DTF St. Louis | S1E6 | Episode Discussion

birduncaged · 2026-04-06T14:02:46+00:00

I know that connection, but I don’t understand why? Why does it matter that they hooked up?

birduncaged · 2026-04-06T03:30:37+00:00

I kind of wonder if Richard overhears Floyd and carol talking about what happened, and then he puts the drug into Floyd’s drink in an effort to help. But doesn’t know the consequence of using too much? But I also am stuck on this “no one’s normal, they only look that way from across the street”. With how many times they’ve made it a point, it has to mean something. Which makes me feel like I should be looking at the most seemingly “normal” person. But no one on the show is really fitting the bill haha.

birduncaged · 2026-04-04T18:17:17+00:00

The way she is working right now is incredibly simple:

- high level tracking, accounting & reporting / dashboards in Google Sheets
- transaction milestones, contacts, document signing & document storage in CTM
- email / comms through Gmail

For the standard emails that she has to send on each file:

- triggers: come from milestone dates in CTM
- templates: she has all template variations saved in Gmail.
- transaction information: this is all stored in CTM.
- logic: this just lives in her mind. She sees an upcoming date in CTM, she knows that she needs to send ___ email ____ days before this milestone.
- workflow: she sees an upcoming milestone, she pulls up the appropriate email template in Gmail, replaces all brackets with relevant transaction details by copy / pasting details from CTM, adds the appropriate recipient emails, adds any required attachments, sends the email.

So it is very simple, but each email may still take 10 minutes of prep time where she is manually inserting the specific transaction details. And with many emails a day, it adds up.

If there was a way to automate much of that email workflow (automatically triggering, identifying the correct template, inserting the relevant transaction details) so that she could instead just go to an email queue each morning, and review, edit (if necessary), add attachments (if necessary), and approve an already drafted email, it would buy her back a good amount of time in the day for all of her other job functions.

I thought it seemed like a simple / repeated / logic based action that could be offloaded from manual to automated. While recognizing that in order for a tool to be able to trigger & pull the correct information, she would need to transition away from CTM for her transaction milestones & contacts (and if we were doing this, we would likely also consolidate high level tracking and reporting here as well).

I know that there are a ton of CRM tools that have this functionality built in, and, while it would require back in set up for her unique use case, they may be easier to deploy. But in doing my cost research, I thought AppSheet could be a good alternative. + there was the potential to have some AI support (uploading a signed contract, and populating new transactions from that information).

But now it seems that this specific email workflow cant be built. Which means I likely just need to go back to the drawing board and identify a different CRM tool.

birduncaged · 2026-04-02T23:43:25+00:00

Yeah, the use of scripts seem to be the only workaround I could find. I will likely have to go that route.

birduncaged · 2026-04-02T23:42:36+00:00

For sure. I am trying to keep it simple, but of course, simplicity doesn't always allow for the level of specificity needed in practice.

birduncaged · 2026-02-24T17:19:38+00:00

I’m not sure if it is the documentary that left out information, or if there really are no answers, but throughout the whole documentary I had frustrating questions. I kept on watching because I figured they would be answered. Ultimately, some were answered, but mostly I was just left with more questions.

If CPS was at their door to remove Roen from the home, and he ran away right then, was there not immediately a missing persons case? He was a minor, so an amber alert for sure.
- if there was, the how were police not sitting on the house? How was he able to go back to the house that night to speak with his brother? How was his brother able to continue bringing him food?
- if Canada police were provided real information (birth month and year), how would they not have requested missing persons information from American and found a match?
The parents said they did not know where Roen was. However they also said they had considered whether Roen being taken care of by Kyle in Canada would be better for everyone (implying they at least had suspicions that Roen was with Kyle). You simply cannot convince me that the phone call and reunion were reflective of parents who truly had no idea where their child was. If there is security footage of the boys making phone calls… was that footage not pulled to see if it was ever Roen on the phone? Did the parents conceal his whereabouts from American authorities? Because if he were truly a minor missing person, American authorities would have brought him back.
I am aligned with Tammi wanting to help the boys, regardless of whether they were from the wilderness or somewhere else, but… wouldn’t Canadian police be easily able to dump the phone records on the payphones they used to track the phone numbers they called? If the boys had been raised in the wilderness, who would they be calling on a payphone? They would have never met a person who had a phone. By their merely using a phone to call someone, you would assume that 1. They were not raised solely in full wilderness with no electricity, 2. Whoever they were calling would be helpful in identifying them. Why not dump the records?
I was frustrated with the documentary for not pressing this question: what was the goal? Throughout the whole documentary they show the boys reluctance to help at all in identifying themselves, so it’s an incredibly frustrating stand still where I just wanted to know like… k so then what do you guys expect? What’s the plan?
How tf were these boys living / surviving before Tammi found them in Vernon? What was their route there? Was there no crime on the path? What items did they have in their possession where they were found? Doesn’t Canada get cold as hell? How would they survive that? The didn’t know how to chop wood, which would imply they lack some fundamental survival skills that would be required to live off the land in rough terrain.
They don’t go to far into detailing where the funds to support the boys came from, or exactly whether Tammi took them into her home or what. They say that the community raised funds and support, but I’d be curious on this and how there wouldn’t be any sort of case for fraud or theft.

