Pseudonyms and Social Networks July 28, 2008

I’m a parent of a teenage daughter and a preteen boy – both of whom are online; I work in the internet industry; I’ve been a victim of a cyber-stalker (or two); I have carefully crafted my own online identity to protect my personal information, sometimes to the detriment of my career which revolves around people knowing who I am and being able to find me.

I was hesitant to put my personal info out on social networking sites, even those sites that attract a more professional crowd (like LinkedIn). Putting the information out there meant it was readily available for whosoever wanted to view it; a frightening concept to say the least. Especially considering my charming experiences with the world of cyber-stalkers. Call me paranoid, but I still haven’t decided to let go of my privacy. Add in the facts that much of my work is done under pseudonyms at the client’s request, and the rest of my pen-named work is out of self preservation (more on that in a moment) and it’s easy to see how any “online presence” of mine could be a fractured entity at best.

This topic came up at work not too long ago, when someone decided to Google me, and came up with a serious mess. Well, they searched my real name. Whoops. Since my first name is also synonymous with a certain college town, and my last is not exactly an uncommon word, literally hundreds of thousands of results, none having anything to do with me, come up. In other words, my given name is what we would call a “highly competitive” keyword. Unless you’re a college, ya aint’ likely to rank real high with it! Heck, Google didn’t even have me on their radar. Switch over to my two most common pseudonyms, or any one of my various cyber-names and you’ll find me. But want to prove that any of those individuals are related to Yours Truly? Or even to each other? Lots of luck!

Basically, I’m riding the edge of a sword – on the good side, my privacy is protected. On the bad, people have a hard time finding me, or associating me with anything of significance. Which sucks when you’re a writer.

However, it’s a chance I’ll take. Why?

Well, remember earlier when I said “More on that in a moment”? Yeah. Well, here’s the “more.”

Though I have a “day job” and have signed (and do not violate) my non-compete and non-disclosure agreements, I do still freelance. Sometimes, that freelancing pokes fun at the very industry in which I work. Who better to satirize something? Also, much of my work relies on humor and sarcasm, often at the expense of those I know (whose names are of course changed to protect the less than innocent). My friends and family are use to this and take it in stride, it’s the rest of my “circle of influence” that I’m not too sure about. How in the world could I possibly continue such behavior if everyone and their brother knew it was me? Why, I’d have to stop writing about a certain coworker who… and that client who… When anonymity is preserved, everyone can pretend it’s not them, and then they can laugh – and learn. Without that anonymity, they get offended instead. Funny how that works.

In short – that layer of distance allows me to continue both my day job and my freelance work, without offending either side. True, there are those who have seen more than one facet, and who know a bit more than most. There are even those who know everything. But they are few and far between. For the most part, my online self is, and shall continue to be, a study in multiple personalities.

This was never quite so apparent as when I asked a trusted friend for advice on my online portfolio. He has known me for years and I trust and value his opinion. Plus, as an educator, he’s uniquely qualified vet my resume as it were. After serious (and mostly positive) constructive criticism, he finally pointed out, “You might actually want to do more than one of these.” His point was well taken. In today’s polarized political climate, it’s easy to see how my wide ranging topics could give an impression of one who lacks passion for anything.

What really cracks me up, however, is that I have all of two photos that I use for any avatar, or icon, or writer’s bio, etc. One looks somewhat studious, the other anything but. It’s amazing how many people have seen both, and never realized they were one and the same person. Of course, most people aren’t expecting to find that the girl who wrote the scathing, and distinctly conservatively leaning piece about firearm rights is the same one who wrote an equally scathing piece of dartwork aimed for the heart of the “Religious Right.” Huh. Go figure.

Maybe one of these days, I’ll haul all of my various selves, personas (grata and non grata alike), characters, pseudonyms, noms de plume (or would it be guerre?), etc out of their proverbial closet and we’ll all have a coming out party. Until then… well… I’ll continue to lead my fractured existence.

