Domestic Geek

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 People are so self-absorbed that they never think how this affects the people that originally made those patterns.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

Work sucked today on so many levels. I wish I was in a position where I could just walk away from there and never look back.

There were a couple of good things about today, though:

1) Marcus took me to Qdoba for lunch and I got my new favorite there, Shredded Pork Mexican Gumbo. The first time I decided to try this menu item, there was a new girl there that didn't speak much English and she kept pointing at things and I'd say sure, except when we got to the end, there was neither the soup or the tortilla strips the menu said it had, so once that was rectified, I wasn't entirely sure what I was eating was what it was supposed to be. It was darned tasty, though. I waited a while to try it again, and this time it was an employee I knew had worked there a while. Turns out really the only thing I ended up with that time that wasn't supposed to be in there was some queso.




2) By the time I left work, I was so fed up that I went in search of alcohol. I try not to keep much in the house because in my current state of depression, I could easily turn to the bottle often. Thank goodness liquor stores around here sell single bottles. I don't remember where I read about New Belgium's Flambozen (maybe their Facebook wall), but I made a mental note that if I ever saw some, I was going to try it. I'm a little bummed that apparently I totally missed their pumpkin beer this year. I kept talking myself out of buying one, so of course now I can't find it. It's a Raspberry Brown Ale and since I like a lot of the fruit beers I've tried, I was hopeful. I stopped in at Wallaby's over on Florida/Parker and fortunately they had a couple of singles, so I purchased one and put it in the freezer when I got to home to chill it.

It was so good! I'm going to grab a six pack to take to South Dakota next week.



On that note, I'm calling Uncle on this stupid day and going to bed.

I used to love getting chocolate covered espresso beans at Starbucks as a treat. I was sad when one day I realized they didn't have them anymore. I keep asking my Batista friend if she has heard anything about the company bringing them back, but I guess they have no plans to do so. I have toyed with the idea of making my own, but since we're in the suckpartment, I haven't felt like trying to deal with it.

I had to stop into Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage to pick up some Wild Idea Buffalo meat for dinner. As I was heading to the register, I happened to be in the chocolate aisle and the big Chocolove bars were on sale for $1.99. They have one called Coffee Crunch in Dark Chocolate, so I threw one in my basket to try. OMG - it tastes just like I remember the Starbucks beans. Now I have to be careful that I don't mistakenly eat too much in one sitting like that one time I ate an entire bag at once. My heart was racing so bad, I thought I was going to have a heart attack.

As to yesterday's inability to post a pic from the app, apparently it's more than just an FTP permission. Not quite sure what I have to do to make that work, but it will have to wait until this weekend.

Well, thank you Comcast for being down the last few hours. I guess today's post is a quick blurb posted from the ol' iPhone app that I haven't been able to write my post.

I will share my latest eBay score - I had a saved search for a particular cross-stitch mag I wanted and when I clicked the link in my email, it took me to a listing for 4 mags! The BIN price was the same as I'd seen the one mag alone and the seller was in Arvada. They came yesterday and turns out there were patterns in the other three I had wanted to track down. Yay!

ETA: I was going to post a pic, but apparently I don't have the permissions on my upload directory set correctly. Guess I'll try to sort that out tomorrow.

ETA: Here's a pic of the 4 mags:

I'm having a bit of an attitude problem with work - yesterday I just snapped. I'm burned out and I just don't give rat's ass about mail data processing anymore. I frankly don't care to waste my time preparing postage estimates when 90% of this crap is junk mail that's going in the trash can anyway. :( I'm tired of fixing the same problems over and over for the last 2 years/8 months (geez, I was only supposed to do this a few months while I figured out what to do next with my life), yet the client's never fix the major problems that I ask the account managers to relay. I'm tired of the morons in the USPS changing regulations all the time, making it harder to sort mail, yet wonder why nobody wants to mail crap anymore. I'm tired of most of our crappy Account Managers that can never get their damned tickets right, so I have to fight with them to even be able to start their crappy jobs. Also, what's the point of putting my best work out there when everyone around me does it wrong and they still have jobs? I'm also still allergic to my co-worker's smell, yet I still have to share an office with her over a year later because I was told by my supervisor to learn to live with it.

Marcus walked into my office yesterday and found me teary. That's never a good thing. He asked me the other day because the crap going on with our house has him testy (that rarely happens) how I can stand being angry all the time. He said it makes him utterly exhausted. That struck a nerve and really got me to thinking. Yes, it is exhausting.

I keep reading on Facebook that people consider today a lucky day (11/12/13). If that's true, how about helping me figure out where to go from here, universe? Something needs to change.

As far as the lack of NyQuil last night, that sucked. My nose decided to run and stuff decided to work loose in my chest, so I was up coughing until 3 am. I'm sure the 4 hours of sleep in not helping my apathetic work ethic and foul mood.

That said, I guess I'd better prepare my morning coffee and get out of here. I've usually already been at work an hour or two by now. I just don't want to face the stupidity today.