My New Shave Schedule:

Old habits die hard but this one I was glad to get rid of which took me a while to. For a number of years, I was required to shave daily and after I became disabled, I kept shaving daily. So one day I decided to wait a couple of days and it made a huge difference for the better. And ever since then, I've been shaving just about every 2 to 3 days. So me doing daily shaves has come to an end:

So from now on, I'll be shaving every 2 to 3 days since I'm no longer required to shave daily. The cartridge razors are doing a phenomenal job for me. Between good prep, using a shave soap & brush, along with this shave schedule, I've been getting phenomenal shaves with zero irritation.

Proraso Green & The Track 2:

Today's shave was great. It's also Friday which means Proraso Friday is in effect. So I went with the modern day classic Proraso Green which has an incredible Menthol & Eucalyptus scent to it which is just what my sinuses needed today. And to finish off today's shave, I went with a nice healthy dose of TN Dickinson's Witch Hazel and then I put the icing on the cake with Pinaud's Osage Rub which puts the post shave feel over the top:

The 1970 Gillette Track 2 was really good. I managed to get a squeaky clean post shave feel in 3 passes. It's been a while since I've used this razor and the blades did slightly tug a bit. So after I finished my shave, I took the Track 2 to my new fire hose strop for 10 passes and then I followed that up with 5 passes on the rough leather and 10 passes on the smooth leather. So that should have more than freshened up the blade that I have on the Track 2. If not, I can always put a new blade on there. It's got quite a lot of shaves on it.

Vision & The Gillette Shield:

Today's shave was great. Sorry for the delay folks, I had to take my mom to the doctor today and we didn't get back till just now. My mom has walking pneumonia. Earlier today I went with Soap Commander which is my top artisan brand of soap and I also went with my personal favorite, "Vision" which has an incredible aqua, amber & mint scent. Then I finished it off with a nice double dose of my "go to" splash and then I went with Soap Commander's matching aftershave balm which adds a touch of menthol to the already over the top post shave feel:

The Gillette Shield was great. I had that sheet of ice post shave feel after just 2 passes. My next shave of the day will probably be on Sunday. I find that shaving less tends to lead to a much better shave experience and almost no irritation occurs when I do.

Derby Shave Stick & The Black Diamond:

Today's shave was good but I have to quit using DE, single edge & straight razors. More on that in a moment. Today I tried 3 new things and all 3 were really good. The first was the Derby Shave Stick. It reminded me of Arko in terms of performance only with a much better scent which is kindly a classic clean soap type of scent. And to finish off today's shave, I paired it with a nice healthy dose of Thayer's Cucumber Witch Hazel which smells like a freshly sliced cucumber:

The other thing that I tried today for the first time was an ILR edge on my black diamond straight razor. It was good but almost deadly which is why I have to say adios to the traditional wet shaving razors. My first pass went extremely well and then things went down hill from that point. My against the grain pass told the same sensitive skin story I've been experiencing over the past few months and it had been 2 days since my last shave. The final pass is what woke me up to a fact that I had been ignoring for the last 6 years which is the side effects from long term anesthesia. My hands started shaking and come really close to being deadly as a result. So unfortunately, I have to quit using DE safety razors, single edges & straight razors and it sucks too.

Lemon Chill & The Fusion:

Today's shave was great. After a nice, hot & relaxing shower, I grabbed Stirling Soaps and their lemon chill scented soap which has incredible lemon meringue pie scent to it. This soap is doing a better job at getting rid of my sinus issues than my cold medicine is. And I finished off today's shave with the matching aftershave balm which is also helping:

I'm too sick to use a DE safety razor or a straight razor so I grabbed my Gillette Fusion which was excellent. I have an extremely close and smooth shave that resembles and feels like a sheet of ice which I got after performing 2 passes. I don't know when my next shave is going to be because I'm still pretty sick even though I've been taking some cold medicine.

The Muhle R41 1st Impressions:

The Muhle R41 is an awesome razor. When you mention or ask someone in wet shaving what's the most aggressive razor you can buy, this specific one is the 1st that gets mentioned and rightfully so. So lets get started. First the packaging is excellent. This razor was made in Germany:

The shave was great but very aggressive. I can feel the blade on my skin. I also don't recommend daily shaving with this specific razor. It's that aggressive:

It's also a 3 piece which is a good thing. I did come with a Muhle branded DE blade but I want keep it in tact so I went with a Feather DE blade:

The instructions and brochures that came with it are mostly in German :

This razor had no problem removing my 4 day old beard. The fit and finish is nothing short of phenomenal and the grip is also excellent. It is some where in between light & medium weight. It's not as light as a bakelite razor is but still weighs less than a DE 89. The price tag starts at around $56 U.S. Dollars depending on where you go. In addition to not shaving daily with this razor, you also don't really need to go against the grain either on your 2nd and final pass. I regret going against the grain on my 2nd pass from now on, I will only do 2 with the grain passes. All in all, I'm glad I bought this razor.

