Phoar. I held back so much when my Aunty called.
I told her quite clearly over there phone that I don’t want to be used and manipulated into trying to influence everyone else into making a decision on the will and approving things.
I told her quite clearly I would not get involved and if I needed the inheritance I would not intervene and get involved.
All she wanted to do was try and use me to influence the outcome and kept talking negatively about everything.
She tried manipulate me again and I told her not to.
I didn’t really want to talk to her but I’ve had it with her.
Edit: and I’ve slightly burnt my fish fillets thanks to her.
Definitely worked up an appetite for tonight’s dinner thing. Another long hot sweaty day especially after going to bed at 1am with the random cleaning and shit. Need to hurry up and shower and hoof it over there soon though. Thankfully REA is coming between 10 and 12 tomorrow which gives me time to vacuum the joint and clean the stove.
Back down the bellarine for the night, hopefully 2. All about watering :(
But first chillies are turning!
I think the blood and bone gave it a bit of a kick.
And the flower patch is lurvly. So glad I got my way with that.
Boxes come tomorrow , that means I will start packing in earnest. Since I have already cleaned and sorted everything it shouldn’t take long. 🙂
I have now tried pistachio spritz bubbly. I shall not do so again.
Hmm not sure you could convince me even if it was free.
That sounds … interesting
Same mob makes one of the lemoncellos that are all the rage right now. It’s not awful, just peculiar.
lemoncello
Tried making it a few times and I just don’t see the appeal (or I’m just really bad at making it).
Okay I said I wouldn’t care if dad didn’t care about these photos, but he’s seen my message and hasn’t responded.
I just need to chill! It’s a workday! It’s gonna bring up a lot of feelings from the past for him! Not everything is about you Spud, gah!
Oh man. I’m feeling so tired and unwell lately. I try to rest but still in pain.
Lying in bed and doing extensive landscaping in Minecraft to stay occupied. 😔
wup, something on Cochrane’s road is on fire
Just saw it on the news, a place at 1 Elden Street is on fire and they’re trying to contain it at the moment.
There’s been a bit of stuff on fire lately
I stand corrected, apparently it’s on ebden. Better fuckin’ not be Big Pig
I had a look at the job and still have no idea what it was, but it is at the other end of the street from Big Pig. Some sort of warehouse or something yet to be identified.
I just realised that even though I was just involved in lots of peripheral fire brigade organisation stuff revolving around that I never actually looked at what was on fire 🤣 So yeah, something big was burning but I have no idea if there was any pig involved.
hopefully not his coch or else thats gonna be awkward AF.
Thanks for paying for my 2nd playthrough of cyberpunk 2077, shitty workplace.
Do you have Phantom Liberty? That was a wild ride.
I do! I’m starting from scratch because I want to try a netrunner build instead of sandevistan
I tried to do a netrunner build awhile ago but whenever I started using skills everyone would get alerted after they changed things.
I was feeling a bit down today but the man is here and he always makes me feel better. That and a trip to bunnings. ❤️
A Bunnings date, as my OH would say (we don’t get out much, lol)
I love that 😂
hugs 🙂
Thanks mate. I’m all good now 🙂
skin is crawling with excitement about this campervan. Cant pick it up till next week cause cant get the towpack fitted till next week which means we will miss the public holiday. Not the end of the world, cause we probably need to set it up first, clean it all out and get it all kitted out for us anyway. But still. Its exactly like buying a new car or ordering a new phone online. You spend all this money but then have to sit and wait and you cant play with your new toy.
plot. PLan. Ooooh you wanna put a buncha usb ports in there. Ya wanna do up even fancier LEDs and shit. Get some ideas going! https://caravanmods.com.au/
I found an opportunity to start an online store and I’d like to ask the DT brainstrust on some feedback. I’ll mark it all as spoilers because people may not want to read my full ramblings or some of the subject matter:
Business talk
So I’ve been looking at business where I work to try boost my other business offer, selling marketing software subscriptions, and I came across a lingerie wholesaler.
They just had an open submission to sign up as a stockist so I thought I’d check it out. I have an ABN and a registered company so I could just do it, and there was very little vetting on their side.
Once approved I had access to their entire catalogue and they do dropshipping, where you don’t need to stock the product yourself. Essentially someone buys the product from you, then you buy the product from the wholesaler and they ship it to the person for you.
These guys have way more than lingerie. You can stock a whole sex shop with what they have. But I’ve decided to keep it simple, try focus on a few core products I think would move, and have picked more socially acceptable things that you could actually advertise on social media.
Instead of uploading everything, I’m focusing on things that could target the rave, festival, club scene. So it can still be seen as fashion instead of getting labelled as a sex store and getting banned from every online platform. I’m offering a few best selling items in the hope they will have a broader appeal to try get some cut-through.
I came up with an idea for a store name and a design, here’s the URL, the store is up and running: https://lxix.store/ LXIX is the number 69 in Roman Numerals so it looks fancy but is a sex joke over two thousand years in the making.
