Category: Opinions

Aging Beautifully?

Posted on by Webmaster with Leave a comment

my face over the years

My efforts to heal osteoarthritis naturally include healthy nutrition with a focus on clean, simple food. Lifestyle changes like better sleep, less stress, modest daily exercise, plenty of water, help not just my crumbling hip but also my overall health. Weight loss has been a lifelong struggle for me since my late teens. Countless extreme diets, childbirth, menopause, and 47 years of office jobs certainly didn’t help.

With the diagnosis of stage 4 “bone-on-bone” osteoarthritis in my left hip, accompanied by the recommendation to get a total hip replacement done, I was finally scared enough to seriously get a grip on myself.

Over the past two years I lost 44 lbs of excess weight. I now fit into clothes that I’ve last worn fourty years ago. My hip hurts less, but I’m not fully recovered there yet. I love looking in the mirror, and I’m taking more selfies than ever before. Is that vanity? I call it pride.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of me going from chubby cheeks and double chin in 2010 to big, bright eyes, laugh lines all over, and silver hair in 2026.

Posted in Opinions

Reviews aren’t verified!

Posted on by Adventurer

One of the oldest, now almost only and definitely biggest, search engine started out as just that, a search engine. Their mantra was simple: “don’t be evil”. Somewhere along the road that mantra must have gone missing.

Writing a review of any company on there is really easy: find that company on the map and publish your review. I do that in one of two cases. If my experience with the company was absolutely abysmal, or if it was to die for stellar, I’ll take the time to rate that company. Mediocre or average user experience doesn’t warrant a review. I believe most regular folks are like me. They write reviews when they are sorely disappointed, or when they are thrilled about a product/service. I really don’t think average users go through the trouble of making up shit just to discredit an honest company. Up until now I trusted the reviews on that big search engine, good or bad. Not anymore, though.

Here’s what happened:

Thirtythree months ago we bought a used car at a local dealership. The car itself was good. The process of buying that car, however, took us a full two months from signing the purchase agreement and paying until we finally had the vehicle and all the wheels for it. The whole ordeal was an unbelieveable sharade! We talked to five different people at the dealership on the phone daily. We even involved the car manufacturer’s customer service. After the transaction was finally done I sat down and wrote the review. Just to warn others, and to get that load off of my chest. At that point I did what I should’ve done before we even looked at the car – I read reviews. The company had a 2.7 rating out of over a hundred reviews. At least that made me feel a little better. I wasn’t just me. It was simply their MO after the old owner had retired and some bigger chain had bought them up.

Fast forward to today. A few days ago now I received an email from the “don’t be evil” search engine. They tell me that this company requested my review to be taken down for violation of terms. They claim “defamation”. Meaning they say I’m committing libel to hurt their business. Why would I do that? Now, if I want my review to stand, I have to waste my time and money to find witnesses, documentation, go to court……. almost three years after the transaction. Why would I do that?

Out of curiosity I looked up the current reviews and rating for that company. They supposedly stand at 4.8 stars right now with a lot less individual ratings – cleaned up all old, negative reviews. There are services offering to do that for a fee – not a high fee either.

Maybe I should open up a business: let me take down your bad reviews for you, I’ll charge like $50 only in case of success. Then I’ll focus on one star reviews older than two yearsreviews screenshot and simply claim “defamation”. Bingo! Don’t just go for the big sites with your clean-up, less known rating sites may still give you away. Funny thing is that this particular company’s own website shows a 3.3 out of 5 customer satisfaction rating. Go figure.

Posted in Opinions

Ad Fatigue and my Hierarchy of Needs

Posted on by Adventurer

I am officially retired after over 46 years of gainful employment. This new life stage is a chance to count the blessings, reorient myself, focus on new goals and the road ahead. To gradually ease into the big change I started weeding out my digital presence and social media networks. If you happen to be one of the people who got “deleted”, don’t take it personally. It’s not that I don’t “like” you anymore – it just means that I don’t think our interactions would be deep and meaningful in the future.

When you spend time on social media, clicking on names of people or pages, after a while the algorithm starts showing you different ads. It thinks your interests have changed. When I noticed the change I realized that I don’t pay attention to ads anymore. We are all being bombarded with ads for products and services online, offline, in magazines and papers, on TV and radio channels, in our news feeds and social media accounts. The average person “sees” between four and seven thousand ads per day. Or, actually, we don’t see them. The phenomenon is called “ad fatigue”.

There are entire industries researching why ad fatigue happens, how to prevent it, and how to measure success in advertising. I personally don’t need to advertise anything – my life doesn’t depend on making money by selling myself, or my products, or my ideas. I wish, though, that advertisers – or their products and services – would consider my needs better, offering the things that I often search for and have no luck finding in the endless flood of useless ads.

Maslow's hierarchy of needsSo, what is it, that I need/want and would actually buy at this point in my life? Abraham Maslow had a pretty good grip on what motivates people. He discovered a hierarchy of human needs and depicted that as a pyramid with initially five steps. He later realized there was something motivating the people at the top of his pyramid to even higher levels of achievement and postulated a sixth step. I agree, the top is definitely there – transcendence is the pinnacle.

I am old enough to have worked my way up the pyramid to the fifth level. I have food, water, clothes, a house, a social life, friends and family, I reached (almost) my full potential. I am actively pursuing level six now. I frequently dig through the internet, searching for something that I’d spend real money on – and can’t seem to find. So why can’t Google, or Amazon, or any search engine, deliver the results that I am searching for? Simple: advertisers don’t realize that there is this untapped target group of potential customers at the top of the pyramid.

I don’t “need” shoes (something from level 1 or 2 of the pyramid) for example, but I do buy shoes often. I like shoes. Very specific shoes. It took me years to find a manufacturer or two who make “my” kind of shoes. So, if you are selling shoes, you’d have to pay close attention to what I am searching for (mostly attributes from level 5 and 6 of the pyramid) and then target your ads to deliver on those search terms – unless you really don’t want me to buy your shoes.

When I am looking to buy new shoes, here’s what I would typically search for: “wide shoes handmade in Europe out of genuine leather with flat heal and round toe box”. Now, if you’d offer my size, favourite colour, easy return policy, and payment via Klarna – we’re in business. Even if your shoes are “expensive”. Or, maybe, especially if your shoes are “expensive”.

I know, I’ve become a snob.

Posted in Opinions