Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation

[yogi]

If this is for real, I'm literally going to be tickled pink. I'll take pictures and show you.

I was searching my e-mail junk folder this morning and there was a piece of mail with the title of this topic on it. Normally I trust the Google e-mail filters and just delete what they cite as junk. But this was about Facebook. I couldn't let this one pass without at least looking at what the scam is all about.

Turns out it was not a scam. You must know about the "tag" feature that was available to Facebook users. You could box off a person's face and tag them in one of your posted photographs. By magic everybody and their brother who knew this tagged person would be notified about what you did. Many, and I do mean many, years ago somebody tagged me in a photo. When I went to look at it, I was nowhere to be found. They obviously misidentified me. I never heard of tagging prior to that time and did a little research to discover what it's all about. The long and the short of it is that Facebook was using facial recognition software to identify people. What they did with that particular information was anybody's guess, but it clearly was an invasion of privacy. Well, I have mixed feelings today about the whole technology, but back then Facebook was using me without my permission and that pissed me off. So, I went to the settings and shut it down as well as I could. Never heard from the "tag" team again and pretty much forgot about the whole idea. Actually, I pretty much forgot about all of Facebook.

So, anyway, this e-mail was from a law firm to advise me that I might be party to a class action law suit settlement. The only requirement was that I lived in Illinois for 180 days anytime after 2011 and had a Facebook account during that time. Apparently Illinois had and has some pretty hefty laws regarding the use of facial (or any biometric) recognition and Facebook violated them. As is usual, Facebook claimed they broke no laws, but they will hand out $650 million just because they are nice guys. So, anybody who makes a claim will receive cash from Facebook to the tune of $200-$600 depending on how many people file a claim. The claim is due by November of this year and the cash will be distributed early January of next year.

Did I make a claim? LOL Not only did I submit one but I passed the info onto my wife who also has been tagged. My claim was immediately rejected after I told them my current address, but they gave me a chance to explain. So, I did attest to the fact that I meet all the qualifications, i.e., was a resident of Illinois for the said amount of time during the specified period of time. They said, ok. Thank you very much. And, they sent a verification that I made the claim.

Should a check from Facebook actually be forthcoming, it will be the classic irony. In fact I may not bother to cash it. I will frame it and hang it above my computer so that I can brighten up any day I need a little boost.

[Kellemora]

Wow!
I hope you get a good sized check out of the deal.

I've been in a few class action lawsuits in the past.
Never ended up with more than 8 to 20 bucks out of them.
Attorneys are who make the really big bucks from them, hi hi.

[yogi]

I think I would have put in a claim if the payout was 2¢ instead of $200. The folks at Facebook have been using my good name, and my fake account, for many years without compensation to me. I guess I agreed to all that when I signed up, even thought they didn't make it obvious at the time, but still. They have been using me and everyone else they harvest information from to make billions of dollars in profit. This settlement for $650 million is a drop in the bucket for them.

Likewise I've been involved with a few class action suits and don't recall ever getting any cash of significance. Many times they offer discounts on their products and/or service as a settlement. I don't know how Facebook ended up agreeing to this cash payout, but my opinion of the state of Illinois has moved up a notch.

[Kellemora]

I'm going back a lot of years here. But when businesses got bad checks, they used to post them on a bulletin board for all the customers to see. Eventually, it became illegal to do this. So instead, through the businessmen's association, the names and account numbers were published to all the member businesses in a newsletter, and in some cases, businesses would call each other if a new con artist was in the area. This worked well for many years.
But what broke their back was, each business association would begin sharing their info with others in neighboring cities. Like Des Peres would share with Kirkwood, Rock Hill, Maplewood, etc. The little newsletter turned into like a magazine they all subscribed to so all the data was pouring into one company in Kirkwood. It worked well for several years, then the state came in and pounced on them for disseminating private information. They got shut down, and ever company who supplied data to them was fined like 2 to 5 thousand bucks each.
But it did create a new era sorta. Most places just quit taking checks unless you were an old established account. But then too Credit Cards were coming on the scene. Ironically, we did not take credit cards at the florist for several years, until it became almost mandatory. Dad didn't like it one bit, because of the extra bookwork for him. But his brother who was technically the President was glad to not have to bill clients later, although that was all pretty much automated in a way before we went with the big Wang computer, which was also CJ's doing, hi hi.

