Brain Enema of a Savage Mind » life

Taking Control of Your Online Identity

Alex — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:11:23 +0000

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.

So assume rather than my meager innocuous findings, I discovered several things during my search that I’d rather other people, especially potential employers, not see. Not everything is lost. Many sites allow you to easily remove the comment or photo in question. Even when they don’t have a mechanism in place for you to do it yourself, writing the maintainers of the site a polite e-mail will often yield great results. People who manage web pages understand these sorts of predicament and will often be more than willing to help out so long as you’re polite about it. If they aren’t willing to remove the offending material your list of options becomes quite short. I’m not sure if there are legal methodologies that can come in to play, you’d have to consult with a lawyer about how to handle that situation. If the situation can’t be remedied before someone might be inclined to run a search on you, then you can either keep your fingers crossed, or you can be upfront about it, let them know what they might find if they search for you, and explain it, put it in to context to help disarm the situation.

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Qualifying Life Event

Alex — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 21:34:48 +0000

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. Â 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. Â 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. Â In some ways they are a little bit interesting for instant gratification. Â Well now it’s about time to start tying the different parts of my online life together. Â First off I’ve started out with a bit of Twitter and LiveJournal integration. Â 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. Â That might mean I’m in for another theme change, and if so, then so be it. Â 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.

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Starting a New Year.

Alex — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 02:55:50 +0000

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.

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Banging around the house.

Alex — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:07:17 +0000

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.

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Happy Birthday to me!

Alex — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 15:08:06 +0000

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).

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Happy New Year!

Alex — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 02:33:20 +0000

While I may be spending New Year at home feeling a little under the weather rather than out enjoying the evening with friends 2007 has been a pretty good year. Sure, this month hasn’t been that great, and it’s rather fitting that I’m ending the month feeling run down, but over all this has been a great year. After all I got engaged earlier this year, I’ve been enjoying my job over all, and I’ve taken a couple nice little vacations this year. There’s been no major negative things in 2007 – sure, many minor complaints, and some rough spots, but nothing terrible. I’ve got hope for 2008. I’ll be getting married in June, and hey, maybe there’s going to be some excellent trip in my future. Maybe my expectations are a little high for the new year, but considering expectations the past few years have been so low I think its safe to be a little excited for this one.

So to all of you, a happy and wonderful New Year! May your 2008 bring you everything you dream.

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Super Burnout.

Alex — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:04:08 +0000

I’m not talking about the video game here, I’m burning out. The holidays are always tough – I don’t have a lot of that family or shopping stress – it’s just that because we have a bunch of students working here who all disappear around the holidays I end up working a crazy number of hours. Plus I end up dealing with other peoples holiday stress as we get people in here last minute shopping for random gifts. Then there’s all the running around after work because around the holidays everyone wants to get together, or go out and do this or that. I don’t really remember what my living room looks like anymore.

Today is a half day for me. The parents are in town so I’d like to see them for a little bit rather than always be at work while they’re here. Tomorrow though will be a full day of working. Saturdays are crazy days to work. Between tours and large groups, and just generally being just slightly more busy than two people can handle its going to wear the last bit of me out I’m sure. Fortunately Sunday there are no plans other than sitting on the couch. Maybe I’ll treat myself to a new XBox game and spend the whole day blowing up aliens or some such. It will be a good relaxing day. Life should return to some sense of normal around January 12th once our student staff get back in town. But for the time being its zombie mode for me.

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Merry Christmas!

Alex — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 15:48:15 +0000

For those who celebrate Christmas may it be merry and bright! For those of you who don’t I wish you much happiness and joy, and hopefully a wonderfully relaxing day off spending it in whatever manner you choose! While I don’t have much time off (just today in fact) I plan to use it wisely – doing as little as possible, eating good food, and enjoying the company of friends and (new)family. Here’s to hoping that the end of this year will start in motion the beginning of a brilliant next year!

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Going Lo-tech.

Alex — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:32:33 +0000

As I had mentioned earlier I’m trying to bring a little more organization in to my life and I had been looking at various methods of doing so. One of my biggest hurdles has always been remembering things. I tend to remember I need to do something pretty much minutes before it needed to get done by. Things without a firm date have a tendency of sliding out of focus for me. Obviously this was the first thing I knew I’d need to address if I were to have any hope of bringing a little more order to my life (not too much order mind you, I do enjoy some amount of the chaos).

I had been pondering getting a PDA again, though I never used it as much as I should have – for whatever reason I just felt uncomfortable carrying one around so it was never with me when I needed to keep track of something. A few people have recently suggested I try using a Moleskine notebook. I looked at them a couple of times and they are very nice, so I made a mental note (ie, a bookmark in my browser) so that I might come back to that idea at a later date. Well yesterday I was reading some article on Lifehacker during a particularly slow moment at work and lo and behold they had a link to an article about converting a small Moleskine notebook in to your own custom day planner. This person actually made the decision to go from a PDA to a more simple approach to things and it inspired me. So last night I made a trip to Borders and ended up picking myself up a couple of the notebooks. One of the smaller ones (grid paper because they were out of the lined notebooks in that size) and one of the larger lined ones for jotting done story ideas, random observations, anything at all that might help the good ole’ creativity start flowing again.

I broke out the ruler and a drafting pen last night and started dividing the notebook, one week over two pages. Right now it only goes up until the end of June 2008, but I’ll add several more months to it. Then the last 60ish or so sheets will be used for todo lists, notes, etc. I bought some post-it note reinforced tabs so that I can divide the sections in the back accordingly.

Now I’m armed with my new lo-tech PDA and feeling ready to get something done! Or maybe just refill my coffee cup, it’s still early.

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Day off.

Alex — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:42:32 +0000

Since I have to work this Saturday I got today off instead. While the thought of just being lazy and not really doing a thing crossed my mind more than once, I did some productive things as well. I applied for a passport – a first for me. I’ve never been out of the country (other than several trips to Canada), but I’m hoping to fix that sometime next year. Hopefully after the wedding we’ll be able to go somewhere fun, like Ireland. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ve also been doing some cleaning around the kitchen, and am making my chicken soup. Chicken soup is one of my favorite foods of all time. I make the stock from scratch – it’s really an all day activity so I have to do it on a day I don’t work. The weather looked sufficiently gloomy for chicken soup so I’ve got the stock pot in the kitchen boiling away. The aroma is already making me drool. I don’t really have a recipe I follow, it’s more just done from memory though I should write it down at some point so I can share it with others. It’s a slightly modified version of the chicken soup my mom always made.

That’s another thing to add to my todo list: make a page for recipes and make a page for homebrew recipes.

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