Every now and then, it's instructive to discover what the Web knows about you.
After having preached to the kids that employers and other decision-makers will regularly check online for additional information about them, I decided to google myself.
When I was yet a teen, I realized that "Mark Smith" would be a name I shared with many others (and there were twelve others in the phone book, when I lived in Charlotte, NC!), and I decided then to use my middle initial to narrow down the field. Even "Mark F. Smith" isn't descriptive enough these days, with 310 million Americans.
I found the expected links to my audiobook narration. I found a link to this blog. I'm pleased I did not find links to a serial murderer or a scandal-ridden politician. There is a fairly good PhD out there with the name and there was an important executive in a nonprofit who is being missed. A list of "Mark F. Smith patents" went back only a few years and so did not uncover the two I was granted in the 80's.
But what moved me to write this post, is that there is someone on Facebook with the name, AND IT IS NOT I. So don't post to him, thinking you're reaching me! I have resisted the Facebook craze so far. Maybe later...
You will always be Marksmithofsimpsonvillesouthcarolina no matter -where- you move. Might as well just add 'relocated to X.' on the end. Branding oneself as well as you have, it's not a benefit to go mucking about.
ReplyDeleteThat being said. Thank you a hundred times for your work. You are by far my favorite reader on Librivox. I would love to hear you read some more early Andre Norton. (Zero Stone and Moon of 3 rings comes to mind).
Thanks for the vote of confidence!
ReplyDeleteI have some Norton on Audible.com - "The Defiant Agent" is there now, and "Key Out of Time" should be up this month (March 2012); both are from The Time Trader series.