There are a ton of people at my work who waste time/ down time checking facebook in a way that's visible.
We got a huge lecture about how things we say online are not at all private. I think that maybe some stupid young people had said some things about their coworkers which could be read by other coworkers, but there was also a clear point that we can't say anything about our employer by name. Anonymity is important or. rather, pseudonymity, is important.
Emigration sucks. You lose your social network and don't understand how things work in the new country.
The most interesting blogs that I've read about publishing or finance were anonymous. Authorized or escrow anonymity is the likely next step, like Asia Times' Spengler.
Have you tried being Heebie on G+ with a picture of Lisa Gherardini or somebody? I don't see why it wouldn't work. My BiL's pic is him, but it's completely unrecognisable.
OTOH somebody (probably from here) adopted me on G+ under their real name and I haven't a clue who they are. It's quite entertaining to wonder about but it isn't keeping me awake nights.
I am just Heebie an Google+, and they haven't made me put up a picture yet.
I've (recently) created a Facebook account and a Google+ account and done absolutely nothing with either of them.
The biggest hurdle, aside from not wanting to start over, is that it just feels wrong to build a non-anonymous online identity. There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea, there are several people that I only know in online space who blog using their real identities*, but it just gives me the heebie-geebies (sorry). I've just spent enough years operating under the rule, "don't share personally identifying information online" that it's a hard habit to break.
* If Bruce Schneier does it, the risks can't be that serious, right?
Yeah, I also tend to think of secrets as b/w, especially online. That's a big part of why I never joined facebook, although I admit I've been tempted for spy-on-my-old-friends reasons. The other factor is that I don't to tell people things in real life, either. So I waver back and forth between thinking that facebook (or g+, which I have now tentatively joined) will help me to stay or feel connected with people, and wondering if the total one-way connection that I have in mind will really work.
But now g+, under my real name, suggests that I encircle Heebie, which (nothing personal) seems weird.
I'm on Facebook as myself (one fairly private account) and another one where I try not to say anything that I wouldn't want someone to be unable to find through searching.
If you search my real first name last name, what you'll find are mostly comments by me on health policy. If those comments get me in to trouble with an employer for being in favor of universal health care, then I don't want that job.
I use Facebook and to a lesser extent LinkedIn to conect with people I know in real life who I may have lost touch with. Having found them, I sometimes continue the conversation off-line. My aunt and I reconnected that way.
Google + sounds like something I'd want to create an anonymous account for.
Also, how do you set up g+? I suppose that if I want to continue as Bostoniangirl, I could create a new e-mail.
I have a co-worker who I did friend who is on Facebook under his real last name but chose "Prospero" as his first name. He also gives different weird names to the people in the coffee shop, because his name is pretty common.
I'm wholeheartedly in favor of anonymity. If I join Google+ I'll most likely try to make two accounts, one under my real identity and one as Togolosh or one of the other pseuds I occasionally use. Maybe it's time for a whole new pseudonym. I'd have switched over here already if it wouldn't give LB a conniption - I sympathize with the difficulty of keeping people straight, though my approach is to not care outside the context of a single thread. That goes for real life as well as virtual - unless I know someone well or have some compelling interest I just don't keep track of our interactions.
I just wrote down my thoughts about Google+ recently, so I might as well post the link. Summary: I'm planning on creating a Google+ account, but haven't done so yet, and I have no idea whether I will wind up using it more than Facebook or what.
As for the secret identity thing, it sounds like Spandex, Communism and other ideas from comic books: nice idea, but then real people started using it and it went downhill quickly from there. (I wish I could take credit for that quote.) For every person that genuinely has a good reason for a secret identity and makes it work, there are probably nine more who screw it up, or are just making a lot of work for themselves and everyone else for the juvenile thrill, and/or are using it for actively bad things like only bullying or trolling.
Part of the problem is that it's not just a double identity, it's a potentially infinite number, divided as many times as one likes. A few months ago I started a new blog, intended for work-related griping and musing that I didn't want to put on my much-less-anonymous personal blog. If I decide to get serious about political blogging (unlikely, but for the sake of argument), I would want a third blog for that. I've used at least two names in commenting on blogs.
This is confusing for me just to keep track of, and if I used the auxiliary identities more, and/or if my identities overlapped more with each other, it would probably be very confusing for other people as well.
I'm not allowed to say a whole lot of stuff I'd like to say for professional reasons. My employer has good and valid reasons for wishing me to remain silent. Still, it kind of sucks that I'm not free to opine on stuff about which I have some of the strongest opinions.
I even feel restricted in my anonymous identities, in that they are probably not anonymous enough that someone would be able to put together who I am based on various clues I've left behind, spread around the internet.
So, I tend to keep my mouth shut, although probably not as much as I should.
I like having a semi-secret identity, and I really dislike the way Facebook and Google want to associate everything I'm doing online with everything else and make it public unless I carefully make every setting, including the things I don't know about, private.
