I honestly never thought I could make a lot of money in writing though. I’d been discouraged a while back about the idea of self publishing when I worked over at Demand Media and was told by someone how “no self respecting writer would do self publishing.” If I had stuck to my guns and went with some of the other self publishing models, I think I would have been able to do better just because of how early that medium was. Then blogging became a way some people were able to earn a living. Some of the bigger blogs were seen as news and were bought out by other major platforms. While I never believed I could compete at the scale of those writers, I did feel I had the ability to contribute somehow to the writing world in a fashion.

Before I started using this blog, I built my own on a different server and ran that for a long time. Eventually, the mysql database got corrupted with the session table blowing up and I had no easy way of fixing it. That old site was horrible in the UI, etc. but I was proud of the content itself and sad when I lost everything. When I discovered WordPress and how I would be able to manage it myself, it became a natural solution where I could start from scratch, not have to deal with certain technical issues like an autosave feature I didn’t implement and would lose posts, etc. According to my first blog here, I think I started this site in particular in 2012 so it goes to show just how long I’ve been doing this.

Over the years, I wrote things to satisfy my whim and as a means of catharsis (which I guess is a fancy way of satisfying my whim). But the catharsis portion was therapeutic because around 2012, I had undergone a very stressful period of my life when my mother had her stroke and I was under pressure from my aunt to become my mom’s caregiver. As someone who suffers from depression and violent mood things, dealing with that level of pressure along with a horribly stressful job and no visible way out of that scenario caused me to have a kind of midlife crisis. Writing was one of the few things keeping my sanity whether it was creatively (such as the Geek Dot Love story) or just putting my thoughts down here instead of actually doing something horrible to myself or others.

Also, since I don’t have friends that have the exact same interest as me, I used blogging as my own echo chamber where I wanted to jot down things I was thinking whether it was frustrations with certain games, reacting unfavorably to movies or once in a while finding some tech trick that I could use as a future reference or perhaps someone else with a similar problem might find useful.

All of that accumulated somehow into 14+ years or writing that has formed into 1500 published posts. There have been other posts in various stages of drafts but generally when I write, the intention is to get it out the door even with bad grammar and other errors.

As my employment situation has been very rough lately and how the general market for tech has become this volatile, almost self-loathing entity, I decided perhaps it’s a good time to see what I can do with this site. While I don’t have insane traffic numbers, I do get consistent hits all the time (mostly bots these days apparently but that’s a different story). I know that if I want to do this professionally most people suggest going strictly niche. But I’m not that kind of person. A site like this with my name as the URL is very personal and personalized. I’m a person with a broad set of interest and love sharing my viewpoint. So that’s never going to change.

But I do want to say that I want to give this a try. I’ve been attempting to hit a blog post a day, which admittedly is quite difficult. Every day is a struggle for inspiration as well as energy since my health has taken a toll since COVD. But I will say if I can make a living miraculously and be able to support myself through my writing, I would take that over any amount of RSUs because I have zero desire to commute nor work for another sociopathic, unempathetic, avaricious, immoral, unethical, dimwitted goofball called a CEO ever again if given the choice. Freedom, I think, is what people really seek in this world and I am someone who wants as much in an uncompromising manner as possible.

The post 1500 Blog Posts Milestone! appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Almost immediately after signing up without adding any details like photos or personal information, I immediately received a message from an African American woman (according to her photo). I decided to check out the person’s profile after learning immediately that you can’t read any messages without being a paid member. The woman’s profile was for the most part blank and actually described the woman as being Caucasian in ethnicity. Naturally, the bells started to really sound off in my head.

I decided to put some more information in and even bothered uploading a recent photo. The photo isn’t a great photogenic image of myself but I figured that it was candid and would hopefully deter anyone from sending me messages. So the first thing I tried doing on the site was perusing through the large number of profiles. Initially, I found that the vast majority of photos on the site had images of women who I would not presume were anything remotely resembling cougars. Many of these women actually looked really good and were probably in their mid 30s at most. So in checking out a few profiles, more red flags started to shout out.

First, there is an odd age discrepancy between the photo and the actual listed age. This discrepancy can go both ways. You would see women who probably were in their 30s listed in their 50s. And sometimes vice versa. Next most of the profiles have no information at all. Maybe there’s a cheap headline that sounds like it came from a pick up artist’s book. The few profiles that had information provided still either came off as some generic psychological study to make you think of the stereotypical cougar.

Over the past few days then I began receiving various messages, “flirts” and even being favorited. When I would go back to some of these profiles, I became highly suspicious whether or not they were real or not. For instance, one profile was supposedly written by a woman in her 50’s (and she looked more like a 30 year old model) with incredibly high standards. Why would she bother with someone like myself unless she was horribly desperate?

Then today something else struck me in that all of these cougars’ names have numbers attached to them. Usually, when you’re picking a name, unless a website has an enormous number of users, there’s absolutely no need to choose a number with whatever identity you want. In my case, I was able to enter a name without conflicting with other members. In turn, I started to think that a lot of these profiles were automatically generated by either a third party system or even internally.

