My skin gets really dry. I am inside a climate controlled, low-humidity environment for most of the day. I use Badger Balm (reviewed here) during the winter months and have tried several hand lotions (see my negative review of Vaseline’s Intensive Care Total Moisture). Despite my best efforts, sometimes my skin just dries out too much and flakes. During the summer and winter months my face gets particularly bad, as I have the AC or heat cranked, respectively. I needed an exfoliant, but didn’t want to smell like a chick.

Every Man Jack sells grooming supplies for men. They sell everything from body wash to shaving products to skin care products. Target carries a lot of their stuff, and I picked up a five ounce squeezable tube of their mint facial scrub about two months ago for $5. I purchased the mint, as the scent was clean without being overwhelming. There is a non-scented version if you are sensitive to perfumes or don’t want the mint scent to clash with whatever else you wear.

Directions are simple: apply a dime-sized amount of scrub to your face every other day. I do this in the shower before I shave. The grit in the scrub painlessly scours the dry skin off. A quick rinse with water and you’re all set.

I have been really pleased with the Every Man Jack facial scrub. It is inexpensive (I have another two month’s worth of product left), is easy to use, and works. I have found that I develop fewer ingrown hairs or razor burn now that I am using the exfoliant. I think removing the dead, flaky skin from my face and throat helps my razor from getting clogged up as easily.

At five bucks you can’t go wrong with the EMJ scrub.

Two thin men face each other in a dusty street. Residents peer from around corners, atop overturned carts, and through thick window glass. A lone tumbleweed hops down the thoroughfare. No sounds can be heard except for a slight desert breeze. The Arizona sun glares directly overhead, forcing both men to narrow their eyes into slits.

“Draw.”

I rolled two six-sided dice, hoping to earn an advantage over The Accountant™ by scoring a hit before he had a chance to return fire. Unfortunately, I am playing the role of a young cowboy, full of guts but low on experience. I miss.

The Accountant™’s grizzled gunslinging veteran unholsters his Peacemaker and cracks off a shot. He gets a +2 on his combat roll, which allows him to score a hit. I slide my health meter down by one. Three more hits like that and I’m dead.

I don’t know if I should move or keep shooting — the rules don’t allow me to do both — and if I make a break for it and get shot again I’ll definitely be too wounded to win. What would a gunslinger do? I think, rolling the dice in my hand. Stand and fight.

Roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll … I’m dead. But I died with my boots on, and that is what Cowboys: The Way of the Gun is all about.
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I’ve held a concealed carry permit for a dozen years come this August. I have owned a ton of holsters over that time period (see DeSantis Nemesis, Fobus IWB, Fobus E2 Evolution reviews). I have decided there is no one perfect holster for all situations. There is a triangle of comfort, accessibility, and concealment that can never be perfectly balanced. The E2 Evolution holster is king for accessibility and okay for comfort, but not so great on concealment. The Uncle Mike’s nylon belt holster I have for my Glock 27 is super comfortable and has decent accessibility, but if I reach too high with my right hand my piece may show.

I soon realized that concealed carry is a lifestyle as much as it is a means of self-defense. There are certain times that you absolutely, positively do not want anyone to know you are carrying a handgun. It might be for political/social reasons. It might be for work-related reasons. It might be for legal reasons. I bump into the first two on a regular basis. It’s legal for me to carry at work, but against corporate policy. If my piece falls out in the middle of a meeting I’d be fired. I certainly don’t want to lose my job, so what’s a guy to do?

The SmartCarry holster makes a big claim: that their unique holster keeps a weapon concealed and undetectable by anyone. I plunked down about $50 and waited for the postal carrier to arrive.
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Some games are labeled as group games, and some games are REALLY group games. You can have four people in a Cranium game and still have a good time. But there are some games that are only fun with a big group of people — and become even more fun as you pile on more bodies. If you are looking for a game for ten folks or more, Hasbro’s Catch Phrase is about the most fun thing you can do in a group and still keep your clothes on.
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I have 50,000 applications and whatnot open at any given time. Sometimes I want an application to always stay on top of other applications, especially now that I run two monitors. For example, I remotely connect to my file server and put that window on my second monitor. I also keep my AOL Instant Messenger buddy list on that monitor. My buddy list gets hidden any time I “focus” on the remote desktop window. How could I keep the buddy list on top at all times?

Enter DeskPins. DeskPins is a free Windows application that allows you to “top” any window of any application. I soon found other windows I wanted to keep on top of everything else, like video Skype conversations with Stilts, or Winamp when placed on my secondary display.

