Archive for February 2010
Enough Already!
That’s it! You all need to go to your room until you’re ready to tell me which one of you really pissed off Mother Nature.
Don’t make me come over there.
Filed under: Angst
The Value of Good Customer Service (or Why DSW *Still* Sucks)
You might want to refer to the The Value of Testing Your Shopping Cart (or DSW Sucks) to catch up with this drama, and be sure to read the existing comments.
__________________________
So, I wrote “Kelly” after responding to her post. No response, other than an automated verification that she read my email. I waited a week. No response. I wrote her again, asking if she posted on Style & Angst just to make DSW look good. Though she read the email almost as soon as she received it, she waited until the next day to respond to me with an apology, an explanation as to the shopping cart issue, and the promise of a $25 gift card that she would have “Hernan” send me so I could use it right away. Apparently “We would love for you to have them” actually means “We would love for you to buy them but we’ll give you something off so you’ll shut up about DSW.”
I waited through the afternoon and evening for the “gift card I could use right away.” Nothing. The next afternoon the gift card finally showed up and an hour later I received an apology from Hernan stating, “I wanted to apologize to you for the delay in your $25 DSW gift card. Please know that we value your business and would like nothing more than a chance to win back your confidence in DSW’s shopping experience.”
So, let’s see… I spend a couple hours of precious time shopping on DSW that are completely wasted because their cart doesn’t recognize PA as being part of the United States. I complain about this on my own blog and Twitter. One of their reps jumps to respond and tells me that to make it up to me she would “love for me to have” one of the pairs of boots I was trying to purchase. When I respond to her at *her* request, she ignores me for a week. Actually, she ignores me for a week and until *I* write her a second time. Then she attempts to placate me with a $25 gift card (quite a bit different from what one would assume “we’d love for you to have them” means, doncha think?). Then there’s a delay of yet another day before they even get around to sending me that. And they think they are going to “win back my confidence?” I’d laugh hysterically if I didn’t find this meaningless sound bite as pathetic as I do.
DSW? FAIL. You can delete my $25 gift card, I won’t be using it.
So in conclusion, I stand by my original opinion… don’t shop at DSW, they wouldn’t know customer service if they stepped in it.
Filed under: Angst
Breaking Fashion News: Alexander McQueen Found Dead
Alexander McQueen (of Armadillo shoe fame) 
was found dead earlier today in his London apartment, of an apparent suicide. It’s a sad, sad day for the fashion industry, which has lost one of their greatest. It’s a sad day for me, too. What a tragic loss of a young and influential fashion genius.
You can read the story at the Huffington Post.
UPDATE: Read what others in the fashion industry have to say about McQueen at WWD. Hurry, WWD hides their posts to non subscribers after a day.
Filed under: Angst
Calling All Budding Fashion Designers — LISTEN UP!
OhohOH, this is SO KEWL!
I just discovered ChicStar.com and it’s a budding fashion designer’s DREAM COME TRUE!
ChicStar is a site where you can submit your own designs, which once reviewed by their professional team of… well, I don’t know exactly but I sure hope they are “fashion industry professionals,” has the potential to eventually be put into production!
Here’s how it works:
- You design a wonderfully stylish piece and submit it
- Their “professionals” review your submission
- Once approved, your design will be released for voting on by the ChicStar community
- Scores and comments related to your work are then considered by ChicStar to decide whether it should be released as a sample or a product
If your design is accepted you will actually receive a free prototype of your design, and your product will be introduced on the ChicStar site. You will be given full credit for your work.
If your design is eventually selected for production, you will receive a $500 account credit (which you can spend at ChicStar or withdraw via PayPal), your name on the product’s label, and your piece will be offered for sale on the website! Phenomenal! I am so LOVING this!
I see real potential here for anyone who has a unique and stylish outlook on fashion and thinks outside the box. They definitely seem to go for chic designs that lean a bit toward punk or gothic themes (think Vivenne Westwood or Jean Paul Gautier). And because ChicStar has a plus size category, there’s especially huge potential for artists in this genré, which has notoriously been virtually ignored by trendy designers.
I love this whole concept, it appeals to both the artist and fashionista in me. I would give anything to have the time to delve into a design or two myself but that’s just not gonna happen any time soon, I’m afraid. Wahhhhh.
If any of my readers submit a design to ChicStar.com that is chosen for the site, please be sure to let me know and I’ll post all about it on Style & Angst!
Filed under: Style
Snow as an Art Form: Winter’s Paradise
Mother Nature dumped 22-25” of snow on us in the last 24 hours, mebbe a bit more. I had my hubby take the below pics.
No husbands suffered frost bite during the taking of these photographs despite what they may claim, almost all were taken from the interior of the house. I can’t say the same for puppies, who are none too pleased with us at the moment.
