Happy New Year!

It’s nearly February but, after talking with many of you, I don’t feel badly for the lateness of this post. For some reason, it’s been difficult for us to divest ourselves of the holidays. I lacked motivation, and the pull toward laziness was compelling.

But I’m back! And I hear you guys are, too. It’s great to be talking with you again in smedia and in here. Plus, there’s a lot to talk about.

Thank you so much to everyone who supported me over the holidays with drinks, gifts and DM well wishes. The lateness of my public thanks is not an indicator of how much you all have touched my heart.

I’m not one for resolutions but y’know I’m down for kink. With a gift certificate from a special reader, I impulse-selected a leash and collar. My idea was to bring it to DomCon L.A. in May. I hope to meet more of you in person, and I thought someone may like to wear it to a play party. Send me a message if you’re planning on attending and/or are interested!

Time to ‘fess up. Yeah, I balked at the whole wish list idea, but you’ve proven that you want it. While I hate being reminded that I’m not perfect, I can admit when I’m wrong. And yeah, I liked it! You were right, and the wish list is here to stay. Again, thank you.

You may have seen the Castellanos on TikTok. It’s not really a resolution, but it is kinky. They are a Mexican couple who decided to pay themselves every time they had sex. It’s kind of like a swear jar but for the good stuff.

Every time they got hot and heavy, they put $6.00 into a jar. At the end of 2022, after a year, they had saved $1,320.00. Lemme do the math for you: it’s 220 times in 12 months. Or, 18.33 times each month. Or, 4.58 times each week. Or, more than every other day.

There’s no indication of what they counted as “one time”, and I’m not going to nitpick, because it’s a great idea, and it was well executed with romance, creativity and, no doubt, lots of lube. *grin*

The Castellanos talked about it on TikTok and have inspired others to do the same… perhaps you in 2023?

[Anyone remember “My So-Called Life”? Castellanos reminded me of Jordan Catalano *grin*]

The Challenge Completed

December 19 was toymax’s birthday, and I made him a birthday post in bdsmlr that contained a challenge with instructions on how he should celebrate. If you missed it, check out my earlier blog post, which contains links to the original post and the results post in a NSFW site.

Due to the post’s popularity and my rules, toymax had to spank himself 108 times, thanking me after each one. He also had 4.5 hours of edging to do. AND he earned the bonus of dripping wax for 19 seconds.

Toymax promised results in January, and he did not disappoint! To keep this website relatively safe for work, I’m showing you the edited images–thanks to toymax. For those of you who want the real thing, here is the link to toymax’s NSFW post.

Pay particular attention to his hand. Toymax bought a purple candle and purple nail polish. But the best thing is that he dripped wax longer in one spot to bring out the purple… I had told him that my purple candle drips lavender. I guess I need a volunteer to see whether toymax’s trick will work with my candle, too! *grin*

Well done, toymax, and I’m glad you got to celebrate your birthday for a month. 🙂

Laptop Lamenting

Last month I briefly told you about my laptop problems. Some of you commiserated with me in smedia, saying you were in IT and offered your assistance. Thank you! We have a lot of IT people in our community. However, the end result with everyone, was that it was a nasty story.

A couple of you said I am picky. The fuck? To those peeps, I say, what’s picky about wanting the best laptop with the most advanced features to be able to last longer before the next time I need one?

What say you?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Pfffft to picky!

I wasn’t going to continue this thread but it’s become unbelievable, and I’m forced to share… mainly because I look forward to your comments but also to… well… rant.

In my last post, I summed things up into one example: After being sent to the escalations department and needing to speak with my case worker, I provided the keywords necessary to be routed to her… only to be told, “We don’t have an escalations department.”

That was after three weeks of nothingness.

It’s now been seven weeks with another escalation to the corporate level, also invoking a supervisor. [Reminder: I’m purposefully not revealing the manufacturer]

The corporate supervisor said he needed to ask his subordinate about procedure because–get this–he doesn’t have the authority to actually do anything. He told me the company does that on purpose. ?!

The problem in a nutshell is my brand new laptop’s battery depleting too quickly. The secondary issue is the company’s communication system is completely discombobulated with no department knowing what others are doing. In fact, they have repeatedly misstated the problem as my laptop’s charger not working, period.

I’m not an IT person, but I know that a battery and a charger are two different things.