American Blend & The R41:

Today's shave was great. Today I went with Fine Accoutrements and their American Blend scented soap which has an incredible scent to it. The scent is based on YSL Rive Gauche Pour Homme (2003). And to finish off today's shave, I paired it with the matching aftershave splash:

The R41 was really good. 2 passes at the most is all you need. I did make a bit of a mistake and went against the grain on the second pass. The next time I will only do with the grain passes with this razor because it is very aggressive and has no trouble removing any beard.

Mail Call #3 of 3: Muhle R41 & American Blend:

And the last of my mail calls is from Shave Nation Shaving Supplies. I've been craving Fine's American Blend pretty bad as of late so I got the entire matching set and I also ordered the one and only Muhle R41 which is one of the most aggressive DE safety razors you can buy:

A hand written note is always a very nice touch:

This is what I'll be using here in a few minutes. I couldn't be happier with all of these mail calls today.

Mail Call #2 of 3: ILR water stone:

The 2nd mail call of the day is from Imperia La Roccia or as I call it, an ILR which is really cool. I got the 2.5 by 7 inch water stone. Dr. Matt Robins highly recommended this stone and so I finally pounced one and I'm glad that I did. It did come with a slurry stone but it won't see much use because Dr. Matt's technique is under low running water with no slurry :

Unlike other natural stones, this one slows way down with slurry. So I can add this one to my collection and I believe I'm done with water stones.

Mail Call #1 of 3: Tomonagura Strop:

The first of 3 mail calls today is from Keith V. Johnson over at TomoNagura which is on Etsy and it is awesome. I purchased the 2 inch Vintage fire hose strop to keep my straight razors fresh along with my cartridge razors. The penguin was a really cool touch:

It's about 3 inches longer than my 3 inch black leather strop:

Now I'm really digging this part right here. No more hearing and sometimes startling banging noise from a D ring and no more dents in the door either:

Like I said earlier this is one of 3 mail calls and all of them are awesome:

I'm really excited and can't wait to use all of these items.

Retropie Build Revised Edition:

Okay lets try this again. I deleted my previous blog post mainly because I found out that my original app that I was using does indeed work and the reason I wasn't seeing it was because I wasn't connecting it to the web. More on that in a bit. First you need a Raspberry Pi 3 computer which you can get online for about $35 U.S. Dollars. Now to help things along, you can get a kit from Amazon which includes the computer and power supply along with a couple of heat sinks which are needed. You will also need an HDMI cable shown on the left side in the photo below:

You will also need a wired USB controller. The reason I recommend getting a wired controller is that the blue tooth used in some of these wireless controllers aren't recognized by the raspberry pi 3 computer and if you were to pause a game to grab a drink or something, the wireless controllers tend to shut off and the only way to re connect some of them is to re boot the computer. Plus it's been my experience to see this happen with my Xbox 360 which is what led me to get the controller you see below. I got tired of this and went back to the wired controllers. Also, I do recommend avoiding the Playstation 3 & 4 controllers mainly due to the fact that it can be confusing to configure it which you will need to do later on. In my opinion, the Xbox 360 controllers seem to be tailor made for this build. You can use any controller you want as long as it's a USB controller it just seems easier with the wired Xbox controllers:

You will also need a class 10 micro SD card. If you are going to get a lot of emulators & Roms, then I highly recommend spending the money and getting a 64 gigabyte or higher micro SD card. I don't really need a lot of games and/or systems because a lot of my original systems still work. I can still play both Playstation 1 & 2 games on the Playstation 2 and my Sega Dreamcast is solid and still works like it did the very first day I bought it. So all I really needed was a 32 gigabyte micro SD card. ****It must be a class 10, do NOT get anything below that class! **** If you do get one below class 10, your games will have some serious lag time and quite possibly freeze up on you. You may also see some performance issues such as no sound like I did on my preloaded micro SD card that I bought which cost me around $54 U.S. Dollars off EBay. So try to avoid buying a preloaded micro SD card if you can because they tend to use the ones below class 10:

Now after speaking with the game wizard, I found out what exactly I was doing wrong and why the launcher didn't work. Your raspberry pi 3 needs to be connected to the Internet for it to work. Now there is a method you can use that doesn't involve a keyboard but I highly recommend getting one because it's much easier & faster to connect the raspberry pi computer to the web using one. I ended up using a keyboard due to the security features and how I log on to the Internet:

I do recommend getting a case but definitely not the one you see below. It's made by a company called "Old Skool Tools" and the only thing it has going for it is looks and that's where the positive traits end. Very flimsy and extremely difficult to assemble and it's even worse to disassemble it. It cost me $20 U.S. Dollars from Amazon which I regret buying:

