Brain Enema of a Savage Mind

Taking Control of Your Online Identity

Recently on Lifehacker and a couple of other sites that I read regularly they have been talking about your online identity.  Who you are when someone types your name in to a search engine.  I’m sure you’ve tried it, most people have done what has been referred to as “vanity Googling”.  While vanity, or some level of curiosity may be the motivating factor behind people searching their own name online, it actually is something everyone should try.  Why?  Simple, so that you can be aware of how you are being presented should someone search your name.  That someone could be a potential employer, client, date, or any number of other people you’ve come in contact with.  If you don’t know what the search engines reveal about you, you could be in for a nasty surprise.

To be prepared for writing this I went ahead and Googled myself.  It had been awhile and I was curious as to what I might find.  Under “Alex Schwartz” it took until page 22 to reach a reference that was actually to me and that was a link to Dan’s florn.net podcast.  Under Alexander Schwartz the first reference I hit was after a few pages, and that was a link to my Amazon profile and wish lists.  Nothing terribly damning there other than learning which X-Box games I long to play, and what books I want to get next.  Trust me, it’s not that interesting, take a look if you don’t believe me.  Googling me doesn’t reveal much of anything about me(yahoo and Bing both turn up next to nothing while searching my name). In some ways it’s a good thing because I don’t have to worry about people finding out things about me that could be damaging.  I’ve been pretty good about avoiding putting anything online that could be taken the wrong way.  By the same token sometimes not finding anything speaks volumes.  Are people going to wonder if I’m secretive?  Not very interesting?  Haven’t done anything with my life?  A luddite (well, okay, checking my Amazon wish list, or the fact that I run my own domain, disprove that theory in a hurry)?  Not even real?  It leaves a lot of room for people to speculate and just plain wonder.  Paranoid?  Maybe a touch, but let’s face it, online life has been, in many ways, merging with our real world lives.  People have lost a shot at a dream job simply due to a dumb comment, or inopportune picture posted to the web.  Just like at a face to face meeting, you want the first impression of your online identity to be a positive one. Continue reading…

Qualifying Life Event

I can’t believe that its been as long as it has since I last updated here. I had been on quite a roll, but in my defense life got a little bit topsy turvy.  Gabriel was born on March 4th and since then life has pretty much been in chaos. It’s been the good kind of chaos though.  Still its left this blog a little bit in the lurch.

I found in the past month I’ve used Twitter (meh) and Facebook (blah) quite a bit more.  In some ways they are a little bit interesting for instant gratification.  Well now it’s about time to start tying the different parts of my online life together.  First off I’ve started out with a bit of Twitter and LiveJournal integration.  In theory this post will get put on both my LiveJournal and referenced in a tweet automagically.

My next step is to work on Facebook integration, and after that I’ll start working on some Flickr integration.  That might mean I’m in for another theme change, and if so, then so be it.  Still, it’ll be nice to get back in to the habit of playing with WordPress while also adding a little bit of organization of my online persona.

In the meantime, for those looking for some pictures, check out my Flickr photostream.

Starting a New Year.

Last year had its ups and downs in my life.  Not that its uncommon, but mine tended to fluctuate a little more between the extremes than I would have liked them to.  Today my grandmother passed away.  To say this year isn’t off to an exemplary start is an understatement.  But there is a lot of time left and who knows how things are going to go from here.  There’s a lot I’d like to see come of this year and I’m going to have to really put my mind to it to make it all work.

With that said I thought maybe I’d make a little list, mostly for myself, so that at the end of the year I can look back and see exactly what I managed to accomplish.

• I need to write more.  I’ve fallen out of the habit and I’d really like to get back in to it.  The end of 2009 I actually made some headway so I want to ride that momentum through 2010 and have something to show for it.
• In the vein of the above, I want to focus more on this blog.  Maybe give it some actual focus, but for now I’ll just settle for getting in to a routine of regular posting.
• Finish painting the inside of the house, remodeling the home office, getting the nursery ready, and fixing up the sun room so its actually usable for this year.
• While I’m most likely not going to be looking for full time work I’d like to find something part time, or at least get some freelance writing and/or computer consulting gigs going to start bringing in a little bit extra – especially with the baby due in March.
• I’d like to get back in to painting Warhammer miniatures.  I don’t know if I’ll actually get back in to play Warhammer at all, but I always found the painting relaxing and it would be great to get back in to that habit as well.  Hobbies have been sorely lacking in my life the last several years.
• Finish cleaning the basement.  It’s chaos down there but this is totally doable.  I managed to clean the one part in only a couple of days, so taking care of the rest can be done with a week of solid work on it.
• Finally, I want to get the hang of catching passed on the back hand in hockey.  That’s going to be my one developmental skill to work on with the rest of this season.

I don’t know how much of this I’ll accomplish, but all of it is absolutely doable.  I just need to find a little more routines in my life to get the creative energies going and to chase away the blahs that haunted me through most of 2009.

So here we go 2010 – stumbled at the start and fell flat on my face, but let’s see if I can’t pick myself back up and fight my way back in to the thick of things.

Banging around the house.

Lately I’ve been managing to keep myself busy around the house.  I’ve been doing repainting and repairs around the house – there’s certainly more than enough that needs to be taken care of.  So far I’ve managed to paint the guest bedroom which was badly in need of it.  While it’s not the shade of yellow I would have picked, it has certainly grown on me.  It’s a very warm and inviting color.  All the trim is finally done, and other than touching up a few spots I’m ready to start moving stuff in to the guestroom to get it all setup.

The other day we ripped out our old front door and put in a brand new one.  The old one was pretty badly hung, and the area cut out for the door isn’t exactly straight.  It took us a bit of sawing, chiseling, and sanding down of things to get the new door frame in straight.  It’s in nicely now.  A brand new door knob and lock and it really looks greats.  Just need to touch up a little bit of paint on the frame and the door but that won’t taken terribly long.

The next big project is putting in the new ceiling fan that we bought.  We’re calling in a little help on that one as a lot of new electrical needs to be run and we’d rather have that taken care of by someone who knows what the hell they are doing.  It’ll be nice to have the fan (and light) in here.  It gets a little bit stuffy in the summer so it will be really nice to have some airflow in here.  It’s even reversible so that you can circulate the warm air in the winter.

After that I’ll be replacing all the light switches in the house with matching ones rather than the mismatched collection that came with the place.  I’m also going to fix one of the dimmer lights that never worked quite right.  There’s also some GFCI outlets that need to be installed for the bathroom sinks and by the kitchen sink.

Finally I’m going to set up the room we’ve been using as a library/storage as a home office/library.  That will mostly involve a lot of moving stuff around and finding places for things.  Likely it will mean more stuff being piled in to the basement – the basement that is a project for a much later date.  Right now my focus is on the upstairs and finding a home for everything.  It’s a great feeling to be busy again.

Happy Birthday to me!

Well it’s the double 3 today.  Yup, one of those repititive kind of brithday numbers, 33.

Nothing special is planned, just a relaxing day at home.  A couple of friends are likely coming over so we can eat copious amounts of bacon, enjoy a beer or two, and watch ‘I Am Legend’ (which I have to go purchase later as a birthday present for myself).