For you IT peeps, and those who get hard over specs, I have Windows 11 Pro, 12th gen Intel i7, 32GB RAM, 1T HD, 14″ OLED screen, 2-in-1 touchscreen… it’s billed as a premier business laptop yet, in battery mode, it won’t last a work day. It doesn’t even get six hours.

I’ve been asked by multiple people at the company how long the battery’s supposed to last. When I told the corporate person that *she* should tell *me*, she Googled it… and concluded that she needed to speak with a tech!!

After which, she sent me a picture of the battery specs that showed 15-20 work hours. But the tech told her the only way to achieve those numbers is if the laptop is on and, basically, that’s it. No programs running, just it sitting open and on without anyone using it. When I joked about no one’s going to just turn on a laptop and walk away, she agreed, and laughed with me.

Didn’t fix the problem, though.

Bypassing six weeks of painful communication (you’re welcome), the end result was to get a new laptop with the same specs and have a tech swap the hard drives, so I wouldn’t have to set up a new device.

The processing of the new device created two automatically-generated emails: One was a new order for a laptop with the dollar amount being zero; and a second one that said the work order was completed. ?! With all the messed up communication, I didn’t even bother to question it.

A couple of days later, I got a call from the company’s customer service department wanting to know if my computer was now working great after the service call. ?! I questioned the date of said service call, and he said January 4, which was the date the new unit was ordered.

I went off on him a bit about the failure of the company’s basic communication infrastructure, since there was no service call on that date, etc., etc. He performed his due diligence “apology” and said he’d notify “someone”. I said I had no confidence he’d reach anyone who cared, and I didn’t expect to hear back regarding our phone call.

I haven’t heard anything, by the way, and I’m not holding my breath because…

I received another email with some specs for the new unit and a link to view the full specs. However, that link went to a shipping page.

The case manager sent the specs–they were identical, miraculously. But then I received an automated email saying the work order was closed… successfully. I hadn’t even gotten the new unit!

Some more emails with the case manager indicated that “apparently” that email was generated since the unit was delivered. I informed her it was NOT delivered and, according to another email I’d received from the automaton, it wouldn’t be here until the 24th.

Well, the unit arrived the next day. I let her know, and she submitted the work order for the tech to swap drives. [by the way, the “NEW” laptop is a month OLDER than my current one]

Meanwhile, I charged the new laptop to 100% and removed the plug. Without internet or anything besides the bloatware that came with it–essentially, doing nothing but turning it on and letting it sit, the battery went down to 24% in nine and a half hours. Still not 15-20 but definitely better than under six.

Friday, the highly confused tech called asking if I wanted him to swap hard drives. He wanted to know if I got a new unit. ?! And he said he’s never seen a work order like it and that the company doesn’t permit them to swap drives. He’d have to check with his supervisor.

Fifteen minutes later, he’s at my house, telling me his supervisor is allowing him to swap drives and nothing else. He’s not allowed to go into the BIOS… which makes the swap moot. He’s also concerned with Bitlocker, because, if it’s on, we may get locked out if we don’t know the code. ?!

He checks both computers and determines that it’s off, and he’s about to proceed with the swap. I tell him to stop. First, because he can’t guarantee I won’t be without a computer. Second, because he didn’t know whether Windows would boot up without BIOS intervention. And third, because I asked him whether we should write down the Bitlocker code just in case.

His answer was no, because it’s off in both computers. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never known a tech who wasn’t fully invested in Murphy’s Law.

I had to tell him to stop two more times, explain what I was after, and confess that I didn’t think swapping drives was going to add life to a crappy battery. He agreed, though he didn’t know anything about the battery.

His brilliant idea was to take the new hard drive and put it into the old computer and, if it booted up, we’d know it’d work! ?!

I was the one who said, “And what happens if it *doesn’t* work?”–though, to be fair, he starting asking the question while I was voicing it.

So, I decided against the swap and said I’d get a power bank. I asked the tech about his laptop, and he said he has this company’s laptop–he is not an employee of the company. He works for a third party contractor that services multiple manufacturers; hence, another problem with communication.

He tells me that he has TWO batteries in his laptop, and I get excited. That sounds like a wonderful solution! But no, he’s got an older model, and mine can’t have two. I’ve never heard of two batteries so I ask him about it, and he says his older model has an external battery.

