Shaving the Wrong Way

When I woke up this morning, my skin felt tight. Tight, like maybe the hairs on my face couldn't break through the skin.
I check the mirror, and what do I find?
Zits. Lots of them. In the very places where my razor travelled upwards yesterday.
I'm 28, I'm not supposed to have zits damn it!
And it's not for lack of hygiene either!

I guess I have only myself to blame for taking that nutjob's advice, but that doesn't make it suck any less.

Shaving Techniques

Today I tried re-shaving against the grade, as suggested by the article on lifehacker.
I have some first impressions, and they're not good.

• It took considerably longer to do it this way.
• It was uncomfortable.
• It felt weird. (maybe this is something you get used to)
• It tore up my skin something fierce.
• The added benefit: minimal, if any.

I have been using high-grade shaving equipment and skin care products for several years, so that's not the problem either. All this crap, for a benefit that's hardly noticeable, and that will certainly not be noticeable two hours from now is just not worth it.
I'll be re-applying moisturizer to my face all day to undo the damage I've done to my skin.
In short, don't try this!

(used up)^3 Revisited

Some of you might remember how I could not get my brand new monitor to work at the rated resolution and refresh rate? (Ok, it seems that I didn't blog about that, or that I couldn't find the post, but anyway, it didn't quite want to play). Any way, this new graphics card that I have (which works perfectly, by the way) allows me to come closer to that, running at 2048x1536 in 75 of the 85 possible Hz announced.

In other news, I came across this on lifehacker today, and it goes against something I have been taught fundamentally (on both Discovery Channel and by Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon), namely that you're supposed to shave against the grade. What the hell? That does terrible things to your face. Sure, it's a closer shave, but at the cost of fucking your skin up badly.

Maybe I'll try it though. Who knows I could have been wrong all these years.

Also, as you have probably seen over these last couple of posts, I absolutely love using back references to stuff that I've written myself. Someone has to be proud over my earlier musings. It might as well be me.

Close Shave

I recently acquired the new razor from Gillette, the Fusion. I must say, it's a really close shave, especially if you've let it grow for 2-3 days, but I'm not sure it's necessarily closer than the Gillette Mach3. Granted, it has more blades, so I guess it should be, however Gilette had the Mach3 out as their main razor for several years, much longer than I've seen any of the others have the spot light, so one begins to wonder if this isn't just a marketing hoax. The Mach3 was decidedly better than the Gillette Sensor Excel, so you could at least feel the progress there.
The Fusion has 4 blades, which should give me a closer shave, and I must admit that I can feel the added resistance as the blades fly down my face (always down, never up, "go with the grade", as Danny Glover says in Lethal Weapon). It felt strange at first, but now I'm almost used to it.
What the Fusion does have is a single blade on the back, for those precision areas. I like that. What I didn't like, however, was that the razors head is now so large that is has trouble adapting to the geometry of my face. Especially in the area just under the sides of your jaw. If you're not a big burly man, then these angles can be quite sharp, and require extra attention, over the effortless sliding seen on television.

In any case, it's definitely good enough, and as I assume it'll phase out in the coming 5 or so years, I might as well get used to it. The only reason you can still buy blades for the Sensor Excel, is that the Lady Shave that they have introduced uses the same blades.
You'd think that they would give women the same advances as us. Hairy legs are not sexy.
I guess the ladies could just buy the same razors that we use, but I'm sure there are things involved making shaving your legs with a Mach3 more difficult. I wouldn't know, I tend to not shave my legs.