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Angie’s List?

jen — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:59:10 +0000

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Alright. I know you’ve all seens the ads on TV for them. Angieslist.com is a site you go to review services and professionals in your area that you recommend or to warn others away from. They say they don’t take ads, but there is no way to tell, as they will not let you experience the site at all even in a trial form in anyway shape or form.

You can’t even SEE if your location has any review coverage, or even other members, unless you cough up at least $2 a month to start. There is no free trial. There is no NOTHING but a video of Angie herself telling you how great it is and some walk throughs. None of which is actually letting you experience the site in anyway. To me it just smells of a scam.

So I’m wondering… who runs this site? How big of a sham is it? They make lots of money obviously to have that many ads on tv but it is by tricking millions of people $2 at a time who only want to see a peek if it’s useful for them?

Why can’t they have a two tier system. Let you sign up free and see what in your area is reviewed and so many reviews there are, maybe even a rating, but not see the reviews? Maybe even let you leave reviews, but not read them.This way they can build up the locations they do not have a lot of coverage in thus making it a bigger site, reaching more people, and make it more viable to more paying members.

But no. They close it. Lock it down, make it exclusive and elusive. They make it what most sites in this day and age of open information are leaving behind.

If there is one thing I know from my work on Artfire, you have to give people something for free. It might only be a a few things in order to get them to upgrade, but you have give them function and purpose for coming there to begin with and when they do you reward their loyalty for subscribing with even more function.

The fact Angie’s List has been running this long under this model makes me increasingly more suspicious of it since logically it should have shut down a couple years ago.

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Goodbye comments on old posts!

jen — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:07:46 +0000

Due to being spam bombed out of my mind since i started blogging again, I have turned off comments on any posts older than 1 year, which basically means everything other than the front page since I had a LONGGGGG dry spell.

I hate doing it but I have 800 spams in moderation queue from the last THREE DAYS. I dunno why all of a sudden they have focused on me but DAMN. I get so many REAL comments get mixed into the victims headed to the trash.

So. No more comments on old posts. At least for now.

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Dear Ebay

jen — Sun, 23 May 2010 06:58:18 +0000

I understand my purchase of shoes on your site has renewed your faith in me as a female of the species. Maybe you can tell my mother everything is okay.

I know my prior my purchases have mostly consisted of snowglobes, paddle punches, USB toys, and generally Hong Kong made techy stuff have left this previously in doubt. So excited were you by my seemingly first “grown woman” purchase that you have begun sending me tons of fashion foreward suggestions. I must like shoes, right? I would surely like those Rip off Manolo’s. Or that handbag. Or those dresses.

However, the shoes I bought were Birkenstocks, the very antithesis of high fashion, and they are replacing one of my pairs ( yes I have more than one) that I’ve had for about 8 years.

See? Tim Gunn is fanning himself right now.

Carrie Bradshaw I ain’t, okay? Can we agree to disagree on your suggestions for me, or do I have to buy a power tool to balance it back out?

Thanks again for all the junk I’ve bought.

jen

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Having a garage sale? Here’s some tips…

jen — Sat, 15 May 2010 16:40:22 +0000

Today we went to the a nearby burg, they were having their annual town wide garage sale, it was a madhouse with hundreds and hundreds of yards and parking lots filled with junk. But a few things stand out, and as a avid garage sale I thought I’d make a point to mention.

1: NO ONE WANTS YOUR CLOTHES.
Seriously? You think anyone is going to rifle through a table of your old shirts to see if they are their size? People who do like to buy used clothes like to go to Goodwill, etc where they get washed, hung, organized by size or type and are easy to search. And they usually have something in mind, and your pile of junk ain’t helping them find it. So: DONATE IT. Get it out of the way, hell get a tax write off for it. But forget putting it out at the garage sale. No one freaking wants it, and if they are like us, if we see sale with tables of clothes, we move on. Normally we don’t even slow the car.

2: YOUR STUFF AIN’T WORTH WHAT YOU THINK
You aren’t in a retail business, so no need to slap those up to retail prices, garage sales are for bargains and to make a few bucks (notice I said FEW), make someone happy while keeping it out of a landfill. If it’s worth so much, freaking keep it.

3: IF IT IS BROKE, TRASH IT.
That toaster ain’t gonna fix it self and for $5 I can buy one on a Target clearance that does work. Unless it’s car no will buy it for parts. It’s trash, face it, embrace it. No one is going to buy it to recycle it either, unless it’s a large amount of scrap metal.

4: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BUY A FAT MARKER!
Don’t make signs with ball point pen, or a fine tip sharpie, because honey, no matter how many times you scribble over it it’s virtually invisible driving. Also, try to make sure your damned house number is on the sign! Arrows should at least be as big as a adult hand, and be lines at least as wide as a finger, PLEASE! If you use a colored card stock for your sign stick with BLACK ink! White paper stick with red black and blue. DON’T even TOUCH a highlighter! Get a nice old school chizel tip marker. Get a nice fumey one too, aside from being waterproof (summer rain happens) it’ll give you a nice buzz – bonus!

