Fishing For Love In All The Wrong Places

As a single working women I was tired of coming home to an empty apartment and eating alone every night. With very little time to socialize, I decided to try one of those online dating sites. A friend of mine suggested Plenty Of Fish, the name should have tipped me off, but I was desperate so I gave it a try. I do not know about most areas, but where I come from there are not so many fish in the sea. At least not keepers.

My first date with anyone from POF was with a guy from France. On our first date, the only thing that he wanted to do was to go to his house for drinks. I wanted to get to know him better before going to his house. Besides, I was hungry. So I suggested we go someplace for some food. He very calmly sized me up and then said, “I am not interested in feeding your, I am only interested in having sex with you.” Well my response to that was, “Unless you want to be wearing your balls as a pair of earrings, take your filthy hands off me”.

My God, I could go on for many days telling you about the sleazy guys I met on plenty of fish. Men who are married, pigs or just perverted that will tell you anything to get you between the sheets. Then of course there are the borderline stalkers that call even after you tell them you are not interested. I do not get the mentality of some guys who think that by being excessively persistent you will somehow change your opinion of them. Sometimes even the threat of police action does not deter them. From my experiences, the site has so many abnormal personalities on it, I wonder if the penal system is allowing access to dating sites. Certainly a Lady Gaga video I have seen would suggest that POF is available from inside.

I have never seen a place before with such a concentration of liars and cheats. I met over two dozen men in person via plenty of fish in the months I was a member. Only one of them was worth going beyond a second date with, and it turned out that on the fourth date he drops the bombshell that he is an illegal alien and needs to get married to stay in the country. Others wanted me to go on web-cam so they could see what I really look like because they did not believe my profile photo. Can you imagine, they didn't believe what I looked like when most of them looked nothing like their photo. POF does have its good points I suppose. If you are of average or even a bit below average in the looks department, you will get more than your fair share of attention.

The last straw for me with POF came when I made a date with a so called registered accountant, who by the way lives in a first class condo in down town New York. Everything was great. He took me to a top of the line restaurant. After questioning my tastes in food, he ordered for me, which was quite different than what most men would do. He ordered a really nice Pinot Grigio to go with our meals. We gone back to his place and he was a real gentlemen, we talked, laughed and snuggled.  Just when I thought I had broken my POF curse, the inevitable happened. The creep got around to telling me that he wanted me to prance around his apartment naked wearing nothing but a horse tail butt plug. Well after yelling at him a bit, using words like creep, pervert, twisted, and I forget what all else, I smacked him with my purse and galloped right out the door.

It was then I realized that POF was not for me and deleted my profile. I was so discouraged about this site that I vowed I would never again use a free dating site of any sort. My friend, being the pal that she was, did a bunch of searching on her own and said that she found a link with a bunch of recommended dating sites on it. She twisted my arm a bit and got me to at least check it out to see if I could find a better place than POF. When I got there I viewed it with a lot of skepticism, but once I realized the POF was not on their recommended list, they gained a bit in my esteem.  I was also surprised to find that eharmony was not there either – with all the ads on TV I had seen, they were the one I was going to try next, but they were just so darn expensive. After checking out some of the sites on one of their category pages, I signed up to a couple. I had decided that by spreading my profile farther afield that it would make it easier to just delete it from one of the sites. Best move I ever made. Now I am meeting decent men who are not looking for a bed buddy, but are genuinely looking for serious long term relationships. My happiness index has gone up a few points since then because I now have a social life again. What a nice change!

Most dating sites are not bad, although the totally free ones tend to attract more riffraff I am told. Even the best dating sites will have a few bad apples in them. You have to be on your guard anywhere. With internet dating you have to practice safe hex before you practice safe sex. Many sites are excellent at deleting the accounts of freaks and weirdos, but even the best have some zany characters haunting them. You have to be careful with your personal information, and remember, if you have any doubts about the person, do not agree to meet them.