Musical flashbacks brought to you by iPod… July 27, 2008

I’m sort of on the fence when it comes to things digital. I’m a member of that generation who actually recall days before computers were everywhere. We remember the first “family” video games (Pong, anyone?) and the days when personal computers were large and incredibly expensive. We also recall when the “boombox” was the height of portable music – oh the batteries we went through – taking over from the transistor radio. At the same time, all of these cool new gadgets did come into existence during our formative years.

The technology evolution pretty much grew up right along with us. We remember when cassette tapes took over from vinyl, and when CDs took over from tapes. Most of us would have maimed, if not killed, to have an affordable way to transfer our beloved tape collection onto CD. Along the way, we learned to love all things tech, to embrace the changes and relish the new and improved. We are the generation who wasn’t born plugged in, but wanted to be. Contrast this with my own children, who are growing up in an age where computers were a given, when the Walkman was replaced with the iPod, when CDs were the norm and “digital” is the buzz word of the day. My 14 year old cannot recall not having a computer, and only vaguely recalls having a Walkman. Basically, what I’m saying is, I grew up seeing the writing on the wall, and now as an adult, I’m still deciding whether or not I like this brave new world we live in.

Now that I’ve gone off on some nostalgia tangent, I’ll get back to my point.

One tech development I lovingly embraced was the digital age of music. CDs were my new best friends when they first came out, and when the iPod came out in 2001, I wanted one – badly. It was years before I finally got a small MP3 player (tight finances and all). For the last couple of years, I’ve been begging and pleading for an iPod, one that had more space than I could possibly fill. On my birthday, I finally got my wish. I got my iPod Classic. Wheeee!

So the fun has begun. Getting all of my existing music lined up on iTunes and loaded onto my iPod, surfing around and searching for more music to buy, and otherwise having the fun of dumping hours upon hours worth of music onto my new toy. Oh, and creating playlists… And getting a very sore thumb from getting addicted to a certain silly game…

And like any kid with a new toy, I’ve been trying to figure out everything I can about it, looking at all the neat and cool things it can do, and finding excuses to use it for everything I can.

Did you know you could sync your calendar to your iPod? Yeah. I thought that was a pretty cool feature. Then I realized. I already sync my calendar to my phone. How many places do I really want or need my schedule synced to? Huh?

My main reasons for wanting the big iPod were that I was sick of having to swap out my music every week or so when I got sick of the couple hundred songs my little MP3 would hold and I wanted to be able to load pics and carry them with me as a digital album. That desire was born of losing all the pics in my cell phone when I upgraded and had forgotten to transfer my pics before transferring service. Whoops. So I’ve been going through all of my pics and deciding which ones will get uploaded to the iPod.

But mostly, I’ve been having a lot of fun dusting off old music memories and sticking those fun old songs into my new toy.

To understand my giddiness over this prospect, it has to be explained – for 13 years, I lived in a house where the only music played was either worship music, classical, or some country. The country was OK so long as it didn’t reference spousal problems, leaving or getting left, affairs and extramarital sex. Huh. Well, scratch about 75% of all country music then! I grew up with an incredibly varied musical background, listening to everything from classic country and oldies to rock and Motown. One neighbor referred to my mother as “That crazy redhead who plays the loud _(insert incredibly offensive and colorful term)_ music next door.” Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to type that word.

I grew up listening to Isaac Hayes and Barry White. I also grew up singing along with The Righteous Brothers, Conway Twitty (and if anyone ever tries to claim that old country wasn’t suggestive, I’ll slap ‘em upside the head with some of his lyrics!) and Roger Miller. Add in some Dr. Hook (I love Shel Silverstein, both in song and in print), Otis Redding, Genesis, Smoky Robinson, Cream, Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross, Creedance, Elton John, Loggins & Messina and Three Dog Night and you’re getting an idea. The closest I came to “kiddie” music was Harry Belafonte, and I don’t mean the “Banana Boat Song.” The first song I learned to play on a musical instrument was “Lean on Me.”