It's not terribly high stakes for me -- anyone here who doesn't know my real name could with minimal research or by asking, but it annoys me that it's hard. 'LizardBreath' is an identity with a certain amount of history and reputation, and I'd like it to remain practical to keep that separate from my real name.
I wish someone had told me I could use a fake name to comment here. Then I would be able to make inappropriate jokes.
I used to be really careful about logging out of gmail before doing any searches or anything other than checking e-mail. I never touched the privacy settings on one of my Facebook accounts. The one that I actually check which people at work don't know about is locked down. I went through every setting and turned off every permission without bothering to see if I might want anything.
Also, the Facebookization of many blog's comment sections has basically led to me not leaving comments on those blogs.
But there's a fuzzy middle ground - if you don't want it widely read, make it slightly cumbersome to find. Lately I'm wondering if I'd find it hard to write if I ventured into the fuzzy middle ground of secret identities.
I've been in the middle ground for several years now. You would think it would be more precarious, but then another month goes by and no one from real life mentions Megan FTA or OtPR, and no one from blog life tracks down the real me (without invitation, which you all have). So far as I can tell, the only thing guarding my identity is that people who don't read blogs (which is most people) do not give a fuck about blogs.
The strangest thing to me is that my sekrit water identity is so one-directional. I'm told that there is some small curiosity in the water world about who I am, and to them, it is very hard to find out anything about me. But there must be a few hundred blog people who know that I write a water blog, and I rely entirely on their discretion, which has held so far. A secret that a few hundred people know isn't a secret, but somehow the worlds stay separate. All I can think is that people who are only reading water blogs for the content and not the bloggy-nature of things do not know blogs very well. They could find me instantaneously with the right search, but I haven't seen anyone do it.
To one of your other points, I fucking love writing as OtPR. Love it. Love that that voice isn't immediately classed by gender. Love that I'm not yet a caricature. I think the tone sounds exactly like me, so it isn't like I've been able to write in a different voice, but it feels very freeing to have some flimsy psuedonymity.
Another interesting thing is that after a couple years I told my two bosses. I didn't want them to get blindsided one day if it were ever important. The upshot is that one said he would have rather not known, but only one of them ever checked it out, and he hasn't been back. People who do not read blogs do not care about blogs. Neither boss told me to stop, nor tried to direct the writing, nor mentioned it since.
I'm quite willing to give Google all manner of information about my interests and shopping habits - I just want to know that they'll keep it completely private. I'm glad to have only relevant ads presented to me. What I object to is sharing with everyone. My Mom doesn't need to know I searched for a story I read around 1990 about a guy who got leprosy from screwing an armadillo.
15: Yglesias -- I had something that I thought would have been entertaining to say in his comments this morning, but I haven't figured out how to comment there without much too much work setting stuff up.
15: Same here, although only one blog that I can think of, and it's more because Facebook is blocked at work for me than because I'm opposed to it. I mean, I think I am opposed to it, but that probably would have fallen sooner or later if I had the chance at work, which I don't.
The thing that I find most frustrating about Google and its fellow tech-evangelists is that they're either willfully or incompetently obtuse about how difficult and dangerous it can make life just to reveal connections between people. All of this suggesting friends in common and whatnot is deeply worrying to me, in large measure because I do a lot of things that are much, much better kept separate.
When you are representing a teenager who has legal problems because he's gay and doesn't want to tell his parents he can't go through with an arranged marriage, you don't want the nosy lady from your church to be all So! Who Was that Nice Kid Who Commented On Your Music Post?
I keep things pretty firewalled, but it's a small community where I live and I've many times already had the issue of someone that I've helped in a professional capacity who pops back up on my radar screen as a friend of a friend or something. In many cases I know deeply personal and confidential information and even confirming that I know the person is violating a trust.
It's a much bigger version of the problem that started happening a decade or so ago, when Caller ID on work phones meant that I knew instantly, whether I wanted to or not, that the social worker calling me for help for her client was calling from an AIDS organization.
Heebie, I was going to send you another link on G+ but I'll just tell you here. Google is now asking for people to report fake profiles to them. But on the plus side they've responded to other criticisms and will no longer be requiring that you identify yourself with a particular gender.
8: Setup a profile associated with a gmail email address. Also, you need an invite from a G+ user. Feel free to email me if you want one - elizabeth at avianexplorer dot com. I'll send you an email associated with my elizabeth.lastname@gmail.com account.
16: Huh. How would someone who doesn't already read the blogs where you're known as Megan find you from OtPR? You're self-identified as a water-bureaucrat in CA, but I can't think of what else would identify you.
I've mostly not found it complicated, the secret identity thing, because non-bloggy people have not proven especially interested in my bloglife, on the whole. When I had a Topic Blog I ended up telling my family about it* and they were sort of like "um, swell" and I think my sister and dad read a little and my mother, who is 100% uninterested in opera, seemed to find the whole thing a little bit bewildering.
But I mean...my whineblog (LJ, natch) didn't come up much--being separate from my life in the steakosphere was to some extent the point. The only time it was much of an issue was when I was dating someone to whom I eventually mentioned it because it was a bigger part of my life then and I felt like I was being secretive. Then a while later he was all "so, obviously I am curious to read it" and predictably I felt weird about it and eventually made everything private even though he had clearly just wanted to see what the hell it was and hadn't kept reading.
