PooBou.com

Fair warning: prepare to be outraged.

I don’t know how many of y’all who use Flickr have had this problem, but here’s the thing. Occasionally I get people who add me as their contact who speak very little English, and who have no pictures available in their photostream. If I ignore it, a couple of days later, I’ll get a Flickr message like this (honest to God, I’m copying & pasting one of the emails I’ve gotten):

Catie I found very beautiful, and I can use the photos of her. Please think well. The Catie is the most perfect little girl that I ever knew, I am photographer.
I found this very beautiful little girl, and in my opinion should be a model. She is simply nice, beautiful, sweet … I would like to know her better, and thus allowing me to use the photos of his daughter.
Many people use the photos of her daughter in ORKUT, if you want I can help it.
Kisses, good week and good night.
-name removed-

The first time I got one of these, I wondered what the hell Orkut was, so I did some investigating. Turns out, it’s a social networking site, sort of like Facebook or MySpace, but the users are predominantly in Brazil and India. It’s run by Google, and appears to be a legitimate website from what I can tell.

So, whenever this comes up, I always respond that NO, you may NOT use the photos of my daughter, and then I block them so they can’t see my Flickr pictures anymore. Lately, I’ve been even more proactive: if someone adds me as a contact and they have a vaguely foreign-sounding name and nothing in their photostream? I block them. No questions asked, they’re just gone.

Then, the other day I got an email from someone on Flickr with a link to a profile on Orkut. I followed the link and found this.

(Click to enlarge.)

Somebody set up an account, claiming that they’re me, using my daughter’s picture as their profile pic, and acting all outraged that people are using Catie’s pictures on Orkut. And they add that “Bianca and Daph” (who??) are the only people authorized to use Catie’s pictures. What the ever-loving eff?!?!!

First, I reported this person to Orkut for identity theft. Then I started doing some investigating. Orkut is sort of like Facebook in that you can post a message called a “scrap” (sort of like writing on someone’s wall in FB). I left a message that was borderline hysterical, sort of “who the hell is this? You’re using my daughter’s picture and acting as though you’re me online? TAKE THIS PICTURE DOWN IMMEDIATELY OR I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND ARRRRGGGGHHH HULK SMASH!!!” Or, you know, something to that effect. I’m pretty sure I dropped an f-bomb. (Which probably has less effect on someone who speaks poor English.)

This is the response I got.

No I have not got it very badly and I really apologize, is that I see many people using photos of her daughter Catie and I decided to do this to stop using his daughter, if you are aware already found 5 girls who wore the daughter and she stopped using because I asked, even though I did wrong I have done something right, sorry about that

So… you’re just pretending to be me in order to protect my kid? Um, sorry, but NO. If you think someone is doing something unseemly with pictures of a stranger’s child, wouldn’t you, I don’t know, try to CONTACT the parent of the child whose pictures are being used illicitly? Maybe?

I took this screenshot & posted it on Flickr, and the person immediately contacted me and asked me to remove it. HELL NO, jackass. I responded and said that I would not be removing it because I wanted to warn the other parents I know to be on the lookout for this. Meanwhile, the profile appears to have been removed, so yay for that, I guess.

So, now I’m left with questions:
1. Why on earth would anyone have any interest in these pictures? It’s not as though they’re naked pictures of her that could be construed as p0rnographic. I don’t post anything like that. What’s the motivation for this? A quick search on Flickr shows that I am definitely not the only one having this problem. But why? What’s the purpose? Do I need to be worried that some Brazilian child sex ring is going to come to North Carolina looking for my daughter? (That’s what my mom thinks. She advised me to shut down my Flickr account AND my blog when she heard about this. And Mom, I love you, but no.)

2. What do I do now? I don’t want to set my Flickr account private, because then I won’t be able to use the pictures on my blog. How do I keep this from happening in the future? Do I stick a watermark on my photos? Would that even help? I mean, if they’re going to steal so blatantly, I doubt a watermark would be much of a deterrent.

3. How do I use my tiny little space on the Internet to try to make this stop? I doubt I can make huge websites like Flickr or Google listen to me. I’d love it if Flickr had some sort of option to block incoming links, so I could have an option that blocks anybody who’s clicking over from Orkut. But I doubt they’re going to make a major site design overhaul based on the complaints of a few people. So, what to do? I know some of y’all are way more clever than I am with this type of thing. If you have any ideas, please share them.