But the 13 year period preceding 2006 was pretty much a musical graveyard. Put it this way, I recently had to write an article about Nickelback, and I had never heard of the group.

So, forgive my giddiness over digging up old favorites like Billy Idol, INXS, the Sex Pistols and other quintessential ’80s stuff.

Now pardon me while I go have some flashbacks or something!

A sticky situation? July 27, 2008

I admit it, I’m an addict of odd news stories. I just love reading things that are slightly outside the norm. It probably started when I got the oh-so-fun assignment of researching stupid crook stories for one of the magazines I used to work for. And yes, Snopes is one of my favorite bookmarks.

A brief of the news story:

LEBANON, Ind. (AP) – A woman accidentally stabbed herself in the foot with a 3-foot-long sword while performing a Wiccan good luck ritual at a central Indiana cemetery.

Katherine Gunther, 36, of Lebanon, pierced her left foot with the sword while performing the rite at Oak Hill Cemetery, police said.

Gunther said she was performing the ceremony to give thanks for a recent run of good luck. The ceremony involves the use of candles, incense and driving swords into the ground during the full moon.

Gunther said she was aiming to put the sword in the ground, but hit her foot instead.

“It wasn’t the first time I performed the ritual, but it was the first time I put a sword through my foot,” she said.

Gunther immediately pulled the sword out of her foot, and her companions took her to Witham Memorial Hospital, where she was kept a couple days for treatment, suffering a compound fracture.

No charges were filed, police said. The Wiccans were warned that being in the cemetery in the city about 20 miles northwest of Indianapolis after posted visiting hours constitutes trespassing.

Wicca is a nature-based religion based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons.

Now, ummm… well. Wow. The moment I read this I knew I had to post on it… But my brain went in so many different directions!

First, I started searching for more details on the incident. Guess what I found? Several Christian sites quoting the event and wondering if perhaps the devil was trying to tell the hapless witch something. Nice. Yeah. Well, perhaps god was trying to tell something to that pastor who decided to use a dirt bike to illustrate his sermon and then drove it off the platform, breaking his wrist?

Or perhaps we should stop trying to ascribe deeper spiritual significance to things that are simply part of the human condition – like screwing up your aim with a three foot long blade, or having a complete and utter brainless moment thinking that riding a dirt bike around on an indoor platform sounds cool.

Meanwhile, a part of me wondered, “hmmm, if this had happened during something other than a Wiccan ritual, it wouldn’t have even been news…” And I spent quite a bit of time trying to come up with a reasonable analogy. Let’s see, if this were a Christian event, and in the process of doing an illustrated sermon on the armor of god, they managed to… And the more I thought about it, the sillier it became. While I could easily imagine any number of non-Pagan groups doing incredibly silly things and the resulting injuries, I finally realized that the issue here wasn’t necessarily the slip up and the injury itself. Like real estate, it’s all about location, location, location.

Had our intrepid heroine been celebrating her good fortune in her back yard, or on the beach, or the mountains, or any other outdoorsy kind of place, this probably would never have made the news. It was the fact that this group of celebrants was in a cemetery, after hours no less, that made it newsworthy. The fact that the celebration is practiced during the full moon just makes it even more attractive, but again, had this happened in a more mundane location, I doubt anyone would have thought much of it, and darling Katherine could have lived out the rest of her life without this particular 15 minutes of fame.

39 and holding? July 15, 2008

OK, my birthday was this past week and I decided to have some fun and take one of those “virtual age” tests. Oh surprise, surprise! I’m “virtually” all of 18.5 years old! Wheeee – I’m just a kid!

Now, let’s get to reality… Last week, I turned 39, the beginning of my 40^th year on this planet and my last year of being “under 40.” I did some surfing around and found a lot of “woe is me” posts about turning 39, a lot of “oh crap am I feeling old” garbage. Well guess what? This isn’t going to be another one of those posts! Nope!