So visit the link below. It has some great advice for online dating as well as lists of recommended dating sites. I think you will find what your looking for just like me. Good luck.
Advice for Women

Manufacturing Mates

The Amazon.com kindle is just one of many e-readers flooding the market currently. In fact, e-readers are going to pretty much shut down the brick and mortar side of the print industry within the next few years. Authors will leverage this paradigm shift to self publish. There will be a lot of book sharing between people. In effect, this will do to books what the Ipod did to music. And although the music industry will cry foul and that people are stealing copyrighted material, the result will be that more people than ever will read on a regular basis. In fact, these e-readers will be the final enabler for people to sell serial stories on a mass basis for the first time. Once publishers and authors adjust to this new paradigm, they will make even more money than ever!

Well so much for speculations about the publishing business. But something that you have to be aware of is the amount of information that companies like Amazon glean from your e-reader habits.  Likely you already know that they use the titles that you purchase to figure out what to recommend to you. Most people would just consider this to be good merchandising. Most people are not aware that Amazon also tracks what you are reading and what you are re-reading as part of this exercise. Just because you buy a book does not mean that you read it and like it. They track how fast you read it, and if you re-read it. The creepy thing is that they also track anything that you highlight as well. They are also sharing this information with publishers so that publishers know what it is that people like within each publishing genre. How scary is that?

Welcome to the true electronic age.

People have been bandying about the term electronic age for over 30 years, but it is only in the last 10 years that it is really getting into the types of machinations that we saw in George Orwell's book 1986. It would seem that our society was a bit slow in living down to George's low expectations of us.

You may wonder what it is that these companies are doing with all of this personal data.

So far, the publishing companies are focusing on choosing plot scenarios that are sure to sell well. They have been financing assistant ghost writers for popular series writers to accelerate their output.. At the same time, they are able to check for consistency of story lines. The star trek series of books through 20 years was written by a series of guest writers. Can you imagine how much better and more successful that series would have been with better character consistency, better plot consistency and better knowledge of what it was that their buyers liked and did not like? What do you think that similar tactics could do for the likes of Nicholas Sparks, Luanne Rice or Ken Follet?

So take it a step further. Why have a real author at all? Why not have an author team and create an artificial persona to front them. They can be cagey and invent a fictitious person by doctoring a photograph, create a website with a blog, have a bunch of social media profiles, and hire a PR team to look after that persona. They could play up the fact that the author has agoraphobia and will not appear in public. Now you get a team of ghost writers to start working on new books, and an editor checking for consistency of story lines if the books are supposed to be a series. If they are just all of a genre, then the only check is for consistent style. Of course the next step in this sequence will be to hire people to do blog posts and answer email from these fake entities. Faced with this, most people would just assume there is a living, breathing person that belongs to the name. Welcome to the likely future of the big publishing companies.

There is another industry that would benefit from applying similar information and tactics. That industry is Web Dating Services!

The work that Microsoft is currently doing with computer interaction is truly impressive, but likely the gaming industry will be the only near-term beneficiary. Apple's deployment of SIRI in a big way is also likely to shape a lot of near future technology.  Voice technology is most critical on small mobile devices, but will find their way into most computer based systems.  The really interesting part will be when voice, gesture and face recognition technology is widely employed in other regular home appliances and vehicles.

What if these gesture recognition, face recognition, interactive voice and video technologies were combined? What if you could come up with a simulacrum that would be able to interactively chat with someone? What if they can recognize you on sight, pull up your previous conversations? What if they can tell if you look sad or tired?

Almost every dating site on the Internet has some form of contact initiation mechanisms where they entice people to respond. Part of this is to get them out of the habit of being lurkers, but mostly it is to coax people into signing up or upgrading to a paid membership. When people upgrade so they can reply to these messages, they have people on staff to interact with you.  So that hot chick that seems to be so enamored with you seems too good to be true, and probably is. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and dating sites have to make money to stay in operation. It is not all fake, but some of it is.

It takes a while to find someone to mesh with even on a dating site. You will never do so if you quit too soon, or if you are too timid to interact in the first place. These systems may seem money grubbing and greedy, but they do serve a useful purpose. People who hang around longer are more likely to be successful at finding a match.

