Welcome to the Mediocre family, Casemates

@f00l hopefully @snapster already hadms an answer for you at hand but just in case I’m going to post here mentioning backerkit.com as a great platform for managing all those kinds of details.

@jbartus holy typos, Batman. That should say has.

@jbartus

Thx for link.

Your typos can never beat out my typos.

You had better concede.

@f00l do they still count as typos when you just let them happen without trying to edit?

@jbartus

I try to edit. And then something interrupts.

And I am going to fast. And already, like the White Rabbit, always LATE and then some.

And editing introduces more errors.

And I miss errors. And try to edit phrasing, which goofs things up. And run out of time. And try to do 7 things at once.

And can’t proofread my own stuff anyway.

Ands every time I try to hit an “m”, I seem to accidentally delete half of what I wrote, or something.

I am terrible both with swiping and with letter-by-letter.

Thanks, GBoard. Love ya.

It takes a lot if work to be a true PRO.

/giphy typo

@f00l I am in awe of your talent

@jbartus

I’m so special.

@f00l Let me take a stab here:

• The reverse of what you did. Pledge at the party level ($100) and then add $60 to it. We aren’t able to do that with the Early Bird $50 amount, though. In that case, I saw someone say they made a second Kickstarter account to do both. I don’t know Kickstarters rules about that, but it seems fine to me to do that if you wanted.
• Yes, If you pledge for the party and then can not go, we will figure out a way to get you the remote party pack instead.
• We will be sending out a survey post-Kickstarter (if it fully funds) asking for email/username to match these things up.

@dave

Much thx.

@curtise

Early promo, and fun?

@curtise Yep! You’re free to back it even if you can’t/won’t buy wine.

@curtise

why are you using Kickstarter for this and giving them what I assume would be a fairly large chunk of the coin, rather than just selling this using Mediocre’s own commerce backends?

the same reason lots of people use kickstater even established brands, it gets publicity

@curtise and kickstater only take 5% + 3% cc fee so its not that bad https://www.kickstarter.com/help/fees

@communist 8% is a HUGE cut when you are sitting on a working e-commerce platform (or three? or six?.. meh, checkout.org, morningsave, the now defunct drone.horse, the soon - or maybe never - to open mediocritee, and even this casemates site that is opening for business next month).
Selling the launch packages internally would certainly be costing less than 5%, and probably much less than 3% for the CC processing too: few businesses pay that high a rate to process transactions.
So perhaps you’re right about the marketing angle.

@curtise Also, Kickstarter is now a known quantity, and that brings with it a level of reputation & trust that Meh/Mediocre Corporation likely would not have otherwise.
I also don’t think Mediocre has the features needed baked into their platform yet- crowdfunding is just different enough from the ecommerce stuff they do here that it may not be cost effective to have someone add a one time feature (with the attendant maintenance cost for upkeep on a rarely used feature set).

@dashcloud there’s nothing special to it. Create a sale using mediocre.com or any of the other sites that currently exist in the family. Offer on that sale the specific pledge options as things you are selling. Kind of like how Meh currently sells several different sizes of bedsheets in several different colours. The only thing that wouldn’t be straightforward would be the escrow that sites like Kickstarter offer (where if a target isn’t reached, all money is refunded). Although I would posit that Mediocre could simply offer a batch refund of all transactions from that sale if it didn’t meet some minimum quantity (but I’m pretty certain there’s no chance that this endeavour won’t be launched).
ps. I trust @snapster and @dave and the teams at Mediocre far more than I do Kickstarter… Reputation of this place on the other hand heheh!

@curtise

Companies and brands do expensive and sometimes fun or silly promos for reasons.

I’m willing to trust the local biz acumen to hit the Mediocre level.

@curtise Because this…

@jml326 right, I get that, but that was back before they owned several online ecommerce sites

@curtise They just followed their woot success.