[yogi]

I remember the transition to credit cards. They were not well received initially but apparently they were safer than accepting personal checks. The local stores where I lived didn't actually stop accepting personal checks, but they made it very difficult to use them to make purchases. Our family was the last on the block to get a credit card and most of the things we bought were paid for in cash. On rare occasion when the hard currency wasn't available yet, we would write a check to a shop which knew us well. Some checks had to be held for a few days until payday. Why the shops agreed to that is beyond me.

Publishing checking account information is probably the worst idea I can think of from a privacy point of view. However, I've never yet lost money to a crook raiding my checking account. I have had several people steal my credit card information and make unauthorized purchases that way. It's nice that the state wants to protect my privacy, but not even the crooks care about my bank account. Well, unless you are a thief in Nigeria. It matters to them.

[Kellemora]

In the beginning, the cost to take credit cards was really high, especially if you have a low walk-in customer count.

Heck, my Merchant Account cost over 50 dollars a month to take only two types of credit cards, and an additional 35 dollars a month to take electronic checks, which was something new at the time. Plus then 6% of the sale on top of it.
I think now it is under 20 bucks a month for the account and only 2% of the sale. I don't have one anymore.

Along with making it illegal to display bad checks, and after the businessmen's groups could no longer publish a list.
Some good came out of that. We could then turn over bad checks to the police department and they would try to collect them for us. Laws were made, then changed, then changed again, so the burden of collecting on bad checks fell back on the business owners, unless the amount was over some high amount. So collection agencies began taking them for half of the value of the check if you were a paying member of their agency.

Dad tried using a check collection agency for about 3 months, and they didn't do much of anything. Cost us more than we ever got back from them. So that was that.

[yogi]

None of the above has anything to do with spider mites, but my understanding is that they are a common problem in greenhouses. Since you spent a little time working in a greenhouse, maybe you can enlighten me.

The last time I saw evidence of spider mites was well over thirty years ago when I was growing a vegetable garden and flowers at the first house I owned. I remember the occasion, but I don't recall what I did for a cure. I probably just left them be. LOL The other day while out cutting off deadheads on the rose bushes a couple of them had some heavy webbing in the crotch of some branches. It didn't look like ordinary spiders, plus there were some dead leaves and some leaves turning yellow and gray. That told me it wasn't an ordinary arachnid, although we have plenty of those too. I didn't get too involved with the rose bushes but the few places I checked didn't have any visible mites smiling back at me. They are tiny so that I wasn't sure I'd see them even if they were there.

I trimmed off the deadheads and then did some reading. I was surprised to learn that insecticide won't do it for spider mites. One needs a miteacide, and a lot of those buggers have learned how to become resistant to that. They like dry and hot, which is what we had for about a month so that the suggestion was to hose down the plants with water from the bottom side up. Them mites camp out on the bottom of the leave and not the top. Do that often enough and there should not be a problem. However, if you can find some miteacide, and there are several kinds, one can try spraying with that. But every article I read says that only works for a little while. Also, every article I read says it's common to see these bugs in greenhouses. Rotation of nutrients, or something, is the cure there. Well, I rarely feed the roses so that there aren't any nutrients to rotate.

So, do you have any experience with the common garden variety of spider mites and what to do about it if they come visiting?

[Kellemora]

Spider Mites are a pain in the arse, but easy to get rid of without using chemicals, well sorta.
If they were few in number, we would just mix alcohol, water, and dish soap and spray the underside of the leaves.
If they were several plants, we would add Neem oil to the above mixture.
Can't use too much alcohol or soap or it will kill the plant or dry out its leaves.
We also bought non-food grade cinnamon coarse powder and a 1/4 inch wide line of cinnamon was ran along the inside edge of benches. This keeps a lot of critters away, and adds a more pleasing but mild aroma to the greenhouses.
We tried tea sprays a few times, but the didn't work as good as just plain old alcohol and water.

