Domestic Geek

I'm really wishing I hadn't done any paid blogging back in the bleak unemployment fiasco back in 2007.

Every few weeks, I get an email from somebody asking to have their link removed from my pathetic little blog. I did a little purging a while back. Some of the ones that remain are services that I would have actually used at some point. Like right now, there's a font site asking to have their link removed. They were on my list of resources for when I get back into design, but no longer. If these darned companies would worry more about their service or product and less what Google's most recent demands are, they wouldn't really need to care about where they rank on Google.

I'm so sick of this SEO game. Stop trying to game the system (that's why you and/or your company paid for all these lame links anyway) and stop giving Google all this power over you.

I'm especially irked when it isn't even a paid link in question, just some site I found and linked because I liked what they had to sell or wanted it for future reference. Some guy with a site selling old Hallmark ornaments asked to have his link removed. I told him why I had linked it and since he apparently cares more about Google than a customer, he's history. His stupid website still looked like something from a beginning HTML class. Good riddance.

I was going through some papers and found a list of all the paid posts I made back then and now I'm going to remove each and every one regardless. Some acquaintances that did paid blogging with me back then say they ask the companies to pay them to get the links removed, but I so don't want to deal with that. I'm just tired of seeing this crap in my inbox and reminding me of a period in my life that I would like to keep in the past.

STOP PLAYING GOOGLE'S GAME - NOBODY CARES!

Ok, not exactly food, but that is the closest category I have without creating a new one.

I made apple cider with mulling spices and Tuaca one year when I had my knitting friends over to the old mobile home.

At Whole Foods this year, I saw and end display with some organic mulling spices in a tea bag from R. W. Knudson, so I grabbed a box. A gallon of organic cider and a bottle of Tuaca (on sale).

SO DANGED GOOD!

Thank you, apartment-dwelling brat children, for thinking it would be cool to leave a little mound of rocks right in the middle of a dark sidewalk. I love twisting my ankle and tweaking my back during Mr. T's walk.

Not a long post today as I'm rather irked.

In an effort to multitask, I decided to do my laundry on site tonight while I watched the Bronco game, did dishes and worked on some computer stuff. When I went over earlier, all the washers were full. I got my stuff in around 8 finally, had it in the dryer a little before 9. As soon as the game was over, I went to get my clothes and the laundry room is locked. This would be my fault if say, I knew 10pm was the time they locked it; however, I have walked the dog at 1 in the morning and it was still open. Apparently closing time is whenever the asshole with the key decides it is time to lock it. There are no posted hours and the couple of times I have been in there babysitting my laundry on a Sunday evening, it was after 11 when the dude showed up.

I let laundry go too far and we were totally out of clothes, so everything is in there. With my luck, the guy won't be back at an early hour to open it, either.

We're also out of poop bags. They expect the residents to clean up after their pets, yet we haven't had bags in over a week. I carry my own, but the lawn is becoming a mine field out there.

Also, the 3 fountains in this place haven't worked in months and they're freaking disgusting.

I'm so glad they felt the need to raise everyone's rents $50 so we can live in a crappier place than it was when we moved in.

I need to get on my soap box for a moment.

I really feel bad for people trying to make a living doing any type of designing these days, but I feel especially bad for cross-stitch designers. Just like in my graphic design field, anybody that can buy software all of a sudden thinks they are a designer. I don't know how many sites I have turned into Disney because I see someone selling charts for images they scanned and ran through their software.

An even worse problem is that the computer age has made it so easy to share or sell copyrighted patterns freely. People are so self-absorbed that they never think how this affects the people that originally made those patterns. This problem is made worse by foreign counties (China, Russia) that won't crack down on offenders if the work originated in another country. Pinterest has been horrible for these folks, as once again, a good idea and a useful tool is being abused by many. Instead of using it to post links to projects to do something or the like (as I do on my Stitchery board), they're putting the whole freaking chart there for anybody to use.

What most of these losers don't realize or care to admit is that they are STEALING! Many designers are tired of the fight of trying to protect their property. Instead of the freedom to create, they're having to deal with insolent people that hate being called out and hiring lawyers. Many of them have decided it's not worth it and quit. I also hate the ones that say it is OK to use Disney stuff, they're a big company and someone else making a little money off their characters isn't a big deal. Stealing is stealing.

A couple of recent posts on a Facebook group to which I belong really got my blood boiling. The group description has this: "We do not share or sell patterns in this group." Well, a woman was showing pictures of the piece she was working and anytime anyone asked her to name/designer, she simply offered to send them a copy. When I counted up how many people had publicly asked for it (never mind that many probably sent private messages), I got pissed. As I recognized the style of the designer and the chart is on my to-do list, I tracked down a legitimate place to purchased it and posted the link on both offending posts. I took a screen shot of one of the posts and then made inquiries as to how I could pass that on to the designer to give her a head's up. What slays me is people continued to ask for it after I called her out on it, so they suck just as much as she does. I PMd the group's Admin and then had to go to work. All day long, I kept seeing my notification counter increase, but as work makes me angry enough, I dared not look to see how many others were asking for it.



(Man, it took forever to blur out/cover the offending names. See how nice I was? I even covered up their avatars since many of those are pics of family members. I can show some respect.)

Right before I got off work, the admin had messaged me back to inform me that she had taken care of it and to thank me for alerting her to the offending posts. I then noticed that my notification number was very low. Whew, one down. I got a PM from a woman letting me know that the offender was now acting like the victim in all this:



All sorts of people commented on her post. Too bad she didn't let them know why her posts were deleted. It had nothing to do with what she was stitching, it was the problem of giving everyone that asked the danged pattern for free. I clicked through to her page to see what kind of woman she is on her page. She's a "Christian" and sells Avon. I wanted to send her a PM asking her how she'd like it if people intercepted her Avon deliveries and just gave them to others, since that was basically what she was doing to the designer whose pattern she was forwarding. I didn't though. Then I saw this - The IRONY! (ETA: Well, now I know why she had no problem passing it on, the pattern is pinned on her board - yes I'm stalking her. She got it from one of those crappy Russian sites I was mentioning earlier. Grrrr!)



I felt so bad for this designer that I decided to buy 2 of her charts that I've been wanting since I got paid yesterday. I bought the one in question here, Lets Love Winter, plus Let's Sew.