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I’m going to be doing a little tweaking on the ol’ blog here over the next few weeks. Nothing major, just changing up some of my sidebar stuff. Ads will be different – Google ads are gone because they’re useless, and I might try out some different ads instead. Hopefully it won’t be anything too annoying or intrusive, but I trust that y’all will let me know if it is.

Oh, and I’ve dropped my blogroll from my sidebar because I have about 100 or so blogs in my RSS reader, and just highlighting about 1/4 of them over there seemed sort of pointless and unfair. Also, now trolls can no longer use my blog as the launching point to go attack on someone else’s site. Which has happened a few times. But no more. Suck it, trolls.

And while I’m talking about bloggy/techie stuff, I do have a couple of questions for you lovely people:

1) Do any of you know anything about RSS feeds? Because my feed went from partial, to full, and back to partial again and I never did anything to change any of it. I can’t figure it out. I’m using WordPress, I’ve upgraded to the latest version, and on the Settings > Reading screen, I have it selected to show full text. Why is it still showing up as partial? Any ideas? Help?

2) After seeing some of the gorgeous photos that were taken at Type-A Mom last weekend, and after suffering from camera-envy for a while, I’ve decided it’s time for an upgrade. My little point-and-shoot (it’s an Olympus Stylus 790 SW) is an ok camera, but I end up with an awful lot of blurry pictures, or pictures that are too washed out and grainy. Also, the delay on the shutter speed is so slow – and toddlers are so fast – that I miss an awful lot of really great shots.

So, as soon as I can figure out how to afford it, I want to upgrade to a DSLR. I’ve heard good things about the Canon Rebel, but I know Nikon makes some really great cameras too. Any of you photography pros have advice for a beginner who’s never used a DSLR before? I’ll take whatever tips I can get.

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We got home from the Type-A Mom Conference yesterday afternoon. This was only my second blogging conference; BlogHer was my first. It feels odd, to go to two in one year, when I’ve been blogging since 2003. I’m not sure how it worked out like that, but there you go.

I think that overall, the Type-A Mom Conference was a lot more enjoyable for me than BlogHer. At BlogHer, it was like Overstimulation Central. The schedule is packed, there are tons of people there, the marketers and their swag are all over the place, everything is rush-rush-rush, and while I certainly got to meet a lot of the bloggers I adore, I didn’t really get a chance to spend a lot of time with any of them. And that’s not really a criticism of BlogHer, honestly, I think it’s just the nature of the beast. By the time it was over, I was so glad to be home again.

By comparison, Type-A Mom was totally different. For one, just the fact that you’re at a resort in a smallish mountain town instead of being in a hotel smack in the middle of downtown Chicago gives it a different vibe. And the fact that it’s a smaller conference means that instead of rushing around trying to meet everyone, I had the chance to actually spend time with people; to have a real conversation and form an actual connection with them, not just a “hi! OMG you’re here! So great to meet you! Ok bye!” Which is sort of what BlogHer felt like to me.

Also, for me personally, Type-A Mom was different because Dave and Catie came along with me. In some ways that was harder (no “I’ll take a nap whenever I damn well please” policy like I had at BlogHer), but it was also great because then I didn’t have that urge to rush home to them – they were already there. Saturday morning, I totally skipped out on the morning sessions, which ok yes, maybe I would’ve learned something if I’d gone. But I spent the morning lying in bed with my family watching cartoons, and I can honestly say that there was nowhere else I wanted to be at that moment.

Oh, for the record? Catie freaking loved Kid Con, which I wasn’t expecting at all. She cried the first time Dave dropped her off there, and we tried to stagger her time there to keep her from getting too overwhelmed. But seriously, after that first time? Every time we took her back to “daycare school” (her term), she’d run into the room with an “Ok, Mommy, bye! You go now!” She was glad to see us when we’d come back for her, of course, but she clearly had a fantastic time there. That was an amazing program that they set up for the kids, all blogging conferences should follow that example.

So, yes. It was great. At BlogHer, I was so exhausted and couldn’t wait to get home by the end of the weekend. With Type-A Mom, I just felt sad and melancholy the whole drive home because I had so much fun, and I wish that all of those fabulous women lived in my neighborhood so I could see them all the time. Sigh.

Oh, and Catie’s take on the conference?
During:

After:

I know how she feels.