If you can turn plants upside down and blast them with a spray from the hose, that will get rid of them too.
But in a greenhouse situation, you need something a little faster and easier.
That being said, we never used pesticides on the plants themselves.
On rare occasions we may have used a systemic, but only the kind that would be long gone before the plant set bud.
I know, alcohol is a chemical, but it is not a pesticide. Alcohol kills mites dead instantly. But too much will will dry the leaves, same way with the soap. We only use enough soap to get the water to stick to the leaves. Soap makes water wetter, and keeps it from evaporating for a longer period of time.
So the purpose of the soap is not to kill anything, although it would at stronger amounts, but merely to make the water wetter is all. Often, when bought commercially, soaps are called surfactants or just wetting agents in the industry.

All that being said, White Fly and common Gnats were usually our biggest problems in a greenhouse.
That and Nematodes on ground level greenhouses.

[yogi]

Thank you for the insightful information about spider mites. Some of the articles I read mentioned Neem Oil as an effective mite killer but I never heard of the stuff and would have to go on a treasure hunt to find it. I like the idea of alcohol and water too. Soap does in fact make water wetter, which is it's only actual purpose in cleaning scenarios. Professional window washers use vinegar and a tiny amount of dish soap just for that purpose.

My favorite insecticide is ... 409. It's amazing stuff but not effective on some critters. These same rose bushes with the mites get visited by Japanese beetles every spring and I have on occasion evicted them with 409 spray. I've learned, however, to wash that stuff off the rose bushes shortly after the beetles drop dead. If allowed to stay on the leaves it does exactly what you say, i.e., dry out the leaves. Amazingly the 409 seems to have no effect at all on the flower itself.

I bought a multi-headed sprayer for the garden hose. It has about five or six settings that you can dial up and change the spray pattern. There is one that is more or less flat and looks like a broom made of water. I used that on the rose bushes yesterday because it was easy enough to angle the broom so that the underside of the leaves were hit with the greatest force. Some of the webs were near the center of the plant and I had to use the "jet" spray to dislodge those. Hopefully just hosing down the plants will keep things under control. I really like the rose bushes and would hate to replace them with something less vulnerable to bug attacks.

[Kellemora]

WalMart has Neem Oil, the good version for only 4.79, while the same stuff on Amazon is 8.99.
I find Amazon super high on a whole lot of things, some things priced so high it is ridiculous.
Things we can buy from a grocery store or department store here for 3.50 to 4.00 is like 15.49 on Amazon.
WalMart is also high on a lot of things too. Take the Neem Oil I just mentioned. It is 4.29 at Cardinal Farm Supply, same price at the CoOp Feed Store.

On rose bushes, I most often used a powder sprayer, but for the life of me, I can't remember what it was I used in it.
We only got a few rose bushes again a couple of years ago, and we use a spray on them the wife picked up.

I brought a gallon of Diazinon 4E with me when I first moved down here, and eventually used it up around 2009. My license is not recognized down here to buy more, if it is even still available. But I do have Command G which I use in the yard for fleas, ticks and other critters. Plus another one for ants which I just finished a while back and have not replaced.

[yogi]

I used to use Diazinon judiciously. The last time I was able to buy the stuff was many many years ago. I believe I got it at WalMart or possibly Home Depot. I had half a bottle of the stuff in my garden shed, probably half a liter or so. It was primarily because of that chemical that I looked up the toxic waste disposal site run by the state of Illinois. I didn't want to just toss it down the storm sewer. Since we were in the process of moving, which is why I wanted to dispose of the Diazinon, I found quite a few other "toxic" chemicals the state recycling service would accept. They took paint if it was not latex. They told me to put cat litter in the latex and just dump it in the city trash pickup. That was an amazing piece of advice, by the way. The can of latex paint turned into something rock hard when mixed with the cat litter. I was fortunate to find that toxix waste disposal station. It apparently is the only one in northern Illinois and within driving distance.