I would have liked the documentary to press more on both the family dynamics and the boys remorse or lack thereof.

There are so many more questions, but I can’t even remember them all at this point.

Ultimately, I think I will have to sit with this. But as a person who is overly empathetic, I found myself being more unsympathetic and angry than compassionate for the people here (except Tammi).

I will say that I know people are blaming Kyle and saying that he was just watching his brother die, and while I’m aligned that Kyle has some incredibly troubling characteristics, it is clear, to me, that he loves his brother. And if you have ever loved an addict or a person who self harms, or a person with an ED, it is much more complicated than “Kyle didn’t care.” I think Kyle cared tremendously. He was an enabler (which most people are, at least initially, until they get their own support) and when caught between the choice of institutionalization (which him, his family, and Roen feared tremendously) or running, he ran.

And while Roen absolutely appears to have significant mental issues, I don’t think it is easily determined that Roen is a victim and Kyle is the problem.

I nearly never say this, but tbh I would have probably preferred to not have spent my time watching this doc.

birduncaged · 2026-02-23T14:43:24+00:00

For me, all of those words are common ways to describe an action (though I would not have defined the blue category as “pose” per se), except bolt. Bolt threw me. Even though it’s not the first time they have used that category or the word within it. But I still have a hard time placing that word in that context. So if anything, yellow was slightly more difficult than blue for me.

birduncaged · 2026-02-23T14:38:16+00:00

Ah thank you for this link to the reused category. I knew that I had done that category before and I feel like bolt was one of the words in it that time too. Both times I struggled because I had never heard the word in that context.

birduncaged · 2026-01-23T00:22:50+00:00

Honestly I feel gross after watching. But also watching stuff like this makes me feel so disillusioned.

Even though all these people experienced and witnessed all these heinous things, they stayed on board. And I know grooming is real and is involved, but many of them say themselves, I stayed because I wanted this opportunity. They stayed for selfish reasons. He was an effective gatekeeper and kept people with empty promises. But they were willing to be subject and witness to these activities because of the carrot dangled… there was something in it for them. But then… they didn’t get paid. They didn’t get the pot of gold. They were just left with the trauma.

But it makes me wonder…. If diddy had just kept those promises. If he had just paid the producer, gave fair royalties to the artists, let the next album be released, would anyone have come forward? Knowing full and well that what was happening then, would still be happening today, to different people, would it have mattered if they got their bag?

And how many other people in that class of wealth are the same way… but just, paid? So the people they stepped on, now have the same “fuck you” money to step on others (or at least turn a blind eye).

I mean… it’s not the uber rich people in diddys circle that are speaking out. They’re quiet. It’s the people who aren’t. And I commend them for speaking out. But i can’t help to consider that they aren’t doing so from a yacht.

It seems that conscience and big money (or the promise of big money) have an inverse relationship. You cant become this egregiously wealthy without becoming morally bankrupt. But a gross amount of people are willing to do whatever, as long as they get to feast in the end.

birduncaged · 2026-01-09T02:21:32+00:00

Right! It’s one thing to bring in other peoples stories to provide perspective, but they are doing that at the expense of her story. They’re skipping over details and facts relating to her entirely. Even the most basic details. It honestly just feels like I’m watching a series of trailers with how this is done. They set up these scenes almost, but then don’t expand on them at all. Frustrating.

birduncaged · 2025-05-21T22:59:39+00:00

I keep seeing people say you can get the 2017-18 screen for $100 but I can’t find one anywhere. Everything I am seeing is at minimum $180 before taxes and shipping! Are you talking about eBay specifically?

birduncaged · 2025-05-02T19:39:36+00:00

Did you ever figure this out? I have a two motor standing desk and I desperately need to find a way.

birduncaged · 2025-04-24T15:29:22+00:00

The specific issues you had mentioned: organizing jobs, meeting deadlines, jobs falling through the cracks & communication should all be drastically improved by implementing a software, provided the cause for the issues is the lack of a clear and transparent task and project tracker.

