geo_t

Sounds like we have a budgeting situation here. Are you guys paying into your favorite charity (your immediate family, even if your single) a percentage of your earnings of your pay check before it's gobbled up by all the other expenses? Even if it's, say a $100 a month you pay into this account, in a year's period you've got $1,200. That's usually enough to buy most any custom or designer heels. It's just keeping the goal insight, narrowing the field of desires, and disciplining your cravings for the daily lattes, breaks enjoying donuts or chocolates, latest dvd's, or that other vise that you really could do without. It's your choice as to which is more important or of a higher priority. Usually, you have to nurture the lawn you have to get it greener so that it will be more attractive.

Seems to me that you're taking a fairly light-hearted gripe (nothing in my size in a discount store) the wrong way. Sure, I'd love to give Christian Laboutin a few thousand dollars for some made-to-measure boots, but lets be realistic here. The US economy is in the crapper and shows no sign of getting better and unemployment is rising, so what's more pragmatic? Taking all spare $$$ and using it to pay of "easy" credit, pay down the mortgage and build an emergency fund, or blowing it away for a pair of shoes.

There's a reason I was at the discount store and not a department store... I got the *exact* same pair of work shoes for $30 less. Same reason I shop at a discount grocery store instead of Whole Foods... same food, less $$$.

By the way, throw the garbage away!

Um, what?

...on the other side of the shoe store. Went shopping for work shoes today. Boring, black oxfords suitable for my professional life since my line of work is somewhat, shall we say, conservative. Anyhoo, walking past all those cute boots was somewhat depressing. Shoe Carnival had some really nice high heeled knee-high boots with turned-down cuffs (for $55!) but they only go to size 11. Sigh... the depressing reality of being a large guy with a penchant for heels. Now don't get me wrong, I love the collection of heels I have amassed over the years, and wear my Domina knee boots everywhere possible, but I'm getting a little tired with the same old size 13 styles year in and year out. Too bad I don't have the budget for custom made...

I've got a pair of Domina 2020 boots that I wear as often as possible this time of year, but having to lace up the hooks each takes time. They have a zipper, but it's mostly useless since when you unzip the zipper, all the hooks come undone. Does anyone think it would be possible to remove the hooks (they have holes like eyelets) and replace with normal eyelets so I can use the zipper for fastening without having to re-lace each time?

At risk of sounding contrarian, there are a million sites out on the web where girls can indulge their shoe passion without having to concern themselves with potentially unwanted male contact. In comparison, the venues where men can discuss heels are more limited. Try going to general fashion sites and telling them you're a man who wears heels, then be prepared to duck. I view the girls-only forum in the same negative light as other girls-only venues, be it clubs, gyms or things like free-drinks-for-girls nights at bars. In a world where the PC crowd kicks up a fuss over any and all instances of men-only institutions, the existance of women-only leaves a bad taste.

...now there's OMG Shoes!

Well, dammit. Was getting ready to go out yesterday. Similar attire - dark blue jeans, white shirt, leather jacket and Domina 2020's again. But it was not to be. I had got the car out the garage and was getting out to close the garage door when I stood on a small rock and twisted my ankle. Taking a step in heels means flexing my ankle quite a bit, and that hurt like a %$&@#. Back to basic walking boots for a few days.

I don't get to go out in heels all that often, certainly not like JeffB and HappyFeat (thanks to finding myself in a very conservative part of the country) but from time to time I just go for it, and today was it. It's been over a year since my last full-on street heeling, and today I had a five-stop checklist of things to do, so off I went.

Some consideration went into my outfit. It's cold here - barely above freezing - so boots would be more suitable than strappy sandals or pumps. I only have one pair of boots now - size 13 Pleaser Domina 2020's in black patent. Not quite the full 6" heels as advertised, more like 5 1/2" but still extremely comfortable due to the curved arch. The rest of my "outfit" was as conservative as the town I was going to - black jeans, black shirt and a black leather biker jacket. The jeans leave some of the boots showing, but no matter as the stiletto heels are loud anyway.