I have to agree with you about Amazon being wildly unpredictable in their pricing. I think it's due to their delivery method wherein they drop ship half of what they sell. The shipper, who often calls himself a store, just follows the advice you posted here on a few occasions. They buy their products retail and double the price when selling it through Amazon. I suppose that covers their costs of shipping and handling. Having said that, I will also say there are some deals I found on Amazon that could not be had anywhere else. You could find similar merchandise, and that is what often accounts for the price differences. Similar is not the same as identical.

[Kellemora]

The grades of pesticides you can buy at retail stores is MILD compared to the stuff we could buy with a license.
Where yours might say use 1 cup per gallon of water. Ours might say use 1/4 ounce or so many CCs.
But even the stuff we could buy today is no where near as strong as what we bought back in the '70s.

I remember our chemical storage room quite well.
For every gallon can or jug of chemical, right next to it was a first dilution jug which we worked from.
We may use like 1 ounce from the can and place it in the dilution jug with a gallon of water.
Then from the dilution jug we may use 1 cup in 30 gallons of water to get the proper concentration for use.
But then we started buying only pre-mix designed for use with a 10 to 1 mixer being fed from a 150 gallon tank.
The only problem with this was we then had to have 6 of these tanks set-up with all the OSHA markings and inside a locked chain link area. We had to keep records of exactly how much of what we used on what date and time too.
As things got easier, the requirements got harder.

[yogi]

Well, yes. Handling of toxic chemicals has become more difficult due to the increased concern over polluting the environment. They claim the ground water is getting so bad that the day will come when no "fresh water" supply will be safe to consume. I don't see an easy solution to that conundrum.

You may know of the Rodale Press publishers and J. I. Rodale it's founder. He was into healthy living and published a magazine about organic gardening. I got a subscription as a gift and kept it up for many years. It had a lot of handy dandy tips and tricks I attempted to use in my garden, but ultimately I gave up on the feasibility of organic gardening in general. For example, one of the natural ways to eliminate pests (such as spider mites) in the garden to to implant lady bugs. Those ladies eat a lot of pests and keep things under control. So, I bought a box of lady bugs and released them into my garden. About a week later not one was to be found. My garden didn't have enough food, or they didn't like the neighbors, or whatever. Keeping them there ladybugs in place was the trick. Same for worms that supposedly condition the soil. I do believe that is true, but the same problem exists. The worms eat the soil and poop it out to condition it. They didn't like the taste of my dirt apparently and left town. Then there is the idea to just let things be. Share the goodness with natures friends. You know, half the tomato crop for the insects and fungus and the other half for human consumption. That might actually work if the critters weren't so discriminating in their taste. They eat all the good crops and leave the malformed and immature stuff alone. So, I started back to using chemicals after a while, but in a limited way. I can't see how organic farmers exist. They must do other than pure organic farming, or grow their crops in a laboratory. But even then the pests find their way in.

[Kellemora]

I agree, we don't want nasty chemicals getting into our ground water, that's for sure. Much of it never breaks back down either, especially the kinds of things they have been making the past many decades.

I used to own a Barnstead Still, it was for making lab grade distilled water, commonly called triple distilled.
Water made in a single pass still can actually be more dangerous than the water it was made from, especially if someone does not know how to do it properly.

Have you ever noticed when you boil water in a microwave, it will boil twice?
It does on a stove too, but most folks never notice that.
The first boil is the lighter chemicals being boiled off, then the second boil is the cleaner steam from the water itself.
This second boil is when you want to start capturing the water for distilled once water. But only if you vented off the first boil and kept it vented until you reached the second full boil.

There are many natural things organic farmers do to keep the pests away. Normally it is things that repel rather than kill the bugs. Or common things that do not hurt the environment. We used one heck of a lot of cinnamon. Cinnamon is the bark off the tree, dried and ground into powder. Just like mulch it deteriorates and turns back into dirt really fast. Normal tree mulch only lasts about three years before it is all gone. Decomposed back into soil again. Or eaten by the many critters and insects that live on dead wood, hi hi.
We also used diotomacious earth, commonly known as swimming pool filter powder. It is already basically just dirt, but the crystalline feature of it kills larger insects such as roaches and cannot possibly harm humans or other animals.

