Product Review: Frog Tape
I've been doing a little bit of painting these past few days. We had to repaint the family room walls and decided to paint the ceiling a new color. Before painting the wall, I bought a new roll of blue tape to mask around the windows and the doors. The problem I have with blue tape is leaking at the edges and pulling up old paint, but it's certainly better than using ordinary old masking tape.

We used an entire roll of blue tape up while doing the walls, so I returned to the hardware store for more. But instead of blue tape, I saw this roll of green tape called Frog Tape. The packaging promises "Perfect Paint Lines" and it seems to have delivered. I've been pulling off the tape in a few places and there doesn't appear to have been any paint bleeding. But the green stuff still did pull up some old paint in a few places.

Summary: Worth an extra buck to upgrade from blue.

Product Review: Novaform Memory Foam Mattress Topper
The 1-inch foam topper that came with our overpriced Dulux bed has deteriorated to the point it needs to be replaced... my back has been aching and my back really never aches like this. I called up the local Dulux for a replacement price on the 1" foam mattress topper... they quoted me $800. Uh, thanks but no thanks you filthy leeches! Instead, I ordered a 2.5-inch thick Novaform Memory Foam Mattress Topper at costco.com the other week. It arrived last Saturday and I opened it up yesterday. I bought the California King size because that's what I thought we had, but... I was wrong, we have just a plain 'ol King. Oops. So I returned it today at the local store and wouldn't you know it, they have the foam mattress toppers in stock out on the floor... but not the 2.5" thick version, instead they have the 3" thick version for a mere $10 more than the on-line model. Bonus. So I swapped it out and put it on the bed. First impressions are good; nice and soft, just the right amount of firm comfort, responds and rebounds well during movement. Hopefully it will sleep well.

Update Fri Sep 5 22:14:40 PDT 2008
We have been sleeping on the new topper for 2½ weeks now. It is very nice and comfy. Kristy absolutely loves it and gives it very high marks. I am also very satisfied. Great value too... just $170.

Product Review: Sony Playstation 3
I bought a PS3 a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't really happy about it and made the purchase while wringing my hands due to the unfavorable affect I've seen video game consoles have on the neighborhood kids I know. But alas, the PS3 is one of the cheapest Blu Ray players on the market right now (probably because Sony is partially subsidizing the cost fully expecting to make up the money in video game sales) and the upgradability of the PS3 to BD Profile 1.1 and BD Profile 2.0 is something no other Blu Ray player on the market can match. Furthermore, I hear the PS3 has a library of video games that is supports. So, right there... the value proposition of the PS3 is immense. This means that if I ever find a standalone Blu Ray player that I actually like (for a reasonable price), it should be relatively easy to resell the PS3 on craigslist or something.

That's the rationalization I used to justify the purchase at the time anyway.

Last night and today I fiddled around with the multimedia support of the Playstation 3 - I must say that I was simply blown away... almost speechless in fact. I knew that the PS3 would play slideshows of pictures, but I forgot about some of the demos that Khan gave me at his house. I'm speaking specifically of the "photo album 2" slideshow (or whatever it's called). Basically, I loaded up some 600 pictures of Eliana that I had taken of her from the time she was born and loaded them onto the PS3's hard drive. The PS3 read the EXIF data of the pictures and sorted them by date and delivered the most wonderful slideshow that I could have hoped for. It was absolutely brilliant. I put some music in the background of the slideshow and then ran it on a continuous loop up in the attic during Eliana's birthday party tonight. It was an immediate hit.

Summary: Why buy a standalone Blu Ray player when a PS3 brings so much to table? Go get one. You won't regret it... even if you never play one single video game on it. (Am I a fanboy now Khan?)

Product Review: Preval Spray Gun
We have been working hard (and late into the night) deep cleaning rooms on the second floor before we move furniture back into our home: cleaning carpets, wiping walls, installing closet shelving, etc. We have also been doing paint touch-ups here and there. Wall touch ups are easy enough with latex paint, but trim touch ups on the oil-based enamel are a bit tricky... at least, if a smooth brush-stroke-free finish is desired. Fortunately, I stumbled upon the Preval Spray Gun at Home Depot. The Preval spray gun comes with a canister of some kind of aerosol and a screw-top glass jar to use for any paint. I bought two of these and loaded up one jar with Eliana's red trim color and the other jar with the off-white trim color we use throughout the rest of our home. I'm very pleased with the results - a nice smooth even finish with no brush marks. I'm going to buy another one of these and dedicate it for use with black trim touch-ups around my kitchen.