First stop the "smiley face" store. I was able to park fairly close to the entrance of the store, and I went in. No obvious strange looks from anyone, no comments. In all, totally uneventful. Although it is a whole different workout walking around a big store compared to home, a lot harder on the calf and thigh muscles. All done, I paid and left. No drama, no comments. Easy. And that just about sums up the rest of the morning. Nothing more than a couple of sideways glances in a couple of the stores I visited - one has a tile floor and the other polished concrete and the sound of my footsteps was very obviously from heels.

There was a few things I noticed. First, it may only be 1/2", but that makes a huge difference in the ease of walking. My dearly departed Hayway boots had 5" heels and I could wear them anywhere, anytime, without such a workout. The surface you're walking on also makes a huge difference. The linoleum of the first store was slick under my heels, but tile and concrete were easier. Finally, and this is the biggie, I think that if people aren't expecting to see a man wearing heels, and you're dressed appropriately to your surroundings (red pumps would have been more conspicuous than black boots, for example) it's not going to register, and if it does it's no big deal. As others have said, the issue is being yourself and being confident, and don't go skulking around like you have something to hide.

So there we are, my street heeling for this year.

[sorry, no pics. Image a 6 foot, 250 lb guy with shaved head built like a rugby player dressed all in black, you'll get the picture]

With boot season fast approaching, I was inspired by all the cool boots the women in my building have started wearing. Unfortunately, all the local stores only seem to go to an 11 or 12, and the few size 12's with high heels were impossibly tight for my size 13 feet. How I envy those of you with smaller feet.

Anyway, I bought myself a pair of black patent Pleaser Domina 2020's. Despite the towering heel they are really comfortable, no doubt helped by the inner sole that gives some arch support and the snug lace-up fit. Haven't worn them out past the mailbox yet, but I can feel the urge to go street heeling coming on again.

I received a pair of black patent Pleaser Domina 415's today in size 14. The look great and fit fairly well. The width is olay, but they are a bit too long so there's a gap at the back. I expect a size 13 would have been long enough, but too narrow in the toe box.

But no matter - I like them, as does the SO. The "6 inch" heel comes in at about 5.75 inches, and is about 0.5 inch across at the tip, so they're not really a true stiletto, but they are easy to walk in.

I looked at Frederick's website before and I never saw anything taller than 5" and larger than size 13. Do you have examples?

This would have been three years ago or so, before the company was bought and turned into another Victoria's Secret clone. There's a picture on here somewhere of me wearing them with a pair of girlie jeans, but I can't seem to find the original anymore.

Thanks for the responses... I've had my eye on a pair of Seduce ankle boots with (quoted) 6" heels and interchangeable ankle straps. I may just have to go and splurge on them soon.

Okay, so I'm probably way behind the curve here, but a recent experience with some shoes from Fredericks of Hollywood* has got me somewhat cautious before I go placing an order. When Pleaser or Leslie shoes are listed as 5" or 6" heels, is that fairly consistent across sizes or do the heels get higher as the size increases? I like really high heels (and have several 7" pairs) but I'm looking for some that I can wear out (and have a tight budget ).

* I bought a pair of pumps with "six inch" heels from Fredericks a while back, on sale. Looked good on the screen and indeed, were to die for in person. But the heel was a little over 7" in my size 14, and it took a lot (and I mean, a lot) of practice to walk in them and although I did wear them out on a few occasions, they always felt too high for outside wear. In terms of height, I bought a pair of the "Extreme" heels that several places were selling a while back. In my size, the 5.5" heel was exactly 6", and was extremely comfortable and just the right height. Too bad the rest of the shoe was uncomfortable to wear for more than a short time.

I miss my NAD's. Specifically, a NAD 1155 pre-amp and a NAD 2155 power amp. I used them to drive, of all things, a pair of Wharfedale Diamond III's with a modified Philips CD player, and latterly a Pioneer laser disk player as the sources. I still rue the day I sold them and bought a Kenwood A/V receiver instead. Sure, the Kenwood had a lot more power and was more flexible and had the Dolby processing built in and watching movies rocked, but it just wan't the same for listening to music. One day I shall have a 1155/2155 set again, although maybe with two 2155's to bi-amp some speakers. One day.

Nevermind... didn't come out quite how I intended.