@curtise their ecommerce site, as cherished as it is, isn’t nearly as prominent as Kickstarter and has a far less diverse audience, plus this whole crowdfunding thing is Kickstarter’s baliwick, they have consumer trust on their side. If all Mediocre wanted to do was fund the creation of the site I’m sure they have the means to do so without soliciting funds from the masses, after all when they sell something people actually want Meh itself clears more than 50k on a single product never mind what their other endeavors produce. This is a marketing move to attract an audience from Wine.Woot (where a mention pushing people to a Woot competitor directly would likely not be overly welcome) and other places that have never even heard of Meh or Mediocre or quite likely even Woot.

@mtb002 eastern Iowa here. So we have that much support.

@mtb002 Davenport here… have to send the wife, she’s the wine drinker.

@mtb002 Dee Moines, here. I hope we all like sweet white wine, lol

@mtb002
I’m Des Moines as well. The local police station has a designated area with a camera set up to monitor craigslist transactions so that might be a good place to meet if anyone is nervous about meeting people from the dark web.

@TheFLP spend $10 and give me the tee-shirt

@communist That is insufficiently frivolous — the t-shirt would be useful (to you).

@TheFLP I was in the same boat, but (to be overly clear) it looks like the badge only appears on casemates.

https://meh.com/forum/topics/what-a-twisted-way-to-reopen-vmp-membership---glad-i-still-have-mine-1#5a44fb1f6f1c630d9050f8a6

Hey, um, @somebodyWhoWorksHere (@snapster?), Any chance we could get the badge to show here for those who don’t have a meh-specific badge? I think you’d see a lot more $5 bills. Well, figuratively speaking.

/giphy five dolla dolla bills y’all

@stinks As long as I can go there on the days I remember Casemates exists to admire it, that’s enough for me.

@Cerridwyn I expect we’ll feature only wine for a while. It may depend on the pipeline of wineries participating and our ability to move volume though.

@snapster Thanks
I don’t do wine
I do booze, love caskers even though it is pricey has heck
but bought a lot of food off wine.woot back when it was yours.

@snapster I need a fix for my barely buzzed habit. I need it bad.

@bdb No barely buzzed, but Teahive and Promontory up on wine.woot.com

@SaintO I am!

@SaintO what part of RI - the Deep South, the far North, the West… or the east?

@Cerridwyn gets a carton of Eggs Zachary.

@excarnate actually, your existing VMP likely makes this a no brainer if you plan on keeping the VMP. $60 gets you a prepaid year of VMP + 3 x $10 coupons usable on any Mediocre site + a tshirt.

@RedOak I look at the Kickstarter page and see nothing about coupons.

@excarnate check your promo or spam filters or your account email settings here to see if there’s a reason email didn’t get to you on it.

@excarnate the email came from meh.com (on 12/28, just before 1pm Eastern for me… felt a bit late) with the subject line: "VMP Exclusive: Help Launch our New Site"

After an intro of empty words of puffery and flattery focused on your - until this point, VMP-sucker - ego, the key paragraph from that email:

As a special offer to (existing)sic VMP members only, when you back our campaign for $60 (the “1-year Free Shipping” reward level) you’ll get half that value back in the form of three $10 coupons valid through the end of 2018 on any of our sites: Meh, MorningSave, and this new one, Casemates (where your VMP status gets you free shipping now, too). Even if you hate wine, that’s still worth it…

… so while it would appear you could continue to toil away paying the $5 per month for VMP, why be a sucker? Pre-pay the $60 and get 3 x $10 coupons that you can still choose to ignore if you - like me - find the meh.com deals aren’t what they once were in the first 18 months or so…

PS: in what other world can one feel completely “normal” saying not completely flattering things in the very next comment following the founder of this “world?” Gotta love Mediocre. Sorta. Not.

@snapster I rarely get email from meh; it isn’t buried in a spam folder–I’m not using one on the account meh email comes in to.

@RedOak I’ll trust it’ll work, hence, I signed up. At the worst, I’ve prepaid VMP for a year, which isn’t horrible. Except to my wife…but she does like morningsave, so I should be ok.

