buckle and that's it. The watch is featherweight light, the tick is thankfully near-silent, and because it's a small seconds watch, the "quartz-ness" of it is effectively hidden unless you intently stare at the tiny seconds hand at the bottom of the dial.
Surprisingly, the dial has a real texture pattern on it and isn't all printed. It also has a signed buckle. Fancy!
This watch is not expensive, but this is "my Tank". I saved about $7,490 buying one of these over a Cartier.
How to super clean a coffee mug
Once you start cleaning a coffee mug this way, you'll do it for life.
This is the only thing anybody wants to see after cleaning their coffee mug is a nice, clear stain-free interior that you can see your reflection in. That's the goal.
If you're like me, you have a favorite mug that you use a lot, possibly every day. Over time, coffee stains will happen and that's just the way it is. You clean your mug regularly, but no matter how much or how often you scrub, those stains absolutely will not come out.
The secret to super cleaning a coffee mug is...
...toilet bowl cleaner, if you use the right type.
The two types that work best are Lysol 10x and The Works! blue label (the green label is terrible).
The process of how to super clean a mug
Step 1. Clean the mug with hot water to take away the easier stains and warm up the mug interior. Leave the mug wet.
Step 2. Put on kitchen gloves. I'll explain why in a minute.
Step 3. Add a few centimeters of toilet bowl cleaner into the mug.
Step 4. Slowly fill the mug with warm or hot water all the way to the top.
Step 5. Gently mix the solution with a spoon for about 10 seconds. (Be sure to rinse and clean the spoon thoroughly afterward.)
Step 6. Let the mug sit with this solution in it for about 15 minutes. You can take off your kitchen gloves now.
Step 8. After 15 minutes, put your kitchen gloves back on.
Step 9. Take a bottle brush and scrub the mug interior. Some water will splash out and there's no avoiding that. This is OK.
Step 10. Rinse out the mug with warm water. You can take off your kitchen gloves now.
Step 11. At this point you wash again to remove any residue left behind from the toilet bowl cleaner. Put in a squirt of regular dish detergent such as Dawn Ultra into the mug.
Step 12. Take your bottle brush and wash out the mug interior again.
Step 13. Empty the mug and thoroughly dry with a towel.
Step 14. Smell the inside of the mug. If you smell toilet bowl cleaner, wash it out with Dawn again and dry. You know you're done when you no longer smell any toilet bowl cleaner.
Warnings, and what this doesn't clean
Toilet bowl cleaner is strong stuff that will irritate your skin, so it's strongly suggested you wear kitchen gloves while using it because you don't want it landing on your skin.
This kind of cleaning only works for porcelain mugs and not glass, plastic or other material. Additionally, this is for all-porcelain mugs and not for the types that have a decorative steel band at the top or other such decoration that isn't porcelain.
This should go without saying, but if the inside of the coffee mug is painted, toilet bowl cleaner may and probably will remove the paint... although I've no idea why anybody would drink hot coffee out of a mug where the interior has painted artwork.
The reason you let the mug sit with the toilet bowl cleaner solution in it is because the cleaner is literally dissolving stains during this process. Regular dish detergent doesn't do this all that well and can't because if it were as strong as toilet bowl cleaner, it would be unsafe for your skin (hence the reason I say to wear kitchen gloves).
If you hadn't guessed by now, the reason this method of cleaning works so well is because a coffee mug is made of the same material as your toilet, porcelain.
What this method of cleaning will NOT clean is any damage you've caused to your coffee mug from scrubbing it too much in the past. If you see gray scrub marks (such as from scrubbing the mug interior with steel wool), toilet bowl cleaner won't clean that.
Do you have to wash your mug like this EVERY time you clean?
No. You only clean this way when you start seeing stains. The rest of the time you can wash your mug normally.
Car navigation crap
You technically can get car navigation for as cheap as 6 bucks if you know where to look.
A big reason I don't use the phone for car navigation is because using a Garmin is simply more reliable.
The model that I use currently is the Garmin DriveSmart 66, although you could get a less expensive Garmin Drive 53 to get the job done.
However, yes, if you have a local thrift store near you (such as Goodwill), it's possible to grab an old Garmin nuvi for literally 6 bucks. I've even seen some selling for as little as $2.
If you're able to score a cheap Garmin that has the car charger, mounting clip and suction mount, that's almost everything you need. You do need to buy a 32GB microSD card to store the modern map data and a USB to mini USB cable to connect to the computer so you can update the maps via the free Garmin Express software.
Does the Garmin have maps as up-to-date as Google Maps? No, but you can always get the GPS coordinates and save favorites that way.
In the end, what really matters is that your navigation works, and a Garmin works, be it something new or old. It is also very important to have a navigation system that does not change. Map apps for the phone are notorious for switching things around every time an "update" happens. Buttons are moved, colors are changed, fonts are changed, features are added that you don't want, features that you like are removed... it's a nightmare.
And you would think, you would think, that adding a favorite (as in saving a location and naming it whatever you want) should be the simplest thing to do in a map app. It's not. Your favorites are "tied" to an account that you must login to just to see them. Not logged in? You see nothing. Sorry, Charlie. Renaming a favorite sometimes works but other times isn't "allowed". Then there are times when your favorites just DISAPPEAR! Where did they go? Well, it doesn't matter because they're gone.
On the Garmin, any favorite you save STAYS THERE and doesn't randomly vanish. You can rename any favorite at any time and it WORKS. You NEVER need to login to anything just to view your favorites. You can SEARCH all your favorites easily. You can even CATEGORIZE your favorites by use of the categories feature that you can name whatever you want just by editing any favorite.
That kind of favorites management, which has been in Garmin GPSes for over 15 years, is just too big of an ask when it comes to the phone. Evidently, even though the phone is far more powerful than a Garmin GPS, it's just not possible to have decent favorites management on it.
And yes, that means a $6 used Garmin nuvi has better navigation favorites management than a $1,000 phone.
Tweed cloth jacket guitar cable for 7 bucks
Another reason to love the Amazon Basics line.
Firstly I'll say that tweed cloth jacket guitar cable for $7 is the price right now at the time I write this, so it may change in the future. For now, it's cheap.
I remember cables like this easily selling for over $20 just for a 10-foot length. These days with modern machining, the cables still have the same quality and can be manufactured for less. So yeah, total win here.
Are tweed cloth jacket cables any good?
My answer to that is any braided guitar cable is good, including the one mentioned above, and it's for one reason:
It doesn't tangle anywhere near as much as regular guitar cable does.
If you play guitar mostly at home (as most guitar owners do), it's probably true that more often than not you're just leaving your cable plugged in the guitar all the time. You pick up the guitar, play, put it back on its stand, and repeat whenever you feel like strumming a few chords.
If using a regular guitar cable, yes it will tangle even just doing those simple motions. Braided cable is far less likely to tangle over time. It's obviously not impossible for braided cable to tangle, but you have to really neglect it for that to happen. On the other hand, regular guitar cable manages to find a way to get tangled even if well cared for.
There's also something else that cannot be denied about tweed cloth jacket guitar cable. It looks cool. Whether you get the black-and-white or the traditional tweed look, it just has a much more interesting appearance compared to plain black.
Again, it used to be that cable like this was double or triple the price compared to regular cable. Not anymore. Go ahead, get a few, and enjoy.