"Bad Habits" went over very well last weekend. Mrs Geo also went as a nun, but the more traditional kind. I had to substitute the sandals for a pair of bright red 5" ankle-strap pumps as the straps of the sandals were cutting in too much after a just a few minutes. When we got to the party, there was a little round of "wow", "sexy outfit" and "how do you walk in those shoes", but that soon passed we had a good time with friends. Time to start thinkiing about our costumes for next Halloween. We thought about Star Trek characters... guess who'll be wearing the mini-dress and go-go boots? Back to regular clothes and subtle shoes for another year.

I voted 6", and here's why... I have, at different times, walked the full length and width of Lakeside shopping center and the surrounding stores wearing thigh boots with 6" stiletto heels under my jeans. The first couple of times my legs and back were really sore, but later trips were mostly painless. Stairs were always a bit tricky, though. Nowadays... I tend to limit myself to 5" heels for regular wear. I've been all over Underground Atlanta several times, walked around many Florida towns, New York, not to mention doing "The Timewarp" many, many times wearing boots or pumps with 5" stiletto heels. I still have 6" and 7" heels, but they don't get much use outside the house.

I think this will be the year that I give something I've been wanting to do for years it's public debut. It's a really, really short flippy black dress worn over fishnet pantyhose with Fredericks of Hollywood red strappy sandals with 5" heels, all topped off with a nun's headpiece, long stick-on nails and "Elvira" style make up. I call this "Bad Habits," others may call it a "one way ticket to hell!" Most of the year I'm seen out as a regular guy that just happens to be wearing heels, but come Halloween... look out normality!

I'm kind of with JeffB on this... I haven't worn heels for more than a few minutes since my last ankle boots and trench coat outing last winter. Maybe I'm growing up (finally!) but I'm more into boots than sandals, and 100 degree weather isn't really the time to be wearing boots so maybe I'll get more into it for the fall and winter.

I too miss Hayway. I have many pairs of their shoes and they've all held up really even under my not inconsiderable bulk and occasional wet and muddy abuse. It was expensive to get them here thanks to a poor dollar/pound exchange rate and shipping costs, but it was worth it.

You look great in that dress. It's awefully short though. Wish I had the figure to pull this look off.

Firefox: I guess we have different priorities when it comes to computers. For what it's worth, I'm the support guy for a moderately large organization, and believe me, having a system that actively prevents people doing dumb things is a good thing. By dumb, I mean accepting every "install this!!!!!" pop-up they encounter, or downloading junk spyware ridden apps from shady websites, or just simply messing with things they don't know about. XP in an active directory network is good (lots of things can be locked out) but there's always some wiseacre who thinks they know better and manages to really screw the pooch. But some things should be important for the guy (and gal) at home too... The randomized address space may not sound sexy, but by moving the program memory around from machine to machine (and from one session to another) Vista should prevent a lot of malware from running. Vista for 64-bit systems takes this a step further, where all system drivers must have a valid security certificate to be installed, hopefully stopping random bits of code from being installed. I say "should" and "hopefully" because at this time this is somewhat untried. While the OS had proved resistant so far, this doesn't mean that some basement hacker isn't going to figure out a way around this eventually. BitLocker, while being aimed at corporate customers, would be a very good thing for anyone who uses a laptop. For those that don't know, BitLocker encrypts the entire hard drive, so without a suitable security key the system is useless. Removing a drive from a system just leves you with a paper weight as the encryption would take many lifetimes for an individual to crack. [ Generally, if an XP system was lost and the drive put into another computer, it would be possible to take ownership of all the files and folders on the stolen disk then access them. BitLocker encrypts them making them unreadable without the original hardware and encryption key. ] So the big question a lot of people may be asking themselves... should I upgrade my computer to Vista. Well, if you've got a system that meets your needs and you aren't jonesing for the latest and greatest, I'd hold off until you're ready to replace the entire system. To buy the top version of Vista - Ultimate - would cost US$400, and some hardware more than two or three years old won't be up to running it. Having said that, one thing I did notice going from XP to Vista on my currrent system (for those who care, it's a two year old 2.2GHz AMD Opteron 148 with 1GB memory and a three year old ATI 9800XT graphics adaptor) didn't have the same performance hit that going from NT4.0 to XP did on the system I used on 2001. Then again, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation was just about the most efficient OS Microsoft sold up until now and would run really well on minimal hardware.