Also, these units are priced less than $5 (the cartridge refills are priced less than $4) - so they are a great value.

Summary: A handy little spray gun that produces fabulous results. A must-have!

Product Review: Panasonic KX-TG5776S and KX-TGA571S
Two of our three phones died last week... bad batteries I presume. Rather than replace the batteries, I replaced the phones. We had our old ones for almost 6 years (I gave the one that was still working to Scott). I replaced our dinosaur Uniden 900 MHz individual phones with a Panasonic expandable digital answering machine and system with full color backlit displays, the KX-TG5776S base and the KX-TGA571S handsets. I ordered the base plus three handsets and received them a couple of days ago... wow, what an upgrade!

The new phones double as intercoms, so I can pick up the phone and page Kristy upstairs. Sure, I can yell up the stairs and get her attention... but when the third floor goes live, I'm not sure if my voice will carry up two floors. So the intercom feature will get a lot of use. Eventually, we'll expand the phone system to the full compliment of 8 handsets and have one in all of the "popular" rooms in the house. (Apologies in advance to the living room.)

Some other key features we like: the phone book can be shared among all of the phones, the caller id history is shared automatically among all the phones, all of the phones show that a new message is waiting and the message can be checked from any handset. Also we like the fact that if we screen a call or are just too lazy to pick up, the message that is left on the base unit answering machine is also broadcast to each of the handsets and played on the speakerphone. Very nice.

There are a lot of bells and whistles on the phone that are fairly frivolous. The background of each phone can be customized. We will probably snap a picture of the room where the phone belongs and use that as the background. Custom ring tones can also be assigned to each number in the address book. And not just some selection of stock ring tones, but any 20-second wav file of your choice that is stored in the handset's memory. Each handset includes a USB port and can be connected to any machine (*cough* running Microsoft Windows); the interface allows you to transfer pictures for the phone's background and music for the phone's media library. Just today I solicited feedback from my siblings and in-laws asking them to choose what music they want played to signify when they call us (no responses as of yet).

Summary: How did we live without these phones!

Product Review: Pandigital 7-inch Photo Frame
I picked up a Pandigital 7-inch Photo Frame today from my nearby Staples ($89). We bought it as a gift to give to our longtime child care provider, Lori, who is going away to college. I spent the better part of this evening playing around with it and am very unimpressed with the product.

The photo frame includes the common features found on most photo frames: 128 MB built-in memory, slots for a variety of external memory cards, mp3 support, and a slideshow feature. The first thing I tried was to just dump some MP3 files and some full-sized pictures onto the internal memory and see what would happen. The result was a slideshow of some very poorly re-sized pictures on a poor quality LCD monitor. The upside was that the music sounded great! I realized that I wasn't going to be able to do anything about the poor LCD hardware (hey... I get what I pay for), but I played around with the picture sizing so that I could avoid the built-in non-smart re-sizing included in the frame. After a few attempts, I was able to get a decent result - not great, but good enough.

Pandigital's bios/UI leaves a lot (a lot!) to be desired. It is slow, clunky, and less than friendly. Furthermore, the on-frame controls are completely non-intuitive (fortunately the remote works well). I would expect that if I owned or kept this product for myself that I would not change pictures very often, just to avoid the experience of working with the frame. But once the frame is set up, it functions ok... just don't look too closely at the quality. The more expensive pandigital frames probably have better LCD screens, but they all likely share the same crappy UI. Yuck.

I would not recommend this product except to those that are looking for something that is cheap; there must be better options out there.

(Postscript Sun Jun 24 19:07:41 PDT 2007 // Kristy bought another one of these today from Staples for her Dad for Father's Day. It appears that the buttons have been updated with a new revision of the model, but no upgrades to the bios. The LCD quality seems worse with this model than the previous one. Not good.)

Product Review: Blockbuster Total Access
Kristy and I don't really make time to see movies at the theater. My opinion of theaters in general is very poor. The cinemas are all just non-descript cardboard boxes now and the movie screens are way too small. I grew up seeing movies on the big screen like the Villa Theater and Centre Theater (which was a beautiful 1,000+ seat Art Deco theater where I saw many movies as a kid, including Star Wars). So it is pretty underwhelming for me to go see a movie at the generic megaplexes that are so common now. There are still a few exceptions, like the local Cinerama Theater in downtown Seattle. In fact, were it not for the Cinerama and the IMAX at Pacific Science Center, we would probably not see any movies in the theaters (with the exception of kids movies, which we are compelled to see).