Is this currency I see before me? I think it is.
*It's an embarrassing story and I'm not sure why I'm telling it but after I posted about the death of a beloved singer, someone from like...NPR in Boston or something? contacted me and was interviewing people about that singer, so I sent out a mass email saying "I WILL BE ON THE RADIOZ" and then of course I was sort of incoherent and didn't make the cut.
17: I'm sure your mom has already guessed your armadillo fetish even if she hasn't mentioned it to you or admitted it to herself.
I don't really do the whole secret identity thing. If I was more active on Facebook and the like I might do, though.
"Ginger Yellow" came about when I joined a message board populated mainly by people I knew in real life, and I've taken it with me pretty much everywhere on the internet. It might as well be my real name for all the secrecy it provides.
China is obsessed with making all web postings associated with real names. The US government doesn't bother because Google and Facebook are doing all that work for them.
17: Google was really burned by the Buzz mishap that resulted in revealing connections that should have remained anonymous. As a result G+ will not have the same privacy issues. It seems like people mention the Buzz fiasco about 50% of the time they bring up Google and social and 100% of the time they bring up Google and privacy. So Google really wants to improve on their reputation.
If they thought to check incoming links to OtPR, the top one is from Rhubarb Pie. Technorati gives me away in an instant, but I haven't figured out how to fix that.
The woman who runs the water news aggregator said she was on to me within a sentence, because she had also read me at FTA. But I count her with the blog-people who are generously staying discreet, because she is. She's also the one who tells me that she gets pressed for my identity.
21 - The Google Buzz rollout fiasco ought to have enlightened them a bit. It's good that nobody was hurt but the potential for physical harms was very real.
I suspect that the root of the problem is that the people running the show are basically a bunch of naive middle class nerds who've never really encountered a serious problem in their lives. No abusive parents, no stalkers, no crazy religious relatives, just plain old suburban blandness.
21: And all the really high-up people are oblivious, because once you're big enough it is harder to separate the private from the public. It's helpful when you're a venture capitalist (see AVC.blogs.com) but less helpful when you're a peon.
Ken Auletta wrote a piece in the New Yorker about Sheryl Sandberg, the COO, of Facebook. I thought about bringing her up here, but it seemed like it would just be Linda Hirschman redux. I first heard of her when a classmate from college linked to her presentation at a TED conference for women on Facebook. But the idea that she shares with Zuckerburg that everythign should be open and there should be no separation flies in the face of the real world that most of us live in.
28: Technorati is completely obnoxious about that. I put my name on there for my blog because I wasn't careful enough and didn't realize that it would be published. I asked them to fix it probably ten times and they never responded. Six months later it was finally fixed.
I don't mind people knowing who I am, but I post with a pseud so my comments aren't associated with my name when someone does a Google search.
I suspect that the root of the problem is that the people running the show are basically a bunch of naivemale middle class nerds who've never really encountered a serious problem in their lives.
--I suspect.
I keep various online spheres somewhat apart, so the people I know via various music boards and the like know me by a different pseud from here, although neither are anonymous as such as both are just variants of my real name. I use the form I do here to combat casual googling, rather than to stay anonymous.
30: That is such a great piece on Sheryl Sandberg. I like a lot of her statements about how women need to stop leaving before they've left. I'm a bit conflicted about her opinion that women need to stop acting like victims because on the one hand, yes, if all you do is complain people won't take you seriously but, on the other hand, it is very easy for a white Harvard-educated woman with Larry Summers as a mentor to say that things aren't that bad for women.
35: At first you posted here under your real name without mixing up the letters and only occasionally switched around the order.
My real name is common that the best way to anonymity is to hide in plain sight. Last time I googled it - some years ago tbh, I didn't appear in the first 10 pages, where I gave up.
If, heaven forfend, I became notorious for some reason, I might rethink this.
My cunning plan was to start my Facebook under this pseud and then switch it to my real name... and then never use it. So if you're friended to [My Real Name] that's me!
38: My last name is French and fairly unusual in the U.S., and my first name is not known in Romance languages. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the combination were unique.
36: I have not studied this stuff in depth, but I was intrigued by the concept of sponsors (a step above mentors). At that point you're going out with somebody and discussing your career over dinner. These are the kinds of things that HR manuals say not to do. At the very top levels, you almost have to break certain rules.
Ken Auletta wrote a piece in the New Yorker about Sheryl Sandberg, the COO, of Facebook. I thought about bringing her up here,
I found that piece oddly compelling for the way it spends time distinguishing between the life experiences of people that are extremely successful in their careers from people who are merely very successful -- both of which are pretty far removed from my experience.
That isn't a criticism, I really did find it fascinating, and have been trying to talk my friends into reading it.