Okay next you need to format your micro SD card. I highly recommend using the SD Card Formatter seen below. Here's the link for that specific utility: https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ . It's free to download and pretty simple to use:

Now please pay close attention to the size of your card because if you get one that states it only has so many megabytes, you made need to re size the card which is pretty simple to do. I tend to use my digital camera to format the card and then I re format it again using this tool: 

Once it's been formatted, you will see this below if you have done it correctly:

Now to get your retropie running, you will need an image. I recommend going to this specific web site's download section & downloading that image. Here's the link to that specific web page: http://www.gamewizard.ca/downloads.html . All you need to do is just download it and NOTHING ELSE. Don't extract it, open it or anything. If you do it could corrupt the image and make it impossible to be flashed onto the micro SD card which I'm about to show how to right now. Now I must say that this specific download does take about 20 to 30 minutes but it's definitely worth the wait and then some:

Now to flash the micro SD card, I highly recommend using a tool called Etcher. Here's the link for it: https://etcher.io/ . You can use another utility if you want but why would you when this one is just basically a "point & click" and watch? Here's the desktop short cut seen below:

First you need to open Etcher which is kindly slow to open but not much:

Next you simply select your image that you downloaded earlier:

After that you select the drive you want to burn the image to. Just make sure you pick the correct drive that your micro SD card is located in. And yes this does work with USB flash drives and then you simply click the flash button seen below:

It could take roughly around 5 to 6 minutes for the initial image to flash onto your micro SD card or USB flash drive:

After the image has been flashed, Etcher will automatically validate that the image was flashed correctly onto your device:

Now after Etcher is finished, a warning screen will come up saying that the micro SD card is unreadable and it will ask if you want to format the card. Hit cancel and eject the card, DO NOT FORMAT IT! Windows will automatically eject card and you will need to remove the micro SD card from the adapter and place it into your Raspberry Pi computer with the pins on the card facing up. It will boot up and then re boot a few times and you will see the screen below:

Next you will need to configure the controller you are using which is what you see below:

Next open the WiFi connection and connect the Raspberry Pi 3 computer which is now called Retropie to the Internet. After that, open the game wizard launcher. You will see a black screen and then a user license agreement which you need to accept:

Once you've accepted the user license agreement, you will see a black screen with code running on it briefly and then you will see the screen below. I picked the "full" option which includes both the Roms & the box art for the Roms & systems:

Here's the black screen with the codes running that I mentioned earlier which is normal:

Here's the Emulators which can be seen below. Now some aren't available for various reasons so don't be alarmed. Now please pay attention to the emulators you pick because some of the files use a ton of disc space and you could max out your card very quickly as I found out the hard way and I ended up starting over. Since I have a Dreamcast that still works along with a Playstation 2 that can play both Playstation 1 & 2 games, all I really wanted was the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis/Megadrive, Sega 32X, Atari7800, Super Nintendo, NeoGeo and the Sega Master system. To heck with the Nintendo 64. I wasn't a fan of it back in the day and I've heard a lot of people claim that the performance is awful on Emulation Station so there's no need for me to get a bigger micro SD card which can get expensive. Now if you chose the "Full" option earlier and once you pick an Emulator, the emulator you picked begins to download which is the longest part. Some could take as long as 2 to 3 hours and others could take 2 to 3 minutes. It depends on how big the file is which can be seen next to the emulator selection screen. After the emulator is downloaded, the Roms & box art follow automatically:

Once you've gotten everything you've wanted perform a re boot to save the changes you made. After that you will see the emulators on your screen like the one for the NES seen below. It also tells you how many games are available for that system:

Standard Punch Out for the Nintendo Entertainment System looks phenomenal. I've not tried Mike Tyson's Punch Out yet but I soon will:

I ended up writing down each system and how many games it has so I could determine how many actual games that I do have:

The total I got is 3,176 playable games which is awesome. Nintendo is about to release a Super Nintendo classic edition for about $80 U.S. Dollars which only has 21 games. Even though I spent a little more than that and what I wanted to during this build, you can build this for roughly about the same price as a Super Nintendo Classic Edition. No joke. Nintendo simply doesn't get it. Why would I spend hundreds of dollars on the latest video game & all of the extra content and why would I spend upwards of $300+ dollars on a new system that has almost no video games available for it when I can either buy a retro trio for about $60 dollars or simply do this build here for about $80 to $90 dollars and have a lot more games? Retro Gaming is where it's at. Nintendo, Microsoft & Sony could be making a ton of money off retro gaming machines right now but unfortunately, they're too greedy & ignorant to see what they're missing out on.

