Guy Stuff at Guys Clubhouse

I’ve been seeing the commercials for “Dove Men+Care” lately and have to wonder what they were thinking. I gather they must be competing with Axe, but am I the only guy that sees a flaw in the marketing here? I have to wonder if they listen to the guys working there as much as the women. Did they survey men before the launch of this line? Not properly if they wanted to make a bunch of money. Here’s how Guys Clubhouse would have done things.

• Guy sits at table across from Dove surveyor
• Surveyor pulls out two beer bottles
• One bottle is labeled Dove. The other Hawk ( for example )
• Guy is asked to taste test both
• Surveyor records which bottle guy reaches for first

I promise you, it won’t be the Dove bottle. I think you see what I mean here. Start a new company, give it a manly name, then at the bottom of the bottle in finer print write “Owned by Dove”. I have no idea what ” Men + Care ” is about. I would get “Care for Men”, or even “Man Care” maybe, but “Men + Care”, I know it’s to mean the same, but I just don’t get it. And please, take the picture of the dove off the bottle too. Geeze! Any man knows that when your standing in an aisle full of strange new male products, and there’s one with “Dove” at the top and another with “Axe” at the top, you’re walking out of there with the Axe!  Dove is a great brand name and product. The marketing is clearly for wives not guys though. Which is fine if your married and don’t shop I guess.

Well, what a waste of time that was. 20 minutes of my life shot all to hell never to be regained.
He spent 5 minutes talking about the spill then tried to simply distract everyone with talk of “new energy”. How about telling the people what the cleanup plan is or will be. He put a 6 month moratorium on deep water drilling. I’d think it would be a one or two year moratorium considering the damage done. Even the space shuttle was grounded for a couple of years and that wasn’t half the disaster this has become! Drilling will resume long before this mess is cleaned up. Thank the lord I don’t live in that country.

After reading Opera had released a  new beta last Thursday and it was reported to be  super fast, I had to download and try it. I’ve always thought Opera to be an incredible browser and people, this beta is a rocket!!  Hold on, let me backup  for a second.

I used Opera for about a year. ( see my previous post here )   I loved my Opera. I think it’s fantastic the way the email has been integrated. The security features are good.  The interface is easy enough and skinning  is simple ( although some cooler skins would be nice ). I could go on for an hour about why I liked that program,  but let’s get to the meat of things here.  Opera seemed to get slower and slower with every update. When we updated to 10.10, it became what we considered unusable. Yes, of course it was usable. But for us guys, needing instant gratification, it was over. I changed to firefox. It is faster than Opera 10.10, but other than that, it doesn’t really excite me. Which brings me back to  Opera 10.50 beta.

It was very unstable as is to be expected with a new beta. And I only used it for a short time because when I tried to skin it, well, let’s say it didn’t like it. But holly sh..t, it was fast. I mean, the fastest I HAVE EVER  SEEN! I’m not sure the average computer user would want to download this right now, and if you do, I’d say try it without the skins.  But I am very excited after taking this for a spin. Going from something so slow to this really blew me away. In a few months, I’ll be putting Firefox to bed, and once again be using the best Browser!! Opera.

Here’s the new layout with the L shaped table. Notice what a great job I did on on the wall behind. That’s Real soft wood news print! I’m just playing with the wiring at the moment. I’m just using 2 transformers instead of a nice expensive power supply. So, I’ve tapped  into the track 3 times so far ( cut the track in 3 , each section powered separately to reduce resistance.) (continue reading…)

I started Building a race track this week.  First on the list was the table.  I wanted to make it a good one as we’re going to have scenery and make this a permanent addition to the cave. We used 1/2″ plywood, 2×4’s for the framing and 4×4’s for the legs.  The table is 4′x12′ with a 3′wide 4′ long extension making it a big L shape. The extension was an afterthought because I have 75′ of track and the table was to crowded. I used a program called “slotcar manager” for the original layout that I ended up changing. This will only be 2 lanes because I have no friends!! At the end of this stage the first layout was done and the wiring roughed in. I’ll have that wall covered soon. We’re just getting started on a big project here. Stay tuned.

first track layout

Well, crap. After using Opera for a year now, I’m afraid I’ll have to say good by to it for a time.  Not that I don’t like it, in fact I love it! But after the last few updates it has  simply gotten to slow. For some reason, it insist on running my CPU up to 70 and 100%.  Now, my computer is not new, granted, but I don’t think a p4 with 2 gigs of ram and a 3GHz processor should be subjected to that.  I was getting aggravated with it a bit for the last couple of months but today was it. I can’t even watch a vid on youtube anymore with out it freezing up on me and my CPU winding out to 100%.  The program is great! I love having my email integrated with my Browser, and the wand feature to log into my stuff is great! I’ve read the forums and sad to say, I’m not the only one having this trouble. So, I’ll have to say good by for now, but really look forward to coming back to it when they get it right.  In fact, if you have a new computer, I highly recommend you try it just for fun.  You may have better luck than I did.