I purposefully haven’t linked to my blog except in private emails to friends so far. And I lazily haven’t bothered to update my home page at all; it’s quite embarassing. Nor have I updated my ASF homepage at all, which used to (well, a while ago) be the top hit for my name for some reason. But now googling just my name finds this blog – or rather, the RSS feed for it – as the 10th hit or so.
Now I have to figure out who linked to it – someone on Technorati or one of the aggregator/pingback sites, or someone in their own blog. Actually, that’s not important: I really need to start posting interesting content for all those folks who now read this now that they can find it in google! Whoo-hooo, I’m famous!
Yeah, right. Actually the one nice thing about an unusual name (especially the combination) is that the great majority of hits are relevant and either written by me or are about me. Although I am a privacy minded person, I’m completely used to the fact that anyone who can spell my name (which is not necessarily an easy skill to learn) can find out so much about me. That’s partly because I do try to write with at least a certain level of style, and also because it really only tells a tiny part of the whole story of Shane. Heck, even my ASF involvement – much of which is explicitly public, because that’s how the ASF works – is completely skewed. Not that the past 2 months shows it, but for the past 3 years nearly all my ASF work has been on the very few closed lists that they keep. Kind of odd: I went from automated tester and developer/release manager to being an organizer and PR person.
(Brief pause while I hang my head in shame in case any ASF folk are reading this and wondering where the hell I’ve been the past 2 months – I really do plan to come back soon…)
Yeah, I feel for you. There are only about 12 people with my last name and only one of them has any sort of internet presence. Of course my “professional name” is more obscure and most hits are for the Dr. Who companion with the same name.