I only used Red Veined Slate that I had processed in a special way as my growing media.
First the slate had to be horticulturally stable, which made it hard to find. Normal slate is used to make things like Haydite in a similar fashion than my product. Except mine required two kilns to make and a 150 foot long turnpipe kiln.
Basically what happened is the first kiln melted the red veining from the slate which ran down the turnpipe kiln, that first kiln was also so hot it caused the slate to puff up like popcorn. Then as it tumbled through the kiln, the melted red veining would begin to cool and coat the popcorn with a porous topping about the consistency of a clay flower pot. Then when it hit the second kiln it was backed onto the popcorn like a ceramic coating.
I hold a patent for my growing media, which I abandoned and let expire.
It was perfect for my hydroculture planting systems.
I also used the waste after it went through the grading screens as media for hydroponic growing beds.

I wish I had all the money I spent to get Wonder Plants up and running.
Heck, just the inner pot mold to make the pot liner cost over 140 grand to have the single shot die cut.
The number of companies involved in making all the components used to get started is phenomenal.
And so was the cost, hi hi.

[yogi]

I never noticed that water boils twice, and considering all the pasta I make, I've watched a lot of pots of water come to a boil. I'm certain it does boil twice but I think you and I have a different notion of what boiling is. The first appearance of air bubbles in the water shows tiny bubbles of some gas. After that there seems to be a calm period with not many bubbles at all but the water is moving from the hot bottom to the cooler top rather rapidly. Then the roiling boil is typically bigger bubbles and more rapid vertical movement of the water. Technically the water is considered boiling at 212F, but I've never measure the boiling pot of water to see at what stage that temperature is established. My guess would be somewhere between the tiny bubbles and the roiling boil.

Collecting the water vapor of boiling water would be the tricky part in the distillation process. I can see how the process of collection might affect the quality of the vapors that have condensed into liquid again. They say distillation removes the toxins and that is true, but I don't remember exactly why that is true. I normally don't have a need for distilled water so that I never looked into it.

Making your own growing medium sounds to me very much like sorcery. You are/were the alchemist extraordinaire. LOL I used to start my seeds in vermiculite or Perlite and seldom had a problem. Then again, I was into gardening for the fun of it and didn't need to make a living from it.

[Kellemora]

I just thought of something. I wonder if you realize that in the restaurant industry, all foods that are cooked with or in water, the water must be brought to a full rolling boil for one minute to allow the chemicals to outgas before we begin cooking in it, or using it in something else. If we are not boiling food we have to let the water cool back down before using it. Just another one of those things most folks don't know about that goes on in the kitchen.

As far as making things, I've never been afraid to think outside the box.
Look for all areas that might cause a problem, and then eliminating those areas in my products or items.

I have used both vermiculite and perlite but not usually as a starting mix for seeds.
Vermiculite tends to be too wet, and perlite can float out, and does not hold moisture.
Commercially, we usually used a peat moss blend for starting seeds, or commercial foam cubes for that purpose.
At home, most of my seed starting boxes were a layer of glass wool over which I placed a material similar to a paper towel, but was scored in 1 inch squares, and after the seeds were placed, a fine layer of peat less than 1/16th inch thick over it. But not always, I usually did it this way if seeds were old and germination sparse.
With fresh seeds we used little 10cc plastic cups filled usually with peat or with an inorganic growing media.
And some seeds we used Agar in the cups, a clear growing gel, like Jell-O, hi hi.