So, we don't get out to see movies that often. The solution? Rent movies by mail. The options? Netflix (which has been in the rent-by-mail business for years) and a relatively new program from Blockbuster called "Total Access". I signed up for the cheapest Total Access program last month and am, so far, really impressed with it. For $7.99/month we are allowed to rent a maximum of 2 movies per month (which is actually plenty for us). But we can then return the movies to the store (in the enclosed return mailer) and exchange them for any movie in the store... for "free". So basically we get 4 movies, 2 of which are "free", for $7.99/month... or 2 bucks per movies, all of which typically are new releases. Not a bad deal.

The program is easy to use as well (how hard can selecting movies really be? ...not too hard). The on-line interface doesn't get in the way, the search capability and recommendations are there if needed, and the inventory is as good as I need (not sure how it compares to Netflix, but I would imagine it is as good or better). I have filled up my queue with about 50 movies we would like to see, or (at 2 movies per month) enough rental options for the next 2 years... that is unless I cherry pick from our list while exercising my "free" rental options.

Update May 27, 2007: We have now been subscribers to the "Total Access" now for 1 year. I'm still very satisfied with the service and am pleased to share that the Blu-Ray selection on-line is far, far superior than anything that can be found in the stores. We now pretty much exclusively rent movies in high def since we have converted to Blu-Ray. Once I updated my movie format preference on-line, then the software automagically converted the format of all the movies in my queue to Blu-Ray (if available). Very nice!

Summary: Good value for low volume movie rentals. Highly recommended.

(Update Mon May 28 23:36:15 PDT 2007 // corrected the monthy charge)
(Update Tue May 27 15:28:58 PDT 2008 // add Blu-Ray info)

Product Review: SwiMP3
Last year I briefly mentioned a product that my brother-in-law Scott referred me to - a waterproof mp3 player designed for swimming. I ordered one last week and it arrived today. I plugged it into my laptop and started to charge it up. While it was charging, I dragged and dropped a few songs over to the device. There is no special software required in order to transfer songs to the device (a definite plus). After the device was fully charged, I took it over to Pine Lake for a trial swim.

The SwiMP3 does not transmit sounds directly to the inner ear via headphones and the ear canal, instead the sound is transmitted via the SwimMP3 discs that lay directly on each cheekbone. The sound is then carried via the bone transport to the eardrum. When I read about the bone-to-bone transport mechanism, I immediately thought of a car maintenance trick my Grandpa Kiser taught me to diagnose faulty bearings on ancillary accessories connected to your engine by the engine belt (e.g. the power steering pump, the A/C compressor, the alternator, etc). For example, if you suspect that your air conditioning compressor is running a little rough, you can confirm your suspicions by placing one end of a wooden dowel or metal rod on the compressor and putting the other end as close to your ear canal as possible. The sound will transfer from the compressor through the one end of the metal rod (or wooden dowel) and can then be heard on the other end. Using this method, you can isolate the sound from the compressor and listen to the noises emanating from within. It works great and is a cool trick.

This same sound transfer mechanism is utilized by the SwiMP3 player. On the dock when I turn on the SwiMP3 player, I can hear the sound but it is somewhat dull compared to all of the other noise in the background that I am hearing in my air-filled ear canal. However, the second my ears are submerged, the music is heard loud and clear. Under the water's surface, the sound from my water-filled eardrums becomes the background noise for the music instead of the other way around.

While swimming, the music is still very distinct even with the noise generated by my swimming stroke. I swam across the lake and back, covering 1½ miles in about 45 minutes - or, in my new manner of reckoning time spent while swimming and listening to music - I swam each leg in the same time it took to listen to 4 or 5 songs. Heh.

I don't really mind swimming in the open water without the music. Pine Lake is very peaceful and serene and is big enough that I can swim many different routes in a given week (this keeps the repetition down to a minimum). But the music I chose today for my swim (the album "Takk" by the artist Sigur Rós) was meditative and relaxing... a nice compliment for the open water swim methinks. For lap swimming, I will load up audio that has a harder beat or perhaps a book on tape or something.

