Saturday, October 04, 2003

Go Google Yourself!

I've promised to blog about this for a while now, ever since the post about how one of the "other" Kevin McNerney's in the world got a new job, which then got posted somewhere online, and one of my fraternity brothers jokingly asked me if I was moving to California. It took a while, but here goes.

If you're a Jim Smith or a Mary Williams, this won't be a big deal to you, because you will likely already have run into at least one other person who shares your name. But if you have an unusual name like I do, it's sort of weird/cool to think that there are "other you's" running around out there.

So the best way to find out about your alter-egos is to take your name, put it in quotes, and type it into Google or another comparable search engine. I've done this a few times, and here are some of the other me's I've discovered...

The brewery owner from Georgia...
(If I'm ever in Atlanta, I have to go meet this guy, since he's the only one of the other me's who actually has a job that serves the public. How cool would it be to walk in there and say, "Hi, I'd like to speak with Kevin McNerney. Tell him that Kevin McNerney's here to see him.")

The search firm executive from Virginia...

The medical-devices guy from California...

The children's-book illustrator from England...

The U.S. Army spokesman in Europe.

There are others out there--the owner of a coin company, someone from the legal department of the Royal College of Nursing, a firefighter from Connecticut--but you get the idea. (I'm actually amazed that, with this many other me's, I was able to secure kevinmcnerney.com as my domain name on the first try.)

As for the frequency of appearances on Google, my unscientific survey shows the brewer with the most entries by a mile, followed by the executive search guy, followed by the medical guy, followed by me. That's not bad for a humble musician who hasn't even released a CD yet.

Oh, one final link: Click here and scroll down to the second picture; I'm not sure why this struck me as funny; maybe it's the look on the guy's face. At least he has a "college job" too...

If you find anything amusing when you Google yourself, send me an email and maybe I'll include it in a future post. (UPDATE: Now that I have the comments feature enabled, you could also just click the link below.)

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