5: PUT A DATE AND TIME ON YOUR SIGN
I cant tell you how many times I’ve driven to a “moving sale” following a sign only to find out they already moved. And if you can find it in your heart to actually take it down when done you will be doing a service to everyone.

Thanks, had to get that out of my system.

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OMG!!!! I’m Blogging!

jen — Sat, 15 May 2010 16:29:30 +0000

I know it’s been almost a year, blame twitter. I’m going to try to post at least once a week now I swear!

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I’m off Etsy

jen — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:26:54 +0000

Etsy has decided to shut my store down.

After 100% feedback, and 224 sales, I’m shut down. I can’t even have an account now, even to buy. They are turning me off on Tuesday completely and I am now grabbing all my customer data off.

Reason? Good Question. They cited “user complaints”, but won’t elaborate further. Since I can’t use the forums or Storque so I’m not sure what they can find to complain about me with, other than I work for Artfire and exist.

I cant say I’m surprised. I’ve been expecting this since September when I joined on at Artfire and announced it here on my blog, so this is just the other shoe dropping. I’ve more or less stayed on out of pure spite.

You can of course find me on Artfire for all your pincushiony needs.

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Dinner and a Show

jen — Sat, 02 May 2009 02:22:26 +0000

(I just sent this letter to national Operations email address)

Dear National Amusements,

Right now as I’m writing this I’m trying to decide what to eat for dinner after “eating dinner” at your theatre. See I’m trying to decide what would be willing to puke up later should the food poisoning I fear I might have gotten from your food should hit.

See, we decided to splurge today and try the local Cinema de lux in Springdale, Ohio and see Wolverine on opening night in one of your “directors halls”.

It cost a little more than going to the Rave (our usual fave) but the prospect of ordering food from our seats was nice since we were starving and we hoped it would be a better behaved and more adult crowd (wasn’t, still had a chatty housewife and a screaming baby).

It had taken me a while to even find out more about your Director’s Hall Theatres. There is precious little info on your site, and certainly not connected to the page for my theatre where I’d of course want to be able to access it. I had to google it and read a newspaper article in Connecticut about it to get what it was. So there is a head up for you, fix your site. It’s cumbersome as hell.

So anyway, back to the show:

We ordered moments before the opening credits. Finally.

Our food didn’t come until well after the movie started. Like 30 min into it. We had ordered two burger combos (burger, fries, drink) but came on ONE paper tray piled so high it as impossible to deal alone with as there was no place to put it. We sat it on the floor and started eating in the dark. They hadn’t brought any ketchup packets, the burgers, while large, were dressed poorly (barely any ketchup, NO mayo or NO cheese as ordered)

The fries were cold, and limp, largely inedible. The burgers were all but lukewarm… well raw.

Not rare, RAW. There was a cooked outer shell, After a few bites I noticed that meat seemed well… mushy. Soft even. I stuck my finger into the meat, in the dark mind you, and felt the patty. Wet, cool and it pulled away and molded easily in my fingers. My stomach tuned. My husband was so hungry he had devoured his without too much thought other than it was food, and he is a man that likes everything charred to a cinder. I sat mine aside.

After the movie I got a look at it. Not only was my burger raw it wasn’t bloody. Meaning it was barely cooked. Ground beef only gets blood after it gets hot as the fibers break down releasing the juices, this did not even get hot enough to do this, so it was beyond rare. It was raw.

All in all it was a confusing experience, once we’re not sure we’ll repeat, we’ll stick with the Rave. At least they won’t try to kill me.

Jen Segrest

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Don’t be a Twidiot

jen — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:30:01 +0000

I joined up on Twitter in late 2007 and I love it, but it took me a few weeks to get wrap it around my brain.

Soon though it really took hold with me, and with the new job making me too busy to blog all the time I haven’t really had time to blog, but I do have time to twitter. Twitter has almost killed my personal blog, one that I’ve until recently posted to sometimes more than 3 times a week since 2001.

I’ll explain really quickly in case you live in a cave: Twitter has been called a Microblog. I like to think of it more as public short attention span text message everyone in the world can see. You can only use 140 characters as the limit on text messages for phone is roughly 160. This allows you some space for a username and since many people twitter from phones etc thus the whole character limit thing. It’s meant for short messages. “I’m at The bank, and this teller is taking foever. Bury me at Wounded knee” or to ask for tips or link to find things etc. It’s actually quite addictive.

But Twitter is being abused by crafters who are filling it full of spam who don’t understand what it is and what is frowned upon. In the past on the talk on Twitter has been about how Etsy sellers are the new spam villain there because of the (etsy staff suggested) spamming twitter with all their listings, relistings and bullcrap.

