Good Stuff

Ski Reality

2009-08-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

You know how a new car depreciates the moment you drive it off the lot? And how you can save a bundle by buying a low miles car? Really, the same thing happens with skis. New ones are crazy expensive. Powder7.com makes lightly used demos available to you at a small fraction of the "R" word--retail. Their cost to ship--$29.95--is very reasonable, or, if you live in, or can swing by, Lakewood, Colorado, you can pick your skis up and save the shipping. I just acquired some Dynastar Legend 8000s from them; Jordan promptly answered my email asking for recommendations.

Gun Dog Door

2007-12-02T13:46:00.000-08:00

Thrilling name, eh? Only thing better might be "Top Gun Dog Door." And maybe this is. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, perhaps you have "Old dogs/New dogs/Lame dogs/Crude dogs" and maybe that crew has not been able to master dog doors you've tried, or maybe they have destroyed flimsy plastic frames. Or the racket they make going through the door may have caused you to question whether you were really getting a net benefit. Well, the doors of gundoghousedoor.com may be the solution to your problems. They are built to withstand a Riot on Dog Cell Block 13, and are easy to install and quiet in operation. Photo shows Nellie the basset busting loose. (All my dogs are thrilled to be considered "gun dogs.") One caution: the tolerances between the flap and the frame, while acceptable, are not as close as the web site might lead you to believe.

Work on Surviving the Apocalypse: Minimalist Getting off the Grid

2006-10-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

You've heard about "getting off the grid," which has always suggested massive arrays of some capital-intensive thing like photovoltaic cells or wind farms. But there is a simple, elegant, inexpensive way to do minimalist grid-evasion. How about a small, light, well-made radio that can run--a long time--on a few turns of a hand crank that also powers a built-in flashlight, emergency blinker, and siren, and also charges cell phones? The sound is remarkably rich, volume impressive, and there are a ton of cool case options. LL Bean

Work on Your Hair: Robocut

2006-05-05T16:23:00.000-07:00

I think infomercials are great: they linger in the memory even better than a Werner Herzog film. For many years I have been haunted by: 1) moronic hair cuttists who ask you all kinds of questions and then ignore the answers. My favorite is "How do you want the back?" I have never seen the back, thank you very much. And even a cuttist to whom you return will ask the questions again, and who knows if they will do as well as they have previously. 2) an infomercial for Robocut.

This, so the story goes, is the brainchild of an HP engineer who had my kind of complaints. It involves whirring blades (!) that are kept a strict distance away from your scalp and brain pan by plastic attachments. Hair is drawn up to the whirring blades by a vacuum cleaner (I could not make this up) and then cut hair is drawn into the vacuum cleaner. It is claimed that any cut is possible; Reality Man can only vouch for the "all one length" cut, which can be achieved in a minute or less. Hahahahahahaha. The picture is of the way the unit over my toilet sees me. (No, I'm not doing that. The bouffant look is courtesy of the air drying provided by my new electric scooter, about which, more, later, probably in a different place.) The cost is probably comparable to a couple trips to the cuttist, with tip. The savings in time and aggravation: priceless.

Work on Your Pet: Boomerang Tags

2006-05-05T15:59:00.000-07:00

You may enjoy "driving" the pet tag engraving machines at the big box pet stores, but beyond immediate gratification, what have you got? A thinly-engraved, thin tag of some metal or other that quickly either becomes unreadable or just plain tears off. Give Boomerang Tags a try. Choose from a variety of sizes, materials, colors, and shapes--I chose medium red plastic bones, and they're cool, very easily readable, and, we're told, unbreakable. The price you pay--very reasonable--includes postage, and the tags arrive in a few days.

Work on Working on Other Good Stuff Web Sites: Uncrate.com

2006-04-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you'll stay loyal to Reality Man, but once you've checked out Uncrate.com, you'll probably cheat on me a bit. More of a consumerist thing, they openly admit they're out to show you cool ways to blow your rent money. But you'll always be true to me, baby, in your fashion--won't you?