As I've explained in the "fetish accusations" thread, I find I'm addicted to conquering ever higher heels. Not "fetish" but certianly addiction.

Here's a few pics of me coping (reasonably well) with a full 7" heel ankle boot. I'm size 12 US to give you some idea of the steepness.

Awesome boots.

If you keep on practicing you'll suddenly realise you can walk all over in these boots without discomfort. It just takes a little time. Good luck.

To be honest, in terms of basic layout and operation, XP is not that much different to W95.

With all due respect to Firefox, that's one of the craziest statement's I've read about Windows in a while. It's like comparing a new Bentley to a Model-T and saying there's not much difference.

Remember the old server/workstation operating system Windows NT? After version 4.0, it mutated into Windows 2000 (NT 5.0), Windows XP (NT 5.1) and now Windows Vista (NT 6.0). I know an awful lot of people have used/are using Windows 95 through ME, but retiring the old tired MS-Dos based operating system for NT based one was one of M$'s better moves. Vista builds on XP in a lot of ways, but most of them are not really evident... improved system security, randomised memory mapping, better firewall, built in malware detection, and finally the need to always run as your computer administrator has been vanquished.

Ah... I seem to be drooling on myself.

well vista doesnt open anything that looks dodgey from what iv seen so far (iv just installed Vista Home Premium) and it seems to be working quite well...

altho it wont let me run photoshop or premiere (im in the process of buying adobe photoshop elements 5 and premiere elements 3...which have a vista update...BUT ANYWAY)

I have found quite a bit of software that doesn't play all that well with Vista, and a lot of it is caused by the same problem - programs trying to write user data to the system folder, program folder, or system registry keys. In any system it's never a good idea to have user data being written to the same location as program/system files. That's why Windows 2000 and XP (by default) don't let you see the contents of c:\windows and c:\program files. Vista takes that one step further by (a) actively stopping programs writing to system areas, and ( creating a "sand box" area away from the system folders so that programs can still work. It's not perfect as some programs don't recognize the spoofed "c:\windows" and "c:\program files" folders, but it's a start.

[ And before anyone chimes in with "get a Mac", I'll remind you that Apple damaged compatibility with old apps when they let OS X loose (remember "classic mode?"), and with the introduction of the Intel Mac's totally stopped old software from running. Whose approach is better? It's a wash - M$ allowing old stuff to run leaves the same security holes open; Apple not allowing it to run can annoy users who have to buy the same software all over again. ]

Whose fault is this? I'd lay it at the feet of the programmers. M$ (for all their faults) have been telling developers not to write to system areas for some time now, yet developers still do it. I don't know what it is - laziness or just a cavalier I-know-better-than-BillG attitude, but with Vista out there that's starting to bite people in the butt.

Oh yeah, Vista is the first M$ desktop operating system that really makes it easy to run as a non-admin user without having things stop working. That makes the old Unix geek in me happy.

What I would probably do is to get a pair of lasts and then make a mould of your lower leg with "modroc" or similar and cut it in half. Then put clingfilm inside the two halfs and bung the lasts on the bottom and fill with plaster and then you have the mould you need.

That sounds like a plan. Maybe one day I'll have the time to turn fantasy into reality. Maybe I've watched too much anime, but a pair of shiny carbon fiber knee "boots" teamed with a carbon fibre breastplate...

I would design it exactly like a ski boot just as you say but you know how hard they are to walk in and a high heel one will be even harder...

Who said anything about walking?

Well... in my idea a large part of the back would be detatchable, to allow the foot to enter, then fixed back in place using rigid fastners - thinking of motocross or ski boot style over center closures. If the boots are molded from a composite material, you could build in locating bumps and places to attach the closures. Having said that, I'm not sure the best way to start something like this. The actual lay-up of fiberglass or carbon fiber wouldn't be too hard. Getting the last/female mold would be somewhat tricky, short of taking an existing pair of boots and filling them with a molding agent, then laying composite cloth/resin over that.