Summary: Highly recommended to take the sting out of lap swimming.

Product Review: Oster Milk Shake Maker
I picked up a Oster Milk Shake Maker from Costco today. In the past, every time I made a milk shake in my ordinary blender, I would think about buying a legitimate shake maker due to the inconvenience of creating the confection using a blender (i.e. turn on, turn off, mix around ingredients with wooden spoon, turn on, turn off, repeat). However, I never mustered enough energy after the shake was consumed to even bother putting the milk shake maker on my gift list. But I saw the Oster chromed-out beauty at Costco today for $30, so I decided to buy it and try it out.

I made a a couple of shakes with the Oster tonight. My first attempt did not go well. I presumed that the little aerating blade would chop up the whole strawberries for me as it mixed the shake. It didn't work out that way... the spinning blades aren't sharp at all. After I emptied the stainless steel mixing cup, strained out and cut the mangled but largely intact strawberries into smaller pieces, and then reassembled the ingredients... the shake maker did a decent job of creating the final product without much hassle (I moved the cup up and down a little bit to get all of the last ice cream chunks broken up... but I did this while the blades were in motion).

When I make milk shakes using a blender, the shakes will come out much thicker - too thick for a straw. This new appliance produces shakes that seemingly are much lighter and "frothier" and are easily consumed using a large straw. I guess that is a good thing, I dunno - I guess it is a personal preference. Nonetheless, it sure is a handy little appliance for making milk shakes. Recommended.

Product Review: Graco XR7
I bought a Graco Magnum XR7 airless paint sprayer back in 2001 (at Home Depot) for about $400. Since then, this handy little airless sprayer has probably saved me many thousands of dollars (in money not spent on painting subcontractors). Over the course of the last four years I've painted my kitchen table and chairs, a set of bedroom furniture for my brother-in-law, all of my kitchen cabinets, a built-in bookshelf for another brother-in-law, our patio table and chairs, several other large pieces of furniture, quite a few doors, and many other miscellaneous items (such as shelves, frames, stools, trim, etc).

Like any other aspect of home improvement, my first painting project with the sprayer seemed a bit daunting. But I'm convinced that with the right tools, anyone can paint as good as the professionals. Actually, I think I do a better job than the professionals (at least the three I've had work on my house); I say this only because I spend more time making sure it is done exactly right. It would probably be prohibitively expensive to hire someone to do as thorough a job as I expect... and so, I've forced myself to learn to do it as capably as I can.

If a large painting project is looming, then I highly recommend an investment in an airless paint sprayer. And I can't say enough good things about the Graco XR7. The prep time and clean-up is just a bit more tedious than using a brush, but the results are outstanding. I've never been disappointed.

Product Review: Minwax Stain Markers
I bought a couple of Minwax Stain Markers the other day at the recommendation of one of the finish carpenters that has been working on our cabinet installation. I bought a couple of colors; one that matches our newly floors and stained cabinetry and one that matches the cherry furniture in our master bedroom. These pens are an absolute must have. They are easy to use, extremely convenient (no need to crack open a can of stain and get a brush out), and produce excellent results. I need to get another one (red mahogany) to touch up some dings/scratches on my office furniture.

Highly recommended.

Product Review: All-Clad LTD Cookware
When we moved up here to the Northwest into our fine four bedroom home, we left a single bedroom condo in LA (where we rented everything). We also sold our condo in Provo (UT) and pretty much liquidated everything in the kitchen (either sold it or gave it away). So, one of the first items I purchased for our new home was a solid set of cookware, namely the LTD line by All-Clad.

The cookware is marvelous. In fact, I like mine so much I convinced my brothers to chip in and buy my Mom a set for Mother's Day a few years back. If you have a gas range, then the LTD cookware is a must have (if you have an electric range, then do yourself a favor and replace it with gas). Great stuff.

Product Review: Orca Speedsuit
Based on the recommendation from Jeff, yesterday I purchased a full-length swimming wetsuit manufactured by Orca (the Speedsuit model). The Orca Speedsuit can be purchased on-line (i.e. eBay) for about $200-$220, retail price is $299. But, I don't particularly like to order clothing on-line... I'd much rather try something on to see if is a good fit first.

