High Praise

 Someone from my past reached out to me recently and gave me the most genuine, if head swelling, compliment.  I've previously written about her in the epic, thrilling posts The Reference Fuck, and Cum On My Tits, A Love Story.  We were talking the other night and were both feeling a bit frisky, so there was a bit of play.  I directed her to touch herself in the ways I knew she liked and said horrible things to her.  The compliment came in the chat after.  

She told me that I had taught her more about her body and what brings her the most pleasure than she ever could have been able to on her own.  

It was certainly nice to hear, considering I can feel my skills atrophy more by the day, here in Kansas in a pandemic.  Here's hoping you're lucky enough to be learning more about your partner's body, this weekend.

For The Love of Dog

Those who've read my earlier posts know I'm a huge dog lover.  I had dogs growing up, all the way until my marriage ended.  While I haven't had a dog of my own for the past decade, I got my dog fix volunteering at the Richmond SPCA.   If you've read my most recent posts, you know that I've taken in my parents' dog.  Sadie is a catahoula mix and white as the driven snow, with these amazing blue eyes.  And she's quite literally saved me.  

And I get that I sound as though I've discovered something that was obvious to everyone else and should have been obvious to me.  That some readers are making goofy faces and saying 'Duh!'.  Obviously, I'm going to explain, or this would be a pointless entry.

Again, if you've read some of my more recent posts, you know I've had some incredibly challenging times with my parents, recently.  Being an only child, single, and in a strange land, I've been forced to shoulder the burden alone.  While my Iceman mask remains unmelted and I really am quite adept at dealing with things and moving on, I'd be some sort of sociopath (okay, a worse one) to not feel a bit untethered, battered, and alone.

Even before my parents imploded, the solitude imposed by the pandemic had induced mild circling that ultimately leads to the death spiral of mental health.  

Every day, Sadie reminds me what unconditional love feels like and I've smiled more since becoming her daddy than in the previous three years combined.  I've never had a dog who wants nothing more than to be close to me.  To make that easier for her, I bought her a second bed that I put in my office.  Her favorite thing in the world is when I get on the floor with her, so she can snuggle and receive copious amounts of pets.  She's the most affectionate dog I've ever had.  Every time I lean down to pet her, she responds as though I'd been gone for a week, even if it's only been 10 minutes.  As you can see in the picture below, she also considers my doing pushups in my gym downstairs as the perfect opportunity to snuggle.  

At the moment, Sadie is snoring away in her crate, a few feet from my kitchen table, where I'm typing this.  And I wouldn't give her up for the world.

Submission

 I'm blatantly stealing this from another blogger, who discovered it elsewhere, but it was too on point not to share.  

Seven Figure Scam

 Thankfully, almost no one who reads this knows my true identity, which I guess is sort of the purpose here.  That anonymity allows me to share shit that's quite embarrassing.

Ultimately, this one will include a life lesson, followed by a complete rant.  I'm breaking it into two entries to make it less of a hump to read.  Buckle in for a bumpy ride.

My father in a nutshell - really fucking smart, emotionally stunted, and a drunk.  He was a well educated professional and rose from essentially being a clerk up to the C suite.  He and my mother have been in Florida for about a decade, living in their exclusive gated community.  My relationship with him hasn't always been great, due to the second and third trait I listed above.  The last few times I visited, something about him seemed off, as though his mind was losing its sharpness.  But I figured it was because he was drunk most of the time...was it alcohol or the onset of dementia?

About a year ago, I received an email from him indicating he and my mother needed to come live with me, because they were out of money.  It seems he had lost most of his retirement savings in a investment scam around real estate in Turkey.  I got on a plane and found he had just enough to stay in their home.  I also made a point of finding out exactly how he had been scammed and was flabbergasted.  Every bit of 'official' communication came from the common email domains starting in Y and G.  This included the heads of state banks in Turkey and UAE.  Once they hit him once, they kept hitting him with stories about how his money had been found and all he had to do was send even more money to get it back.  And he blindly sent them over $750k.  These fuckers screamed amateur hour.  In one instance, my father asked about an email he supposedly received from the Murat Çetinkaya, the governor for Turkey's central bank.  Aside from it coming from one of the email domains I mentioned, a quick search found that dude had been sacked by Erdogan two months prior.  I couldn't fathom how my father couldn't recognize this shit for what it was, prima facie.  