Certainly, there are people who probably are legitimate users and I have seen members with “normal” sounding names. But some names just seem so obvious as a trap when you hear sexual innuendos as their handles.

In turn, I decided to do some research to check out reviews from people. Sure enough, the vast majority of people out there have reported that the site is nothing more than a scam. No one can confirm whether it’s an internal or external scam. But some interesting things came up to indicate what a shady operation this is. For instance, if you do end up paying, most of those “messages” you receive are from a Nigerian scammer, trying to get you to click on a link to their site (which is nothing more than another porn or webcam sex site). The worst part is that the payment system is a lock and there isn’t any easy method to remove your subscription. The customer service intentionally is worse than AOL, the cable companies and government unemployment offices combined.

I’ve seen similar sites to these in Japan and I think that there’s a good chance that it’s all run by a network of scammers. While there is a CEO attached to CougarLife in particular, these systems all have similar features.

Unfortunately, despite the shadiness of this site, from what I understand it operates legally. I think that someone should investigate this company and operation though. I really feel that there’s a group out there that has managed to connect all these components together and run it through some shadow company.

Either way, bottom line is to stay away from sites like these and do the research first prior to signing up.

The post Website Review: CougarLife appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

I have to admit something: I’m horribly lazy when it comes to food. I have the impossible problem of never being able to decide what I want to eat most of the time. Part of this is because I really don’t cook much and generally don’t care for cooking on average (I can cook but have a limited range). As a result, I tend to abuse myself and end up resorting to fast food spots that pretty much are on just a single street (and usually just around the corner). I think part of this is attributed to the fact that I simply in the past had developed some horrible habits since my work day and locations ended up voiding my ability to find decent places late at night (which really do not exist where I live). In turn, I became a fast food junkie, something I have no real pride in but a fact that I have an impossible time escaping.

On top of that, I lived in some of the best zones in Tokyo for 5 1/2 years. The benefits of living in Tokyo are the plethora of excellent reasonably priced food options. I think I ended up getting horribly spoiled. Even the cheaper options like bento far exceeded the fast food options in America. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of living as a bachelor in Tokyo is that cooking ends up becoming extraordinarily expensive and inconvenient. It’s far easier and cheaper even to justify having dinner with your friends or just picking up cheap bento at the local convenient store rather than preparing anything complicated for yourself (outside of heating up a rice packet and tossing on curry).

In short, I’m somewhat fucked when it comes to food.

That said, I still am picky but hate the fact that most fast food options these days end up costing roughly $8-10 per meal. Factor in finding something exciting beyond tacos and hamburgers, the drive, the wait and the often misplaced order, it’s easy to start wanting to find better options.

So when I heard about the idea of delivery Chinese food, I decided to investigate a bit. After my mom’s stroke, I really don’t many opportunities to eat out at decent sit down style restaurants, much less finding spots that aren’t located along the main road near my home. Enter Eat 24.

Eat 24 is local restaurants that serve a fair number of US cities. Although the selection varies between cities, the thing I’ve come to appreciate is that I have more options available. Part of my criteria for finding a site like this was home delivery. While not every restaurant listed has this option, a fair number of them in my zone do. Another aspect is that I wanted to have a variety of listings. I started with Chinese but I managed to branch out a bit to Thai and (fake) Japanese. Thus far, the quality has varied but it does break up the monotony that I was facing.

The service itself is convenient since you can save your credit card information to a single spot and use them to handle most of the inconvenient aspects like tip. The people who arrive typically just deliver the food, although you might have to sign something depending on the place. Many of these restaurants have hours that go up until 9-9:30pm. For a late bloomer like myself, that aspect is pretty damn nifty.

A lot of places will require a minimum order fee and potentially a delivery fee. On average, I probably spend roughly $20 per order, which includes tip. But the way I look at my meals is this. Usually, these meals end up being good for at least 2 meals. The fact that I don’t have to go out of my way to drive and park make it all a huge plus in terms of experience.

Each spot offers their entire menu. Some items will have notes where you can read other people’s comments as well as favorites and dislikes. Unfortunately, because of the local nature of these spots, you won’t find a great deal of information, so the experience really ends up becoming a trial-and-error issue. I would say that the lack of descriptions and images take the site down a few notches and is a feature that they should eventually focus on. That said, the food itself thus far has been reasonable. Certainly, the quality ends up being a step higher than normal fast food chain restaurants.

The thing is that as a gamer, blogger, writer and technologists, I want to spend more time focused on those activities as opposed to waiting around in line. So if I wake up late or lack groceries in the refrigerator and just feel plain lazy, this site to me is a huge convenience boost. Obviously, I can’t do this all the time as it can get expensive. Yet I can’t deny the trouble it’s saved me.

The post Website Review: Eat 24 Hour appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.