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With all the moving and house stuff, I sort of forgot to mention that we’re going out of town this weekend. Or rather, today. Thursday.

We’re heading over to Asheville, North Carolina, and we’ll be there until Sunday. I’m going to the Type-A Mom Conference, and since it’s only a road trip away from here and doesn’t involve airfare, we thought it’d be fun to have Dave and Catie come along. We’ve never been to Asheville, and I hear it’s beautiful there, so I’m really excited.

What’s odd about this little mini-vacation is that we each have different agendas. I’ll be at the conference, Dave wants to go hiking in the mountains, and Catie has a pass to attend “Kid Con,” which is a whole separate event for kids at the conference. I’m a little nervous about that, since Catie isn’t really used to large daycare scenarios, and I’m sort of expecting her to freak out.

But then, she may surprise me. She’s done really well at the YMCA daycare several times. And yesterday, I had a work meeting at 10:30 in the morning; Dave was at the office, and our baby-sitter is out of town this week. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I took her to a drop-in daycare facility that’s close to our new house. I’d typically be a little iffy about that kind of place, but I had heard good things about it from one of our old neighbors, and I didn’t really have any other options. Catie was very excited to go to “daycare school” (as she called it), but when it was time for me to actually leave her there, she had a full-on screaming, crying meltdown. I had to walk out the door while she cried for me, and I swear, I’ll never get used to that. Still, the daycare teachers there said that she was fine about five minutes after I left, and she had a great time playing for the next two hours. She even asked today if she could go back to daycare school. So, I’m thinking that maybe Kid Con will be fine. We’re certainly talking it up to her a lot, about how she’s going to have SO! MUCH! FUN! I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic about how she might react.

So, yes. Asheville! Road trip! Type-A Mom Conference! Getting to hang out with some of my favorite bloggers! Long weekend! Yay!

Oh, and just in case I don’t blog while we’re out of town (because I very well might not), here’s a cute video of Catie opening a present from Mimi & Pop-Pop (my parents).

The guitar (“gui-tahhg,” as she says) was really cute for the first 15 minutes. Now I’m taking bets on how long until it mysteriously “breaks” – or at least until the batteries disappear.

P.S. Happy 3rd birthday to my beautiful little cousin, Elizabeth! We love you & can’t wait to celebrate when we get back next week.

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If there’s one thing I learned at BlogHer, it’s that there are a lot of bloggers out there who have got this whole selling-your-blog thing down to an art. There are also some whose marketing skills could use, um, a little polishing. (If any of you here are the ones who interrupted private conversations to throw your business cards at people, yes, I am looking at you.)

Honestly, the idea of doing product reviews or giveaways has never appealed to me because I didn’t think it would fit in with the narrative of my blog. All I do here is write about my daily life; I think of this blog as my journal, where I tell stories about my kid and oh-hey-this-random-funny-thing-happened. I think it would come off as awkward and contrived if I suddenly threw a product review in the middle of it. There’s a really great post at Suburban Turmoil about how reviews and personal posts shouldn’t mix, and I tend to agree with her. The last thing I want is to pull people in with a long sob story about my poor toddler’s asthma and then twist it with a, “But it was all magically healed with ACME Lung Fixin’ Balm!” at the end. (Note: I know of no such balm in real life. If you came to my site searching for it, I apologize.) You know what I mean? It’s disingenuous and phony, and I don’t want any part of that.

But, at the same time, I’ve gotten a couple of offers to do some reviews, and I don’t want to turn down a potential income source for my family. So to that end, I’ve created a new site:

PooBou’s Reviews

My first product review will be coming up soon, and seriously y’all, I’m SO excited about it. I’m working with CSN Stores, which is a perfect fit for me since they have all kinds of great home decor stuff, patio furniture, kids’ toys, and basically anything you might need for your house. Since we’re moving to a new house at some point in the next month, and we need stuff for said house, this little project is going to be very near & dear to my heart.

I’m also going to do some reviews for the lovely Room 704 ladies, which should be a lot of fun, since I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to cuss in those. And since I very rarely allow myself to cuss on my own blog, I’m really looking forward to that.

So, stay tuned. Should be some fun stuff coming up on that horizon.

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BlogHer was amazing, as I expected. I know tons of people are going to write posts about it, far more eloquently than I can – although, let’s be fair, I’m at a bit of a disadvantage since I’m pounding this out on the airplane with the most epic hangover I’ve had in years. (Typing blog posts in MS Word to copy & paste later, can I get an amen?)

