Some Stuff I Like For a Change
Like a lot of people, I often feel moved to blog when something pisses me off. Which is fine, but it has been pointed out to me on a few (thousand) occasions that I might be a bit too cranky. So I'd like to take a brief time out to talk about some stuff I like. I have no monetary connection to anything I'm discussing here, except that I've spent money on all of it.
My Chromebook: Got this Acer Chromebook I'm writing on two years ago on a Groupon deal for 150 bucks. It has been my primary computer ever since. And it has not slowed down at all. This as compared to the computer that the IT department at my job supplied me with at around the same time. That one, a Dell laptop, has grown almost unbearably sluggish in the two years I've had it. And I don't even have admin privileges, so I can't install anything. The Chromebook won't really work for video editing or music creation, but I don't do any of those anyway. There are pretty robust, though not professional-quality, photo-editing tools available online, but I don't do a ton of photo editing anyway. I now do all my writing on Google Docs, which is pretty much the simple word processor I like that Microsoft Word hasn't been for decades.
Imagine No-Chicken Broth. Yeah, you can make your own vegetable stock, but ain't nobody got time for that. This is great for all your vegetarian soup making needs and a lot of other uses as well--making really tasty rice, for example.
Dorco Razors--O, I have thrown off the shackles of Gillette and gotten some great razors that work just as well at a fraction of the cost! I curse the years I spent buying overpriced razor blades at CVS like a chump.
Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Shaving Soap--I have searched for years for the perfect shaving cream. This is it. With a little water in your hand, it lathers up beautifully and really shields my embarrassingly sensitive skin from irritation. Plus it smells great.
Songza--Nearly everyone I know uses Pandora for their internet radio needs, and nearly everyone I know complains about the repetition and general shittiness of their Pandora stations and how they have to save up the skips and so wind up listening to songs they don't like. Why, why do you suffer when Songza is available? Songza's playlists are assembled by actual humans rather than algorithms, so they're just much better. Imagine a playlist made by somebody who knows a shit ton about music; now imagine that for any kind of music you might be into. They're really really good. They're so good that Google bought Songza for a ton of money just so they could have access to their playlists on Google Music.
Zojirushi Fuzzy Logic Rice Cooker We eat a lot of rice since a member of our family was forced to go gluten free. We had one of those cheap rice cookers, and I just got used to uneven cooking and an occasional burned crust on the bottom. I don't know what fuzzy logic is, and I don't care. I just know that I literally get perfect rice every time with this baby, and it does a great job on steel-cut oats as well.
