Friday, February 17, 2012

Stuck inside these four walls

Yeesh, what a boring day.  Couple more hours of it, then I get to go home.  EXCEPT... We're My wife is babysitting 4 toddlers until tomorrow evening.  This is so some married couples can go to a church retreat this weekend, without their crumb crunchers tearing the hotel down.  Instead the crumb crunchers are tearing my house down and terrorizing my doggies.  If you don't hear from me after this, check the Benton County Jail inmate roster and look through the booking pics for the guy on a psych hold that pulled all his hair out.  That'll be me.

-----------------------

Andy has a very interesting post regarding internet anonymity.  It looks like a really long, tedious post, but that's only because Andy uses a big font.  So go read it.  As for me, I use a pseudonym mainly because my real-life first name is the very generic "John."  Not that there is anything wrong with that name, but...  Yell "Hey, John!" at my church and half the guys turn around and say "Yeah, what?"  And my last name, while seemingly simple, just confounds the heck out of people.  I tell people "it rhymes with Bonham" and they are like "Whoa!  John Bonham!  You're the drummer for Led Zeppelin!  I though you were dead!" Then I'm so annoyed that I have to punch them in the gut and take their skateboard.  It gets old after a while.  Hence the nom-de-blog.

It's also interesting to do the self-google...

In other words, I'm so screwed.  There are usenet (anybody remember usenet?) articles I posted back in the '80s in the rec.pyrotechnics newsgroup about blowing things up with homemade bombs.  Like melons.  And tree stumps.  And... Well... I'm sure that Big Sis ("ve haff detailed files") Napolitano already knows all those things about me.  But I s'pose it'd still be prudent to shut up right about, umm, now.

All that junk is still archived and shows up when I google myself.  Of course, Rick Santorum thinks it is a sin to google yourself, so maybe I should just knock it off.   What I'm getting at, is that there is already such a wealth of stuff about me on the 'net that could be cherry-picked to make me look really bad.  Or really good.  Or really ordinary.  No way to put that genie back in the bottle, so I don't worry too much about what people try to find.  Perhaps you, though, actually have a decent reputation and would like to keep it that way.  Start by reading Andy's post.

---------------------------------------

Scary-good overhead image courtesy of Google Earth.
(Image of me standing in the parking lot flipping off Google's satellite photoshopped out)

Here's a view of where I do my early morning grunt job.  It is never so bright and cheerful when I am there before sunrise, but that isn't the point.  The point is stupid people doing stupid things stupidly.  The "corral" is what we call the walled-off area where we store non-valuable things like the garden hoses, snow shovels, etc.  It also has our dumpsters, which we also share with the Chevron station that is partially visible at the top of the pic.  I know, none of that is the least bit interesting but I felt a strange compulsion to include all those details.

So... A customer came through the drive-thru.  The customer pondered the offerings on the menu, placed an order, paid for the order, received the order, and proceeded to leave.  This may seem like a routine event.  But it you stop and think of it, it is quite amazing.  Someone from 500 years ago would think it miraculous that we could travel about in big shiny machines and get a greasy breakfast burrito and coffee for $3, with all this happening under the goal-time of about 140 seconds.  They would conclude that man had reached a level of Higher Intelligence.  Then the time traveler would marvel at the Low Intelligence of said customer driving RIGHT INTO THE CORRAL.  Tearing up the wall, goobering up the door so it no longer swings freely, and then DRIVING AWAY leaving behind a mess of broken headlight glass and bits of bumper cover and fender trim.  Since none of the stuff in there is valuable, there is no surveillance camera pointed at it.  We don't know who did it. 

So I say to the hit-n-run moron:  This moment of stupidity will haunt you all your days, like exaggerated boasting of blowing up melons on the rec.pyrotechnics newsgroup.  Because I talked about you on the internet.  And the internet is forever. 

24 comments:

  1. Heh! Goober really tore his car up and drove off? Well...at the risk of raisin' ire, I'll bet it was a her.

    Despite Santorum's warnings, I Googled myself last night after reading this in the FeedReader. Amazing, really. Not even using my full, legal name...just using Andy Reeves, yielded my addresses in 4 different towns in 2 states. Yielded my father, mother, oldest son, and wife's name, too...and their previous and current addresses. Oh yeah...little brother's name & his first ex-wife appeared alongside the linked people searches.

