Close Call

13 Jul 2003 By

I’ve talked before about the Never-Really-Was-My-Girlfriend. She called last week because her mom saw my grandpa’s obit in the paper. I was a little harried when the phone rang, so I forgot to avoid the call. I let her talk at me for a while.

We’ve reached the point where we have nothing to say to each other except to talk about old times. Actually, I might have something more to say to her if I cared enough to ask her how she’s doing.

Anyway, I got an email from her a couple days later entitled “good ol’ fashioned web-surfing…” I panicked because I thought she might have come across this site. I don’t really know how she could have because I’m pretty sure you can’t get here by googling my full name.* And, you know, I’ve talked about her in less than flattering terms. I don’t think she’s so stupid that she couldn’t figure it out.

But the email wasn’t about this site. It was about — get this — a math professor we had our freshman year.

*It turns out you can get here by googling my name. Anybody know if there’s a way I can get that to go away?

  • http://members.rogers.com/cub4blog/ cub4bear

    I had that problem, and the only way I could get rid of it was to ask everyone who had linked to my site using my name to change their links. It worked, but it took a week or so for Google to catch up.

    In my case it was easy to do that because it was friends who had linked to me, but this might not be the case with you.

  • http://picklejuice.yatescentral.com Natalie

    The best you can hope for is to have Google bury you in the back pages.

    I just googled your full name and it looks like it’s pulling up the entry where you were explaining where you got the name Irk from – for some reason it’s not offering the cached version so you must have a “no cache” thing? Try going back and deleting/editing that post, then the next time Google trawls it’ll no longer grab at that page for your last name, maybe?

    I remember you spelling out your yahoo ID once…maybe it’s grabbing onto that?

    There’s a way to totally block access from Google completely if you’d be interested in that – I know how freaky it can be to think that someone you don’t want to find your blog. Thank jeebus none of the people I’m avoiding know my married surname. Hey, there’s an idea…just get married! :^)

  • http://picklejuice.yatescentral.com Natalie

    Geocities, baby. It’s the Geocities.

  • http://www.swirlspice.com Erica

    Damn, Natalie, you’re good. The geocities is gone now. I suppose having that “Yahoo!Me” thing up there ain’t helping either. I’ll have to see what I can do about that.

  • http://www.deanesmay.com Dean Esmay

    Making sure no one links to you using your real name is easily the most effective way.

  • http://www.kazoofus.com Kathy Howe

    See…I said the hell with trying to hide my blog from people I know in real life. As if I know all that many people that would give a two shits anyways.

    Good luck getting rid of your name in cyberspace…hopefully something works for you!