Every once in a while, I sprinkle in some personal tidbits on to my blog, and I hope you don’t mind. This morning, I want to congratulate my wife on successfully defending her doctoral dissertation yesterday afternoon.

Karen has been in graduate school earning a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology for the last 4+ years, and she is currently in the midst of her 5th year internship. Karen worked hard on her dissertation (and for the last 4 years of grad school), and I am very proud of her accomplishments!

Now we’re off to Florida to celebrate.

Sorry that this post isn’t related to our business, but I think it might be of interest to some people who read my blog. Baron Capital Group (Baron investment funds) holds a one-day investment conference / shareholder’s meeting every year in New York City called the Baron Investment Conference. If you own stock in any Baron Fund, you are probably eligible to attend, and I recommend that you do attend if you can.

Last year’s conference was great for a few reasons. I had the chance to listen to several CEOs   speak about their companies, and this in and of itself was interesting. Additionally, Baron Fund managers took the stage to discuss their funds, and Ron Baron (the founder of the company) also spoke. Not only was Ron humorous, but he was also reassuring, something that was appreciated during the tough economic climate of last year.

Sound like the same old shareholder’s meeting held by every other company? Wrong. Last year’s conference featured a set of about 5-8 songs by The Eagles during lunch, and several songs from Rod Stewart in the afternoon, both oldies and some newer songs. In prior years, the crowd was entertained by Jerry Seinfeld, Elton John, The Beach Boys, and other top acts.

If you have invested in any Baron Funds (check your managed accounts and retirement accounts), you are probably eligible to attend. If you elected to not receive annual reports, voting ballots, and other reports in the mail, you may not have received the invitation, so check with your financial adviser.

This year’s conference will be held in New York City on October 22, 2010, and if you’re eligible to attend, I recommend it.

I saw this video of a touchdown run by Ike Ditzenberger in a Washington state high school football game featuring Snohomish vs. Lake Stevens. The back story is that Ike is a student with Down Syndrome, and he trained for the “Ike Special” play for the last three years.

The game was a blow out, and Ditzenberger’s touchdown was the only score his team made that day. With all the bad things you hear about, it was nice to see sportsmanship like this in a high school football game.

Thanks to Donna for letting me know about the video.

Every day, I see pingbacks to articles I write from websites I’ve never heard of that seem to be made for Adsense news aggregators. Most seem to focus on a specific topic, and because that topic was discussed in my article, the site poached all or part of my article for their benefit.

Although I have yet to file a lawsuit, I have sent plenty of takedown notices to frequent violators and their hosting companies (I bet this article will get picked up because “hosting companies” is a popular term for content thieves). Similar to my situation are newspapers and websites that post daily articles written by professional journalists. This content is often “borrowed” or used by bloggers and other websites without permission. According to an article today in Wired.com, there’s a new company that aims to make money from these copyright violations.

A Las Vegas company called Righthaven apparently has been filing lawsuits for its clients whose rights they believe were violated under US Copyright Laws by content thieves and poachers. The penalties for Copyright Act violations are pretty severe, and many bloggers and websites may prefer to settle them without going to court to save time, stress, and money. With millions of potential targets, this could conceivably be a high-yielding endeavor for the company.

Content providers and publishers need to do as much as they can to protect their content, and lawsuits are a way to show that the copyright owner is serious and isn’t going to mess around. For bloggers and journalists who quote articles and attribute the source of those quotes, it may be a bit dicey if you get caught up in one of these lawsuits.

It’s important that bloggers and writers know the copyright law and be sure to follow it. I know there are plenty of people who think they’re safe posting all or part of an article as long as they link back to the source, but this certainly seems to be a false sense of security.