Let me know what you think of the website. It’s a little rough in areas and doesn’t have everything, but I’m hoping it looks trustworthy enough someone might click through from a Facebook ad and trust it enough to convert and buy.
It’s almost impossible to grow a social media following organically these days, so I’m expecting to put a bit of money into ads. My only problem is I have no assets aside from the so-so product images from the wholesaler and the brands themselves.
I’m hoping the way I can make this work is I’m hooking up every tracking pixel to just about every social media account I can find. My plan is to eventually get to know my target audience enough I can create ads and remarket to them effectively enough I can build a mailing list, introduce new products as if it’s a ‘launch’ to capture previous customers again, and just grow the database of customers and like customers.
But I need actual sales to keep this going and achieve any of that. I only took the ‘Coming Soon’ off the website last week so it’s still early days, but I want to make sure this website looks like it will work. The marketing software and business consulting was a slog because I don’t have a network or capacity to follow up with people effectively. If I get things right here I could just run an ad and get returns.
I’m also considering reaching out to people and sending free product for content. But that’s also a case of choosing the right people, as it still costs me money when I have no cashflow at the moment.
Also, I’ve searched for the most popular products on the wholesaler’s store to find other websites selling the same stock. A lot of them are basic and ugly websites that don’t look all that maintained. You can upload a CSV of the wholesaler’s catalogue to your store, and I think a lot of people just do that. So they have basic images and descriptions, and are hoping for more of a ‘build it and they will come’ approach.
I also want to do a lot of SEO work and try be the top rank for a few keywords. That can supplement ad spend and helps with building a following long term. I don’t think anyone but the big stockists are doing the same.
I’m just worried I could have a theoretically perfect online store, but can’t realise any actual sales because my ads aren’t good enough or I don’t have enough capital to spend on advertising to figure it out. Any feedback is recommended because I feel like I could make this work.
It’s all one size?
Size range is S-M-L-XL-LX-IX
I could add to cart without selecting a size, that’s why I asked.
Maybe make all the descriptions 3 lines long (maybe a blank line after short descriptions) so that the ‘add to cart’ buttons line up nicely. Otherwise it looks great.
Quick thoughts:
- The store name/URL is wonderful - definite winner, there. It’s memorable and easy to type.
- There’s something really off about the models. If those are real women, they’ve been airbrushed into the uncanny valley. If they’re AI-generated, that would make sense. I have no idea how you could go about fixing them, but yeah - that’d be my first priority in your shoes. Photoshoots and models are super expensive, I realise.
- I don’t know about the rave scene or what what the GenZ crowd in general are into. I can say that I doubt any of this stuff would appeal to my wife though. Possibly the red one? By targeting a crowd, are you turning off a large potential client base?
- The website itself looks basic - like a template off square or wordpress or something. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I’d emphasise that you are real some more - ABN, Contact details etc.
- The three things I care about as a customer are: Quality, Price and how long it takes for my stuff to arrive. I’m variable on #2, depending on #3. I’ll pay more to have my stuff sooner. If it’s going to take two weeks to come from China, be super clear about this.
- As to quality, be really upfront about that. If the quality of the product is dubious, don’t try and spin it as excellent quality.
There’s probably a lot more to cover. At a glance, the range of products looks really limiting. I’m at work and can’t really be closely scrutinising a lingerie store, so I only spent about 2 minutes on the site. A wider range will probably increase the trustworthiness of the site.
I’m no expert but I’d be wary of anything that at some point could leave you holding the bag.
Say if someone does an order with you but you’re relying on someone else and the goods are late or don’t arrive. Worse the dropshipper could take the money and phoenix.
Also be careful as Mastercard and PayPal have cracked down on anything of an adult nature so if they flag something you might not get paid. No idea how strict it is and it might be ok to pay for underwear but the association with the other goods might call attention.
Also the website is clever but I wouldn’t parse that, I’d just see random letters that might look a bit sketchy and probably not click.
Sorry! I’m just a bit wary and raised some risks you might want to consider, the side hustle isn’t a bad idea.
Edit: Oh yeah and the AI or photoshop point is a fair one. I’ve only hovered for a preview but if the models look unnatural that might be a turnoff. Because AI doesn’t cost much it’s being used a lot for scams, and while the business is above board that sort of appearance might make ads look sketchy.
If it was me advertising stuff I’d just go on Model Mayhem and hire an amateur model with a TFP arrangement (time for prints) which means they do the shoot for free in exchange for the right to use the pictures. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_for_print
However if these pictures are being supplied by someone else, which it’s likely they are, then I’d be a little bit cautious because with a lot of image doctoring you might not be getting an accurate idea of the product or its quality (which you could be blamed for if they are shady). The pictures might have even been stolen from elsewhere.
