Mistaken Identity

There is a multi-blog conversation going on at present between
Stillbert, Lindsay, Quinny, Gordy and myself which is touching on the problems associated with being too honest in your blog and being caught out by current or potential employers. Personally I believe that if you blog in a public place then you have to expect and welcome anyone reading it, and compose your missives with that in mind.

Lindsay refers to there being another Lindsay Beaton out there, and I guess we pretty much all have to deal with others from the 6,423,430,637 people on the planet sharing our name.

If I google for my name, then after ignoring all the inevitable porn sponsered links, I find three alternative Ian Gay personas, and all on the first page.

I first discovered there was another Ian Gay showing up in cyberspace a few years ago, he is a Software Engineer and Chemist from Canada, and seems to keep pinching my username to various websites. Nothing too wierd yet.

Next I find another Ian Gay, living in Perth, works in a prominant role at Qantas. My brother works for Qantas and constantly gets asked if he has a brother Ian, to which he replies yes and no. Getting a little wierder now.

But the one that takes the cake is an electrical engineer about my age (I left high school to study electrical engineering), in prison along with his wife for murdering their young son by poisoning him with salt, apparently because he was naughty.

Now I'm not one of these people that cares too much if a google search has me at the top or not, but I am keen to make sure I appear above this last bloke..