This all came after a day in early 2009 that Etsy supported called “Etsy day”. It mostly consisted of thousands of members tweeting about them, and made #etsyday go to #1 in twitter trends (that means hottest topics), while I’m sure many learned about Etsy that day it annoyed people about 1000% more people.

The thing is Etsy had been telling it’s sellers for months before this to join Twitter as it’s a “great way to promote your items!”. It’s sellers are mostly middleaged aged females, many of whom still find the whole social media thing largely a mystery – but they want to sell, so they do what the 20-somthing Etsy staff says without regard to what is appropriate or frowned on. They don’t learn the customs or culture of Twitter. They constantly relist items and dutifully tweet every last one of them like instructed. Their feeds are filled with nothing more than “check out my crap!” and links to their shops – stuff no one wants to see – and just fill Twitter with spam. If the would learn more about Twitter, and how to be a better Twitterati, some of this blatant link whoring spam would slow down.

So as a avid Tweeter, one that now “gets it” let me pass on what I know to folks out there:

If you don’t understand Twitter, stay off it. Seriously.
Really I mean it. It’s not a hard thing to get. If you really want to ‘get it” follow some people and learn about it before you start posting. Learn what the protocols are, how things are done. Observe then try later.
Don’t follow everyone who follows you. This isn’t kindergarten. Do you bookmark every site you go to? You should only follow people who you enjoy reading. If someone replies to you and you like their tweets, sure go for it. Maybe it’s a start of a beautiful friendship! But if you follow 1000 people you won’t know or be able to read any of them.
Don’t get into how many followers you have. It’s no an indication as your worth as a person. Just means you have that many people who think you suck less than other people. Don’t go trolling for followers. The ones that will follow you blindly aren’t reading you anyway, they want you to follow them, so THEY can spam YOU. It’s better to have 200 followers who like what you say rather than 2000 who don’t see a word.
No one gives a crap what you sell. Really. I mean it. NO ONE. I am not saying you can’t promote your things but don’t flood the twittersphere with them. Keep them to a few a week, tops. Show more what you are proud of than what you have and have more to offer than what you sell.
Not everyone uses twitter as you do. That means Twitter wasn’t made for you to spam, It was made to connect people not hawk products to them.
It’s a conversation, with or without people. I said it in a tweet once to someone about all the celebrities that are on Twitter now: “They don’t get that it’s SOCIAL media, not LOOK AT ME-dia”. Most don’t reply to anyone, ever, but just blather about their day as if it’s the word of god from on high. Most ordinary twitter people don’t get that either. Many sellers think it was invented to be text advertising, and it wasn’t.If you talk to people more than you talk at them and you’ll likely be a halfway decent Twitterati.
People who are funny are better tweeters. If you are missing the humor gene, STFU. Really. There are enough crotchety killjoys out there already.
Don’t tweet everything you do, less is more. And by extension: Random is more fun that minutia. I’ve been known to just tweet that “I Like Fruit Punch!” or “I just ate ham with my fingers because I’m a fancy lady!” the like and I’ll get people replying how they do too! It’s weird but funny in it’s own way.
Find those who do what you do. I like to tweet during TV shows I’ve found some great other fans that way! (Run a search for your say a TV name while it is showing or a band, or your crafty art, and you’ll find some new people who enjoy it too. It really is a great way to find people.)
Ask the twittersphere. It’s a great place to ask for advice, tips, links… give the same to others too. Find a funny link? I wanna see!
More than your “followers” see your posts. Many people use various apps for Twitter and many like to view (at least sometimes) tweets by everyone along side the ones they are following. So if you send out those tweets on your items for sale you ARE spamming everyone indiscriminately without meaning to.

Okay, that’s the basics I think. Just some tips to keep in mind, but again – if you don’t get it, you don’t have to. Many of us do. Shrug it off as a mystery of life and move on.

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Tongue in cheek

jen — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:12:30 +0000

Yes I’m still alive. Just busy.
Anyway, I have noticed there is a new campaign out for a lady shaver recently, and they take divergent angles to the same point. One is British I think, the other I saw on TV in the US here. The latter was so subtle Mr Man didn’t even know what it was about the first time before I had to explain it with the power of TiVo. It’s nice to see they are going after women with some humor for once.

I know my readers, if I have any left, enjoy my video finds, so here you go!

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Hello New World!

jen — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:13:22 +0000

Cried like a crazy woman during the inaugural, everytime I'd see someone on TV crying it'd get me too. And I'm not a crier. Just so incredible.

Last night Mr Man and I went out to eat, O'Charlie's nothing fancy, it was there, but the place was packed. I mean every seat packed. On a wednesday. It's never busy to go out to eat here on Wednesdays. The place was upbeat and chatty.

I told Mr Man it was "Hope". Evidentially it smells like chargrilled steak.

MMMM, hope, rare indeed.

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