Geek Habitat

Please continue to hold Joel, his wife and their baby Nathaniel (Nathan) in your thoughts and prayers.  A donation of nearly $1,000 was collected by Joel’s friends and co-workers and hand-delivered to him (that’s “the collection” referred to in the quoted email.) Additionally, blood platelet donations in Nathan’s/the Ziegler’s name are also still encouraged so the platelets are available at the moment any surgery can be done.

Hug your friends and loved ones and let them know how much they mean to you, every single day, every single time you see them.

Love,

- Shannon Moore

—– Original Message —–
From: Lyssy, Jodinell
Sent: Thu Sep 27 21:06:06 2007
Subject: Nathan Ziegler update

I know it is late, but I just got a call with an update on Nathan.  Unfortunately there have been a few additional complications.  Typically they want a babys blood pressure to have at least a 15 point difference between the systolic and diastolic and Nathan only has a 10 point difference, which means his heart is working way too hard.  Additionally, it appears that he had two seizures today.  The hospital is bringing in a specialist to read the EEG results and determine if there any abnormalities.  The final news was that his liver has attached itself to the wall of his right lung.  This means that moving the liver is no longer an option.

Our collection was delivered today and Joel and Michelle were deeply touched by the generosity. I included a card identifying all the departments that contributed.  Nathans God mother, Bernadette, delivered it to them and she said that Joel kept saying, How do you begin to say Thank You.

Please continue to keep this family in your thoughts and prayers.

- Jodi

Justin and I are no strangers to folks stealing our copyrighted works (photos, writings) which we’ve posted online. I’m sure at this very moment there are blatant copyright violations of our photography and writing that we are not even aware of, such as this one I stumbled upon a month or so ago thanks to my logs in WordPress. The text on that page is mine, originally published here on GeekHabitat.com on March 3, 2006; the images advertising my WildTexas.com site are server redirects I put in place–the site was originally hotlinking images directly from our servers, thus not only stealing our copyrighted work, but our bandwidth as well.

Well, the latest in this saga is my recently renewed concern over Flickr.com, especially now that we have a child and, like all doting parents, are posting zillions of photos of her and our family there.

It’s bad enough for someone to steal your copyrighted works–it’s vile, low, crappy and, yes, illegal. What’s worse? In rather alarming numbers, there are people who actually steal photos people have posted of their own children for the purposes of populating fake user profiles on social networking sites like Orkut.com. You read that correctly–they steal the photos and post them as if the photographed children are in fact, their own sons/daughters. WTF?

Discussion about two of the most recent incidents of this appalling new twist on copyright violations can be found here and here on Flickr.com.

This follows on the heels of two of our friends finding people who should know better (businesses and blogs) illegally using their copyrighted photos from Flickr.com, as well: Gizmodo should know better!

So…

Right now, in the absence of much time to mull over options and “elegant solutions,” I’ve taken the knee-jerk reaction of marking ALL of the nearly 500 photos in my Flickr gallery as only viewable by friends and family. This has many downsides that impact my friends and family, including: one must have a Flickr account (free or pro, either works) to see the photos and one must be logged in; it also negatively affects our family’s eStarling photo frames because they only pull in Flickr RSS-fed photos marked PUBLIC. Oh, it also breaks stuff like the Flickr preview/teaser box used in the navigation bar here.

I will be looking into the best solution. Justin’s Flickr account is presently still public, but only because I didn’t remember his login information.

I’m not trying to be paranoid, but I do think some increased precautions are needed to protect our photography (our business, afterall) and Sara’s right–now and in the future–not to have her image abused by idiots/thieves/lowlifes who feel the need to create false personas online, complete with charming little children (photos of said children stolen from other people’s photo galleries.) It happens more than one would ever imagine, as evidenced by the fact there’s a whole Flickr group for people who have had it happen to them or spotted it happening to someone else!

Oh, and don’t be surprised if I start watermarking all of our images (including those on Moore Photography & Design. I hate watermarks, especially those that are manually placed in a hard-to-clone/-crop out region of each photography, but I’m tired of knowing we’re basically leaving the keys to our vehicle sitting in plain sight just waiting for the first thief to come along. At least with a vehicle, only one thief can steal it at a time, though! With intellectual property, legions of thieves and make off with your work at the same time, each leaving with a perfectly reproduced copy of your work and very little to go on to track them down. /sigh

If you are able to donate blood platelets, this is an urgent request to do so. The newborn boy of one of our friends, Joel Ziegler, was born on Monday with a life-threatening congenital condition. To learn more about the kiddo, you can read my blog entry calling for prayer requests/positive thoughts — http://geekhabitat.com/1056/prayerpositive-thoughts-request/ — it includes a link to a brief description of the condition.