Work on Your Body: Cross Terrain Skis

2006-02-24T12:39:00.000-08:00

You weren't expecting that one, were you? But you do cross country ski, don't you? And you have been...inconvenienced, shall we say...by the inability of your double cambered skis, however edged--think Fischer Europa 99s--to turn--on hard pack or powder--control your speed, do anything? Well, the New Age is here: Alpina Cross Terrain skis. They're fat, steel-edged, with as much side cut as a super model, and about 3/4 of their bottoms are fish scaled for climbing without fussing with skins or wax. They also are on the short side: mine are 168s, I think. Team them up with Voile Heavy-Duty Mountaineer Bindings and a three pin boot with some authority--say Rossignol BC x9--and get ready for an experience that combines the religious with the self-confidence of Donald Trump. You'll turn and brake with authority and precision, and you probably will not miss the skinny double cambered guys in any situation. And, once again, you're almost sure to pay less than Reality Man.

Work on Your Head: Reading Glasses

2006-01-23T15:41:00.000-08:00

If you're like me--and you aren't--reading glasses have gone from being an amusing intimation of mortality to an absolute necessity--crippling not to have. You're probably also not like me in stuffing them into the front pockets of pants. Many a cheap pair has died this way. But expensive pairs are, well, expensive--and then you have to take care of them better and grieve their loss, when they, like sunglasses, ride off into the sunset. But going into your local discount--or even book--store for readers has possibly left you feeling faint and nauseated. Allow American Reading Glasses to come into focus. Four pairs of black horn rims to make Elvis Costello weak with envy for $12.00--that's no misprint--including postage. You will probably pass over the lifetime guarantee offered for merely paying $3.99 p&h for a broken pair as being infra dig. (I'm trying out a badge-holder from a trade show as an alternative to the in-the-pants approach. Stay tuned.)

Work on Your Head: Music Guru

2005-12-28T16:09:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you are so deeply into your crib, and your head, that you rarely, for example, go out or listen to the radio, or talk to anyone, or.... Good news.... The folks at www.pandora.com do, or, at least, did at one time. They compiled a massive database of music, and classified it a bunch of ways, and, if you input an artist or a song, they will play complementary music, and alter their selections based on your feedback. So, no need to change your ways. It's the answer to the Jeopardy music clue: "Jimi Hendrix and Allman Brothers." Answer: "Who are two artists on the 'Lou Reed' pandora music channel?"

Day Trading: In and Out in a Jiffy

2005-05-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

The problems with most day trading systems are legion:

They're too complex
They require too much care and feeding
Who knows when or if you'll get a signal?
You have to stay in and sweat for hours
It's hard to know when to pull the trigger (or the plug) or get out

You may be able to think of others. The Sixty Minute Trader is full of straight talk for those who would like to make an excellent living trading the first sixty minutes (probably just a handful of them, actually) of regular trading hours. I haven't seen the ideas presented anywhere else, and, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I've looked at (and paid for) a lot of other systems.

Work On Your Crib: Spin Drying

2005-05-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

Well, you don't drive a Hummer, right, but you still dry your clothes with a dinosaur. That's right, you take out a laundry load sodden with water, soap, and minerals and then throw fossil fuels at it to get it to dry. Spin-x spins that load at 3,300 rpm (compared with your washer's 500), at a very small energy cost, and then your dryer sails quickly through the moisture that's left--and much of the soap and minerals are gone, too. I got mine when nothing but the electric dryer that came with my crib would fit through the door. Maybe also the solution for those who are sensitive to soap residue.

Work On Your Body: Back Hair

2005-05-14T11:07:00.000-07:00

Either this is, or it isn't, an aesthetic judgment for you or someone you know; Good Stuff sometimes deals with aesthetics, but we're not touching this one. If it is an issue, Razorba is a very inexpensive, simple, effective, non-medical or -chemical, do-it-yourself in 5 minutes per week or less solution.