As an aside: I once acquired something like 10,000 small test tubes that were accidentally purchased by a lab. They were not Pyrex tubes, but plain glass tubes so they couldn't use them. They were going to toss them, so I offered to buy them from them. We agreed on 1 cent each!
Now in the florist business, we used glass tubes with a cap in some bouquets. But these were slightly fatter and a lot longer, so would not work well. So they sat around in the warehouse for a couple years until I had a brainstorm, hi hi.
Terrariums and the like were all the rage back then too.
So I came up with an idea. Start seeds in the test tubes with about 3 inches of Agar in the bottom.
I sold these from the cut flower shop, and later from the greenhouse sales room, under the name Test Tube Babies.
Naturally the could not live for very long in the test tubes, but I experimented with a few different seeds that grew slowly and would last in those tubes for a month or longer, before they either became root bound or grew out the top.
Heck, within the first month we sold over 3,000 of these, then sales began tapering off to only around 1,000 the next month. I waited about 6 months before doing it again, only this time instead of greenhouse plants, I decided to do lemon trees from seed. This was a bit more work, because I also scored the glass tubes at the bottom so the bottom could be snapped off and the tree removed for replanting. I also chose the seeds for a miniature decorative lemon tree.
Besides the Test Tube Baby Lemon Tree, they got a pot with a peat pellet to plant them into when the tree reached the top of the tube. We only sold 2,000 the first month, and 1,000 the second month. But folks were asking if they could buy just the tube with the gel in the bottom to plant their own seeds. So that is basically how I sold the remaining 3,000 tubes. After all the expenses for materials, and labor to make them and let them grow for a bit. I still made over 5,000 dollars in profit. All on a whim, hi hi.

As the Chia Pet craze faded out, although they are still around today.
We started selling Salvia Nemorosa seeds as an alternative to Chia, which is Salvia Hispanica.
Our suggested use was as a decorative coating for normal clay flower pots.
We provided the gel and the seeds in packets to mix together and apply to the outsides of their flower pots.
This never became a craze like Chia Pets, hi hi. But we probably sold over 5,000 of these little kits from April to July the year we offered them. Your's truly is who put these kits together for sale, but sales were through the florist, so all I got was my on-clock time while making them.

[yogi]

Use of Perlite and vermiculite for starting seeds was something I got out of one of those Rodale magazines. In my case it was an extra step that I eventually abandoned for starting the seeds directly in a peat pot. Some things had to be transferred to 4" pots before it was warm enough to put out in the garden, and I made my own potting soil for those. I experimented a lot and ended up with a mix of vermiculite, Perlite, peat moss, and compost. To be honest it almost didn't matter what the ratio of each ingredient was. All my tomato plants did well in whatever I started them in. Flowers, however, were picky.

Buying 10,000 test tubes is something only a person who regularly thinks outside the box would do. LOL You risked only $100 but turned that into a $5,000 profit. Kudos to you for being able to do such a thing.

I don't remember any direct experiences with agar but do recall seeing things grow in the stuff. I had one of those Chia animals only because somebody gave it to me as a gift. At the time I had an interest in growing alfalfa spouts for culinary use, and even got into other types of bean sprouts as well. Alfalfa was my favorite because I'd plant it in the garden late in the season and then till it in for next year's crop. I did the same with rye grass too. Apparently alfalfa has a lot of nitrogen and helps things grow. I know the weeds, for example, loved it. They grew abundantly in the garden that had be prepped with organic material the year before.

[Kellemora]

Yes, flowers are very picky, more so than any other type of plant.
In our greenhouses, we blended soil mix exactly for the type plants we were planting.
When you are planting like 5000 plants at a time, we can adjust the entire dirt bin for that specific plant.
We also had things we did that would make a potting mix stay dryer, or make it hold more water for longer, again depending on the plant we were planting in the pots.
It also helps the customers who buy them for use indoors too. Plants that are supposed to stay fairly dry had better drainage and a dryer media, while those which needed to stay wet had less drainage and media that stayed wetter.
One thing we never ever used in our potting mixes to keep things wet were those synthetic granules that swelled up with water. They were used for all kinds of things from scented jars to growing plants so you could see their roots. Trouble is, this stuff does not decompose, sorta like plastic supposedly never does. It was fun stuff to play with, but doesn't even come close to the properties of Agar.