@medz that’s an impolite way to say it. And a completely acceptable way to say it… on Meh.

@RedOak
/image thumb up bruh

@medz

No. They are all required to be completely, irretrievably infantile.
Just like us.

@snapster what happens if i want 4 bottles irk wants 4 bottles and glenn only wants 3 bottles

@snapster i think i am going to be stuck as goat. Can a casemates badge overrule a goat badge and prevent my getting goatness in january

@CaptAmehrican

@therealjrn

@CaptAmehrican

@CaptAmehrican Mostly junk juice now but back in the day (70s) Bully Hill was estate bottled and among the first really drinkable Finger Lakes (central upstate NY) wine. Heir to the Taylor wine fortune started it to thumb his nose at the corporate overlords to whom the rest of his family had sold out. Did all the paintings for his labels and signed them (the labels) to try and get around legal agreements not to use his name. Taylor sued and won. He went back and just blacked out his last name with marker on every bottle (claimed he couldn’t afford to reprint.) Taylor sued again but lost. I have Billy Goat and Butcher Shop limited edition prints hanging in my office. Walter Taylor was a real character and something of a folk hero. Story doesn’t end well but it was fun to follow while he had the limelight.

@Frcal It was the first winery I ever toured. I used to like them and now dont so much. I did not know why I assumed my taste had changed with age. Thanks for the info.
p.s. It is also still the best goat art on wine bottles I am aware of.

@CaptAmehrican OK. One more Walter Taylor story. Probably apocryphal. When he lost the first lawsuit, the judge handed down a list of things he could no longer do - use his last name, promote the fact that he was producing from the original family vineyard, acknowledge that he was a fourth generation winemaker, etc. - Walter claimed he became depressed and felt like all was lost. After a week of sulking, he decided that the Coca-Cola company (owners of the Taylor trademarks) could steal his heritage but could “never get his goat.” That’s how goats became the Bully Hill mascot and why there are so many version of goat labels. BTW he also was sued by NASA for marketing Space Shuttle Red. They lost. Like I said, a real character.

@Pavlov And it needs to be the good stuff. Not the stuff distributed via Ford Fusions!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/jalopnik.com/1-million-worth-of-marijuana-found-inside-new-ford-fus-1796979822/amp

@narfcake

If the Fusion is in Cali, that’s a business! Right?

@slrn I’m close to KS, and also to OK and AR, which don’t allow wine shipping so I don’t think I’ll make any “mates” for this thing. Whereabouts in KS do you reside?

@melwin @Barney lives in Kansas, but I don’t know if she partakes of the wine.

@slrn @melwin @therealjrn Yep, I’m here in the land of Oz. However I don’t drink the juice due to some nasty heart drugs I take. (But I did steal a couple of sips of the Mad Ape Den Wine. Nice cross between nail polish remover and paint thinner, or maybe it’s just been too long since I’ve imbibed.)

Anyway, I only bought the VMP, so no party here.

@melwin I’m a proud resident of LFK. Since March at least. Coming up on a year now I guess… The things we do for our SO’s

@slrn Well, if you’re going to live in KS, LFK is the place to be. I developed great taste in music because of that place, and I have fond memories.

@melwin
@slrn

LFK

Was trying to guess what that meant, not being from KS.

To my astonishment, I guessed right!

@f00l You REALLY need glasses. That’s mixed WASHINGTON Cabernet Sauvignon, and it’s a decent enough deal, but it’s not Wellington. Yes, they both start with “W” and clearly you’ve been sampling a bit of wine, or perhaps a quick jigger of something stronger in your coffee. Those wines are good, but they’re local to me, and I’m still trying to decide whether I’m tempted or not. I’ll probably break down by the end of the day (I did yesterday).

Go ahead, be tempted. Just put on your glasses first. :-}

@Shrdlu

Damn. I’m losing the ability to read.

How about that!

I glanced at it in the app.

Obviously too quickly. I skim (barely-glance level) a lot.