The infamous greenhouse… well, infamous if you followed along with the building of it on Reality Check. The fireplace to the right stands about 7’ and the blob in the middle is a hanging pot on a pole. The bush that appears as nothing more than a lump in the right-hand foreground is about 3.5’ tall.
The front steps.
Icicles on the front porch overhang. *Somebody* needs to clean the gutters, apparently.
View through the half moon window taken from the 2nd floor balcony looking toward the front, about 18’ up. The squiggly things aren’t my husband’s curls, they are part of our whacky aluminum spiral lamp that hangs in the foyer.
View out the living room window on the northeast side of the house. The fence is about 3’ tall.
Telephoto shot of the swing that sits in the back west corner in front of the stand of trees that divides the back into two sections.
The humongous 6’+ wind chimes that hang on the back patio. For perspective, the tubes are about 3-3.5″ in diameter.
The sleeping porch that is attached to the master bedroom, as seen from the 2nd floor guest bedroom window. The floor of this porch is the ceiling to the back patio.
The pond as seen from the 2nd story guest window, looking directly down. The top of the hippo fountain’s head stands about 2’ out of the water. The pond is pretty big, it holds about 4,000 gallons of water and is about 3.5’ at its deepest, but it sure looks small from this perspective. My sweetie dug the whole thing out with a shovel.
Hard to tell but the coral maple in the foreground has bright coral bark, it’s just gorgeous in the snow. The arbor off in the distance stands about 7’. The waterfall into the pond runs from the right of the tree and back and uphill toward a stand of trees further to the right, but its edge is completely snow covered in this shot.
Telephoto shot of the arbor where the back divides in two, and the shed and evergreens beyond at the very back of our property. It’s odd how the snow changes the depth perception, it’s gotta be at least 35 feet from the arbor to the shed.
Sprout, one of our bichons, contemplates the situation on the steps to the back patio outside the sliding doors in the den. The smudges you see on the glass are original “nose paintings.”
Peony and Magnolia: What is it you find so funny, exactly?
Petunia: What? You actually expect me to leave the steps? I so don’t think so. Let me in, I’ll poop in the den.
Sprout: Yeah, yeah, you’ve had your laugh. In. Now.
I love snow. Hubby and puppies… not so much.
Filed under: Style
The Male Species: A Portrait of Perfection
I was strolling through some FireFox tabs I had kept open (I am a big abuser of this function, and keep close to a hundred tabs open at all times until I do whatever I initially had in mind with the info they contain) and came across a gallery of images of the recent Fashion Week walk for Costume National Menswear. And there I found this…
If I were eighteen again, he would be mine.
Filed under: Style
Tracking Your Offspring with GPS (or “Oh No, Jimmy’s Fallen in the Well!”)
Why no, as a matter of fact I don’t have kids.
OK, so maybe I don’t particularly care for kids.
Oh alright… I absolutely cannot stand kids.
Now, even though I know virtually nothing about parenting, I can understand why *other* people want to have kids. I mean, they are great when they’re old enough and you have successfully turned them into little legal slaves that do the dishes, mow the lawn and take out the garbage for you. Yes, I can see how that would be a plus. I also understand that if you spend a good 10-15 years grooming a child to be at your every beck and call that you might be upset if you manage to misplace it.
This is why, when I came across the amberalertgps.com today, I thought to myself, “How cool! Do they make them for dogs?”
Apparently they don’t. All my bichons can do is “sit” but still, I’d be real upset if one wandered off somewhere, it took me at least an hour to teach just that command to each of four dogs! So I thought for a minute and realized that if I did have my own personal house slave/offspring, I’d be really upset if I lost it after all those years of teaching it how to mix my piña coladas just right. Or even worse, if someone tried to STEAL it from me after *I* did all the hard work! Man, I’d be PISSED!
So being the helpful person I am, I thought I’d pass the info along to all my peeps who actually have the patience to deal with a kid until they are old enough for the big payoff. It’s really cool and I can’t imagine why they didn’t think of this ages ago. You can track your little wandering future houseboy by cellphone (preferably web enabled) or on the PC with this nifty gadget. You can even define a boundary around a “safe zone ” and you’ll receive text message alerts if the Amber Alert GPS moves outside of it. It even has an SOS button should little Jimmy fall down a well or something. And once your kids turn into teenagers and they decide they are “too cool” to wait on you hand and foot anymore, this thing also has all kinds of neat things you can do to embarrass the hell out of ‘em in retaliation, like notifying you if little Elizabeth drives too fast or decides to hit the local rave rather than the library where she told you she was going. Then you can call her, make her explain to all her friends that she has to come home immediately, and then give her the choice of being grounded for three months or massaging your feet every night for an hour until she’s eighteen. Gawd, this thing is great! It is apparently useful for all kinds of things I didn’t even touch upon, you can read all about it at amberalertgps.com.
Wow, I just had a thought… they should make an implantable version! I’m gonna write them right now and suggest it! Superrrrrr geeeeeenius!
Filed under: Style
