That's It, I've Had It

A while back I posted that I was have some serious issues with phot theft. I got better for awhile and it has actually gotten worse the little while so I am locking down the kids pictures on flickr. I hate to do it, but I am hoping it will curb some of the theft. I may or may not open them back up, I haven't decided yet.

I will also be going back and making sure all my blog pictures are watermarked. I hate doing it, but I need to try and curb some of the theft while still being able to share some of the pictures I take.

If you are on flickr and want to be a friend so you can see the kiddos, please message me or comment on a picture and I will add you.

It really just pisses me off.

The Paper Mama Photo Challenge: Fingerprint.

Daydreamer, originally uploaded by The Lungos.

finger·print (-print′), noun

1.  an impression of the lines and whorls on the inner surface of the end joint of the finger, used as by the police in the identification of a person
2. any characteristic or set of characteristics that distinguishes or unambiguously identifies a person or thing; signature

I chose this picture of Peanut for my very first entry in The Paper Mama Photo Challenge because it meets the rules and this picture really does distinguish or unambiguously identify her right now. She love to have her nails painted, all she wants to wear are her tie-dye shirts and tutu's and she is is a dreamer and that is the look on her face.

Edited~ I am also adding this picture to Sweet Shot Tuesday. Double duty. Efficient. Lazy. Whatever.

One of the Top 10 Things to Do on a Saturday

Blowing bubbles in the backyard with a sweet 3 year old in a purple tutu. Forget all the laundry, dishes, vacuuming and dusting...

Nothing could have made for a better day than this. This is what living life is all about.

Friday Flip-Offs ~ Photo Theft

There has been some talk around the web/twitter lately about stolen blog post and stolen photos. It has happened to me and it really pisses me off.

I understand that when you put yourself and your life on the web, you open yourself up to a host of things, including, but not limited to: creepy stalkers, trolls, haters, etc. But I refuse to let them drive me off the web.

I post pictures on flickr. Lots of them. Initially it was just random pictures of Seattle and travels that Hubby and I took. Then of our house and eventually the kids. It was our photoblog of sorts and a way to keep family and friends that weren't in Seattle update on what we wre doing.

I have most of our photos on flickr public. I love to search flickr for great travel destinations based on pictures (it is how we found our honeymoon destination) and get ideas for pictures of the kids and craft ideas. So I leave mine public for others to search.

Then a few years ago there was a bunch of buzz about this site orkut.com and how all sorts of stolen baby and kid pictures were showing up. Some people were pretending they were their kids. A few totally creepy people had posted stole pictures in groups like "sexy babies" and other weird things. A majority of users are in Brazil so the site is mostly in Portuguese so sometimes it is hard to determine who is using the picture and how.

Google, who is the owner of orkut was absolutely no help. And reporting copyright infringement and stolen pictures was cumbersome and time consuming. Eventually, though, most of the stolen pictures were taken down and things quieted down.

Last week I randomly checked my flickr stats and saw that I had refers from orkut. I went to check them out and sure enough, there are stolen pictures of Peanut.

I began with the first person I saw with a picture Peanut and posted in their "scraps" that the photo they were using was mine and copyright by me and to remove it immediately or be reported. Then I would scroll through their entire friend list to see if anyone else had a picture of Peanut and same with their communities. And in the communities, I would scroll through all the members, sometimes thousands of them. And on and on. More and more. Overall around 40 (that I could find) different profiles with pictures of Peanut and 15 communities.

Here is just one page that has 2 pictures of my mine. They have the nerve to watermark them as their own and tell others not to steal them.

I am happy say that about 85 percent of the pictures were taken down within 24 hours of the first request. Another 5 percent were taken down after the 2nd request. There are still some up, so I will take the time to report them and hope that Google does it's job.

You are probably asking why I don't watermark my flickr pictures or make my account private/friends and family only. I don't watermark my flick photos (I do my blog photos if I think about it) because: a) in most instances it takes away from the picture b) I didn't know how to do a watermark until just recently c) family a friends print quite a few photos from flickr and they don't want a watermarked picture. And I don't want to go private on flickr because I enjoy browsing other peoples pictures that I want to return the favor. Although - if I ever felt that my kids were in danger, I would drop off the web faster that you could say McGruff the Crime dog.

It really is upsetting that people do these kinds of things and hopefully, if I follow all the right channels, it will be taken care of. If I see an increase instead of decrease of stolen photos, I may do what I did last time and go private with my pictures for awhile and then come back. I will just wait and see.

And you, if you have a publicly viewable flickr account with pictures of kids, you may want to check your stats of surf around orkut to make sure your kids aren't out there either. You may also want to check out this flickr group, they have lots of info about how to deal with this.

I am adding stupid photo stealers to Friday Flip-Offs this week! People who steal can go suck an egg!

Wordless Wednesday

Happy Hippie Kiddos, originally uploaded by The Lungos.

Where Were You?

I posted this picture on flickr in 2007 and wrote about my life then. I bumped it again this year and added to it. I need to get a picture with both kids to mark the date.

She Is What Its All About, originally uploaded by The Lungos.

~*~ EDITED 09/11/10 ~*~
Bumping this photo up. I can't believe I took this photo 3 years ago and that the the attack on 09/11 happened 9 years ago. It is amazing how things have changed for me, my family and my country in the past 9 years. Some good changes, so not so good. What hasn't changed is the way I feel when I think back to that morning when I turned on the news. The flood of emotion is almost unbearable for me, someone who wears my heart on my sleeve.

