Monday, July 24, 2006

Damn, I've Outed Myself

So, my Statcounter logs of late have shown a lot of activity from various points on the AOL network, invariably from searches relating to my original entry on Bob Wooldridge's untimely death, which I had also tagged in Technorati.

(By the way, for those of you seeking to pump up your visitor counts, blog about Washingtonpost.com articles, making sure you link back to them; your blog will show up in the article's Technorati widget. Use this knowledge only for good.)

Now, I make it a point not to talk about work in this blog. Mostly because I like my (relatively) unblemished employment record, but also because I like to think I can keep my personal life (such as it is) separate from my work life. This includes doing things like keeping separate Technorati profiles and Flickr accounts for work and personal business, for example.

(I'm not one of those folks who's trying to build his name into some standalone, ubiquitous blog brand, with one blog for both personal and professional purposes -- those people kind of irritate me. I'm not sure why.)

Also, I find that doing my work blog kind of cramps my personal blogging style. Not only can I not talk about certain things, since it could potentially come back and bite me (which is not unique to me, of course), but I rarely do any personal blogging during the day (not even during lunch). Since I also usually don't feel like personal blogging at home (because it starts to feel like work again), it's one of the reasons I have week-long breaks in the blog, even though I have stuff that I want to write about.

That last one's kind of an occupational hazard for a corporate blogger.

I posted some similar thoughts over in my work blog, only from the viewpoint of a good corporate citizen -- it basically says that while my work blog isn't a persona that I put on, it's not quite 100% me. Which is true.

The point I was trying to make is that, because of all the new AOL traffic, I can no longer cling to the illusion that people who only know me through my work blog don't also know about this blog.

Now, it's not like it was a really robust illusion to begin with. If you Google my name (which I state very clearly in both blogs), my work blog is the first result, and my personal blog is the third result.

Still, it was kind of comforting that there wasn't a lot of crossover between the two worlds. There probably still isn't, but the potential is there. Of course, it's probably not helping any that I'm doing this entry, but the genie is already out of the bottle. Besides, I'm not that interesting.

Continuing with the referrers, I also saw a sharp spike in traffic after the Express's blog (the Washington Post's free commuter-targeted daily) picked up the Bob entry -- I can only assume they've got someone trolling the dcblogs.com/live feed. That accounted for a bunch of hits from around the region, including at least one from the CIA.

Other than that, I just note that:

* Lots of people around the world are interested in Lamer Cream
* My item on using Pepcid AC to fight the Asian Flush is pretty popular, relatively speaking (which is to say, it's marginally less-unknown than the rest of the entries). I'm glad to be of service in any way that I can.
* There are a bunch of people (especially in the Middle East) who find my blog because they're looking for Man Ass. This disturbs me, and I'm sure it disappoints them.
* Speaking of disappointment, I'm still kind of disappointed that my Blog Analysis and Review tool entry never really got any traction. I know of more than a few people who could benefit from it.
* The folks over at the Reston edition of Backfence put my blog back in their local blogs section, after a week's break. Hey, make up your minds.

In closing, this is not a conclusion.

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