I'm enjoying that Sheryl Sandberg piece a great deal. I'm starting to do a fair amount of presenting at our public meetings, because if I don't, there is not one woman on the agenda. (Although the facilitator, who is a pretty dominant personality and gets more speaking time than any other single person, is a woman, so there is at least a woman's voice from up front.)
I do enjoy the speaking. I don't like the extra work. But if I don't speak, it'll default to one of the men.
40.1 could have been written about me. When you search for my real name nearly every result is about me.
38: My real name is a slightly less common than yours, but I am similarly buried deep in google's catacombs. As it turns out, the internet says I'm primarily a heavily muscled, handsome, black musician. In fact:
Russ Barnes is an exquisite anomaly. He is a brother whose very presence causes a shift in the paradigm because while others work on the exterior to attract attention to self, Russ uses his sizeable stature to draw us in to the light. He is a powerful juxtaposition of brains, brawn, and brotherhood, a civilized superhero whose primary power is his instrument - part blaring horn, part soothing sitar - which he uses with the love and purpose of a musical modern-day Robin Hood, taking from the Infinite and giving to the poor of spirit.
But then, you all knew that about me and my "instrument" already.
42: She's certainly a great role model. I was looking for books by women about how to conduct yourself in business and I almost started reading Mika Brzezinski's book until I realized that I can't take the advice of someone who gets paid to listen to Joe Scarborough and act exasperated at his "boys will be boys" routine. I'd much rather take advice from someone like Sandberg.
My first name alone turns up nobody else. Even when it's moderately misspelled.
I've always done everything under my real name and never really had problems with it, but with fb, linkedin and googleplus it's different because all these services are completely obnoxious about linking the various aspects of your online life together. The Internet is big enough that you can have non-overlapping circles of interest, but not when it's in somebody's commercial interest to squash them together.
Meanwhile if you want a good example of why pseudonimity is important, google for the author of dogland.
My paranoia waxes and wanes. I have a particular pseud for here and I set up a separate email account which I'm always forgetting about. I doubt it would take much effort to connect me with my real name.
I also have a little-used livejournal under a different handle. People who see my livejournal have mostly met me in real life but not very often. A search on my real name is not likely to turn it up which is my main concern (so I can occasionally bitch harmlessly about work or personal life).
I've used my real name in some blog comments over the years and I set up a LinkedIn profile mainly so that it would be the first result for my name on google.
I wavered back and forth regarding Facebook but in the end I went for real name and because of that I keep it fairly anodyne. I am a lazy poster anyway and am contemplating Twitter but I'll have to choose yet another handle and I can't find one I'm satisfied with.
I've always done everything under my real name and never really had problems with it ...
Yeah, but I bet you've never peed in a sink either. Or if you have, it's considered normal in your homeland.
I am nearly certain my firstname lastname is unique, but there is a facebook page (not by me)for that combination. Strangely, the picture looks kinda like a suggestive stock photo and I do not understand why I am being impersonated by a harlot.
27, 29: Google was really burned by the Buzz mishap that resulted in revealing connections that should have remained anonymous. As a result G+ will not have the same privacy issues. It seems like people mention the Buzz fiasco about 50% of the time they bring up Google and social and 100% of the time they bring up Google and privacy. So Google really wants to improve on their reputation.
The last part is the important bit. I love what Google has been able to do for search, and I use their products, but they are an eyeball delivery mechanism for advertisers, period. I don't for one single second think that their decisions on privacy are driven by anything other than that.*
*Yes, I'm sure individual people within the Google structure are very philosophically committed to privacy. I'm talking about the weight and precedent of the institutional decisionmaking.
re: 37
Yes, I used to post everywhere under my real name, but I started wanting to avoid chatty bullshit (like Unfogged) being the first things that came up when prospective employers searched. I don't really care if anyone (including prospective employers) reads anything I write online, I just wanted at the time to slightly manage search engine hits.
It makes no real difference now, though, I suppose.
38: My real name is common that the best way to anonymity is to hide in plain sight.
This is indeed useful. Googling my name is like googleing for someone named "John Smith"
Ha! I just googled my name and one of the images that came up is of a buff, naked man with a very large penis. I guess I'm ok with that. Safe search is on, too...
53.last: That suggests that google considers people with your name inherently asexual.
Her speech, delivered without notes but with the assistance of a professional coach who worked with Sandberg on honing her delivery
And this! The same consultants who provide the facilitator give me someone (the facilitator or other staff) to rehearse every one of my presentations. We do dry runs for all of our public meetings. It is just a fucking myth that people get good at stuff alone, or delivered skilled speeches without help and practice. And I like public speaking and can do a decent job cold. But I'm getting better than decent, and that's because I'm getting a ton of support and critique up front. There is so much development that could never happen, just by neglect and default, if I didn't have bosses who put resources into us.
53.last: That suggests that google considers people with your name inherently asexual.
Given the size of the schlong on that dude, I don't think so.
My first name alone turns up nobody else. Even when it's moderately misspelled.
If I drop the second vowel in your name, I get lots of hits for other people.
Oh yeah, my real name is unique so far; everybody with the same version of my surname is related to me.