Anyway, I left from our visit and hit him hard with the message of don't give any more money to these people, which he agreed.  Since then, I'd been asking him regularly if he'd been in communication with the scammers and he promised that he wasn't.  My mother was convinced otherwise and told me so.  But her mental acuity isn't exactly stellar, along with her physical health.  Plus, this was at the beginning of COVID, so I wasn't about to jump on a plane.  Until I got another email about a month ago.  You guessed it, his alcohol induced early dementia self sent what money he had left to the scammers and he was about to be homeless...again.  He wound up giving seven figures to scammers!!!

While the scammers had gotten slightly more sophisticated, they were still amateur hour.  There was an investigator from Interpol on the case, Dustin Scott.  However, our boy Dustin was also communicating via the same G email platform and writing using the exact same syntax / vocabulary as the other goat fuckers.  Oh, and he was also receiving communication from Nuno Matos, the CEO of HSBC UK, you guessed it, same syntax and vocabulary.  Numbnuts sent a statement showing the balance in my father's account.  Except any moron could look at the document and immediately tell it was bullshit.  No bank, outside of perhaps some third world country, puts the CEO's picture on statements.  Even more so, they don't spell his name wrong on said statement.  

So, I jumped on a plane and did what I needed to do.  This may sound callous, but fuck my father.  His dementia is the result of his unwillingness to quit drinking.  I rode him pretty hard, asking him repeatedly in what universe did he think he was going to get his money back by sending them more money.  Going through the communication, the goat fuckers were even trolling him.  One piece of comms from HSBC came from Lisa Simpson.  Oh, they also threw a woman into the mix, who he sent $30k for a diamond ring because he said he loved her.  Now, this is a sensitive topic for me, because a few years ago, my father drunkenly admitted to having a ten year affair with a family friend.  So, my father is essentially a scumbag, on top of a drunken moron.  You may sense some displeasure with this situation on my part.  Well, there's a fuck ton of it.

I'll conclude Part 1 with the life lesson, which is if you suspect one of your family members of dementia, take action.  I should have taken over the finances after the first three quarter of a mill, but a) I figured the fuck tard had learned his lesson and b) he would have fought me tooth and nail.

It's a lovely fucking life, isn't it?

Some Marketing Advice for Online Merchants

Dear Online Merchants,

As a marketing professional and consultant, I'm regularly baffled by what many of you consider as acceptable engagement and retention practices toward your current and prospective customers.  Most are abysmal, which is putting it nicely.

I suggest each of you visit your website and discover for yourself how potentially aggravating most of your sites are.

Lately, I've seen a disturbing trend on suppliers' websites and it pisses me off both as a consumer and marketing professional.  Upon entering their websites, merchants will immediately accost you. Popups that scream 'Sign up for our email newsletter!'  'Chat with an expert now!'  If this is my first visit to your site, in what world would I want to sign up for your newsletter?  I want to know if you have what I want and the garbage you're throwing on my screen makes that act longer than it need be.  If I'm searching for an automatic iguana washer and you only have manual versions, I certainly don't want your newsletter.  What I want is to view a clear, comprehensive site, complete with all of the information for me to consider making a purchase decision.  

If I do need to chat with an expert and you've badgered me to do so, have a damned expert on the other end.  The few times I've actually engaged an 'expert', I've known more about the product than they did, mostly because I've already read the less than complete user manual on your site, which is his only source material.  I've had an expert tell me the product was compatible with an accessory I wanted to use with it, when in fact, it wasn't.  Fortunately, I didn't believe what I was being told, and it ended well.  No thanks to the 'expert'.

Email Engagement

Once someone has consented to receive emails from you, don't make them regret it.  How do you accomplish that goal?  First, let's talk about frequency of engagement.  Start by performing an honest self-assessment of how frequently your customers want or need your product / service.  Is your product a luxury or a necessity?  Do customers frequently make impulse buys of what you offer?  How many other options exist for customers in your product space?  Okay, you got it?  Keep that in the back of your mind; we'll return to it later. 

