The things you find when you Google your own name…
January 10th, 2008 at 06:05am
I’m one of those people who will run a Google search on my own name every few weeks for the fun of it, and also has Google alerts setup to report on activity mentioning my own name. As such, I am quite familiar with most of the things that turn up when people search for my name.
A short time ago I was reading through some posts on a forum that I visit frequently but do not post on as I would prefer to keep my name off there (and yes I’m well aware that I could post there under a pseudonym, but unfortunately forum policy would require me to use my name and not a pseudonym), and whilst I was reading I stumbled across a post which mentioned my name. The post was nice and I suppose I should probably be happy as the person who mentioned my name was quite positive…but to the same extent I don’t want my name on those forums and I am now rather undecided about whether to take it further and have my name removed.
The post has been online for nearly 24 hours and I’m not sure how regularly Google indexes the forum (this site gets indexed far too often, seemingly as a result of Google using updates to the RSS feed as a good excuse to re-index) so I decided to Google my name. I was pleased to be unable to find any results from that forum with my name…but I did get a bit of a shock when I spotted my name being mentioned on the ACT Government’s Hansard website.
In 2006 I had the pleasure of assisting in the running of a charity trivia night, mainly organised by George Lemon from Senator Gary Humphries‘ office, the funds of which went to Gawad Kalinga. It would appear that a short time thereafter Liberal member for Ginninderra Vicki Dunne MLA addressed the ACT Legislative Assembly on the work of Gawad Kalinga and the people and organisations who assisted with the trivia night. Even though my role mainly consisted of moving furniture and acting as a runner collecting answer sheets from the various tables, Mrs. Dunne was kind enough to mention that I assisted with the night.
Until today I was not aware of this rather kind act, I certainly did not assist with the trivia night in order to receive any recognition, but it is nice to have received some recognition anyway.
Thank you Mrs. Dunne, I am just sorry that I was not able to thank you sooner.
Now I just have to return to my original quandary of whether or not to request the removal of my name from the forum I was talking about earlier before Google picks it up.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: Samuel News