Meanwhile if you want a good example of why pseudonimity is important, google for the author of dogland Rick Santorum.
Searching my first and last name (with and without quotes) doesn't find me in the first ten pages of hits and that didn't used to be the case. Adding my middle initial means I show up on the sixth page of hits. I should do something great or stupid.
A long time ago, the first thing that came up was from a letter that I wrote to the Nation. This is no longer true.
The Internet is big enough that you can have non-overlapping circles of interest, but not when it's in somebody's commercial interest to squash them together.
Right, both Google and Facebook's business model is precisely to link together as much information about you as possible in order to sell data to people who want to sell you things. That's it; that's what they do. They've been pretty good about respecting privacy because they know that no one will use them if they're too blatant about it, but the idea that these companies are somehow not in some business other than collecting information for commercial reasons is crazy.
If I drop the second vowel in your name, I get lots of hits for other people.
Wow, those are all relatively new. Within the past year or two.
55: I'm so jealous! I've asked colleagues to give me feedback, but no matter how much I assure them that I'm super thick-skinned about it or even ask them to just point out the things that they like so I can focus on those, I can't get anyone to give me anything useful. So irksome.
It turns out that my amazon profile shows up. Does anyoen know how to make a LinkedIn profile private. Apparently, I can't switch to first name first initial of last name unless I disable something.
the idea that these companies are somehow not in some business other than collecting information for commercial reasons is crazy.
I believe that neither company started with that goal in mind. I also believe that this is an accurate description of them currently, but I started using google when it was the little-known, geeky, non-commercial alternative to Yahoo (to date myself, google replace metacrawler as my default search engine), and that influences my perception of them now.
I've known for years that googling my namie in quotes brought an America's Most Wanted fugitive, but this thread inspired me to follow the link and read up about myself.
Although he's eluded capture all these years, you'd know him if you saw him: xxx walks with a cane, speaks with a stutter and has a metal plate in his head.
Geesh, what are the odds that we both would have a metal plate in our heads?
55: Interesting. I wish that kind of thing were more common. I've been really bugged at work by people who are really bad at public speaking. (I wrote about it on my work-only, truly-anonymous blog, but of course, I can't link to it because I want to keep that blog separate!) It really is an undervalued skill.
66
Although he's eluded capture all these years, you'd know him if you saw him... has a metal plate in his head.
As far as I know I've never seen anyone with a metal plate in their head, but they're generally not visible, are they?
69: You can tell by knocking gently or shooting microwaves into a room and seeing who panics first.
69: They're suggesting that if you suspect that it may be the guy, you invite him over to your home and then get out your metal detector.....
It can be a trifle frustrating, because their other simultaneous goal is to ensure that I present only exactly the pre-selected focus for my talk. As in, if we're asking our advisory committee to give us advice on this narrow issue, do not bring up any other distracting issues that could stand in the way of getting only that advice. Which gets artificial and constrained. But, they are also practicing my presentations with me and critiquing me, and my presentations are the better for it.
Also interesting is that at least two levels of bosses up from me still take advantage of this (god knows what it is costing). So it isn't looked upon as something that stops as you climb management. My great-grandboss doesn't do it anymore, but he gives presentations all day long and has gotten very good at it.
Ken Auletta wrote a piece in the New Yorker about Sheryl Sandberg, the COO, of Facebook.
It's kind of odd how boring Ken Auletta's profiles have become as he has progressed from the Rupert Murdoch/John Malone generation into the subsequent cohorts. I suppose that says something about the maturation of the telecommunications and information technology sectors.
|| I just had a (almost certainly benign) tumor-thingy removed from my left orbit, and it looks like I'm gonna have two black eyes! [Also, I had a sort of eyepatch-induced panic attack and had to unstick part of it and lift it up so I could see.] {Also, also, I was intubated and my throat hurts like a motherfucker.}|>
I never use my work computer for anything not work related since I can just imagine it being used as some sort of breitbart scandal. Even if its google mapping a lunch source
Ooof. Wishing you quick healing, but not before you take pictures and make up a good story.
oudemia! Wow! I hope you have a speedy recovery.
And post pictures of those black eyes!
74: Yuk.
75: There is private browsing. I don't think our IT department is that sophisticated. I'm the administrator on my laptop and downloaded both Firefox and Google Chrome.
74: Hope you feel better. If you want to wear two eyepatches and drive, go to Georgia.
74: So, what story are you going to tell?
it looks like I'm gonna have two black eyes!
If anybody asks what happened to you, just reply dreamily, "I'm in love! Isn't it wonderful!?"
Man. There are all sorts of interesting things I could say (about g+) if I was regularly pseudonymous here. Probably just as well that I can't, but it's a little frustrating.
Ahahaha. Thanks, all! I've been toying with variations on an apo theme, but apo's is better. (A friend got hit in the face with a squash ball and spent a week or so being told "ain't no man worth it!" by strangers.)
82: It's like you've never even heard of Calvin Coolidge.
82: The house style is to adopt a temporary pseudonym using the name of the president of a tech company.
oudemia, allow me to be the first to hope that you feel better soon.
