The day we woke up on Mars. more pics from the NYTimes
Bay Area à l'orange
my cookware recommendations
Go with Mafter Bourgeat and get one of their black steel pans (the 11 7/8" one) and get the remainder from their stainless steel collection: the 9-1/2" and 11" fry pans, the 1-3/4 quart and 4 quart sauce pans, the 7-1/2 quart stock pot, and optionally the 4 quart saute pan. Altogether, these should run you about $500-$600.
There's a small detail with these Mafter pots and pans that's not in most cookware. The handles are attached in a way where the rivets don't go through so the interior is clean.
Also:
- This copper/induction ready Hestan set I guess if you want to splurge
- Grab these Mac knives – 9" chef (or alternate), slicer, utility, paring
- Grab this spatula, microplane, Hi-soft cutting board
- 12" cast iron skillet (for fried chicken) and 10.5" cast iron griddle (for pancakes) are also nice and have been put to good use
Obama portraits
Even if you didn't know these were the Obamas, by looking at the portraits you could tell these two were important — and both are giving off a look of needing you to do something (my interpretation anyway). Glossy vs matte is always a fun argument, both of these are really cool. About as good as it gets.
2018 Pyeongchang Olympic Winter Games, links
Entertaining games so far -> links:
- Olympics Games official site Feb 9 – Feb 25
- NBC's coverage
- ESPN's coverage
- Pyeonchang County
wolf moon 2018
Moon phase and libration, 2018
The wolf moon, or the biggest brightest moon for 2018 what NASA is calling the New Year's Day moon. Pretty cool.
sense of urgency and finesse
Two elements that the French Laundry in Yountville strives for 1) creating and working with a sense of urgency, and 2) doing things with finesse. Baby steps.
MacBook Pro 2016
I love the non-touchbar version of the MacBook Pro. Looking down at a keyboard to find buttons doesn't make sense to me so went with the non-touchbar model. I could also complain about the price and battery life (which you can do every time) but the specs and design are solid. There seems to be quite a few lukewarm reviews out there but that's mostly because people are in need of ad/page views.
The MacBook Pro is still the best laptop in the market by a wide margin from a quality, design, and spec perspective. The Dell XPS laptops and Razer Blade laptops (stealth version) are also ones I'd consider.
Specs:
- 2.4GHz Intel Core i7
- 16GB RAM
- 512GB SSD
- 2k display, although I'm hooking up to a Dell P2415Q 4k external display
- weighs 3 lbs. and effectively has a 4 hour battery life (this does need to be way better)
- USB C and the headphone port are great as the only ports
The sad thing about the MacBook Pro is that it's pretty close to complete as a product (which is what you would expect after 25 years!). You can certainly improve on the internals but this thing can't really get any thinner, lighter, louder, or brighter and no more ports to remove.
Of course a laptop can always get faster but this thing is already pretty fast and the bottleneck is on the connectivity and the server side. The real innovation is happening w/ the iPad and iPhone, still quite a few things that can be done there.
So yet again, this particular MacBook Pro defines laptop because there's really very little left to do to make this an even better product. However, I'm curious to see how Chromebooks continue to evolve (especially versus tablet improvements) since a browser based OS or just a web based experience is what most folks use and need, and a significantly cheaper price point gets the Web out there to more people.
asset accumulation
A couple of nice, pretty mid-life crisis things to possibly purchase at age 40 or 50 but mostly to look at and pine for considering it ain't ever gonna happen :-) These two things and that boat (ok, yacht) I posted last time.
Beneteau Oceanis 38.1
I want a boat — Beneteau Oceanis 38.1. I don't really want one but since we already have a waffle maker…
stepping out of the razor/razor blade model
Several years back, I got really tired of buying way too expensive Gillette razor blades, $35 for 8 cartridges or $4.38 per blade. The actual razor that you can buy from Gillette is cheap, $11.50 or less. This is of course the razor, razor blade model of pricing.
I got really sick of it so I flipped the model and I went and bought a $30 razor (the one pictured above) and nice razor blades that cost $0.32 each or 30 blades for $9.00. Yup, $0.32 per old school razor blade versus $4.38 per Gillette blade. That's kind of a big difference.
There is slightly more work since I need to use shave soap, 3 for $14. You can get away with not using shaving cream/soap with a Gillette razor/cartridge. Shaving cream or gel are fine too but shave soap is cheaper and lasts a really long time. With shave soap, I can rock out with a $12 badger shave brush to lather up the soap which is kind of a pleasant experience making it and applying the lather to my face. There's some cost savings down the road here but it's negligible.
I finish up my shave with a splash of Osage Rub, it's inexpensive and makes our bathroom smell like a barbershop for a hot second. I do get nicked sometimes and I'll use a styptic pencil to fix it when that happens.
So finally tally:
- before
- $11.50 for razor, $4.38 per cartridge
- after
- $30 for razor, $0.32 per blade
All those commercials for Dollar Shave Club had been bugging me. I don't get why you need to join a club to buy expensive razor blades at a slight discount. Get a decent razor and buy the old school razor blades for $0.32 and you won't need to join a club to shave your face. I've already been priced gouged by Gillette for over 20 years, I don't need to be slightly less gouged by some startup.
End rant.