Alright, due to the unfortunate fact that you can find my blog by searching my last name (NOT COOL, DUDES), I have started messing around with it. Bear with me. I've moved the old junk off to a hopefully secure location (on a related note, I'm beginning to be very worried about Google and their world domination plot... I mean, they HAVE to have one), and I'm going to see if search engines can catch up with that. Incidentally, if anyone knows anything about this sort of dealie, help? See, my last name showed up in some comments that people posted, not in the blog itself. But hiding the comments hasn't seemed to do what I wanted it to. Google will still helpfully point you right at my blog anyway.
For those of you wondering why, precisely, this is such a big deal, I'll enlighten you a little. There are exactly seven people with my last name, two of whom are deceased. I am ridiculously easy to find. It's not like I'm super worried about some rando stalking me from across the planet; I'm just not wild about my parents, future employers (hell, past and present employers, too), and assorted other unsavoury types traipsing through my ramblings. And one hears unpleasant things about internet creeps--as scrappy as I am, putting my picture, approximate location, AND full name up on the 'net seems like tempting fate. Particularly as a female who values her independence.
If my last name weren't quite so distinctive, I'd have no problem with signing it to everything I write; even if what I wrote was more abstract, like political opinions or even observational humour, I'd 'fess up. But since I traffic in my daily doings and nefarious neuroticisms, it just seems too personal for comfort.
So here we are. Maybe I'll just shift my whole focus and write about other things entirely. Maybe Google's bloodhounds will get off my back and I'll be able to move the old blog back here without deleting some of my personal history from the last year and a bit. Maybe I'll just stop this madness entirely, and go back to the security of the pen and paper.
Thoughts?
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Things I Currently Can't Live Without
Links
- The Thing Known As
- Cram it with walnuts, ugly
- Pictorial Evidence
- Slowly Going Bald
- Man vs Clown
- Creed Thoughts
- A Faint Odour of Insight
- Steve the Penguin
- Ornamenting Away
- Strombo.com
- Feministing
- The Toronto Star
- The Hour
- Tomato Nation
- Nerve - Original Essays and Photography on Sex, Arts and Culture
- The Superficial
- I Watch Stuff!
- I Don't Like You In That Way
- Go Fug Yourself
- The Fametracker
- Defamer
- Pajiba
- Television Without Pity
- Internet Movie Database
- Home Star Runner
- Pearls Before Swine
- Explosm.net
- Muffin Films
- Angry Alien Productions
- Subservient Chicken
- Make Your Own South Park Character
- You Tube
- Dormitory Boys
5 comments:
Good idea. As of yesterday, I know exactly how bad it is when your current employer finds your blog.
Peter, I had always assumed you were immune to such reprimands...in fact, it was mildly because of your influence that I decided to be unabashed about putting my own last name on my blog.
Of course, I specifically avoid descriptive accounts of my coworkers or workplace, while you have at them in spades...
Live and learn I guess. Susan, as for you, I don't have the secret to toppling Google's hegemony. Give them an inch of your cyber-soul, and they'll take a mile.
If it's any consolation, I think, as a prospective employer, your salty but sweet ramblings would only strenghten your candidacy.
Peter, I had always assumed you were immune to such reprimands...in fact, it was mildly because of your influence that I decided to be unabashed about putting my own last name on my blog.
Of course, I specifically avoid descriptive accounts of my coworkers or workplace, while you have at them in spades...
Live and learn I guess. Susan, as for you, I don't have the secret to toppling Google's hegemony. Give them an inch of your cyber-soul, and they'll take a mile.
If it's any consolation, I think, as a prospective employer, your salty but sweet ramblings would only strenghten your candidacy.
P.S. As a wordpress user, you have forced me to leave this comment with my decoy Blogger login...grrrr
Uh oh... Peter, what happened? Checking Man vs Clown is one of my (many) internet addictions! Damn the man, save the empire!
Thanks for the kind words, Nick--and I'll change the comment setting post haste. Someone did find my blog by googling the restaurant chain I work for a couple months ago, which caused me a little blind panic. After some careful re-reading, I decided that I hadn't said anything TOO incriminating. And I was pretty confident it wasn't one of my bosses. Gotta love that StatCounter.
I think the easiest way to avoid having to worry about that too much would be just to make sure that anything and everything you are writing is written in such a way that you wouldn't care if anyone could find it and read it.
I usually take of this by writing all my blogs out in wordpad, since I'm actually doing it on there I can write everything out completely however I want and then read it over after.
Most of the time I just copy and paste, leaving it the same. On occasion though if I don't like something I can just edit it right there and fix it before I copy and publish.
Then if you're REALLY paranoid you could just not save the file then there wouldn't be a copy of the original blog entry on your PC.
Just an idea...
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