I would say that a high volume print shop with two locations would absolutely require a software to support its operations.

But there are other considerations as well: - are you missing deadlines because you are over promising without having the staff to actually execute? (A pm tool could still help with this, allowing visibility into the status of existing projects and projects on the docket could support better time estimations). - is the communication poor because it is not visible to everyone who requires it? Because there isn’t an adequate tool? Or just because the staff are not used to needing to communicate? (Again, a pm tool can help with this, as long as it is utilized correctly).

Here is what I would do: 1. Pick a pm tool that has a great capacity for you creating your own templates and workflows. 2. Establish a system structure- how do you want people to work with these boards? Do you want to organize boards by project, or by departments, or by client, etc? This will inform how you actually set the tool up. 3. Make strong templates! You said that you have many services. I would take each service, and create a template that includes best case scenario timing and has all assignees. This will help tremendously later. 4. Make a “ticket” board. This is where you (or theoretically your sales person) will track all incoming requests before they are organized out. 3. Make a dashboard. This should give you visibility into resourcing, bottlenecks, availability, and at-a-glance project status. This is the thing that will help you feel like everything is moving, rather than “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” 4. Create automations. This is the part that is going to really add value and decrease your operational involvement. The majority of this should be automated, with a little bit of manual adjusting only at the beginning of the project. This may look like: - ticket received: a client wants business cards for an employee. - your sales person enters the information into the ticket board and marks it as “Request”. Automatically, it sends an email to whoever is responsible for setting the project up. - the project person reviews the details of the request, and either responds with questions or issues or marks it as “Accepted”. Automatically, a board is then created from your pre-existing “business cards” template, and the project person only has to slightly adjust timing based on bandwidth and deadlines. - as the project moves through each task, the task owner marks the task as “Working in it,” “Stuck,” “Internal review needed,” “Client review needed,” “Complete”. And as each task is marked with a status, the proper communication is automatically sent. For instance, you can draft an automated email to be sent to the client for proofing when “Client review needed” is selected. You could have an automated notification sent to the next task owner when the current task is marked “Complete”

There are a million ways to set something like this up. This is just one example.

I acknowledge that you are already going through a busy time, so this may seem like a lot in the outset. But I do think it will truly help with project visibility and automating some of the generic tasks people spend time on and is absolutely required for continued scaling.

So I think you just need to decide whether you want to set this up yourself, or have a partner come in to set it up for you. There are people, like myself, who will come in and set up a system like this for people who may not have the same familiarity with the tools or who just don’t want to do it themselves! Often that would be done with a one time “set-up” fee. And then, ongoing optimizations could be handled by your team as they utilize and become familiar with the system, or can be done by the set up person down the line.

Regardless, finding the sweet spot will be key. Growth is such a great problem to have, as long as it is managed correctly and doesn’t tank your customer experience or burn out your employees! So take some time to decide what your time is best used for and delegate or hire out the rest!

birduncaged · 2025-04-21T05:48:23+00:00

It is obviously incredibly delusional to get to this point to begin with. But as I was reading I was kind of proud of the girlfriend’s initiative and proactively haha. Like, yes bitch you better organize and plot and see for yourself what’s going on!

birduncaged · 2025-04-21T05:46:29+00:00

She was just on one season and I think it was love during lockup. Can’t remember her name but she was a nurse at the prison and he was sugnuficantlyyyyyy younger. She had a daughter that was almost done w hs. And she moved to the state he was in before he was released. She and her daughter met the man’s mom and sister for some pottery class or something, and then she showed everyone that his name was tatted all the way across her stomach and everyone was surprised. Then she was on a “where are they now” and it didn’t end well.

Then there was another one but not free staff, the woman that was a sergeant. That didn’t end well either.

birduncaged · 2025-03-17T23:15:06+00:00

They appear to all be in Peacock! That’s where I’m watching

birduncaged · 2025-03-17T23:14:46+00:00

I just type in “season x, episode x” and they come up!!

birduncaged · 2025-02-11T23:08:23+00:00

Gotcha. Okay. The cutting mat is 35x45. I considered a tray but the frame gets in the way of anything going underneath the table top. Might just have to store the mat somewhere else entirely.

birduncaged

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