Work On Your Dog: Gentle Leader

2005-05-13T11:05:00.000-07:00

If your dog is a puller (if!), it is counterproductive to use an ordinary collar, or even a choke chain or those medieval things with spikes. When the dog pulls, it chokes/hurts and the dog pulls even harder. With a Gentle Leader (known generically as a head collar), there is no choking. When the dog pulls, it turns the dog's head, the dog doesn't like it, and shortly--with a little help from you--the dog trains itself not to pull. My dogs are not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, and they both learned within 20-30 minutes. It makes all the difference in walking and running with them. Your dog's ability to eat, drink, defend itself, bark, etc. is not affected.

Work On Your Crib: Reasonable Security

2005-05-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

Reality Man has to admit, with chagrin, that five years ago when he moved into his current crib he allowed a security system salesman to call on him and sell him a three year contract, at $30/month, for security monitoring--with a security system thrown in for "free." The security system is fine--fairly cool, even--but can be had in 2005 for a couple of hundred dollars. At least I've discovered Nextalarm.com, which provides monitoring for $14.95/month, $8.95 if you sign up for a year (refunds prorated at the $14.95 rate.)

Work On Your Crib: Protect Your Computer

2005-05-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

Much has been made, properly, of such threats to your computer as spyware, adware, viruses, and people glomming onto your Wi-Fi. Less often mentioned is actual theft of the computer, which is obviously made more of a risk by the fact that your laptop typically has to take a little trip on its own at airport security. The Internet has shown its special worth in many applications: stock trading disintermediation (despite my own mixed results), computer dating (ditto), etc. I discovered recently from an article in the New York Times that there is another excellent use: allowing your purloined computer to stealthily email its location when it is connected to the Internet. PCPhoneHome

Work On Your Head: Fire Your Newspaper

2005-05-02T21:08:00.000-07:00

I went newspaper-free during this last year, and it has been a change for the better. Recycling is better than nothing, but there has to be a waste of resources there. You've got to spend energy to turn old paper into new paper, and the new paper is only partly old paper; there's no way that printing newspapers is not a net user of trees. I have no more back-breaking humping of newspapers to the curb (let's not even talk about the time they spent on the floor before making it to the recycling bin.) Your local newspaper, like mine, is probably not much more thought-provoking than your local TV news, but it's probably also on-line, if you've got to have it. (You can probably even, if you're perverse, pay to have it formatted like the paper version!) But your on-line alternatives are pretty much limitless: The New York Times, Google News, CNN, the list goes on. And most comic strips are available on-line somewhere. Strangely, I found one thing that was hard to do without or replace was VCR Plus codes, but here is a calculator.

Work On Your Spirit: Heifer International

2005-05-02T17:03:00.000-07:00

It's graduation time again. What do you give the graduate who already has everything? What gift will not be lost, broken, the wrong size, meaningless? How about one that honors the graduate's awareness that there are millions less fortunate? Heifer International fights world hunger and poverty by providing working and food-producing animals to needy people. I believe I'm giving a goat this year.

Work On Your Head: Magnatune

2005-05-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

First of all, if you're not taking advantage of Internet radio, you're missing a lot. There's amazing variety--and variations in quality--out there. Most players, including iTunes, will get you started with a large list of stations. One worth checking out is Magnatune, which is the product of some interesting premises: that radio is typically boring, that CDs cost too much, and that artists usually are screwed by even the most ethical recording labels.

Work On Your Crib: Design Within Reach

2005-05-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

This site is the very essence of cool. Whatever you have been saving your money for, it has been wrong. Good design will get you through times of no dope better than dope will get you through times of no good design. Design Within Reach

Work On Your Crib: Hot Water on Demand

2005-05-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

The US is one of the few countries that still typically heats hot water all the time, whether we need it or not. You don't leave your car running all night so that you can use it in the morning, do you? It makes much more sense to heat water only when you need it for as long as you need it. So obviously you save energy but added benefits include: the water never changes temperature and you never run out. I was an early adopter of tankless hot water technology and it has only gotten better and more mature. Endless hot water