    Enjoyed the post, Inno, and thanks for the linkage. I guess. :) If we don't hear from you by Sunday, I'll be sure to hit the Benton County Jail Roster link dealie.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My morning job is in a little redneck town a few miles outside of uppity Corvallis, and the clientele there is Extremely Predictable in the mornings. The same regular customers ordering the same thing, day after day. If I keep a lookout for a car with body damage and a piece of tarp duct-taped over the window, that'll be the perpetrator!

      Delete
  2. Sorry about running into the corral. I was distracted because I was googling myself with my iPad in my car when I was driving.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. At least you didn't spill meltdown-hot coffee on your crotch and sue us. So there's that.

      Delete
  3. I self googled once.

    All that popped up on the monitor was a big ?

    Annonimity has it's advantages, I think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agreed, if you can maintain it. I started leaving a trail of bread crumbs back in the '80s before I ever had an idea that this stuff would be archived forever.

      Delete
  4. Of course, Rick Santorum thinks it is a sin to google yourself, so maybe I should just knock it off.

    Heh. BEST political commentary, GOP Division, of the year. So far.

    Nicely done, Inno.

    I google myself occasionally, but most o' the dumb shit I did back in early inter-tube days is apparently safe behind AOL's firewall as I never see it on google. But then again, I've never Binged myself, which Santorum prolly frowns upon, too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. Haven't Binged m'self either. Looks like I have a project for this afternoon.

      Delete
  5. Well John, there's a lot of us Johns running around. How's your car?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is no shortage of stupid stuff that is my fault. This one, however, wasn't. Because I never go through the drive-thru. Because I refuse to eat any of the food made there. (Well, except the chocolate chip cookies. Those are amazing.)

      Delete
    2. "You never go through the drive-thru ... They always F*** you in the Drive-true." Joe Pesci ... Lethal Weapon II

      Delete
  6. I agree with Buck--that's the best line I've heard so far, only I'll add "in either division." Still, before I confess, I wonder, is googling myself a venal or a mortal sin?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I guess that depends on what kind of dirt google has on you.

      Delete
    2. My oh my. I won't be confessing to anything then. I will say I googled myself but I did NOT click on or follow any of the links, kinda like not inhaling.

      Delete
  7. It's a sin to google yourself? What's the word on Facebook and Twitter? For that matter, is it a sin to invest in google?

    Or going down the rabbit hole, is it a sin to google "is it a sin to google yourself" and then see Innominatus show up as the second search item?

    Try it. If you think it's okay that is.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tweeting oneself certainly *sounds* bad!

      Investing in google? Their motto is "Don't be evil" which I think only applies to entities who are naturally prone to evil. Like a pyro, who says to himself "don't burn stuff" over and over right up until he torches an orphanage.

      Delete
  8. Ha ha! jokes on you hit n' run guy! you will FOREVER remember that moment of stupidity for the rest of your days! unfortunately, so will the recipient of this unthinkable stupidity. I can just imagine what's going through his mind "uuuuh ok, breakfast burrito... fries... WHAT THE H*** THEY FORGOT THE FREAKING FOUNTAIN DRINK! Oh yeah, you think ya can get away with that? Well I'll just" crunch "huh? what the h*** was that? (gets out of car) Oh shoot, that's not my car... on the other hand, they forgot my fountain drink!" (drives off)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think that's almost exactly how it all went down. 'Cept we're talking about Philomath, so the language would have been much more, umm, "colorful"

      Delete
  9. Googled & Binged myself.

    I'm nowhere in the first 50 entries.

    I don't use my last name on the internet a lot. Don't need to, since my first name is uncommon enough to serve as a unique individual identifier in the virtual circles I travel.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Heh! We often stop there on our way to/from Yachats. The girls use the fine restrooms and then grab a bite for the road, while I accompany Dog as he makes his peemail deliveries around the shrubs. Last time we stopped there, a lady commented that she loved my bumper-sticker (I only have one, 'cause I'm not a Leftie). It reads: Don't spread my wealth - spread my work ethic.

    ReplyDelete
  11. theres wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much info bout folks online ..sheesh!..hope alls well my friend!..xoxox

    ReplyDelete
  12. Honestly, Mr. Gubmint agent, I have no idea who this "innominatus" guy is. From the sounds of the name tho, he sounds like a really bad dude!

    ReplyDelete
  13. It's been some time since I lived in Corvallis, but 'uppity' would have been the very last adjective I would assign to this podunk of a college town.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This isn't your father's "Cowvallis" anymore. Sure, there's stinky pasture land over where the Ag kids play, but the rest of the town really trying to become Lake Oswego.

      Delete

Family-friendly phrasing heartily encouraged.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...