I’ve also been mulling over Anil Dash’s post “Privacy through identity control“, and I see merit in his argument that there’s no escaping an online identity — only controlling it. I’ll admit it. I Google myself every now and then. The thing is, the me that comes back with the Google results isn’t exactly me, especially since my Facebook profile is extremely restricted and my Twitter username uses no parts of my actual name. If I assume that the rest of the world is currently suffering my level of ADD, I need to start doing some better brand management.

To that end, I’m considering moving back to a domain that has my name in it. I had one years ago, and I moved away from it because I thought it was too Google-able so I’d always censor what I wrote… but I pretty much do that now because The Internet Knows Everything. I’d also worried that my posts were too political or too Muslim for my professional life. Some of the more rabidly political posts fell victim to the yearly purge, and as for the Muslim ones, well, that’s who I am. I wear a hijab on my head, I fast during Ramadan, I pray five times a day. I don’t see how it’s at all “hidden” in my non-virtual life, so I am trying not to succumb to this idea of “too Muslim”  on the Internet.

The only catch is that I never renewed the domain I had years ago, so someone’s been squatting on it for years, and it’s going to be expensive-ish to get back. It’s the one I’d want most, though, so I need to figure out if I want it enough to pay the squatter’s asking price or if I’d be okay going .org or changing up the name slightly. In either case, if I do move, I’ll have this domain redirect until it expires as I don’t think I’ll ever want this one back again.

There has not been any sun today.

It’s been quiet. I’ve been a little sad, inexplicably so.

I finished Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. At first I’d thought it was going to be a new kind of Harry Potter, and I was right, it was, but Harry Potter is about the magic of childhood, and The Magicians is about the magic of adulthood, and being an adult is so much harder. It ended sadly. That made me sad, more than before.

I have deliberately de-chocolated the house recently in an effort to eat healthier. There are carrots.

My pile of to-be-answered email grows and grows.

I found a pair of thick socks that needed putting away, and instead I put them on my feet. Am suddenly much happier. Maybe the sun will be out tomorrow.

My post titled “Searching for the elusive cookie” is actually about the kind of cookies you eat, not the kind of cookies that Web browsers use to record personal information. If you’re trying to sneak a comment by me by making it look “legitimate”, perhaps for that post you should lead with something other than, “Thanks for writing about this. There’s a bunch of great tech info on the internet. You’ve got a lot of that info here on your site.”

Obviously you don’t read my site. It’s far more about the kind of cookies you eat than the kind of cookies you code.

Thanks for the laugh, though.

See the post below, about how I ignored my blog and didn’t do the suggested WordPress upgrade and contributed to a DOS attack on my hosting provider. The other part of this story, the part I just recognized, is that I got hacked. I haven’t checked to see how deep yet, but it’s pretty bad, I think. None of my links are working.

It’ll probably end up with me exporting my posts, wiping out my database, and starting all over with an import of the posts I want to keep. And since I don’t have time to do this now, or until December, I’m not sure what the state of blog will be in the meantime.

The main page works. Hope you weren’t looking for anything deeper, though (like advice on where to buy Nabisco Chocolate Wafers… don’t laugh, it’s quite a popular post).

So, ugly but back.

For now.

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A few minutes later, Leta meanders back outside. I hold up one of three chocolate bars that I’d fished out of a bag in the back seat and gesture emphatically to indicate that I’d be taking this one, please. She gestures back that I am not making any sense. I reach over and slowly unhook my seat belt, and then, equally slowly, unlock the door. Leta watches me dispassionately from the outside as though she’s curious what my next move will be. I open the car door.

The car alarm blares.

Leta doubles over with laughter. I am cracking up myself, and also trying to figure out how to turn the alarm off from inside the car (as obviously outside the car makes the car angry). It takes me only a few seconds to realize there is no way to do this without the keys.

Meanwhile, inside the convenience store, way in the back, Jason looks at Heather and asks, “Is that our car?” And because she is a wise, wise woman, she sighs, rolls her eyes, and says, “YES.”

The shoe Sarah Palin wore to the VP debate
(but I’m guessing hers was in black)

Not because she wore them, of course, but because they’re cute, but still….