Seen parked and locked outside of preschool this week. Because you never know, ya know?

OK, enough tinkering around with my site, back to the important stuff. This was a really, really long week. The boys were all tired and cranky, we skipped a preschool potluck party due to it, and they fought a lot. But this was a really nice way to end the week.

[photo removed]

Chip is playing with a broken guitar ("tar-ie!!"), Mike just figured out how to look through a kaleidoscope, and Robbie is snuggling while he finishes his warm cup of milk.

This is exactly why I wanted an armful of kids!

As promised in my previous post, here's a funny thing one of my kids said today!

Mike was way too tired to go to preschool today, so we played hooky and went to Target. I needed to get some stuff, and he likes looking at all the toys.

We walk in, and for reasons I've never fully understood, the lingerie department is one of the first things you see. And like usual, Mike comments about the bras, but today he was in rare form.

Hey, I bemember, we've been here before to see breasts. I mean bras. Yeah, but we already have bras at home.

So, you ask, how do you remember the exact words he said? Well, it is because I am a huge dork! And I have Mother to thank for it. I keep a digital voice recorder in my pocket all the time. Yes, today in Target, I was mumbling into it next to the juniors section. Sigh, what I have become…

But the truth is that I am just unable to make use of a PDA like a normal person. I want to be able to just note something quickly "bring snack september 12th to Robbie's classroom" and then move on. If I was fumbling along typing with my thumbs while trying to herd the 3 boys along their morning routine, I would just lose my mind!

So instead, I get to look like a deranged weirdo. OK, I guess I can live with that.

Don't know what bitacle is? If you have a blog you should find out. Check out my first post. I'll wait…

OK, so the .htaccess stuff that people suggested never worked for me. They still got through, and I had to go to 100 character truncated feeds. That solved the problem of them stealing future posts, but they will always have the posts they stole previously — including hotlinking to my images. And even though they do some fancy dancing to make it look like they're hosting the images on their site, I can see in my access logs that they are not. And this bandwidth-leeching was pissing me off.

I googled around and found the cool folks at Altlab.com. They have a great anti-hotlinking tutorial. I played around with it and came up with the following.

# hotlinking
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?bitacle\.org/ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/suckitbitacle.jpe [L]

This worked great for about a day until bitacle got 'smart' and wrote a cute javascript to obscure the referring domain. So I grabbed the IP from my access logs, and changed to this:

# hotlinking
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^213\.201\.119\.162$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^213\.201\.119\.163$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^212\.22\.59\.251$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.+\.)?bitacle\.org/ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/suckitbitacle.jpe [L]

As of today, this works and has the added benefit of displaying the below image on my bitacle entries that have images in them:

Like I said, works fine now, but we'll see what the cockroaches come up with next. I see some people saying that they think bitacle is 'responding' to people's concerns, but in fact all they're really doing is reacting to the ways they're being blocked. I'm unhappy that I've had to go to short feeds, but the truth is that I'll likely leave them that way even after bitacle is long-gone. I don't want to be wasting my time like this again in a few months when some other splog decides to do the same thing.

Any other mom bloggers out there have questions about how to protect your content? Or help understanding the controversy? I'd be happy to try to help. Stick your question in the comments and we can share techniques with the rest of the class. (And I promise to get back to blogging about poop, cute things my kids say, and whatever else moms are supposed to blog about real soon now.) Later!

The level of praise for Eric Carle's kid books astounds me. They are considered classics and no preschool would be without them. Kindergarten teachers read them aloud and get approving nods from parents. Book reviewers gush. But has anyone ever read these miraculous works of literature? They are THE SAME THING on every page with only a minor variation!

I get that kids like repetition, and that is satisfying to them. But seriously, a little more modification would be nice. Would it kill him to say the same thing in slightly different ways on each page? Apparently it would.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?

Ladybug, Ladybug… OMG, do you SEE what I mean??

The only thing I like about his books are the collages. I think they are very cute, and possibly they are what make people see genius in his books. But my kids have imagination, and so do other kids. They deserve better than this!

From family camp this summer.

[video removed]

Robbie & Dad dancing at the waterski show. Robbie's head-slap is my favorite move, but I also love the high-five he gives the tree.

That is pretty much at the top of my list of Questions I Don't Want to Hear 15 Years from Now.

Mike & Robbie had a blast at their gymnastics class the other night, and their favorite part is the trampOLINE. The class is at the local university, and the boys love watching the team athletes work out.

You know, up close and personal like that. Learning how to be a big kid.

And I also got a lesson myself… One evening a bunch of young men came into the gym to work out. With their shirts off. Did I mention they're athletes? So, I thought to myself, a little treat for Mommy. Woot!

My next thought was Why aren't they hotter?

That's when I came to the horrible realization that they probably were hot, but to me they looked like children! OH MY GOD I'M OLD! Someone buy me a walker and a chain for my glasses.

And even better, they're making money by taking our content and then putting Google ads on it. Check this out to see what I mean:

http://en.bitacle.org/blogs/viewblog/xgeipfww0/33?usrmode=1

That's my post from yesterday. Does it say 'Plain Jane Mom' anywhere? Nope. Creepy, right? Here are more:

And there are plenty more, but I'm tired of using their shit site to find them. Since they just subscribe to your RSS feed and use that to build their site, the "fix" is to change your RSS feeds to summaries only, not full posts.

Legitimate aggregators like Technorati display only excerpts of your content, and I have no problem with that. Does bitacle irritate anyone else, or is it just me? Is this just a necessary evil? They're selling Adsense ads on our content. Is everyone already aware of this and thinks it's OK? I'm amazed at their gall myself, but I need to hear what y'all think.

Ever wondered what it feels like to have infertility get in the way of your life? Thalia's post today gives an amazing glimpse into the world.

Touched by infertility yourself? (And by 'touched' I mean 'bitch-slapped, stabbed, and left for dead') You may see yourself in what she wrote. I certainly do.

Whoa, last night I watched the season opener for one of my favorite TV shows, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and Blair Underwood appears to have joined the cast.

Yum. He'll make for some good TV watching this year! Yay! Oh, but make sure not to visit his web site. So creepy that I almost don't think he's hot anymore… nah.

This has been your shallow report for the day.