Nobrainer’s Think Tank

For all the following days, I stuck with the double-edge safety razor.

Day 24 (Sunday): I used the Edge ActiveCare Deep Cleansing Shave Cream.

This is the 2nd time I’ve used it and I fucking hate it. Here’s my official 2-trial review. Edge ActiveCare Shave Cream sucks donkey nuts. It takes forever to wash off my hands once I got it on my beard, and I felt the effects of razor burn for the next two days. Save your money. Instead buy a bottle of sulfuric acid to eat away your whiskers and skin; I expect the result will be similar.

Day 25 (Monday): No shaving this day. All day my face and neck felt like I’d shaved way too wrecklessly that morning. I hate the Edge ActiveCare.

Day 26 (Tuesday): I went back to the Shave Secret Shaving Oil–pretty standard shave, about like what I was getting before I started going through this whole testing ordeal.

Day 27 (Wednesday): Same as Tuesday.

If any of you turkeys wants to mosey on up to Charlottesville to aid the moving process, I say go for it. A little spontaneity never hurt anybody. So just hit 29 north and call me when you hit Lynchburg.

And speaking of turkeys, here, for your pleasure, is a true television gem.

Gobble gobble.

The moving of my stuff to my new house has begun. Progress is being made. Extremely slowly.

Most of Sunday was spent cleaning the new place before I could start moving. The previous residents had 3 cats. THREE freaking cats! I think I’ve vacuumed up pounds of kitty litter, food, and hair. Some corners still smell like cat. Did I mention my cat allergies?

Yesterday I continued cleaning, setting things up, and making preparations. At the end of a very long day, I had moved my couch, an area rug, and most of my stereo.

Once everything is successfully moved, it will be time to clean my old apartment.

And somewhere in all of this, I have to do plenty of work. Sleeping will have to wait.

And all this explains the dearth of posting. Sorry.

Here’s the gist of why I hate life sometimes… or at least why I hate my working life as a research assistant. For your reference, I make polymers then try to modify them to change their behavior.

Initially, about 2 years ago, the process was this: make the polymer, put it in a machine, and you’re done. Well that process sucked.

Then we tried another process and it sucked, even though it shouldn’t have.

Now we’ve added another process.

So, in order to run through all the processes and get one set of experimental data, here’s a rough schedule of events, which I am currently in the middle of.

Friday: Spend 30 minutes in the lab mixing the polymer. Let it sit for 30 minutes, revisit it and let it cure overnight. This step is no big deal, and usually I can skip this step since I can make relatively large batches of polymer for later use.

Saturday: Once goals of the test are outlined, spend about 1 to 2 hours doing prep work for the first big process, a chemical extraction. Then spend the next 10 hours waiting to change solutions every 1 or 3 hours, depending on the solvent. Spend about 30 minutes cleaning everything up. This is a pretty farking good way to kill a Saturday, and Saturday night

Sunday: Remove the samples from the oven where they were drying. Spend another hour doing prep work for the 2nd process. Run the first phase of process unsupervised for 3 hours. Spend about 30 minutes cleaning up the messes made by the process. Also begin the 24 hour cleaning phase. During the cleaning phase, the cleaning solution–water in this case–should be changed roughly every 3 hours.

Monday: Having probably slept intermittently in my office, the cleaning process finishes 1 day after having started. Then the samples need several hours of drying. Once dry, tests must be run. The tests may take up to 1 hour to complete. Then the data analysis may take another hour. At this point its probably Monday night, about 72 hours after everything started. I will have spent most of those hours on campus. If I’m lucky the results are good and I learn something. Most of the time something I don’t yet understand screws everything up. And I did all this over the weekend so that I would have something for a Wednesday meeting

Now for the odds & ends

(more…)

This is day 4 with the DESR. Like yesterday, I used the shave secret shaving oil. Unlike yesterday, I decided to go for the against-the-grain shave. All things considered, everything went pretty well. The with-the-grain phase was unremarkable; it’s probably comparing to the original Sensor. I’ve found that short quick strokes work better than longer ones. Same thing goes when shaving against the grain. Today I ended up with a pretty good shave, equal to what I expect from the Sensor. Actually it probably compares pretty well with the shaves I had last weekend when I used the Mach3.

It appears that one blade when shaving is plenty. Of course, much more caution and thought must be used when using the DESR. It still intimidates me.

The testing will continue.

(note, I needed not include the “hatred” tag with this post)

Continuing with my wet-shaving experimentation, this is day 3 with the double-edge safety razor. Maybe the third time is the charm, but today really wasn’t all that bad. Instead of the Nivea for Men Sensitive Shaving Gel, I

employed the Shave Secret shaving oil. Today’s shave was still not what I’m looking for, but it seems pretty much on par with what was the status quo. Even the burn factor was much less than the last two days.

Maybe it’s the increasing familiarity with the razor, the fact that the blades are now a bit “broken in” or that the shave oil is really that much better than the Nivea.

Perhaps in the next couple days I shall be so daring as to go against the grain with the DESR.

The experimentation, shall continue.