Anyway, ego-surfing is one of those things that can be a vain (but fun) thing, and it can also be a useful tool for businesses, ministries and even individuals, for the purpose of finding out what others are saying about them, who is linking to them, who is quoting them, who is using their products, etc, etc.
I've mostly had fun with ego-surfing, and I've found it to be useful from time to time. I've googled (and yahoo'd) "Grace Roots," "Joel Brueseke," "Brueseke," and other such things, just to see what's out there. I've found distant relatives. I've found blogs and websites that are similar to mine. I've found blogs that have linked to things I've written. Because of all this I've been able to "meet" new people that I wouldn't have otherwise met.
[By the way, I have a question that someone might be able to answer. When I google "Grace Roots," one of the entries has a 'thumbnail view' of my blog. The thumbnail image is a picture of Mark Metcalf, who played sadistic ROTC Leader Doug Neidermeyer in National Lampoon's Animal House and also appeared in two Twisted Sister Videos (angry father in 'We're Not Gonna Take It' and angry high school teacher in 'I Wanna Rock'). I'm sure this thumbnail image has something to do with the fact that I posted a Twisted Sister video on my blog early last year. :) Not that I'm bothered by the image, but does anyone have any technical advice on how that image could be changed?]
Last week I mentioned how I had visited alexa.com and found old (archived) versions of my own website, as well as old versions of several other websites. I had fun doing this! Here is what my website looked like back in 2005 and 2006 (note: some of the links no longer work, nor does the contact form), compared with my website now. I'm kind of thinking about changing it again.
A couple of other things I found using Alexa's "Wayback Machine" are archived versions of the websites of the radio station I used to work at, including my old DJ profiles. My on-air name was "Joel Sommers," AKA "The Breezeman" (check out my profiles to see why). Here are my profiles from kwof.com in 2002 and 2005. This is before the website was changed to 891thespirit.com. The Wayback Machine worked for that site too, but the links to the more recent profiles didn't work. Anyway, it's not as if these profiles are ancient, but since I've been gone from the station for almost two years, it seems like forever ago!
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" Ha ha!