81: Did you get that from Amy Sedaris, or is there an earlier source?
74: Oof. Hope you feel better soon. (Don't go for the cheap domestic-abuse jokes, though. I'd aim more for a Siouxsie Sioux kind of a thing.)
Feel better soon, oudemia! But hold on to the eye patch! Pirate is still in!
86: Might only work if he'd been pseudonymous all along.
Did you get that from Amy Sedaris
That's where I got it, but I'd wager it had occurred to others previously.
81: "I just have to remember that pot roast takes longer to cook than the recipe says if you don't let it come to room temperature first."
"Don't be alarmed, they're just tattoos."
"I tell you what, babies are a whole lot tougher than they look."
"Don't worry. I tossed his penis in the garbage disposal first."
95: That is NOT a safe way to piss in the sink.
"Oh, it's nothing. Just bruised myself shaving."
"Running with scissors turns out not to be a good idea. Who knew?"
"You should see the other classicist."
"I'm doing my part to promote Raccoon Awareness Month."
Argh! Laughter is terrible, painful medicine.
I googled myself in books (read a book chapter yesterday, got curious about thesis access- nope). The second hit read [Name], a pimp and a thief....
hit was to a history book.
"Never trust Greeks bearing gifts (and a pony)".
Or maybe it's "Beware . . .".
Whatevs.
"Sorry, First Rule of Fight Club...."
"On the plus side, I liked the Dashboard Confessional album."
"No, no, they're henna. It's called 'racooning.' What, you haven't heard of it? Enjoy your mom jeans, meal at the Olive Garden and trip to Bed Bath and Beyond, I guess."
"Who's got two thumbs and is wildly uncoordinated?"
"THIS GAL! Owww #*$&# I did it again!"
"You know how they say 'look before you leap'? Not always good advice."
99 is my favorite so far, though 109 is pretty good as well.
105: There was a New Yorker cartoon the other day which had some people standing above a city wall looking at a Trojan-style wooden horse. The line was, "How can we know that they're not consultants?"
This reminds me that when we were kids my father used to mock threaten us with the phrase "I'll dot your eyes!"
"I should either be happy Edward got with Bella or I should find another book club."
"If you want a really good story, ask how the rest of me got white."
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Not worth discussing, but I have to express my despair over the debt business. I haven't been following this--sent an e-mail to my Dem Senator and my Rep but otherwise left it alone. It is so depressing.
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"I'll never try to cut in line for a Harry Potter movie again. Vicious little brats!"
"Sure it hurts, but I learned a valuable lesson: don't jog without a sports bra."
I don't think our IT department is that sophisticated.
I know ours isn't. We're still locked into IE6.
"Do you like my World Wildlife Fund fundraising costume?"
124: How do you get anything done? IE is an abomination.
How do you get anything done?
Slowly.
"They thought they could get me to switch from Tareyton. Fools!"
126: Thanks, Liz! That's why I don't get anything done! It's all Internet Explorer's fault! Yay!
I think the lumpen-librarians at my workplace are locked into IE7 (although I think most machines have FF on them, too). I get around any and all IT restrictions by using a Mac.
124: can you tell them they're killing the internet?
134: At my secondary job site, we just got the version of IE that had tabs last year. I once apologized to a tech for not asking them to give me an updated browser and was told that my browser was the newest they supported.
can you tell them they're killing the internet?
They'd be proud.
Les Hinton, the chief executive of Dow Jones & Co., has resigned, becoming the latest News Corp. executive casualty in the phone-hacking and bribery scandal in Britain.
Hahahahaha. This just keeps getting better and better.
re: 133
That, too. They don't give me that shit anyway as I don't put up with it; but some of the other developers had to go begging for admin rights to their own fucking machines.
I used to work in IT support, but they can be insufferable bastards sometimes.
132: Lumpen-librarian! That's me! I'm also locked into IE7 too!
Did Marx say anything about us?
140: Librarian, look it up thyself!
141: Aren't you paying attention? I can't do anything! Internet Explorer has me chained and bound!
I had a fun moment at my old job when we proposed an open-source overhaul of the entire city based on a post from boingboing. Microsoft came in to ask why we hated them, and I got to tell them.
Oudemia! I hope you're feeling better.
On the post topic, I obvs struggle with this question. I stopped using my very cool pseud after he got quoted by someone awesome and my vanity felt under-tickled.
Yet I have this weird profession-straddling thing going on where I want to have an amusing creative persona who can be provocative about stuff and still work in the world of public affairs.
Mostly I've settled this by making it easy to go from my pseud to my real name but difficult to find my pseud based on my real name, a la nattarGcM and then not being particularly provocative, amusing or creative.
Yeah, although I get a bit annoyed with open source, too. When developers at work get all enthusiastic about some open source 'thing', and I know that i) it'll have no documentation, ii) take months of work to set up and then iii) suddenly stop releasing revisions and wither on the vine.
We're still locked into IE6.
Oh, if only I could make an analogy about this.
i) it'll have no documentation, ii) take months of work to set up and then iii) suddenly stop releasing revisions and wither on the vine.
