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Note: This account is no longer active.
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Activity Summary
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Reviews Written: 68
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Member Visits: 3,893
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Total Visits: 55,892
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About baricat
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I'm a married mom of a son and a daughter, living in New England. My husband is, quite honestly, the greatest guy in the world! He's a brilliant engineer who directs a team that works with development of lasers. My little pal in the picture is our own daily shot of sunshine, our feisty little Westie.
I have degrees in Culinary Arts, French language and literature, as well as secondary education. I now write free-lance. Guess you could say I'm something of a Renaissance woman. I introduce myself as the world's only tri-lingual (Spanish is the third), piano-playing, scuba diving, barbershop-singing female chef. Makes for an effective icebreaker at parties...
My husband and I love to travel. We trade our two timeshares (both bought sight unseen) each year for exciting destinations. We love scuba diving, having earned our certification 9 years ago. We are now advanced open water certified. We've traveled extensively in the Caribbean and the Hawaiian islands, pursuing great dive sites, first time critter sightings, and new adventures. Our latest was while diving off the coast of Lanai (Hawaii) in October, we found ourselves amidst a pod of migrating spinner dolphins!
My second passion is barbershop singing. I'm wild about the baritone part (hence my user ID), but have been known to sing tenor and lead on occasion. Arranging music is a fascination. I am very proud to sing with a championship chorus in CT (long commute!), and love to perform. Every February, 3 other ladies and myself get gussied up and go around to various businesses in the Hartford area delivering singing Valentines to teary-eyed women and sheepish-looking guys, ordered by their spouses or significant others. What fun!
As for Epinions, I've found yet another passion. I'm devoted to doing my part to keep this website as a valuable resource to those seeking information in order to make educated decisions. As such, here are my criteria for ratings.
Highly Recommended = A review that is thoughtful, as well as well written. It will let the reader know the pros, as well as possible cons. It not only expresses an opinion, but gives ample evidence of how that opinion was derived. I do not necessarily have to agree with the opinion, but it has convinced me that it merits consideration.
Recommended = A review that is well written, and begins to explain some of the whys of how the opinion was formulated, but leaves me with some questions. Again, it doesn't have to be my point of view.
Somewhat Recommended = A review that expresses an opinion, but falls short of giving compelling evidence of why. It leaves much to question, and lacks detail. May or may not be somewhat sloppily written.
Not Recommended = A "review" that lifts verbatim the work of others. Can also be one that does not in any way convince me that the writer even had a nodding acquaintance with the product. Any review that espouses hatred or bigotry will automatically get this rating. It might be that it is misleading because it does not examine all evidence at hand, or that it contains misinformation or draws erroneous conclusions based on misinformation. Generally, a poorly-written piece that cannot in any way convince me that the opinion is valid.
It can be, however, that the review is well written, but is not germane to the category under which it was posted. Please post only under appropriate category headings.
I ask that others who write try to bear in mind that the actual purpose of this website is not to earn money, but to help others by imparting our experience with a given product. We must all remain circumspect of this, not only when writing, but also when rating reviews.
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