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!

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 People are so self-absorbed that they never think how this affects the people that originally made those patterns.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.

Marcus has said a couple of things to me recently in conversations we have had (I'm not going to say what exactly), that really has me taking a hard look at why I live the way I do. My whole life I have tried to be the good girl and do what I'm supposed to do. Meanwhile, people all around me get away with pulling all kinds of crap with no real repercussions. I also believed for so long that what I really wanted didn't matter, so why bother? I've been living so long trying to be what I thought I was supposed to be, that I never really figured out what I want. There was a conversation on the radio the other day about what would you do with your life if money was not a concern. Sadly, I really don't know what I want. I have a lot of interests, but I don't have a true passion for anything. I think one of the reasons I get so angry all the time is that I'm frustrated with my life and I don't know what to do about it. It may also be part of why I procrastinate so much, as well. I put everything off because nothing feels genuine.

I used to watch Steve Jobs do his Apple keynotes and be so envious of the excitement he had for what he did. I've been trying to meditate to get through the mental clutter to see if I can find that thing that is my reason for being. I'm just so tired of going through the motions of living with nothing to show for it.

A couple of my co-workers recently have had health scares (one had to have a hysterectomy, another waiting for test results to see if she has cancer), which has also got me wanting to get more out of the time I have left. I'm less than 5 years away from the age Mom was when she passed. While it is true that I eat better and don't smoke like she did, that nagging fear that I'll die early like she did is always in the back of my mind. I was looking at my 101 in 1001 page yesterday to see all the things I want to do, yet I never make time for. I also was blown away looking at some of my past blog posts and seeing that I have the same issues year after year after year. I've got to stop making excuses and rationales for why my life isn't the way I want and start finding ways to make things happen. This stagnation thing really sucks.

Anyway, here's one of my favorite Job's quotes -

When Marcus and I go to the homestead in Keystone, we refer to it as "going home." I put my Facebook status something like, "It is so good to be home." It amazes me how many people want to tramp on that.

Your home is where you can be you, where you feel comfortable, where you can just be. To us, that's the house in South Dakota. We've lived in that structure for over 12 years. Many things have happened within those walls, both good and bad. It's where we feel we belong. The old saying "Home is where your heart is" rings true, our hearts are up there.

The place we're staying now (the Suckpartment, as Marcus has dubbed it), is just that - the place we're staying now. We can't relax here with the noise and the neighbors. We don't feel at ease here. We have just the bare minimum of our things here. Simple things like preparing a meal or doing laundry totally suck. The Denver area itself is too freaking crowded. More and more people flood this stupid area every day. The traffic is unbearable - I used to love to drive around, now it is a hated chore. I can't even walk the dog around here without him finding food people have thrown on the ground or being chased by untrained children (my mother taught me never to approach a strange dog without permission from the owner).

I can't wait for the day that Marcus and I pack up that final moving truck and leave Denver behind. I really hope that day is soon.

OK, here I go with my rant about how I hate the whole Daylight Savings concept.

I often wondered if there have ever been any studies done on how mucking around with time affects those with depression, especially with the fall change. While I didn't delve deep enough to find any actual studies, there are plenty of articles written about it. I found this article that suggests sitting in front of a light box. Maybe I should do that, because today was really bad for me.

It's bad enough that I was dealing with a pinched neck nerve or something that hadn't let me sleep on top of the usual stupidity that happens at work, but I was so freaking depressed that I couldn't concentrate on my work. I even contemplated quitting and walking out.

I wish we would just stop this DST nonsense. An hour isn't enough to be of benefit in this technological age, but it sure is enough to screw things up.