You see, I don’t feel old, and I don’t feel like sitting around moping about being “almost 40.” Big fat hairy deal!

Actually, I feel younger now than I did a few years ago (hmmm, amazing what a happy home life does to you!) And I look better.

Besides, how can I feel sorry for myself when my coworkers were guessing this was my 30^th birthday, not my 39^th?

The Comment Gauntlet? July 6, 2008

Yeah, yeah, OK, so I haven’t been doing a lot of writing lately. Actually, that is only partially true. In fact, I’ve been doing a ton of writing, it’s just all been of the work-related variety. Between that and other weirdness and goings on, I’ve found precious little time for blogging. Boo hoo.

But, in the midst of all this, I’ve made a conscious choice to start blogging again. Partly because it’s relaxing to me, and partly because it’s a way to keep my creative muscles from freezing up. You see, sure, I’ve been doing a lot of writing, but it’s almost all been of the promotional type. Which is lucrative, but not very creative. OK, let’s be honest. It’s downright freaking boring (and time consuming) and I can practically do it in my sleep. I’ve been surfing around a few blogs again as well, and found a few that I simply love – soon to  be added to my woefully out of date blog roll (hey! if you’re on it, and you’re reading this, and your blog linky is old and wrinkly, TELL me about it, huh?) Including one wonderful lady who  leans to the left politically, but also believes in the right to own firearms. Hey! Cool! A Gunchick Salute to her!

However, for what I am about to say, I will not divulge the names of the guilty. And so, into the fray!

What the hell is with the comment gauntlet, huh?

Look, I keep it simple – I have to approve all blog comments. That way, I get to filter out the freaks, whack jobs, scary weird people, etc. (Which means I dump quite a few – since I do get some genuine “winners” around here). I realize that maybe a blog with higher traffic and more comments may have a hard time doing that, and so may turn to any number of methods of filtering out spammers and other unpleasant types. And I have been through plenty of reasonable verification methods, including entering user name, typing in characters that made no sense, etc.

But when, in order to comment on a blog, I have to enter my WordPress user name, type in the correct letters (several times since the blasted thing was so jumbled and obscure with multiple colors and a hard to read font made up of mostly bubbles, I got the characters wrong not once, not even twice, but four flipping times – god forbid a color blind guy try this one!), then log in to my WP account (which I wasn’t logged into since I really didn’t want to be logged in on the computer I was on, thank you very much), and then answer a bunch of questions:

Are you sure you want to use the following information about yourself on this comment? Yes, dammit, that’s why I logged in like this instead of selecting “anonymous” – hello!

Is there any other information you’d like to add? Holy Hell, no! I’ve already put in enough, thanks!

This is how your comment will appear, is it OK? Yes, I do know how to type and proofread before I hit submit.

This is how your information will appear, is it OK? Haven’t I already told you this is OK?

This is the contact information others will see when they click on your name, is it OK? Once again, haven’t I already said OK to this?

If not, what would you like them to see? (followed by a return to the info you had already entered and the option to change any of it.) How many times am I going to have to say OK to all this?

Each obnoxious question appeared in its own little pop up screen – yes, a pop up, which meant I had to “approve” pop ups for that site on that occasion. And it wasn’t too long before I started wondering if perhaps the blogger didn’t really want comments and this was a clever (?) technique for discouraging them. Then I noticed there were an awfully large number of anonymous comments, which meant the blogger did indeed seem to want comments… But maybe perhaps they didn’t want to be pointing to other people’s blogs?

That last one seemed likely. Stupid. but likely.

At last the gauntlet was navigated, successfully, I might add! And I was able to place my comment. What should have taken a mere moment of my time had now eaten up over 5 minutes. And sadly, my free time for surfing blogs was now up. And I hadn’t even had a chance to make a quick stop by some of my favorites.