Before we discuss optimal frequency of email engagement, let's go over the different types of email you'll consider sending.  First are the emails that do nothing other than remind customers you exist and sell things they said they were interested in.  There's no need to share anything particularly earth shattering in  the 'hey, we're here' emails.  It's a free pass to lack exciting content.  But don't do that.  If a contact has consented to receive email marketing from you, they should feel as though opening your email was time well spent.  

The second type of email is the announcement.  This can be a new product, a sale, a new service, free donuts, etc.  Information on how to get the most out of your product is a great way to engage, too.  

Let's return to the earlier exercise and using what conclusions you made about your own product or service, let's start with determining how frequently you should remind your contacts that you exist.  Say, how many times per year.  Now, take that number and divide by four.  There is absolutely no reason to remind contacts you exist more than once or twice (at the maximum) per month, unless you've got an effective Covid vaccine.  

Announcements can be as frequently as you have something new to share.  These are the emails where you'd damned well bring some value to the recipient.  That means don't announce you 'Now have iguanas in stock!' if you've never run out of them.   And don't make the mistake of fabricating savings, by portraying something as being on sale, when you're just highlighting your everyday price.

All of this may seem to be common sense, but the number of times I've had to opt out of receiving emails says otherwise.  One of my favorite brands of men's shoes put me on their list, after my making a purchase from them.  They proceeded to send me an email every damned day, reminding me they had shoes, nothing more.  Same with an online seller of liquor.  I received three fucking emails per day, but they couldn't tell me when my order was going to ship.

There's one final type of marketing email to cover.  That's the one that encourages you to give another look at something you'd viewed on their site.  DON'T EVER SEND THIS TYPE OF EMAIL.  Speaking as a consumer, if I had any interest in purchasing that item, I'd already be aware you have it.  Receiving an email of this type serves only to peg my spam meter and often results in my making my purchase from another vendor, who doesn't send me these sorts of communication.  If you're some sort of twisted sociopath and feel you must send this email, offer the recipient some sort of motivation to come back and buy it.  Something like 10% off if you buy this item in the next hour.  The companies I receive these emails from don't offer any inducement for me to return to their site and their emails smell of desperation.  'Please come back and give us money!'

Ultimately, you need to ask yourself one question before sending another email and that is "what value am I bringing to the recipient, when I send them this email?"

I would suggest some of you take the time and effort you expend on spamming inboxes and channel it into creating a world class customer experience.

Sincerely,

SR

Innovation at Plenty of Shit

Plenty of Fish The website has been a previous target of my ire and continues to innovate in ways to raise it.  If I've not previously mentioned it, I was finally able to create an account on the site and not have it deleted fifteen minutes later.  Like other free dating sites, there's now a premium service option, where you pay and receive some sort of benefits.  No clue what they are, since communicating is still free and I don't care enough to investigate.  As usual, I have an opinion and that is those who pay for a free dating site are ripe targets for fleecing.  

One of the new features available to both the fleeced or unfleeced, is the option to check a box that prevents the unfleeced from contacting you.  The site attempts to convince you that they're more serious about finding a partner.  My position is do you really want to date someone who's dim enough to pay for a free site?  And besides, am I really going to pay for a service in the hopes the one person I'm interested will even respond?  Nah.  In any case, I've run across a few who've not unchecked the box and pass them by.  No one's been that irresistible.  That's where the site shows how slimy it's become.

Like every dating site, there's some way to 'like' another user.  You'll receive a little notification someone liked you and they show up in your matches.  Until I hid my profile, I was receiving a growing number of likes from really beautiful women.  I'd click on them and immediately got the pop up saying this member only receives messages from those who've been properly fleeced.  Hmm...something's not quite kosher, but I can't put my finger on it.  LOL

I'm sure you can fill in the blanks from there.  

On a semi-related note, Okey Cupie has updated their site / app again and achieved the pinnacle of making it completely unusable.  No longer can you just do a basic search for people in your area, within an age range.  You're forced to search by interests or some shit.  Oh, and of course, they want to fleece you as well.  Not surprising, considering they're both owned by the same company.