I opened up the yellow pages and started to make some calls. I found a place that sells the Orca Speedsuit (for $250) and had my range of sizes in stock. The funny thing is that the store (Footzone) is located exactly below the NTT/Verio office in Redmond. So, yesterday, I drove to the office and worked for the day there. During a break in the afternoon, I walked downstairs to Footzone and got fitted for a suit (turns out I'm a size 7, one size smaller than what I would have ordered had I ordered it on-line using only the Orca sizing chart as my guide).

Even though I could have purchased the suit cheaper on-line, I felt that the helpful Footzone salesperson (Tim) and the "try before I buy" opportunity the store gave me was worth ponying up a few extra bucks. Furthermore, if I ever have a problem, it's nice to deal with someone face to face. So, I coughed up the dough, and walked out of the store with my new wetsuit in hand.

This morning, I took the the wetsuit out for a swim (61° ambient air temperature, 64° water temperature). Overall, I am quite impressed. First and foremost, it's nice and warm. I feel snug as a bug in a rug in the suit. It is pretty tight on land, but in the water it softens up and is hardly noticable. The suit does provide a bit of positive buoyancy, so it keeps me right at the surface of the water, just a little higher than I am used to. And I do have to work harder to swim as fast as I did without the wetsuit, as I can definitely notice an increase in drag (compared to the bikini-Speedo I usually wear).

Highly recommended for cold open-water swimming... thanks Jeff!

Product Review: iTunes
I remember when I got my Rio500 many years ago. It came bundled with the MusicMatch software. It took me about 1 hour to figure out that MusicMatch was probably the most poorly designed piece of software ever developed. It was awful to use. My main problem with it was how the music library worked. It was easy enough to add files to the library, you just dragged and dropped files from the file browser into the library. To transfer music to the Rio from the library, I would then drag and drop files from the library to the Rio icon within the program. Easy right? Well, yeah.

But let's say you just wanted to drag and drop a file from a file browser to the portable device (and it really should be as easy as that... drag and drop). With MusicMatch, it was impossible to do. You must first add the file to the library and then transfer the file from the library to the device. But why make what should be a one-step process a two-step process? Why not just pick up on the fact that the user has moved a file to the device (by dragging it from an external file browser window to the icon for the device within the program frame) and then just add that file to the device and add it to the library? It was mystifying to me that MusicMatch forced you to take two steps to do what otherwise should have just taken one step.

Well, I haven't used MusicMatch in years, so they may have fixed that. Yet iTunes ("the best digital jukebox" according to Apple themselves *snicker*) behaves in this same lame way. I can't just drag and drop files to the iPod item in iTunes. I have to first drag and drop it into the library, and then drag and drop the item from the library to the iPod. Again... why? Isn't Apple smart enough to just transfer the file to the iPod and, at the same time, add the file to the library? Given the gushing praise for Apple by many of my respected friends, I would think Apple would be smart enough... but apparently Apple is not. iTunes is just plain dumb in this way.

In any event, I was willing to live with a certain level of clumsiness from iTunes because of some of its other strengths (for example, the contextual links in iTunes to the on-line Apple music store). However, I soon discovered that Apple has explicitly crippled some of the features in iTunes when it interfaces with the iPod Shuffle. Not only that, but it is impossible to prevent iTunes from "auto-updating" your iPod Shuffle when iTunes starts up. This is absolutely unforgivable.

Here are two screen captures, the first is for the iPod options found in iTunes for a "normal" iPod:

<ipod options>

Here is the same options dialog, but for an iPod Shuffle:

<ipod shuffle options>

Note the obvious lack of the ability to "manually manage songs and playlists" with the iPod Shuffle. What this means is that Apple has decided that Shuffle users can't be trusted, and that Apple must do the management for these users. Of course, as a philosophy, that may be well and good if in fact the management rules comply with basic consumer expectations. Unfortunately, Apple's implementation doesn't just fall short, it falls flat on its face.

I loaded up my Shuffle before I started out on our recent Park City vacation. I did so using iTunes on my laptop. One day while at the hotel, the Shuffle battery became completely drained. No problem - I simply plugged it into my laptop to charge it. iTunes fires up, tells me it can't find the songs in my music library (since my music files are all back at home on my mp3 file server mapped locally on my laptop as a network drive) and then commences to "auto-update" my iPod Shuffle by removing all the songs on the Shuffle that it can't find in the library (songs which simply can't be accessed because I was not plugged into my home network). Needles to say, my Shuffle was completely erased - all because I wanted to charge the thing away from home. And there is no way to turn the "auto-update" off in iTunes when iTunes is interfacing with an iPod Shuffle, because there is no "manually manage my songs and playlists" option for the iPod Shuffle in iTunes... because Apple explicitly disabled it.