The area of the greenhouse the cut flower shop used for planting planters and keeping those plants, plus the rest of the 80 or so feet I leased for working on my hydroculture plants, had a concrete block wall.
Now in a greenhouse, these end walls were always covered with moss.
I cleaned the wall at my end until it looked like newly laid blocks, and kept it that way. I kept our whole two rows of benches area completely spotless. CJ didn't like this because it made the rest of the that greenhouse look dirty. And since this section belonged to the cut flower shop, he had the audacity to construct a wall in the gutter aisle and gave us another bench in the process. This other bench is where we stored the palm trees and ferns we used for rentals.
My cousin Thomas was an artist and he spent a few days painting a mural on that ugly plywood wall. Plus we repainted all the purlins and rails on our side bright gloss white too. That section almost looked sterile, hi hi.
Interestingly enough, the cut flower shop employees who used to hate to go out and plant planters, now enjoyed doing it.
I added many amenities out there that made the job much easier also.

[yogi]

My grandpa on my dad's side was a farmer in Poland before he migrated here to America to start a family. He had a farm here too but also a multi family house in Chicago, which is where I grew up in what used to be a stable. Aside from that heritage background I have no idea where my interest in gardening came from. I simply like to watch and help things grow. My one acre of overgrown woodland was heaven and my refuge. It was quite the challenge to get it under control but I never did completely get things growing to my satisfaction after thirty years of trying. I did accumulate a lot of power tools, however.

Coming here to Missouri improved our life, but the consequence of that decision is that there is little, if any, opportunity for me to get in touch with nature as I had been able to do in the past. Getting into the commercial end of growing stuff never crossed my mind, which to a large degree is why I am fascinated with all your stories. Gardening here would take another thirty years to figure out, and much of that would depend on approval from the HOA. Well, f**k that noise. I'll just continue to live vicariously reading about your adventures in propagating organic material.

As an aside, I know I mentioned wife and I had celebrated 53 years of marriage a couple weeks ago. I decided to get her a bouquet of flowers but didn't want them from Schnucks or Dierburgs. I wanted some real cut flowers from a real florist. O'Fallon happens to have one, and only one, florist shop. They run a pretty decent store and have a ton of other things besides fresh flowers. There was a good display of their wares in two coolers and I picked out the flashiest looking bouquet I could see. $70 worth of flashy flowers in fact. I wasn't too surprised at the price although I thought it was slightly more than what it should have been. But this was a special occasion. So, I bought it and my wife of many years was ecstatically happy with it. To my great disappointment the entire collection of flowers were dead before a week had passed. You mentioned several times that you put some effort into making arrangements that would stay alive a long time. To me 10 days would be a long time and 5-6 days is a short time. I've had bouquets last a long time up north, and even the roses I get from Dierburgs on occasion last a long time. None of them cost $70. So, I regret to admit that you do not always get what you pay for.

[Kellemora]

Being born and raised in the horticultural industry, I've had my periods of time where I hated it with a passion.
This is one of the reasons I worked for other companies as a draftsman. My dad's heart attack is what pulled me back into the business. But now as a manager, I could also work on things I wanted to, and what led to my getting the patents on my growing system.

Compared to other florists, our prices were cheaper than most, because we raised almost all of our own flowers. The roses we sold came from Raymond J. Masek who had the very best roses of anybody, and he also fetched a premium price for them too. Even so, we kept the prices down as much as possible.

Funeral homes hated to see us close, because what we offered for 85 to 100 bucks, all other florists were over 200 bucks for the same sprays. Then people turned against florists and the Obits were drown with In Lieu of Flowers donate to group who kept most of the money for themselves.

The types of roses they have down south here are nothing at all like we sold.
Before Debi and I were married, I finally found a florist who could get the double-sized long stem yellow roses.
I ordered 60 of them and 30 bud vases with greens and baby's breath one for each table at the reception.
I never told Debi what I paid to get them either. Let's just say this variety of rose was over 3 bucks each.

I would send flowers to Debi on special occasions and have them delivered to her at work.
None of them seemed to hold up for very long, and the price was always crazy high.
But as they say, it is the thought that counts, even though it leaves as big dent in the hip national bank, hi hi.