Work On Your Body: Totalimmersion.net

2005-05-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

Swimming is real joint-friendly exercise for the ageing boomer. And no exercise will put your bod more on the line for inspection: instant motivation to work on it. Totalimmersion.net speaks of the "practice" of "mindful" swimming: it really is a kind of Zen exercise. I imagine long, dreamy strokes instead of counting sheep to sleep. No other source ever gave me any suggestions as to what to do with my hands while swimming. There are short, free videos on the site, and the longer videos for sale are worth checking out (from your library, perhaps). I have also, only recently, been able to rid my mind of the attachment to avoiding seeming like a dork by avoiding the drills.

Work On Your Body: Total Gym

2005-05-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

You've seen Chuck and Christie advertise this--but you should not be unduly prejudiced. The gym is sturdy--heavy, actually--and totally utilitarian. It uses your own body weight as the resistance to build muscle. Like any exercise system, it won't do anything for you unless you use it. If you're serious about developing strength and provocative shape--and, for all I know, Christie may be exactly right when she enthuses about "stretching"--this is probably the best price-performer you can buy. Total Gym 1500

Work On Your Crib: Receive Calls While You Surf

2005-05-01T19:29:00.000-07:00

You may not know how to pronounce VoIP, or even what it means, but not to worry, CallWave's got you covered. It seems that there is not much that CallWave can't do: notify you that someone is calling when you're online; show you who it is; allow you to listen to the message real time and give you the option of picking up the call--or let you transfer it to your cell phone. If you don't take the call, it takes a message. It's a real boon to dial-up Internet users that allows them to avoid the cost of a second phone line. There are, amazingly, still places in the US that can't get voice mail, and CallWave is very useful instead of, or as a complement to, call-waiting. It has advantages for broadband users as well. There are things it has that I haven't even tried yet, like a toll-free home number.

Work On Your Head: Modest Multi-Media

2005-05-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

Just as you weren't about to drive a Hummer even before gas prices went through the roof, your idea of "home theater" is getting good sound at a good price without having to deploy a gaggle of speakers that resemble Stonehenge. Cambridge SoundWorks has been meeting those criteria for years. Here is a speaker system I use with both my computer and my television. PCWorks Speaker System

Work On Your Head: Day Trading S&P E-Mini

2005-05-01T16:36:00.000-07:00

This is rarefied stuff--you either know what this is about or you don't. However, even if you "know" what this is about, you may not feel like you know what you are doing. So many trading systems are incredibly long, laborious, tedious, and technical. In a very short, clear, and delightful video, Malcolm Robinson teaches how to apply the lessons he learned as a floor trader. And there's the added bonus of "Masterpiece Theater"-type music and Malcolm's British accent. Day Trading the S&P E-mini

Work On Your Head: The Way to Trade

2005-05-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

Despite being "Reality Man," it is the unfortunate case that if I had a nickel for every $1,000 I've spent on trading tools, systems, and publications that failed to meet my expectations or fit my personality I'd probably be able at least to buy 20 minutes of long distance time to make an urgent call for help. One notable exception is John Piper's The Way to Trade. It is absolutely invaluable for its insights into psychology, discipline, money management, stops, and trade entry and exit. The Way to Trade

Work On Your Wrist: Invicta 8926

2005-05-01T15:42:00.000-07:00

You're a player, right, but you're a smart player. For example, you drive a Subaru, not a Hummer, right? And you don't need to sport a Rolex to show your status. The Invicta is as handsome and substantial as a Submariner, at a tiny fraction of the price. I only take mine off in one situation--guess. And one hears Submariner owners order it to get a superior replacement bracelet. Invicta 8926

Work On Your Head: The Release Technique

2005-05-01T14:04:00.000-07:00

I stumbled on this site at a time when I was looking to try to view life more as abundant and full of possibility and less as constrained, limited, and scarce. The technique can, and should, be used continuously, and the more you release, the lighter and better you feel. The Release Technique