We have moved again to be closer to family. We have added a beautiful boy to our family. I have grown more in love with husband and celebrated 5 years of marriage. I am so very thankful for the life I have and the people I am surrounded by.

09/11/07
I really didn't give much thought to the date until listening to the radio this morning and they said that it has been 6 years since the attack on the the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and the plane crash in Pennsylvania. That day six years ago seems like an eternity to me. I was in such a different place in my life and the things that were so important to me then, the things that I thought life was all about were so small.

Since then, I met my husband, moved to Seattle, got married, made some amazing friends, and most recently added the Peanut to our lives. These are the things that life is truly about for me now, and I know that I am amazingly blessed with the family and friends I have in my life.

I have a wonderful husband who is my best friend, a unbelievably supportive partner, my true love and the most I could have hoped for in a father for our baby girl. And our baby girl - I haven't figured out how to put into words how I feel about her. She is my light, my life.

As I listened to the names of those being remembered, my heart and soul ached for those who lost loved ones ~family and friends~ 6 years ago. I cannot imagine the loss they feel. My thoughts are with them.

Friday Blog Hops and Follows

Wedding Week ~ The Story of Us Part II

Continued from The Story of Us Part I

She sat up and found out who the socks belonged to and pointed him out.

From what we could see of the striped socks, spiked hair, nerd frames and baby face we guessed that he was a student from another school. And a pretty cute one, too.

We went about our way for the rest of the day – to sessions and speakers and of course through the vendor fair to collect as much useless free stuff as we could and every vendor stamp for the giveaway.

Later that night was THE event of the conference – the invite only, hosted bar, social by XYZ* consulting. It followed the conference social. During the conference social, KP, a girl with us, spotted Hubby-To-Be and thought he was cute. She went up to him, introduced herself, and invited him to join all of us at the XYZ* Consulting party. The XYZ Consulting party was great for networking, free beer, and free beer.
During the XYZ* party, my friend AC and I all chatted with Hubby-To-Be and KP tried to flirt with him. We found out that he was, in fact, not a student but had graduated the year before and worked for a company in Seattle. His boss was supposed to come to the conference, but had sent Hubby-To-Be instead.

As is expected of college students and just graduated college students, we all took advantage of the free beer and drank our fair share. Somewhere along the line K quit trying to pick up Hubby-To-Be and moved on the some vendor reps. Somehow, she managed to convince them to head to the bar and invited us to tag along. So, Hubby-To-Be, me, my friend AC, KP and the two vendor reps begin the walk from the hotel down the boardwalk to the bar we had visited the night before. Along the way, we managed to pick up JL and BL who were in the process of becoming an item on this trip.

When we got to the bar, the vendor reps announced that the beer was on them (back in the day when reps had great expense accounts) and proceeded to buy round after round of beer for us poor broke college kids and Hubby-To-Be. KP was really working her flirt for one of the reps, which I think accounts for them buying all of us beer all night.

I was sitting next to Hubby-To-Be and sharing a table with my friend AC and JL and BL. I was really having a good time chatting with Hubby-To-Be and we as a group were getting along great. On a quick trip to the bathroom, my friend AC and BL both told me that I should totally hook up with him because he was cute (he was) and super nice (he was) and they both had boyfriends or boyfriends in the making so it was all up to me. I just laughed and walked out.

Then the band started. By now, we were all well on our way to being fabulous dancers thanks to alcohol so we all thought it would be a great idea to dance. I have to say that I am not a great dancer, but of course at the time I thought I was, so I was shaking my thing, and making a fool of myself. Of course, Hubby-To-Be still likes to bring it up and how that was when he knew I was the one.

Well, 2 am finally rolled around and they kicked us out of the bar. We all decided it would be a GREAT idea to walk down to the beach.

*Name changed to protect the innocent.

Wedding Week ~ The Story of Us Part I

Oh, how I LOVE the story of us and I have been waiting for the just the right time to share it. And I think the right time is now, the week leading up to our 5th wedding anniversary. Wow, really!?!? 5 years. It has really gone by so quickly.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I met Hubby in October 2001. I was finally in my last year of college and it looked like I was actually going to graduate with a job lined up. I had just finished my second summer at the coal mine and was ready to go back full time after graduation. All I had to do was get through 8 more months of school. Easy enough, right?

Well, one of the benefits of being in a degree program for more than 4 years at a small school is that you know everyone in your program and you are on a first name basis with all of the professors. This means that when sponsored (paid for) attendance at a conference in you degree area come up, those professors think of you first. Such was the case when several slots opened for the Pacific Northwest Section of American Industrial Hygienist Association fall conference in Seaside, Oregon. (I know, you are all, what is that? More later)  I had actually gone the year before to Bellingham because nobody else wanted to go and I had a blast, so I jumped on the opportunity to go again.

There ended up being 6 students and one professor going and we all drove over in a school van. The trip was long but uneventful and we got into Seaside late the night before the conference. Because we all were good college students we all went out to the closest bar and tied one on straight to bed, of course.

The next morning, in proper college student fashion we arrived a little late to the first seminar and sat in the very back. This conference if for professionals in industrial hygiene and is very technical, ie boring for college students. The benefit of going as a student is to receive scholarships and net work for a job after graduation. The reason students go is for the company sponsored parties which mean free beer.

Anyway, my good friend AC and I settle in the very last row and try to stay awake. As she was dozing, she dropped her  pen. When she bent down to pick it up, she noticed a pair of striped socks on a pair of legs towards the front. She sat up and found who the socks belonged to and pointed him out.