Likely the next step for the dating industry would be to manufacture ideal profiles for you based on what you are looking for. You are looking for a 5 foot 5 inch brunette with a trim figure, a steady job, who does not smoke and is not interested in having children. Well amazingly enough, there are a few that have joined up in the last few weeks when you log in and search. In the couple of moments that it takes you to complete a profile, and log in, they could have a bunch of perfect profiles created for you to interact with, and they can keep creating a few more every day for you to find.

What might the next step be? In a decade or so, it should be possible to have a computer generated entity that can interact with you one on one via video chat. Programs currently exist that will can interact with you, and they will fool most people into believing that there is a real person at the other end. Where the media focuses on the more mechanical aspects of artificial intelligence, like walking and running robots, the true breakthroughs that need to be made are on the intelligence side of the equation.  At the present time, nobody has invented a computer based mechanism that is capable of independent thought.

So if you are on a dating site and want to know if a person is real or fake, just try to enter into a video chat with them. The fake ones will never commit to it. If they will not video chat with you, you will know one of two things. They are either lying about what they look like, or else they are really a fake entity. Either way, you are better to seek other people, either on that site or on other sites.

Currently then, your litmus test for determining how authentic someone is on a dating site is video chat. If they are available to video chat, then they are legit.

In spite of all the negative information we just talked about, dating sites do work. I mean, people lie all the time, even in bars. People hand toss out fake names like crazy. Any dating site has literally millions of real people looking to interact. There is a strong chance that many will be in your own town, even if it is small. If you are a man, to minimize the artificial contacts, just upgrade to a paying membership as soon as you join. That will pretty much ensure that you ware always interacting with real people. Women should just join sites where women can interact without paying and men have to pay. These sites will only show women real profiles. Women are strong communicators, so there is no need to entice them into conversation. Sites were men can interact for free tend to be full of cheapskates and unsuccessful men, stay away from them!

This blog post should enable you to understand the more negative side of dating sites, and what is possible. Dating sites do provide a useful service in spite of this, and are worth joining. Just make sure you keep your sensibilities about you.  For a list of some of the better sites, click the link below:

Dating Sites

Vacation Sex in Canada - A Guide to the Country

Many couples enjoy vacationing together, and vacationing in Canada is an amazing experience. This is a country that has metropolitan area, but still has vast tracts of wilderness and near wilderness to enjoy. Whether you are an urban tourist or an eco tourist, you can find literally thousands of places to go and things to do.  Of course, while traveling, you may get an amorous urge and want to satisfy that itch immediately. Out of thousands of possibilities, these are some of my personal favorites.

Newfoundland

Castle Hill National Historic Site has an old seventeenth century fort called "Placentia". It is located strategically on the coast and was designed to protect French fishing rights from the predations of the British. Also strategically placed within this old fort are lots of nooks and crannies for you and your partner to sneak away from tour groups and enjoy some quickie private strategy sessions. Just be careful that the local gendarmes do not find you and turn your afternoon delight into a BDSM torture session.

PEI

Prince Edward Island, similar to Idaho, is known for its spuds. But there the similarity ends. This is an island with only about 200,000 people living on it. Mostly farmers with some fishing and commerce. One of the more interesting attractions for tourists is the confederation bridge to get to the island from New Brunswick. It is one of the longest bridges in the world. But for nature loving people, The Confederation Trail is a highlight that winds through various maritime ecologies. It is a nature lovers delight, and also has many private places for you to enjoy each other intimately.

Nova Scotia

Off the coast of beautiful Nova Scotia, there are regularly lots of whale sightings. Find yourself a cozy nook away from prying eyes and set up a nice picnic lunch. Then, let the magnificent whales set the romantic mood with their beautiful songs and smooth movements through the water. Pretty soon, they won’t be the only ones spraying out of their blow-holes.

New Brunswick

For some people, a little scare can get the sexual juices flowing, as well as adrenalin.  Go to French Fort Cove in New Brunswick, where a headless Nun guides you through the halls and paths with ghost stories and real-life history of the fort. All the lights are low, to make it extra scary, and which provides a good opportunity for some discreet touching during the tour. Hopefully the nun is the only thing that is head-less.

