You might want to check the previous blog post first. I bought a package of Gillette disposable razors that are described as ‘Jetable.’ I could not figure out what that meant and proposed to film my first shave with a Jetable razor. Here, is the movie.
Actually two movies. The first is short and in it I describe the premise for the second movie. Here is the first:
The real deal is the next video. Warning - it is a bit long! About 6 minutes! I hope you make it to the end. The Jetable razor. I still can’t figure it out?? Here is the actual shave!
It all started as a trip to the local pharmacy to get some razors. Over the years I have tried all types - electric, ones where you keep the handle but change the blade, and those that are completely disposable. I had a great electric razor a couple of years ago but the blades were getting dull. When I went to get new blades for it - they were $40. What! The whole electric razor when I bought it was around $50.
So instead I decided to the smart thing and buy a new electric razor. Only by this time the same quality razor was well over $100. Screw this I thought. I got better things to do with 100 clams then shave. The electric shaving is easy but I don’t see how the essentially same product could have more than doubled in price in three years. Let’s not forgot I have an Economics degree and am fine tuned to things like inflation. (hhmm, maybe you should forget I have an Economics degree - I have nothing to do with the bad economy, I swear!).
So it was back to the non-electric path of shaving misery. Choices, choices. Well it’s been about a year now since I switched back and I can’t seem to find any razors that make much of a difference over the next. They all have 3 blades, 4 blades, the promise of looking good, feeling good, getting a close shave, getting a really close shave! After a while all the razors on the market sound the same and all look like they are from the future. Okay with me. I get whatever strikes my fancy. Brand loyalty? Not with razors it seems.
Jetable Razors
So a couple of days ago off to the store I go. I had never seen this before - jetable razors. I got into a serious debate with someone about what this could mean. I pondered if this meant that these razors would be allowed on an airplane. But that made no sense, after all they are still razors. Then I wondered if they have little wings that come out and they fly over your face. Naw, I must be dreaming.
I bought the razors, although I haven’t tried one yet. By appearance they seem like every other hyped disposable razor on the market. But what makes them jetable? What does that mean?
I just went to the Gillette web site for an answer. I have to say how disappointing that experience was. Not only did I not find an answer. I did not even find a search box on the site to look up the word. And, bear with me here - I know a thing or two about web sites - the Gillette web site stinks! All cutesy with a bunch of twirling carousel type imagery, and I can’t even get a description of their product.
Then I searched around the web in general for an answer. I could not find one. Does anyone know what a jetable razor is? Either I am out of touch with all things cool for men, or Gillette is out of touch with explaining what a jetable razor is.
I don’t shave every day - one of the pleasures of working at home, but the next shave I take will be with a jetable razor. I will document the experience, maybe I will even film it. Stay tuned…
The iPhone has an app for everything right? Well so far I have played games, gotten advice, and learned dog tricks all on the 2 inch by 3 inch screen. Excitement and yawn.
But then I get this app which is in a league of its own or maybe its just hooked into the biggest music library in all of creation. Its name is Shazam.
When ever you are near a source of music – a radio, a broadcast coming over a store’s speakers, even at home with your music gear, Shazam will tell you what you are listening to. This is so useful when out in the world and you hear some song you fall in love with only to have the DJ NEVER tell you what it is. That ever happen to you?
Shazam to the rescue. While the music is playing, start up Shazam and press the Tag Now button. It will listen to the music for about 10 seconds, then transmit its sample somewhere and then back to your iPhone is the answer. I have seen this app figure out rock, classical, jazz, and more. I get how the technology works. What I don’t get is how it can do all this so fast. It takes just a quick sample, and even at that the sample may be cluttered with other noise when your are in a public place.
And the answer gets back to you in a handful of seconds as well. It will even link to a YouTube video if there is one of the song. This is free. This is iPhone. This is 2009, the year of iPhone wonders.
It might look like an office chair, but it’s a demon with a purpose. I sit, I work, I have a sense of calm, in a safe profession, for which my life expectancy might rate high on some actuarial chart.
At work not knowing danger is near
Darn office chair, your legs are sturdy, but then why, WHY! are your arms so hard? I cushion up to you and you return the favor with a brick-like response against my torso. I am right handed, I guess I am overall right aligned (that’s meant as a physical trait, not a political one) so I lean into you often to and on my right side. And then one day (actually last week) you return my affection by nearly breaking my ribs! Haven’t I been nice to you? Gave you a nice rug to roll around on? Gave you tables, desks, and other chairs for friends?
Who would know with your innocent, flat, have no care in the world look, you would have your arm dig into me as I reached across the void of my desk towards the bookcase to grab some extra large computer books (they cost about $5 per pound). It’s bad enough I can hardly reach for anything with my right arm after breaking my shoulder, and then you add insult to injury, or rather injury to injury!
the chair arm and my ribcage - not a good mix
If I wasn’t such a forgiving type I would roll you in for one of those leather padded plush fall asleep in models. Can I still count on you?