Glasses/lack of aren’t the prob. Doing/fucking up 30 things at once - that might be a prob.

Or I am losing it for once and all, no possiblity of recovery. I wonder at that event having, possibly, visibly started, often enough. Sigh.

In the event of the latter possibility, I sure hope it’s a strange and interesting trip.

@Shrdlu

Come to think on it:

Go ahead, be tempted. Just put on your glasses first. :-}

Put on my glasses?

And put down my glass?

Or throw my glasses in the fire?
(If I am losing/have lost the ability to read, what’s the loss of glasses, anyway?
And fuck-off, Texas DPS.)

And pick up my glass?
(As long as I am aiming for total and incandescent semi-conscious incoherence (no stopping, no brakes); I could go ahead make the experience “tasty”.

More seriously:

N00b Q.

Ok I should google this.
But:

What the fuck is a “library wine”?

That term wasn’t covered, that I recall, in the couple of wine books I read in the 1980’s.

I am so far out to sea re wine and wine knowledge, I don’t think I’ll ever spot land.

Re: alcohol-fueled stupidity:

Freezing rain forecast for Sunday here.

The young, I hear, they are so frequently “immortal”. Sigh.

@f00l Here you go, straight from Google’s lips to your ears (please wash them out, though, since who knows where else those lips have been):

http://www.winespectator.com/drvinny/show/id/42557

(To save you the clicking, here’s the main point of it:

The term “library wine” refers to a wine that is being kept or cellared away, or is part of a collection—basically, anything you’re not drinking at the moment. Sometimes wineries will sell an older vintage of their wine that they’ve kept cellared for a while, calling it a library wine. The term doesn’t refer to a specific age, but it does suggest a wine that has been or should be cellared before drinking. How long depends on the wine and on the person drinking it. There isn’t really a standard.

@Shrdlu

Thx.

People should, technically, not respond when I ask Q’s like those.
Enabling my laziness and all.

I am glad not everyone has the temperament to be purely an enforcer.

But I appreciate. : )

@Shrdlu OK, local wine expert, someone gave me a bottle of Cupcake prosecco for Christmas. I should drink some tomorrow. Is it sweet enough for a Mountain Dew fan? The internets say to add blackberry liquor to it. Is that a good idea? (I’m afraid to ask over on the wine thing.)

@sammydog01 I am not going to be able to answer this with any sort of expertise, since the last time I tasted Mountain Dew was in the late eighties (perhaps 1986 or so). I wouldn’t add anything to the Prosecco until you have actually tried it. It ought to be chilled; it is, after all, a sparkling wine, and you should drink it in a single sitting. It’s (normally, at least) light on alcohol content, and that should help to make it pleasant.

Please note that my comments pertain to Prosecco in general; I have no specific knowledge of Cupcake Prosecco (although it’s rated highly). It’s almost new year’s eve; it’ll be perfect.

@sammydog01 It’s on the sweeter side of proseccos which are mostly dry. BUT nothing like Mountain Dew sweet. A tall glass of black ice tea with one teaspoon of sugar would be in the ballpark.

@Shrdlu Thanks. I don’t think I can drink a whole bottle by myself and pick up my teenager that is cool enough to have a party to go to. Maybe I’ll just drink all day tomorrow?

@Lighter That actually sounds pretty good. Thanks, I’ll give it a try.

added a press clippings thread over on casemates for more dry reading.

@f00l I want the shirt. Wish “shirt only” was an option.

@heartny

Got wine loving friends?

Or try the winery sales office directly.

@heartny Go right ahead and buy. Try leaving them a note to just send the wine to me.

Thanks in advance. :-}

@Shrdlu Yeah, maybe I’ll try that. I’ll get back to you if I’m successful

@heartny

Greedy @shrdlu lives in wine country. She is surrounded. She doesnt need this.

Send it to me. I’m much more deserving.

@f00l I was going to order, but no shipping to PA. Ah well.

@Jamileigh17

PA has some sucky laws. Got friends across a nearby border?

