15 November 2008 Five seconds of fame


Bocce on the beach in Tebenkof Bay Wilderness Area in SE Alaska

Assuming that I'm like most people, I will admit that occasionally I google my name to see what comes up. If that fiance who dumped me in college wants to know what would have happened if he'd taken that road, what would he read about me? My last name is extremely common, however, so typing my name alone doesn't bring me up in the top 20 (I'm too lazy to click farther than that). Adding 'Alaska' to the search brings up quite a few hits related to my job. But will those from my distant past even guess that I did almost a 180 in my career AND moved to Alaska? To get my blog to come up, I have to type in so many search words as to be ridiculous.

If you've had similar disappointing experiences while googling yourself, you might understand why I was very pleased to find out that my blog was the 6th hit when Paul was googling something other than me the other day. Back in May 2007 I posted about playing bocce on a gravel bar in the Susitna River. Paul was googling to find out the meaning of the Italian word 'palino,' which is the name of the small ball tossed at the beginning of each bocce round.

Why does Google think I'm a bocce expert? It doesn't. Seems that Paul and I both misspelled 'palino.' Google gave Paul the option to correct his mistake, and he soon clicked on "did you mean 'pallino'" and found the answer to his question. Thus my 5 seconds of extremely minor fame with the guy I've spent almost half my life with. But if you can still surprise someone, albeit unintentionally, that you've lived with that long, it's a good thing and gives you something to talk about on the morning commute.

I tried his google search as soon as I booted up my computer at work. 'Palino' - no Corinne blog but an Italian article about Sara Palino, governor of Alaska (ugh!). 'Palino' and 'bocce' - still no blog. Ah, the vagaries of Google and the fruitless search for 5 more seconds of fame.

2 comments:

Alaska's Dirt said...

ha, ha......you are as bad as me...now you need to register on facebook and really get into the vulgar of self.

Anonymous said...

My bocce balls where famous to!