Well, my initial reaction upon noticing that my iPod was just erased by iTunes was just dumbfounded disbelief. Because I was away from home, I did not have access to my mp3 file server, and thus I could not repopulate my Shuffle with any songs. The empty Shuffle became useless for the remainder of the trip. How is it that Apple, a company which supposedly prides itself on improving the user experience could design an interface that is not just unfriendly, but aggressively unfriendly? Can an Apple fan out there cite any other "digital jukebox" on the market that will completely wipe clean an mp3 device when it is plugged in... before any user intervention can prevent the action? I doubt it, iTunes is alone in this regard.

I just now verified the same behavior exists with the recently released iTunes 5. I fired up iTunes, added some songs to the library, transferred the songs to the iPod Shuffle, unplugged the Shuffle, and then unplugged my network cable. When I re-establish the connection between my Shuffle to iTunes guess what happens? That's right, my iPod is erased because the network connection to my mp3 file server is down. Happy happy joy joy!

I can't imagine that my network setup is uncommon. I know many other folks who keep important files such as mp3s, pictures, and documents on home network file servers. A file server (in my case at least) that is backed up on two separate spindles as a preventative measure against catastrophic data loss. Furthermore, I have almost 30 GB of mp3 audio files. My laptop hard drive is 12 GB. Do the math.

Fortunately, I discovered that a Winamp plugin, ml_ipod, exists to allow me to manage my iPod independently of iTunes. And it's everything iTunes should have been. So if you buy an iPod Shuffle, do yourself a favor... install Winamp and the ml_ipod plugin (both free) and throw the iTunes installation CD into the garbage (that's where it belongs).

Product Review: iPod Shuffle
Kristy got me the 512 MB iPod Shuffle for my birthday last month. I've been using it now for nearly 4 weeks. I primarily use it while jogging and while working out at the gym (lifting weights, etc). The small form factor, the lanyard, and the fact that it weighs less than an ounce are all major plusses. I can tuck it underneath my shirt and it never gets in the way. I wish it did have some kind of manual "lock" switch to prevent unintended control selections (my last mp3 player, the Rio500, had this - it was quite handy).

The one major problem with the iPod Shuffle is that the bundled software, iTunes, is garbage. Fortunately, a very handy Winamp plugin, ml_ipod, exists to allow me to manage my iPod without the iTunes-induced teeth gnashing. Thank heavens for open source (and, yes, I already sent my donation to the author of ml_iPod).

Product Review: Jetpak Floaters
Berkeley and Elizabeth have been taking swimming lessons together since July. The technique used by the instructor involves the use of flotation belts. The belts are attached to three squares made of a styrofoam-like substance and measure about 6" square by 1" thick. Two of the three squares are removable.

When Berkeley started his swimming lessons, one belt with three squares was fastened around his back, and another belt with two squares was fastened around his stomach. With the aid of the belt's buoyancy, Berkeley learned how to kick to move himself around the pool. Not long after, one square from the stomach was removed. The more buoyant belt still fastened around his back made his body to lean forward and forced him to use his arms to keep his face from submerging. This is how he learned to doggie paddle.

Eventually the entire front flotation belt was removed from his stomach. This forced him to make his arms (and legs) work harder. At the same time, he was being encouraged to take longer strokes with his arms and "pull" through the water with his hands. While on vacation here in Park City, we took one square of his back, leaving him with just two total. This impelled him to work even harder with his arms, but he has been responding quite well and getting stronger every day.

I highly recommend the flotation belt (see link above to order on-line).

Product Review: Chariot Carriers Cougar 2 Child Carrier
I tried out the jogging stroller today that the kids got me for my birthday: the Chariot Cougar 2 Child Carrier with Jogging Kit, (which Kristy purchased from the local REI). As I mentioned previously (see here and here), I have been taking the kids out for jogs quite regularly (almost daily)... albeit in a stroller (the Peg Perego Aria Twin) that is not specifically designed for jogging.