Turkish Bath & The Doc:

Today's shave felt great & was great. It ought to be illegal for a shave to feel this good. Today I went with good old Jeeves of Hudson Street and their fabulous Turkish Bath scented soap which has now been re named "Barbershop". The scent is an incredible 1920's style barbershop scent with a heavy top note of premium tobacco. And to finish off this shave, I wanted to add a little sweetness to the scent so I paired it with Stirling Soap's Barbershop aftershave splash:

The doc was great and super comfortable. It also had no problems removing my 4 day old beard that often reminds you of barbed wire. I still had to perform 3 passes but my post shave feel is similar to a sheet of ice which is a good thing. I did get some burning from the aftershave but that's mainly due to the fresh feather blade I put into the razor.

Renewal & The Shield:

Today's shave was great and felt really good. In honor of Carrie Seibert's birthday yesterday, I went with Soap Commander and their fantastic Renewal scented soap. The scent on this is a Floral Fougere' scent. And to finish off this shave, I went with the classic Brut aftershave splash followed by Soap Commander's Renewal aftershave balm:

The Gillette Shield really impressed me today and then some. In another 4 more hours, I would have had 4 days worth of beard growth and in the past, I would have been reaching for a DE or a straight razor. In fact I thought I was going to have to switch before I made the first pass. Once I made that 1st pass and had no issues at all, it went extremely well. I ended up doing 2.5 passes. No burning sensation from the Brut aftershave or the styptic pencil which I use after each shave. Just a slight stinging and that was basically it. It stopped almost as soon as the stinging started.

Proraso Green & The Black Diamond:

Today's shave was phenomenal. I was having some sinus issues this morning so I grabbed Proraso Green which is a modern day classic. The scent on this soap is Menthol & Eucalyptus scent which is awesome. And to put the icing on the cake, I finished it off with Pinaud's Osage Rub which makes the post shave feel even better. This combo is perfect for menthol lovers:

The black diamond was perfect. I used nothing but subtle "X" strokes on my Shapton M5 12K stone and I also built a slurry using my Suehiro 1/3K combo water stone and diluted it 3 times on each one. It worked out great and the edge was super comfortable. I still had to perform 3 passes but I got a more than socially acceptable shave. Not shaving everyday and having a nice sharp blade makes a huge difference with the comfort level & tough beard removal. I'm back in terms of using DE safety razors & straight razors.

Honor & The German 37:

Tonight's shave was phenomenal. After a long day and a nice hot shower, I went with Soap Commander and their fabulous Honor scented soap. The scent is some where between Phoenix Artisan Accoutrement's C.a.D. and Fine's American Blend. And to finish off tonight's shave, I went with the matching aftershave balm which adds a touch of menthol to post shave feel:

I had 3+ days worth of beard growth so there was no way I was going to use a cartridge for tonight's shave. It would have been awful if I did. So I grabbed my RazoRock German 37 instead:

And after 3 passes I have a post shave feel that's similar to a sheet of ice:

^ I'm also happy to report that there was no irritation, acne or rash after the fact. So going longer between shaves does make a difference if you are experiencing these types of skin issues. The German 37 was like a hot knife through butter. With a fresh Perma-Sharp blade, My beard disappeared rather quickly. Now I do have a tiny bit of a burning sensation at the moment but it's already subsiding. So if a rash was going to appear it would have already done so. My next shave will be in a few more days & with a straight razor.

Lemon Chill & The Gillette Turbo:

Today's shave was great. This morning I went with Stirling Soaps and their lemon chill scent which is awesome and is perfect for those who are having sinus issues. The scent reminds me of a fresh made lemon meringue pie for some reason and the menthol chill is excellent. And to finish off this shave, I paired it with their Glacial lemon chill balm:

The Gillette Turbo was great. It didn't have too much trouble going through 2 days worth of beard growth but the end result was a post shave feel that resembles and feels like an ice cube which I got after performing 3 passes. I've also decided to stop shaving daily especially after today's shave. It was comfortable and I had no irritation or skin issues. So when I shave again, I will be trying my DE safety razors again to see what happens.

Al Sapone & The Mach 3:

Today's shave was great. It's been a while since I've used a RazoRock soap so I went with their "Al Sapone" which is incredible. The scent to my nose is an Italian citrus cologne scent. And to finish off today's shave I paired it with Clubman aftershave:

The Mach 3 was great. I managed to get a squeaky clean post shave feel in 3 passes. I got so close that I might not shave tomorrow. I also got my first liquid propane refill of the season today. Thankfully it's priced locked for the year:

$62.18 is all that it cost me for 100 pounds of propane which will last me a month once I light the pilot light on my vent less propane fire place. My total costs for heat this winter is usually around $260 dollars which is much lower than firewood and electric heat will ever be. It's also lower than wood pellets. I will probably end up lighting the pilot light around the end of this month or mid October one. It will depend on how cold it gets.