It's my birthday! I'm still alive and kicking… Not likely go to anywhere soon.
That's right,. I'm celebrating on May 22. "Another day older – and deeper in debt…" as the song goes.
From time to time I google my name trying to get a sense of where I stand in this virtual world. I thought I'd do that today, just for fun…what did my wondering eyes discover?.
An Obituary for Joan Marie Moss. It took me a second or two to catch my breath. Bravely I clicked on the link.
Sadly, Joan Marie Moss did indeed pass away at the age of 50. My condolences to her family.
But I also hasten to assure my readers that this wasn't me. While we have the same name, mine has a "-" in it (which a lot of people still tend to ignore and many internet programs insist that I do away with in order mash me into the database). She was born in 1959 – I was born in 1944.
Why even mention this? There are precious few people in this world who are blessed with truly unique names. When you do google your name, you may be in for a surprise. In my case google finds "About 648,000" results. Now, that can be a mixed blessing. Those search results include all the various references to me – articles I've written, places where I've contributed comments and where I've been quoted. They also include false positives where the name is not exactly the same or the information is tied to something or someone completely unrelated to the real me. While much of the information is correct, there's a lot of stuff out there that's either incorrect or dated as well.
People and programs accumulating data rarely clean up after themselves; and, google isn't designed to determine accuracy – it reports what it finds and lets us wade through everything. You just never know what you'll find.
So, have some fun, google yourself and learn who you are, what you've done and, where you've been. At the same time, discover some fun facts about who you are not and where you haven't been. If you find some really unique and surprising facts about yourself, I'd like to hear them.
And while you're at it, google your domain names as well. You never know what you'll find there.