Of course, at this point in time, fleeced or unfleeced, ain't no one worth the risk of infection.

And that's the dating scene in 2020.

Be Very Very Quiet

This entry has zero to do with dating or sex, but it's cool stuff and keeping my shelter in place mind off of dating, sex, and my hatred of the Midwest.

I'll spare you the gory details, but suffice to say one of my work friends is an evil enabler, when it comes to things that go bang.  My current stop on the train to a permanent spot on the government's watch list is Silencer City.

Late last year, I purchased my first silencer.  Cool, right?  For a gun guy it is, so humor me.  What's not so cool is I still can't take it home.  You see, once you've purchased and paid for your adorable tube of quiet, the ATF must still approve that purchase, so, your little black cylinder of joy sits 'in jail' until the that happens, which can be up to a year.  I'm at 188 days, not that I'm keeping track.  (Update:  the total wait time was ultimately 352 days.)I own the silencer and can use it at my dealer's shooting range; I just can't take it home.  Shortly after my second conjugal visit, I discovered that you can legally build your own silencer.  The best part is that the associated ATF approval for that only takes about 30 days.  Well, why didn't you tell me!?

You may be thinking you need your own machine shop to fabricate one of these little gems, but it's amazingly simple.  There are devices called solvent traps, which are tubes that screw onto the end of your barrel during cleaning, and are designed to catch excess solvent and cleaning patches.  They have little dividers and chambers to maximize the amount of material they can hold.  But when you drill a hole through the center of the solvent trap and through the dividers, it becomes a silencer.  There's quite a bit more to it than that, but nothing that can't be done with a drill press and a Dremel.  And like most hobbies, there's a very active online community that you can lean on for advice.  

So, off I went.  I've designed and built two silencers, so far, and am waiting on ATF approval for two more.  God bless the ATF.  Each and every silencer application, officially known as a Form 1, requires a background check, submitting two sets of finger prints, and a $200 tribute to the crown.  Once approved, you receive a tax stamp (it literally is a stamp) for the silencer you want to build.  With that in hand (or in your email), it's time to break out the tools.  Should you drill prior to receiving your stamp, you are committing a felony.

The best part is that if you've done your homework,  you'll wind up with a can that outperforms ones you can buy off the shelf.  That is, if you design for a particular application.  For example, my first silencer was designed to be used solely for subsonic 300 Blackout, and it's damned good.  The loudest thing you hear is the rifle's bolt cycling.  

And now, the Q&A:

Do silencers really work as well as in the movies?  In a word, No.  A silencer will decrease the level of sound created by a gun shot, but it won't eliminate it.  This is particularly true with higher powered rounds, which still require hearing protection, while using a silencer.  Plus, there's the noise of the gun cycling, as I mentioned.  One of the folks I know measured the sound of a bolt cycling at 112 decibels; about as loud as a jackhammer, which is not quiet.

Why would you need a silencer?  I'll admit my primary reason for wanting to own a silencer is because it's fucking cool (for a shooting enthusiast).  I'd be lying through my teeth if I claimed to not to have felt a little James Bond ish, when I threaded a silencer onto a gun, the first few times.  There are also legit benefits to using these devices.  If, heaven forbid, you have to use your gun to defend your home against an intruder, you either suffer permanent hearing loss or use a silencer.  They also protect your hearing, when shooting at the range.  High power rifles are really loud that hearing protection (plugs, muffs) can only do so much; I had a mild ringing in my right ear after a recent session.  A silencer attenuates the sound enough to make them safer; you'll still want to wear hearing protection, though.  

Why would I want to build a own silencer?  Because You.Can.Build.Your.Own.Silencer.  Plus, as I mentioned above, you can frequently achieve better results versus commercial offerings.  They're lighter, too, because we tend to build everything out of titanium.  It may seem unusual, but some people make a hobby out of it.  

Once I finish my last two suppressors, I'll be departing Silencer City.  It's been a fun hobby, but it's not inexpensive.  The can I mentioned above cost me $640, not including the $200 tax stamp.