@heartny It’s a cool design- maybe they’ll sell it later to make a few bucks? And who doesn’t need a few bucks these days?

@f00l Did you notice the shirt is a ship getting eaten by an octopus?

@f00l I never purchased wine before today, due to the PA shipping restriction. I got this one and sent to my in-laws in NJ. I feel oddly good about it?

@ACraigL

Hope it’s a grand experience when you finally taste it.

@f00l Alas, only NJ, which isn’t much better.

@ruouttaurmind the kickstarter still has 14 hours to go.

@makhay yes, vmp is now a 3 website membership working on meh , morningsave, and casemates

@communist wish i would have known that while the campaign was still running. would have kicked in $5

@mmonacoj FALSE. Woot just recently canceled 1 item in my bundled order and only refunded the price of the single item and not a share of the shipping. This meant I still paid the $5 shipping for fewer items than I had agree to when I made the purchase.

@lichme Crazy how fast you can duplicate a business venture when the business model, corporations, and consumers are essentially the same as the first time around.

@medz Maybe they are hoping we’ll buy more on the other sites if we have drunk a bit too much wine?

@medz Correct, not daily. It’s going to be like the old wine dot woot was, during the earlier days. Just three days a week.

@Shrdlu okay

@ruouttaurmind

@sammydog01 Image seems to have evaporated, but… I try to avoid showing up as a dinner guest with anything equipped with a metal screw-off cap.

@ruouttaurmind I can see it. Must be you. Let’s try this:
/image two buck chuck

@ruouttaurmind just looking around winewootstalker shows that the cheapest wines offered are around $15 a bottles with a 4 bottle minimum http://www.wootstalker.com/recentw.php?type=wine&page=10&search=&activeonly=

@ruouttaurmind the coupon space is already being used for the VMP 10% off on MorningSave.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Ignorant True enough, but the original offer, and the confirmation email definitely stated the coupons were good at morningsave. Morningsave CS declined to make it so, standing firm on “no coupons available”.

It seems I’m the first person who’s actually tried to use one.

@ruouttaurmind yeah I don’t remember the actual offer, but there is no mention of MorningSave in the email.

Hi! You’ve got a new coupon code you can use on Casemates.com or Meh.com - VMPBRIBE. It’s good for $10 off any purchase. The first Casemates.com event launches at midnight eastern, tonight.

Even better - you’ve got three uses of that $10 off coupon, for use on buying three separate things.

(We’ll be contacting you later for the other parts of your Kickstarter reward, shirts, etc.)

@Ignorant @ruouttaurmind RedOak posted an email that mentioned Morningsave up there.

@Ignorant @ruouttaurmind @sammydog01
Taken from above:

As a special offer to (existing)sic VMP members only, when you back our campaign for $60 (the “1-year Free Shipping” reward level) you’ll get half that value back in the form of three $10 coupons valid through the end of 2018 on any of our sites: Meh, MorningSave, and this new one, Casemates (where your VMP status gets you free shipping now, too). Even if you hate wine, that’s still worth it…

@ruouttaurmind @sammydog01 they sure did, well that sucks.

@ruouttaurmind no coupons on morningsave for vmp because only 1 coupon allowed and that is always the 10% discount for vmp. Did you try it on sidedeal.com?

@medz

no coupons on morningsave for vmp because only 1 coupon allowed and that is always the 10% discount for vmp.

I recognize this. However, the offer was made. If it was not going to be honoured, the offer should not have been made. I’m not losing sleep over it, but the way it was handled was enough to make me lose interest in placing my order. When presented with the original offer email, the CS rep just went dark and ignored the ticket.

Nothing on sidedeal of interest at the moment.

@ruouttaurmind I don’t think it’s how you wanted it implemented, but you can now use your VMPBRIBE over at MorningSave.

@Ignorant Yes, you are correct, I wanted to be able to use the VMPBRIBE as a VMP! However, the bonus discount code more than makes up for it if I can find something I actually want over there.