Edit 2: Also if you go ahead maybe show it to someone who is in the demographic you’re aiming at, check if it’s something that they and their friends might buy before making any commitments or putting any money down. Subcultures can be finicky and fashions can change. What looks right to someone outside might not be accepted by them. That’s not to say they couldn’t be creative and find stuff that works, just that if it doesn’t hit particular notes sales might be lower.
eeek, the moving is getting all done
while it’s a bit of a fuss it’s nothing compared to moving a household from Europe to the US or shipping a pet cat overseas. It was exciting moving from Europe, there was a sea shipping container on a flat bed truck!! It was cool, even if I say so myself.
Back in the 60s my parents moved the whole family from England to Australia - all the big furniture (including a piano) went in a shipping container made of wood (!!) which was just plonked by a crane onto the front lawn of the house we moved into in Ringwood. Once emptied, the timber was repurposed by Dad into the lining of the garage so he could put hooks & shelves anywhere not just into the structural supports. We moved out of there in 1988, and the lining timbers were just as good/bad as new. The timber was kinda hairy and shed splinters all the time, but was structurally strong. I wonder to this day just what that timber was and where it came from. I’ve never seen anything like it since. Nearest guess would be messmate, but this stuff didn’t warp like messmate does.
This is an awesome story. 🙂
Ringwood would have still been nearly rural at that time! They were probably there when they moved the clock tower! My family would have moved to the area not long before you moved out. Now every time I look at the older houses I’m going to wonder if it has a garage lined with shipping container!
Edit: I have just noticed the excessive number of exclamation marks!!! I’m sorry! I got a bit over excited!!
!
!
❗️❕️‼️⚠️
It was. There was still a cattle/sheep/horse/pig market in Croydon, the Ringwood one had closed recently for large animals but you could still get goats and chickens there. Actually, we pre-dated moving the clock tower - which was opened by my granddad and there’s still a plaque on it with his name. We even pre-dated Eastland! The first version of that was built while I was in secondary school. My grandparents moved there in the early 1950s after my grandad left the army, and bought a large house on Warrandyte Road which is still there. The house was built in the 1910s for the manager of the antimony mine in Burnt Bridge, and it had a circular carriage drive, carriage house and stables, a hutch in the whacking great kitchen for bread and milk & meat deliveries, a huuuuge bath with a mahogany surround - and outside toilets. One for the gentry, and another one for the servants. And I think from memory about 6 bedrooms, though some of those had been re-purposed as the library etc. Great place for a family to grow up, but suburbia covers all eventually.
Funnily enough my family moved to the area (Croydon Hills) after my dad left the army. Not quite so fancy a house for us, and Eastland (in its early brown brick square format) was already there. I had a look at some records and we moved in '82, and I’ve mostly been in the area since then. Suburbia is definitely covering everything, and in higher density than ever before too.
Seeing as you have lived in so many countries, I’m wondering what your accent sounds like.
refined Aussie with no friendly foes and few idioms
I can understand other colloquialisms very well so most people don’t even notice I speak Aussie other than a mild accent
I expect my accent is a bit more broad since I moved back
Having been in the same place nearly 20 years I find the thought of moving a bit terrifying. But at least I have a lot of decluttering done, it at least seems manageable.
My last move was only three blocks. The one before that was technically only two houses, but I had a holiday for 6 weeks and put everything into storage during that time. Moving to another country is totally outside the scale of my expertise.
Skyrim - Dragonborn DLC is way better than Dawnguard DLC. Fight me! 😂
I’ve only ever had them both (also hearthstone) at the same time, so I can’t really separate them. I enjoyed them both, though. I like that island is distinct from Skyrim. I find the ash depressing after a while though and look forward to getting it over and done with.
I’m not a fan of the plane of oblivion inside the books, either. Some people love that aesthetic, I did not.
On Dawnguard, I never liked the castle either. Also depressing and wouldn’t want the vampire life. I completed the vampire tree for the achievement, then cured vampirysm immediately.
I think I prefer Dragonborn because it is open world like Skyrim, it isn’t linear, there are quests unrelated to the main quest to do (like in Raven Rock, and Skaal Village). There’s cool Morrowind vibes towards the south with the Telvanni wizard and his mushroom house. And the voice acting feels real, as in there is emotion and nuance, and there is humour in the way they speak. It feels fun and interesting! I like the mash of Nord and Dunmer culture on the one island, and the Skaal being removed from Nord culture and having their own belief and culture.
I dislike Dawnguard because of it’s linear-ness. It’s feels very one-track, and you have to take Serana with you (I like my follower Borghak the Steel-Heart and she’s my bae). I dislike vampirism, and I dislike being led on a one-track quest system. I have both installed, and honestly I think I’ll just avoid Dawnguard this play through haha.
The ash can get depressing, but I don’t mind it - it just looks like snow to me 😂
I have just bought more packing boxes. 25 for books and 25 big boxes should be enough. I have other boxes already. 🤞
just submitted a quote enquiry for movers for 2 weeks from now 😬