Quebec

Quebec City is one of the oldest inhabited places in North America. It was originally colonized by the French as a fur trading post and fort before the landing of the pilgrims. The current citadel and other fortifications around the city show the military history of the site very clearly. The French culture of Quebec is most evident here. This is nothing at all like Louisiana. After you have toured a fort you can eat at one of the many fine restaurants in the city. When finished with food, you can retire to your room and see if anything else stimulates your various appetites.

Ontario

A little-known and cool spot in the heart of Ontario is the Cheltenham Badlands Trail. In the middle of boring farmland is a crazy Martian landscape like nothing you’ve ever seen. The rock is folded over on itself and a deep red color. Perfect for finding a private nook with someone special and pretending like you’re doing it on Mars.  Please hike your sex protection devices out with you!


Alberta

The Cheltenham Badlands of Ontario are nothing at all when compared to the scope of what Alberta has to offer. If you are into roughing it, you’ll love the Alberta Badlands even more! There’s Brook, Alberta, where you can go digging for bones in Dinosaur Provincial Park. And if you can’t find any fossils, get yourself a private spot and dig for a different kind of bone, if you know what I mean.|For those of you who are into greener pleasures, it is hard to top Banff National Park. Located just outside of Calgary, the park starts in the foothills of the Rockies and winds through a long valley bordered by touring mountains, like Mount Eisenhower. Truly stunning in grandeur everywhere you look. Elk and Black bear wander along the side of the highway the cuts through the middle of the park. You can stay at Lake Louise and enjoy a glacier hike with world class dining. Paddle a canoe on the lake, and when you are finished paddling the canoe, you can get into some more kinky paddling with each other.

Manitoba

Lake Winnipeg has some beautiful fishing,  sailing and camping activities in the summer. One of the largest fresh water lakes in the world, Lake Winnipeg rivals the size of two of the great lakes. And while you are fishing around, you might catch some amorous advances from your partner. Making love in a small boat is an interesting and unique activity. Try it, maybe you can learn to make love in a canoe like any real Canadian can!

Saskatchewan

Let’s face it. Saskatchewan is a huge, flat prairie province with not a lot going on. However, some of the best things about it are the huge, open, flat spaces. Drive out into the middle of nowhere before dusk and find yourself a place to camp for the night. You’ll never see more stars or have more privacy for some hot sex. Plus, if an angry farmer wants you off his land, you’ll have three or four hours after you’ve seen him coming to get out of there. Plus, if you have sex in the capital, you can say you got some Regina Vagina.

British Columbia

Port Alberni is a unique place to visit. Located at the end of one of the longer inlets in the world, this city, which is physically located in the center of Vancouver Island, is actually on the west coast. The inlet is over 40 miles long. You can take a cruise for the full length of the inlet, seeing sleek seals, jumping salmon, and the occasional whale. One of the stops is the world's only floating post office. Once you have finished with the mail, you can exercise you male prerogatives with your own sleek honey.

Yukon

If you decide to venture to the far north of Canada, you should plan to do it in the summer. Winter is just too unpredictable and it is no place for casual tourists. If you do venture into the Yukon in the summer, you will experience very long days and very short nights. In fact, if you are at Dawson in the middle of June, you can read a book at midnight. A couple interesting things to do while in Dawson are to gamble at Diamond Tooth Gerties, Pan for Gold, take a guided river tour, or best yet, drink a Sour Toe Cocktail at the Sourdough Saloon in the "Downtown Hotel". The sour toe cocktail is a drink with a somewhat mummified human toe inside of it.  After you have finished your cocktail, you can retire to your room to enjoy a different type of cocktail with your partner as well as explore whatever toe fetishes, you might have.

NWT

If you are into architecture, then the igloo shaped church in Canada's most northerly town of Inuvik might interest you. Definitely above the artic circle, the sun never sets at all for several days in mid June. Well worth a trip to see.  Of course that means that you can make love under the sun for 24 hours straight. An interesting pastime if you have the stamina.

Nunavut

Nunavut has some interesting features. The most northerly permanent settlement in the world is Alert. It is the home of the worlds magnetic north pole.


For more cool places in Canada to visit see:
http://www.canadacool.com


And if you are reading this and annoyed that you do not have a main squeeze to take on vacation with you, then visit the following:

Online Dating