Baum Guitars Wingman is just plain great

Holy crap, the Baum Guitars Wingman is cool...

...and even better is that there is no bad color for it. Inca Gold, Skyline Blue, Coral Blue, Burgundy, Dark Mist... ALL good.

What drives this guitar - other than how awesome it looks - are the pickups, which Baum calls GoldSound. They make them in-house.

Neck profile is "Modern C", 25.5" scale, fingerboard radius is 12". Everything checks out there.

Tuners? Top tier stuff with 21:1 ratio. Incredible.

For what you get for the price, it punches well above its weight (even though it's not a heavy guitar). Great stuff here. Truly.

When spending $800 on car repair is worth it

I really didn't want to spend the money, but sometimes you just have eat the cost to avoid paying more later.

Take a sway bar link, also known as a stabilizer bar link. They are cheap to buy, but to have a pair of these installed by a mechanic can be anywhere from $275 to $400, depending on car type and garage you take it to.

These little links do wear out over time, and you'd be amazed how much they affect the ride quality of the car. True, they don't look like much and are easy to dismiss as something you don't think needs replacing after 100,000 miles or so. But oh yeah, these little things when in proper working order really do make the car ride better.

I just had three things done to my car. Rear drum brake cleaning, e-brake cable adjust (the e-brake handle was a little loose, I had the mechanic adjust the cable tension while the rear wheels were off since that's where the tension adjustment is), and sway bar links.

Next up however are rear shock absorber replacements. This has not been done yet but will be fairly soon. Rear shocks are not as cheap as sway bar links, but you can get a pair for as little as 50 bucks when you look around, even for a full size truck.

All this stuff combined for my car will be about $800.

Yeah, that's steep for a car repair. But then again, it's for multiple repairs and not just one thing. Still, $800 is $800 and that's not cheap.

Why dump $800 worth of repair into a regular car over 10 years old?

My car is over a decade old and has seen better days, but it's paid for and runs well. I'll get back to that in a moment.

It's usually true that a set of tires is the most expensive thing people will buy for their car. These days it's almost too easy to spend over a grand just for that. However, for literally everything else where repair and maintenance is concerned, most only do the bare minimum or nothing at all, resulting in a car that will basically destroy itself due to lack of proper care.

Fewer than six months ago, I strapped on new tires. Worn out sway bar links and rear shocks can strip away as much as 10,000 miles or more off those tires. How? The tire gets subjected to unnecessary bowing/flexing every time I turn or go over a bump in the road due to worn out suspension components. Not good.

$800 spent on the repairs now means there's a better chance of my tires lasting longer, provided I rotate them twice a year (which I do). That $800 spent now means less spent on tire replacement in the future.

And as I said above, my car is paid for and runs well. True, it's not the prettiest thing in the world and has paint chips, dings and dents all over it. However, yes it is worth sinking a bunch of money into a not-so pretty car that works. If it didn't work, I wouldn't bother.

I'm definitely feeling the sting of spending $800 on car repairs, but given the absolutely insane prices of cars these days, better to make the one I have last as long as possible rather than have a car payment.

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.