Not to doubt that open-source software is usually like this, but in my experience, paying someone for commercial software isn't, in general, better. More lip service to documentation, usually, but seldom anything useful, and companies deprecate products and/or go out of business at a problematic clip.
TBH, the vast bulk of what we do is built around open-source, I'm just venting at people adopting things too early, before we can really assess how long-lived they are likely to be. The existence of substantive clear documentation is usually a good sign, the lack of the same, a warning sign.
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Thanks for telling me to go to the doctor, Mineshaft. I did have an ear infection on top of the viral shit.
Also have laryngitis and am on voice rest.
After leaving the doctor I puked on the way home and at home. Hope that I can keep down the amoxicillin.
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people adopting things too early, before we can really assess how long-lived they are likely to be
In the event, our IT department ended up doing a lot more back-end things open source, but the idea of transitioning to Open Office or Linux on every city worker's desk computer never got much steam. Which as a dedicated Open Office user I think was the right choice.
oudemia (and Bostoniangirl, though by known tastes more oudemia) hopefully this brilliant Wu Tang Clan and Fugazi mash-up can ease you through your recovery.
146: I liked your old pseud. On the other hand, I ditched my own old one too and didn't go for something with my real name. At least, not here. My whole name is on twitter now, for better or worse. Probably worse. In the last couple of years, I've managed to get followed by and then unfollowed by a few people I'd like to at least not be on the bad side of. I know my feed is dull and adds little value; I sort of wish they'd never followed it in the first place. That's the real value of obscurity.
When Alta Vista initially came online, someone searched my real name and the first hit was a Usenet post of mine republished on an afu-related web site describing Rachel Maines original IEEE article on technologically-camouflaged sexual toys (a write-up on related work of hers and we've discussed her here before*). With my work e-mail prominently displayed. A brief e-mail exchange and it was anonymized. Of course around then more and more of the original posts were becoming available on Deja News--although not quite as liable to be stumbled upon by the unwashed.
*On search, I see that *I* have discussed her here before... and related the same story. Hmm.
I never did figure out k-sky's previous pseudonym. I'm going to guess Matt Weiner.
Wrying coots seems mean. I disapprove, k-sky. But I approve of your tumblr feed. Very attractive, if depressing.
155, 156, 158:
Local boys do good!
The thing that's really amazing me right now is how seemlessly they're able to rework Brendan Canty's drumming into breakbeats.
151: Hope that I can keep down the amoxicillin.
I had real problems with that until I swallowed them with custard (well, vla, which is not quite the same.)
Anybody who works with IE6, I feel your pain because we're forced to use it too, since so many of our online applications depend on it and wouldn't work anymore after an upgrade. Let's not even talk about Oracle...
Does anyone know if google tracks your browsing history if you are logged in to their paid e-mail service. My company uses them, and I'd hate to think that they followed all of our browsing and searches.
157: dejanews was better than google groups. I had an e-mail account with them too. I liked usenet.
@15
The Facebooking of comments has a weird effect. There are fewer comments, the comments tend to be less informed, and there's less trolling. It's like Uncle Steve showed up at the skate park in his helmet and pads and wearing a big sign saying "Uncle Steve." And because his name is attached, he tends to say things like "There should be a law about skating without a helmet. I think everyone can agree with that!"
166: Quite right, but I am occasionally amazed at the things people find completely inoffensive.
163:Let's not even talk about Oracle...
The-software-which-must-not-be-named.
"Lots of things really suck and even more things that no sane person worries about cause me night sweats. I have no real power to change anything but I can annoy people about stuff in ways that make it difficult for them to tell me to pound sand. If you are not a horrible person who loves racism, cancer, and the complete destruction of the United States by Islamic voles, copy this to your FB status. Most of you won't dare because you're afraid of normal people reading your feed or you have standards about coherent argument or you hate children."
Googlng my given name with middle initial, I'm the first listing, as I want to be. This even after a faction at Wikipedia decided I wasn't really famous enough to have my own listing, and got it deleted.
Googling given name without middle initial takes 4 pages to get to me. This is a problem.
Googling the diminutive I use in real life (including saying my name at the start of appellate argument*) I'm first again, and while not the only one of the first page, there are a couple of things.
Googling the pseud, the first is my little blog, which is not supposed to be google searchable, and the second is my Twitter account, which gives my actual use name. I thought my anonymity was pretty thin, but didn't know it quite was that thin. Luckily, as Megan says, no one who doesn't read blogs cares about blogs. Maybe I need to go back to the pseud I used here (only, I think) for a year or so.
* I've often said that mooting a colleague for appellate argument is the second best job in the law. You get to skewer your own arguments, and ask the questions of highest vulnerability, and then tell her/hem that his/her answers are nonsense. Changing the subject at will, etc. Best job in the law is preparing the client from hostile examination. After being friendly (and somewhat subservient) for a year or whatever, you get to push the client into giving away his case in 5 sharply delivered questions. There's a strong tradition of rehearsal the legal field.