I didn't shy away from putting the new stroller through its paces. I selected a few horse trails that are located in our neighborhood and set out for a short 2-mile jog. These trails have been all but impossible for the other stroller to navigate (the Peg Perego only really functions well on clean asphalt or concrete), but the Chariot gobbled the trails up and never showed any sign of getting stuck in the loose dirt, high weeds, or rocky terrain. I was actually quite amazed at how well (and effortlessly) the stroller performed.

Summary: Remarkably efficient; performed outstandingly well on both road and trail settings (but performance comes at quite a price... almost $500)

(Update Sun Aug 28 19:03:15 PDT 2005 // fixed some grammatical errors)

Product Review: l'Occitane Cade After Shave Balm
After having blogged about my recent switch in razors, I would be remiss if I didn't write up something on my favorite after shave balm.

Shaving isn't exactly the most pleasant experience for a man's face. And my face seems to be more sensitive than some. Because of this, I have always required the use of after shave balm. I've tried most (if not all) of the alcohol-free supermarket products (if you eliminate the products that contain alcohol, there aren't that many to choose from), but none of the supermarket brands really seem to do very well.

A couple of years ago (for Father's Day I think) my wife got me a l'Occitane Shaving gift pack that included the Cade After Shave Balm and the Cade Shaving Cream. The Cade Shaving Cream is worthless (in my humble opinion), but the Cade After Shave Balm is hands-down the best after shave balm I have ever tried. There is simply no comparison between it and anything you can buy at a supermarket or drugstore. It is well worth the premium paid (and then some). The 2.5 ounce size doesn't seem like it is very big, but I've been using the same 2.5 ounce tube for more than 2 years. A little goes a long way.

Summary: The best after shave balm on the market.

Product Review: Gillette Sensor Excel
About a month ago I switched razors from the Schick Tracer FX to the Gillette Sensor Excel. This is probably the first time I've switched to a different razor in about 15+ years. Seriously. A man's razor preference (blade or electric, and what brand) is probably closely akin to a woman's preference in skincare (or makeup). Kristy has been a Lancôme user for as long as I can remember, and I have always shaved with a Schick Tracer. That - there's what it is.

Recently, I had been noticing that the replacement cartridges for the Schick Tracer have become harder and harder to find. There are plenty of newer three-blade (and four-blade) razor cartridges to choose from, but I have never been taken in by the marketing hype for the three (and four) blade razors. Two is good enough methinks. One day at Costco, I was intrigued to find that the Gillette Sensor Excel (two-blade) cartridges were stocked... some twenty replacement cartridges for less than $20 (anything under $1/cartridge is a pretty good deal).

So I decided to get a Sensor razor at a local drug store and give it a try. If it was as good or better than the Tracer then I would just drop the Tracer and go with the Sensor... pretty much solely based on the fact that the replacement cartridges seemed to be more readily available (and at bulk prices). I didn't even think to switch to an electric; I'm a razor guy.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Gillette Sensor Excel is a much better razor; in fact, it is quite superior to the Schick Tracer. The shave is much closer and the blades seem sharper and more durable. Where the Tracer blades would last 2 (maybe 3) shaves, the Sensor blades seem to shave exceptionally well for 6 or 7 shaves. Bonus. I'm hooked.

Summary: A extremeley good shave, give it a try.

Product Review: Hartmann Luggage
About five years ago, I bought Kristy a couple of pieces of Hartmann Luggage (from their "Cognac Wings" collection"). The luggage is very attractive and quite well made (if not a bit pricey). Highly recommended.

On one of our recent trips, one of the feet of her wheeled garment bag was sheared off somehow, leaving only a small part of the shaft and the screw that held the foot in place. I didn't notice it until during our trip to Tahiti (in March). Recently, I went back to the place where I bought the luggage and asked if they sold a replacement part. No, they said, call Hartmann and they will ask you to ship the piece of luggage to them, fix it, and ship it back... which they implied would be at my own expense. They gave me the number and basically said... good luck.

Well, I wasn't very pleased about the result of my visit and the implied inconvenience (and additional cost) that the prospect of fixing this piece of luggage may entail. After all, I can fix the thing myself if I can just get the right part.

So, yesterday, I called up the Hartmann customer service line with very low expectations indeed. But after I explained the situation to the customer service representative, much to my surprise, I was informed that I would be over-nighted not one, but two, new feet... at their expense. Nice.