FTD.com Sub-standard Product and they are NOT Customer Freindly

Happy birthday to my mom!  I selected this beautiful bouquet to send to my mom from the FTD website and was a little surprised it would cost $65 to purchase the above bouquet.  Oh well, Mom's birthday comes once a year so I submitted my request and went about my business.

So imagine my dismay when my sister sent me the photo of the bouquet delivered.

It may just be me but does this bouquet look like the above photo?  And does it look like it deserves a $65 price tag?  I think not.

I called FTD to complain and they offered to credit me 10% discount.  I asked if they could instead deliver a replacement and FTD contacted the florist who delivered the POS flowers and they declined so I was offered a 20% discount instead.  When I said that wasn't good enough they also offered me a $15 discount on my next purchase.  Since I will never use FTD again this is a useless offer and I told the representative so.

Revenge is on the internets!  I'll post the name of the crappy florist in Florida when I get it.

Time to start using 1-800-Flowers.

Happy Easter!

Watch this spot! The annual Easter Egg contest is tomorrow and I think I have a winner planned. Fingers crossed.

Bing Yourself. Doesn't quite roll off the tongue like "google yourself", right?

Somehow bing (all lower case? Does someone have self esteem issues?) has decided it is my work computer's search engine of choice so I was a bit dismayed when I searched for "house of suz" and it came up with nothing I thought it would. Said being everything from some person (named Suz, imagine that) in Florida talking about how her house was listed but had gotten NO offers to the post from a couple named "Suz and Trev" in Australia---love the way the Brits shorten stuff--- but not a single mention of MOI. And with that I say WTF??? I asked for bing to find house-of-suz, not some-chick-in-Florida-talking-about-her-house. And I know I've been laying low of late but hell, Google still knows ME. Google always says "Hey Suz, how's Rufus doin'?" whenever I "google" House of Suz. So I know it's not me, it's bing. bing is kind of narrow-minded when you "bing", by design, of course, so I guess it doesn't like to go out on a limb and assume you aren't looking for anything it doesn't think you should be looking for, even if what you typed in it's search field, ie: House of Suz, is exactly what you were looking for. So for that I think it's a perfect tool for the workplace since it keeps you on task and doesn't allow for distractions or creativity. Or accuracy, which isn't necessary in the work place either.

To that end I suggest you take the bing challenge, which has been invented by the marketing department here at House of Suz. Search for yourself in Google and then in bing and see what you get. I'd be interested to see how the two searches differ. Just a little experiment, mind you. I'll check for myself, um, myself, tomorrow, when I'm at work. Because at work I use bing. Because I don't matter there, either.

Blogging for dinosaurs.

By now we all (meaning just me and the one person who landed here by accident) know that the popularity of blogging has pretty much gone the way of the rotary phone, as evidenced here, in favor of the 140 character message that ADD afflicted America finds so charming, but I have found evidence to the contrary, my good man! We may in fact still be a civilized people! Maybe. Case in point:

Exhibit A: 15 Minute Lunch (of the now infamous JC Penney catalogue post fame) just celebrated his 5th birthday. Happy Blogiversary, Johnny!

Exhibit B: Out of Character managed to out maneuver being wiped off the face of cyberspace---if that at all makes sense. Possibly the best-ever blog post in the history of blogging has been saved for posterity!

Exhibit C: Miss Doxie posted again. Finally.

Exhibit D: I've managed to find yet another blog (without really trying) that I find interesting enough to bookmark, if for no other reason that that adorable banner photo. Cute enough on it's own even if the writing were not as good as it is.

Then again I am pretty easy to please, but that's another, unrelated topic.

So let us celebrate the blog! Raise your glass and toast this ancient story-telling media! It may be wheezing but it ain't dead yet. Hell, lookie here, House of Suz still stands, and that in itself is somthing.

It is difficult to muster the desire to go to the gym in January. Not because of the weather or the let down of post holiday fun. No, it's because of what I call the Resolutionists, those people who are all on the New Year resolution bandwagon and are hitting the gym and taking up space on the elliptical trainers, space meant for me. I will just have to put up with their gung-ho spirit until they bail on their resolutions come mid February and I have my gym back.

Until then you best not show up at the gym with brand new trainers on because that will automatically fit you into their category in my mind. And I might just stay on the stationary bike an extra 5 minutes out of spite.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that no one noticed I was back. My bad.

Duly noted.

Hello twenty-ten. Here's to new beginings.

Guess who's back? The real question is for how long? Someone gets bored easily.

Oregon has a new law on the books outlawing driving while talking on the phone. I was pondering this while driving on New Year's Day---when the law went into effect---and glanced over to another lane to see a woman driving with a Pug sitting on her lap, its head hanging out the window. The woman was also eating an apple while she was driving. I kind of think maybe that Pug/apple combo is probably going to be just a tad more distracting to a driver than talking on the phone but I don't suspect there will be a law against those two things together anytime soon.

Segue to: it's a new year. What about that, huh? Thank god since 2009 was a total letdown.


And then there's this for Diane.