Fingered for Photo Filch! (Plus, a Season in Home Improvement Hell.)

If you came here between last night and late this morning, you may have noticed that Ultimate Outfitters posted a rather derisive graphic to my post from last Monday informing readers that I had taken a picture of a guy with a trout from their site. Which I had. Don't know when I'll use a guide service in the future, but if I do, I know which one I won't hire.

Seriously, I guess I'm a little foggy on what the standards of "fair use" on internet photos are. I'm not using the photos for profit, though I didn't name the source of the photo. This may become a professional issue for me, too. Not that I'm going to try to make a living off FTR, but I will soon be having students design web pages, and they will need to cite the source of a photo, just as they cite a book or magazine article. Should have saved the graphic from Ultimate Nitpickers to show what can happen when you're sloppy about these things. In fact, I think I'll post another UO photo to see if I can harvest one again.

(A spring run steelhead getting some free dental work. Do your worst, Mr. Roller.)

I do need a digital camera. But as I don't draw a paycheck during summer, funds are tight. May be back to carrying a Visa balance, at least until school starts. Which will happen all too soon.

(river logo from site of Kalamazoo Nature Center )

Another strain on the household budget is our current home improvement project, remodeling our front porch. We're replacing the screens, as well as a lot of wood. That was supposed to be something we finished over the long July 4 weekend, though the goal now is finishing before the end of summer. Money is actually the least of my worries about this. For me, this undertaking is a truly soul crushing event. Few things make me feel more incompetent, desperate, and dispirited than home repair. There is not enough Zoloft in the world to instill in me a "feeling of accomplishment about this. I barely know what I'm doing, it's easy to make mistakes, and potentially expensive to fix them. Plus, my work style clashes with my wife's. She wants these projects to look perfect. I just want to get them to be done. She'll fret over the smallest flaw in things, whereas even with the larger ones, I ask "who's going to see it anyway?"

If it weren't for her, by now we'd probably be living under a tarp thrown over our home's ruins.

(yeah, yeah, yeah. photo from the nature center, etc.)