So I ask whether he’s talking about a power bank. Nope. Two batteries. I quiz him some more, and he says there’s a place for the second battery on the bottom–which makes no sense, because if it’s an external battery on the bottom of a laptop, it’d make typing a pretty precarious proposition!

After more questions, he says it’s not on the bottom but plugged in… which leads me all the way around to, “So, are you talking about a power pack?” And he says yes!! UGH

Let me back up to when he was here last month and swapped the board and battery. At that time, toymax was adamant that I should not allow the tech to leave my house until he had performed a calibration of the sensors, per the manual.

Back then, I told the tech about the calibration, but he had no idea what it was. And he was fine with not knowing, and leaving without doing it. But I suggested he call his supervisor.

After a long time on “ignore”, the supervisor indicated that he, too, had never heard of a calibration. And because I didn’t have the manual at that point AND it had been nearly three hours (after he said it would take 45 minutes), I ushered him out the door.

Since then, toymax sent me the page from the manual. So Friday, I told the tech that I had the page and asked if he wanted to see it. His response was, “If you want to show it to me.” ?!

The tab I had open with the manual had refreshed, and I told him I took a screenshot. I opened the picture and handed him the laptop. He read it and said, “Huh. That’s interesting.”

Then, he proceeded to touch my screen–not a euphemism. I had to tell him TWICE that it’s a screenshot before he handed it back to me so I could pull up the webpage for him.

I asked him if he could perform the calibration but he said not today because he had two other appointments he had to do. ?! He didn’t even do a swap, so he had the time. What he didn’t have was the knowledge, even though the manual provided links and instructions.

With irritation, I sent him on his way, telling him that he can text me after he speaks with his supervisor. Then he wanted to know what website I was using. ?! I told him it was the MANUAL for the computer, found on the company’s website.

Within two minutes of his leaving, I received an automated email stating my work order had been closed successfully. I’ve not gotten an update about what his supervisor had to say.

Then again, do I really want him to touch my computer? If I know more than an IT guy, something’s very wrong.

So, I sent an email for the corporate supervisor to call me Monday. Instead, the case worker called me and said the supervisor got an email from me to call, and he had her call. So I said, “The email said for HIM to call me.” And she asks, “Did you want him to call you, then?” ?!

He didn’t call me Monday but I received another follow-up protocol call from the tech department of the company’s customer service department, wanting to know if my computer was working great after the service call.

I told him that I didn’t allow the tech to perform the swap since he was nervous about doing it and couldn’t guarantee either computer would work afterwards. His suggestion was to send in my laptop to their service center so they could fix it. ?!

I explained how there’s nothing to fix because the main issue is that the company decided to use an inferior battery that had zero power for the unit. And how I’d have to get a separate power bank for it. And I told him what the tech did, didn’t do, said, or didn’t say both times he was here.

After my long-ass, detailed explanation, the guy says, “Okay. I’ll close this ticket and mark it as not fixable.”

I said, “THAT’s what you got out of everything I just told you?!”

Send me your thoughts, anecdotes, commiserations. But really, if you’re still here after all that, you should treat yourself to the latest “Eli” book… it’s a much better read 😀

I am constantly asked–or whined to–if you find a good domme for me, let me know. Or, where can I go to meet a domme?

I came across a Detroit Metro Times article that I’ll pass along; HOWEVER, I am not personally vouching for any of the sites listed. The article itself is sponsored by “Join Lust”, but I don’t know what that is, except for a paid advertisement.

When I scrolled through, I noticed that some of the icons were the same for different sites, so tread carefully.

I can tell you from personal experience that Adult Friend Finder (“AFF”) and ALT.com are owned by the same company. Once upon a time, AFF was a good platform to casually meet people. It used to offer free accounts to women since it was heavily male-based. And there used to be a wonderful free chat feature.

It’s been several years since I’ve been on it. But when I was last there, everything was money based, including chat. There were some creative ways around it if you put in some time. Also, it was heavily, heavily, heavily populated with bots.

I’m not saying you can’t get a good connection: I’m saying, *BE CAREFUL*.

If you know of better sites or if you find something about the ones in here, please let me know. Stay safe!

Do you have a kinky question you’d like answered? Use the contact form to submit your question. All questions will be kept anonymous unless you’d prefer to be named.

Thanks for the great questions and comments!

For other kinky advice, check my blog archives.

Happy reading, and Happy New Year,

~B.J.

Back to Blog