I must be too much of a Dummy to see I have become Brilliant. As a neighbor pointed out to me recently I have increased my stature in the world of writers, not just by the number of books I have written, but also from their progression - from Dummies to Brilliant.
Another of my education problem rants - and it’s math once again. My son and I are working with flash cards this morning. I hold this up to him:
And on my side of the card is the answer - in the upper right corner:
Either I am getting a bit loopy, or somewhere along the way the rules of math have changed. How can the answer be zero? Isn’t dividing by zero a no-no? What happens if you whip out your calculator and enter 2 divided by 0? What do you get? My calculator says Error. I bet yours does too!
I see a lot of sites. I make a lot of sites. I own a lot of sites. So when I see a site of note that I am impressed with I feel like passing it along. Today’s site of interest is twistori. It’s a mix of emotions, technology, and creativity. It lists messages run through twitter. The messages are ones that match a keyword - of which there are six: love, hate, think, believe, feel, and wish. The snippets scroll on by, actually up. It’s fun to watch. It looks like this:
Check it out!
Weird,
A neighbor rings the bell. I answer. He is holding a pie, wrapped in foil. “Is this yours?” he asks, “It was sitting on the trunk of your car.”
No, not my pie, nor do I have a clue who would leave a pie on my car. Is this pie for me? Hhhmm, I don’t think so. Think about it. If someone wanted to give me a pie, and got so close to the door, that they instead left it on the car - makes no sense.
I took the mystery pie from the neighbor and kept it inside over night. The agony! What to do?! Did someone leave me a gift? Is this someone else’s pie (left on my car on the night before Thanksgiving). What flavor is it? Can’t tell without driving a utensil into the pie, but then I could be accused of being a pie abuser. No thanks!
So the next morning, today, Thanksgiving, I put it back on my car around 6:00 am. It is now the afternoon and the pie is still there. I have to drive somewhere soon. What to do - put the pie on someone else’s car? It could be the car of the neighbor who rang the bell. I don’t know which car is his. What would he think if the pie he gave me ended up on his car. This is like musical chairs. Last person left holding the pie, what - has to eat it?
Yesterday, November 7, Joni Mitchell turned 65. Happy Birthday!
There are few musical artists that spin an influence over such a diverse group of - other artists. Joni is one of those golden few. With a career that has altered multiple genres - folk, pop, jazz, and endless variations of those, Joni just does her thing and we follow along, often in deep gratitude.
Although Joni is from Canada and has lived in various places, I never associated her earlier years as a folk musician with a bustling place like New York City. From the Clouds album is a song, Chelsea Morning. For years this tune would ring around my head but without a thought of the song’s history. Then one day I discovered the scenario of the song is looking through an apartment window in New York City’s Chelsea district.
With a line like “Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I saw
Was the sun through yellow curtains, and a rainbow on the wall” it seemed to be somewhere else. Chelsea is just another busy New York area of Manhattan.
Here is the story behind the song: In a 1996 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Mitchell explained: “I wrote that in Philadelphia after some girls who worked in this club where I was playing found all this colored slag glass in an alley. We collected a lot of it and built these glass mobiles with copper wire and coat hangers. I took mine back to New York and put them in my window on West 16th Street in the Chelsea District. The sun would hit the mobile and send these moving colors all around the room. As a young girl, I found that to be a thing of beauty. There’s even a reference to the mobile in the song. It was a very young and lovely time… before I had a record deal. I think it’s a very sweet song, but I don’t think of it as part of my best work. To me, most of those early songs seem like the work of an ingenue.”
Story courtesy of SongFacts.
Bill and Hilary Clinton named their daughter after the song.
Hey, and that is just one song! From an artist who has written songs in the hundreds.
Your fans of long are aging with you but your art and music is as fresh as those days in the ’60s. Please don’t stop. We love you.
When helping my son with homework recently, we worked on a “real-life” problem. This has to do with efficient carton packing. The correct answer, to me, is the wrong answer. Here is the problem: Marvel Models produces 53,716 model cars each month. They want to design shipping cartons that hold more than 3 but fewer than 10 models each. They want to pack each month’s cars in the cartons, with no cars left over. What are their choices.
OK, the lesson was on division and the goal was to arrive at a number, per carton, that would leave no remainder. The answer is 4: 53,716/4 = 13,429 cartons, with an even number of cars per carton and no remainder. The overall instructions surrounding the larger lesson on division was looking for divisors that would leave no remainder.
A carton can hold up to 9 models (more than 3 but less than 10). The optimal packing would be 5969 cartons. That is, 5968 with 9 models per carton, and one additional carton with 4 models.
So what in a real scenario is the logical choice - 13,429 cartons, or just 5,969? If your job was optimizing shipping and you used 7,460 unnecessary cartons, well I don’t think you would be getting a bonus that year, or even likely to keep your job.
I know school is meant to teach operational fundamentals, but when a question like this one is phrased as a real business problem, I find it hard to swallow that the “correct” answer is so obviously a “bad” answer. Just my little tiff for the day.
to Brilliant.