(Also: the last time I had to get on a plane while hungover-or-possibly-still-drunk-from-the-night-before was when my cousin Teresa passed away in 2004. And even though the circumstances around last night’s alcohol consumption were much more joyous this time [celebrating new friendships rather than mourning a horrible loss], flying with a hangover sucks exactly as much as I remember.)

(Also also: hi parentheses! Prepare to be overused. My brain is basically one giant non-sequitur today.)

So, yes. I met tons of bloggers that I adore. The few “rock star” bloggers that I got the nerve to talk to were all lovely and sweet and completely gracious. Some were a little shy and awkward (which, yeah ok, I sort of forget that we’re all basically nerds; I keep thinking that I’m the only one), and some were a lot warmer than I expected and gave me big hugs. I was surprised at how many people knew my name – or rather, my Twitter handle. (Another parenthetical aside: it was VERY weird to introduce myself as PooBou for 3 days. No one actually calls me that in real life, but after a while I just kind of got used to it.)

Then, of course, there are the bloggers who I talk online with a lot, and I was worried that our online connection wouldn’t translate to real life. And you know? It totally translated. From the second I met them in person, it felt like I was just hanging out with old friends who I’ve known for years. Like there’s already an established history, it was totally comfortable and easy. I loved that.

I didn’t attend as many sessions as I wanted. Some I intentionally skipped because they just didn’t apply to me, or because I needed a nap, or because I went wandering through downtown Chicago to go meet up with an old friend (who I’ve known literally since the day my parents brought me home from the hospital, and who I hadn’t seen in over a decade). (Hi, Dendy!) Then there were a few sessions that I really wanted to attend, but they were in tiny conference rooms that I couldn’t get into. People were lined up in the hallways trying to cram themselves in, and just couldn’t. (So, if any BlogHer people read this: bigger conference rooms for the Room of Your Own sessions next year, please!) The best part of the sessions by far was the Community Keynote speeches at the end of the first day. I’ll post a link when it’s online, but seriously, I was doing the full-on ugly cry during a few of them, and almost peeing myself laughing during the others. Anyone who says that bloggers aren’t really writers should watch those.

Of course, you can’t get 1,400 women together without some drama. There were rumors about some illicit affairs happening between bloggers (which I’m 99.9% sure were all b.s.), and there were some women there who got nicknamed “swag whores” because they were literally shoving people out of the way to grab all the free stuff they could. Fortunately for me, I didn’t witness any of that, I just heard about it from other people. I’m generally not a fan of drama, so I’m honestly relieved that I missed all of that and it didn’t put a damper on the experience for me.

Overall, it was great. The swag is nice, sure. I got some cool toys to bring home to Catie. (And some for myself – ahem *thank you room 704 ladies, mwah!* cough cough.) And I got to meet Tim Gunn and have my picture taken with him, which was awesome. (And I’m waiting for the Tide people to post the picture so I can nab it, but they haven’t yet. Argh!) I was in head-to-toe Old Navy, I felt totally unfashionable, but he was so kind and funny and wonderful that I didn’t even care. Plus I made him laugh, and I didn’t accidentally say the f-word in front of him or anything, so bonus points for me.

But the whole point of going to BlogHer for me was to learn more about great writing in this space, to meet the other bloggers that I love, to hang out, and to have fun. So really, the highlight of the weekend was just sitting around a hotel with some insanely talented, hilarious, smart and just effing fantastic people who I absolutely adore, and who I am so proud to call my friends.

So, thank you so much. To Greis, Krystle, Jen, Dawn, VDog, Mrs. Flinger, BJ, Maura, Meghan, Heather, and soooo many other people I can’t even name them all, who made this weekend so completely wonderful and fun. I love y’all, and can’t wait to see you next year!

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Or Sallyjo, or “no comment,” or whatever you’re calling yourself today.

I installed a handy little feature that gives me some pretty detailed info about the people who are visiting my site. And I’m sure that the people you work for at the H0spice of S0uthern Illin0is in Belleville probably wouldn’t be too pleased to know that you’re spending so much time reading my blog. But I have their phone number, and if you spew your shit on here again, I’m not afraid to use it. I might not know your real name, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult for their internal IT department to figure out who you are, since you’re on my site every day.

I’m just sayin’. Watch your ass.

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