The application is easy to use: just click on the DeskPins icon and then click on the title bar of the program you want to pin. You can unpin the program by clicking on the “pin” icon in the title bar. You can also set up rules to pin programs automatically, but I haven’t found the need to do so.

Give DeskPins a try, you might find uses for the application you didn’t imagine.

I wrote a review about zombie board game Last Night on Earth this January. I praised the production value of the game, but disliked the ambiguity of the rules and felt that the humans were very over-powered. I found the humans to be unstoppable with their fast movement and higher combat rolls. Even if a zombie player could corner them, it was nearly impossible to hurt a human, let alone kill them.

The good thing about a blog is that people eventually find out when you bitch about stuff. A few people responded to my negative post about LNoE and suggested I was playing it wrong. Despite their efforts explain it, or say that the game was really slanted towards the zombies, I kept my nose pinched shut and shelved the game for about four months.

Luckily, my friend The Accountant™ was in town and we gave LNoE another try. We read the rules for EVERYTHING, even if we felt like we already had a grip on what to do.

Turns out I was wrong on a very fundamental but game-changing issue: humans roll, but do not add their 2D6 combat dice. They just choose the highest die. G Ramon Gomez tried to tell me, but it bounced off of my thick skull. Sorry Ramon, you were right.

Suddenly the game became a challenge. Humans weren’t wading into zombies unarmed or searching a two-space building while five zombies were knocking outside. That isn’t to say the humans were defenseless; The Accountant™ stumbled upon a nasty combo that allowed one of the characters to roll four combat dice: one for the chainsaw, and one for a hero event card that also killed zombies any time she won instead of when doubles were rolled. The headshot: she was also “lucky,” and could make a zombie player re-roll any one die. I attacked her with about ten zombies and she killed them all without a single bite.

The rules are still unclear in parts, particularly for some scenarios such as the Manor. We decided to draw a different scenario altogether after trying to discern a particular scenario rule. This game needs a real FAQ, forum, or examples of combat, none of which Flying Frog has readily available.

I liked playing LNoE so much that I am considering buying their Growing Hunger expansion. Now if I just had a large enough tabletop gaming group to play it consistently ….

I did something today I have never done in over fifteen years of using the World Wide Web. I bought a Web browser. I can’t believe it, either.
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Gather ’round, and listen to ol’ DrFaulken talk about the biggest piece of crap he’s ever had the displeasure of buying.

A GPS should do the following things:

1. Get you from point A to point B according to your preferences.
2. Quickly receive a GPS signal.
3. Be accurate.
4. Contain current maps and points of interest (POI) relevant to time of manufacture. I don’t expect a GPS unit made in 2003 to ship with current maps, for example.

I really liked my Garmin i5 but there were a few extra features I was looking for that my trusty car-mounted GPS lacked:

• Handheld and portable. I wanted to have a GPS that I could take with me once I left my car (or motorcycle). I get lost easily, and as such don’t venture out on foot once I reach my destination. I hoped a handheld unit would change that a little.
• Touch screen. It’s 2008. I didn’t mind the i5 not having a touch screen, but if I am going to buy a current-gen GPS device I want it to have a few more bells and whistles.

The Navigon 2100 did a great job at being portable, but as far as all of my other criteria? Hand me a compass, please. And I don’t even know how to fucking use one of those.
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I follow a simple phrase about motorcycle safety equipment: “All the Gear, All the Time.” That means protective gloves, boots, pants, jacket and of course a helmet. The difficult thing about ATGATT — besides being getting funny looks in public — is that the comfort and performance of your gear can totally make or break a ride.

I wear leather gear as often as possible. It has the greatest abrasion resistance out of the three material types used in safety gear (leather, textile, and mesh). The problem with wearing leather is that it isn’t great in the cold, and sucks when it’s wet. The protective properties aren’t affected, but wet leather is cold, heavy leather. Between getting stuck in a torrential downpour coming home on a trip and freezing my ass off during the winter I started looking at textile gear.

Most protective textile gear is waterproof and are equipped with a removable insulated liner. They feature body armor of varying degrees. The trick would be to find something that kept me dry, kept me warm, and kept me safe, without busting the bank.
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In an effort to expand my collection of board games that look really cool but we never actually play, I purchased Monsters Menace America from Tanga.com in December of 2006. It so intrigued my friends that I’ve only played it three times so far. I kept trying to push it on them, but they wanted to play Settlers of Catan, Pecking Order, Magic: the Gathering, or any host of other games. Even Hoity Toity got a nod over MmA.

Sometimes life tries to give you omens and portents. STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME, PLAY SOME OTHER SHITTY GAME INSTEAD!! But most times, I just don’t listen.
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