So, inspired by this thread, I decided to type my name into Google and find out if there were any other people with my [somewhat unique] name out there. It turned out to be somewhat surprising:
[ul]
[li]I found some archives of Usenet posts from 1994, including a Linux development newsgroup (scary to think how long ago that was).[/li][li]I found a site for Enterprise Development Ltd. (an Estonian company), with a guestbook page from 1996, which has a long list of names as email links, including mine. With my real email address. I have no idea what that company is, or how my name got in their guest list.[/li][li]I appear in the “thanks” section of the Canoncial List of Pranks (version 3.0), even though I don’t remember what I posted.[/li][li]My name appears in a Research Report (that I didn’t know about) for a public company that I used to be an officer for (and they got my compensation wrong… :D).[/li][li]A sig I used back in the early '90’s appears in a collection of “sigart.” Weird.[/li][/ul]
Anyway, you get the idea. It just struck me what a strange legacy I’ll be leaving behind, based on the fragments that I came across. How strange it might be for my sons to try and guess what these snippets meant, and how they came to be.
I’ve mostly just found e-mails I made to the SKEMERS (Stephen King E-mailers) list I was a part of from spring of 1999. I’ll have to remember my past user names.
I hadn’t done this in a while, and I was surprised by the results.
I found the archives from an Air Force organization I received an internship from in high school.
I write a lot of plot summaries for the IMDb (My triumph of geekdom came when I made their top 20 list. I’m now only a few short of the top 10). I found that a lot of movie web sites cut and paste the IMDb summaries for their own use. AT least the give credit to the writer.
-A few things I wrote back in the days of Usenet that someone has archived, including a “name all the people who have been mentioned in ‘Peanuts’” archive.
You find the darnedest things out there. Among other things, I’ve found:
• A page from the woodworkers’ guild that my father belongs to, along with some pictures of his work (if y’all want to see it, follow this link). I came across this a few months ago and asked my dad about it, and he didn’t even know it was out there.
• A letter from myself in response to a rather stupid column in ZDNet by Jesse Berst (he said “Apple will die soon”. This was in 1996).
• A PDF file of a pamphlet containing a paragraph about prayer that I wrote while I was in high school. Kinda funny, considering I’m now an atheist.
• My mother’s name on the “research advisory committee” for some project related to her work.
I have a very uncommon last name, so pretty much everything I’ll find is guaranteed to have something to do with me or my family.
I entered an online karaoke contest so I could be cool like Omar G..
Instead of putting a 'net moniker in the “first and last name” blanks, I put my real, full name. So now people can find out about the time I turned up my stereo and sang “La Isla Bonita” into my telephone. Badly. Very very badly.
The site for my university’s theater alumni group has me on the list, which is weird because I never did any theater until after college. I guess someone who was a friend runs the site or something.
Yeah, “Torque” is awfully unique. How do you seperate it from all the engineering sites though?
Anyways, I was suprised at how sparse the list with my name was. I’ve been dicking around online for quite a while, I guess I’ve been somehat successful at keeping my name off things.
All I found was a few links to a choir, not me, someone with my name.
A link to a website for my Senior Design Project, apparently some of my group members took it alot more seriously than I did and have been maintaining and continuing work on it over the last 3 years.
A link to a Chicago Tribune editorial article responding to a question I wrote about the '99 Cubs.
As well as a few Usenet questions I posted on a PHP development newsgroup.
Not much interesting, except how shockingly little I remember about my Senior Design Project.
Whoa, the only references I found that were actually me (at least in the top 10 hits) were a posting to python list which was actually a “python script language” forum where, for fun, I posted the text from the Holy Grail. This was back in 1994. It’s post 1,500 of 152,454 posts.
Another on in the top ten was where I posted a drinking game to BarMeister.
Entry 31 was something I had written in to my Fraternity National HQ back in 1995…wow, takes me back.
Most of the other early (1-30) listings were from a photographer with whom I share my name who seems to like taking pictures of jazz musicians.
Curious, I typed in “thinksnow” and found myself to be listed second (well, it was a link to the SD People Pages), the first being a link to a Calvin & Hobbes collection of Calvin-snowman art. I popped up again as listing 52, Dopers Of the United States.
Most of the rest linked to thinksnow@skichalet.com, but that’s not me so I guess I only get 2.
Let’s see here:[ul]
[li]A fanfic that I wrote about the characters in Nukees[/li][li]Some posts in the Alexander the Great forum.[/li][li]Some posts on the S. M. Stirling mailing list[/li][li]A story that I’m participating in in the Robin Round Storybook[/li][li]A fanfic timeline about Lois McMaster Bujold’s Nexus.[/li][li]Credit for some alternate headlines (I’m particularly proud of “Turks Take Constantinople by Storm; Byzantine youth turn out by thousands to greet popular rock band”)[/li][li]Bogosities (I don’t have a cookbook and I don’t do magic. It was rather eerie to see a reference to someone else with the same name as mine who died in 1975.)[/li][li]And a few dozen mentions of me and references to me in contexts that are no longer relevant[/li][/ul]
(Yes, I do have rather eclectic tastes. Why do you ask?)
I found a link for:[ul]
[li] an MD (not me)[/li][li] an interview with one of a set of septuplets to see if their parents did a good job (way not me)[/li][li] a link to someone who’s a Telecommunications Officer with the USDA[/li][li] A softball player (close, but not me)[/li][li] Discovered that I was a character on 90210 that overdosed of heroin. Imagine![/li][li] that I’m the contact person for a steel fabrication company in Minnesota[/ul][/li]BunnyGirl pulls up some anime stuff, art drawings and finally, the People Pages, so I can make at least some claim to fame! Sheesh!