168: The-commenter-who-is-now-named.
We just recently got Oracle up to the level where we could move the browser ahead for the masses. Took some impassioned pleas a couple of years ago to get things in motion.
This climb on the tour has been tactically interesting but is going to end up rather boring--the da reallyy goes to Voeckler
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Oh, 'cause I have been depressed and quiet.
Reihan Salam rights about some of the social origins of political polarization in the fact that different kinds of people live in different kinds of places. [TVA;NHS;]To this I would add the baseline fact that extreme non-polarization in the 20th century was an artifact of Jim Crow.
[Love how the political leveling effects of the great depression and world war II and GI Bill unionization have been disappeared.]
Members of congress' views on economic policy didn't correlate strongly with their views on highly salient race-related issues. And to that I would add Alan Abramowitz' point that the modern electorate is much better educated and ideologically aware than was the electorate of the Gilded Age era of polarization.
This series at AUFS is what has sent me over the edge, that identity consciousness is no longer respectable to me, but done gone psycho. That Critique of Pure Reason is 100% about keeping the n***s down. Got it, theologians.
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Asimo (the Honda robot) is on Okcupid.
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nyt wedding announcement still tops the list for my realname, lo these 13 years later.
@164
I assume so. I log in to gmail in Safari and actually browse in Firefox. (That way round because of ABP.)
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"London police arrested Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch's former British CEO, in the phone hacking and police bribery scandal Sunday...
...and on suspicion of corruption, which relates to bribing police for information.
The arrest comes just two days before Brooks, Rupert Murdoch and his son James are due to answer questions from a parliamentary committee investigating the hacking. Sunday's arrest throws that appearance before Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport committee into question; Brooks would not have to answer questions that could prejudice a criminal investigation."
Hmmm....is there anyone who can investigate Scotland Yard? My bet is that the bribery and corruption reach to the very top
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Woo Hoo. After getting an antibiotic prescription at one hospital's urgent care and puking up everything the next day, I got myself taken to the ED for my regular hospital. I got much needed IV fluids, pain meds and zofran. I also got what was probably an unnecessary chest X-Ray annd a scope down my throat to look for an infection of the epiglottis.
They didn't see an infection in the ear, and think it's just viral, but you can't see my ear drum because of the wax in it. Now, I have to finish the antibiotics, because I had taken 2 doses, and they gave me some IV stuff in the meantime.
Having spent the night in the observation area of the ER, I am now really jittery from poor sleep and would like to sleeo but finding that I can't.
Was supposed to go out to eat today with relatives from out of town. Meh.
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Hits for my real name are now overwhelmingly dominated by a minor scandal/crime I was involved in. I've had an offer from a search optimization company to drive those hits down off the first two pages by highlighting other stuff I have/am/will be involved in....do people think that is a reasonable investment?
Or, to be clear, since another person can't say what's reasonable for me...for the technically savvy folks here, is what they are offering technically feasible? A variety of national news organizations briefly picked up the scandal I was involved in, that's why the hits are so high.
Only if you have reason to believe that people will be googling you. i.e. if you're on the job market or dating market or similar (whereby there are prospective googlers who will draw conclusions that you care about from their findings).
That would be my stance, in any case.
Is this where someone says that we can't give any advice until we learn what the scandal was? To be clear, I'm asking for a friend.
Will driving that cherry tree incident off the first few pages make a difference? How deeply do employers look?
My sympathies BG (and Oudemia upthread) that sounds like no fun at all.
The bridge of my nose and general eye area are now so swollen I look like Odo from Deep Space Nine. (Is this the nerdiest thing I've ever typed? Maybe!) I'm not in pain or anything, just hideous.
180: I'm not particularly tech savvy, but I've understood that yeah, it's feasible. There's the so-called "black hat" optimization method, profiled here. But there's also some outfit that advertises on NPR all the time called Reputation Defender dot com, now called just Reputation dot com, I think. I don't know what they do; they may just cleanse search results of your social media extravagances or something.
Oh, ouch, Oudemia. Thankfully there's not much pain!
My sympathies, Raccoon-face. That sounds totally awful.
179, 180: Depends on the scandal and your role. If you're named Kato and you used to live in pool house, google isn't your problem.
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Paul Stephenson, London's police commissioner, quit in the face of allegations that police officers had accepted money from Murdoch's News of the World paper and not done enough to investigate phone-hacking charges.
Wow.
Be interesting just how many facts come out.
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When Thundersnow got a black eye from a horse ("you shoulda seen the horse!"), I gave her a can of black-eyed peas, which got some chuckles. So virtual black-eyed peas in your direction, oud!
And sympathies, BG. Hope you both feel better soon.
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Protip: When applying for a job, make sure that the top 5 Google hits for your name do not include a Facebook group called CAN'T I JUST BE A HOUSEWIFE?!. Especially if you have numerous real-name posts on its wall.
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The top Google hit for my name is a murder-suicide. I figure if the person I'm talking to can't figure out that I clearly have not committed suicide then I'm fine with them thinking I'm a murderer.