Baby Nathaniel needs several surgeries, and per Justin’s email below, every blood platelet donation we can muster would help this little one and his family at this difficult time.

Please forward this to anyone else whom you think might be interested in donating platelets. I assume those who are located out-of-state (the baby and his family are in San Antonio, Texas at Santa Rosa Hospital) can donate in the family’s name and still benefit them. If not, the worst case is simply that you are extending a helping hand to a stranger in need in your local area, which is not a bad deal, either.

- Shannon Moore

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Moore, Justin W.
Date: Sep 26, 2007 10:03 AM
Subject: FW: Wednesday
To: Shannon

FYI More info coming soon. Nathan is going to be undergoing several
surgeries, thus the call for platelet donations. I understand that
every donation in his name reduces the medical expenses for Joel’s
family.

Justin W. Moore

—–Original Message—–
From: Blauser, William
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 9:31 PM
To: Moore, Justin W.
Subject: Wednesday

I’m assuming you spoke w/ Joel. He said they would take all comers to
donate platelets.

William Blauser

A dear friend of ours, one of Justin’s co-workers, is going through an ineffably difficult time right now. His son, Nathaniel, was born at 5 AM yesterday with a life-threatening condition called congenital diaphragmatic hernia.

Out of respect for the family, I am not posting any more specific information right now; they have enough people champing at the bit to get “the latest” information, and they have respectfully asked that for a minimum of contact so they can focus their energies on each other and their newborn son.

• If you pray, please pray for Baby Nathaniel and his parents.
• If you believe in positive energies or “good vibes”, please send some their way.
• If you wish to donate to help them in this difficult time, let me know. Right now, donations are being collected in cash, but I am sure something more formal will be setup in time–in which case I can notify those who’ve expressed an interest in donating.

So, we’re parked in a McDonald’s drive thru lane waiting to pull up to the drive-thru window. WHAM! A Dodge RAM pick-up rear ends my Ford Escape Hybrid. It sounded bad and was a good hard jolt, but Sara slept through it and we were all still in our seatbelts and fine.

Justin gets out to inspect the damage and get the rammer’s insurance information (another insured motorist, thank goodness!) It takes a good 7 to 10 minutes with our two vehicles blocking the drive-thru lanes, and the gal at the McDonald’s checkout window peers out at the unfolding “drama” periodically. (We were in Bastrop, Texas, so it’s not like there was an influx of traffic, for McDonald’s eats or otherwise.)

We finally get all the information exchanged and move on up to the window to claim our now much more expensive, potentially, McDonald’s breakfasts, and what are the first words out of the McDonald’s cashier’s mouth?

“That guy hit you?”

I sooooo wanted to pipe up, “No, it’s a lover’s quarrel,” or something equally offbeat in response.

As Bill Engvall would say:
“Here’s your sign!”

.

.

Thankfully, we’re all fine and the visible damage to our vehicle is superficial. We basically now have a reversed imprint of the rammer’s license plate number embedded in the Escape Hybrid’s rear bumper, but the reverse sensors in the bumper still appear to work (though they might need to be reaimed/recalibrated, if that is how they work).

Justin, Sara and I are packing up and heading out tomorrow for a couple nights at a Texas State Park. We’re playing it safe and staying in a “mini-cabin,” which we just discovered doesn’t have a built-in restroom–not like Sara needs one, yet. We will have air conditioning, running water, a mini-refrigerator and microwave, so we’ll hardly be “roughing it.”

Technically, this isn’t camping, but it’s a good safe start to camping with Sara since Justin and I don’t have a clue what we’re doing yet marrying up our still relatively newly-minted parenthood with our almost two decade’s long shared love of camping and the outdoors…

No more updates until we return Sunday/Monday. You may find occasional new Flickr photos, assuming AT&T’s Edge network extends sufficiently at the State Park. If not, even cameraphone photos will have to wait until we return. We will, of course, take shitloads of photos while we are there…
Love to all, have a great weekend!