Current mood:
forgotten
No, not really. There's this new data-agglomeration site called Spokeo.com, and some people are alarmed by it (though it's nothing new!). The site offers up information on any person you enter, based on who-knows-what databases. It's cheap, too.
Well, far from being afraid of this site - I'm disappointed! Computers were supposed to help us get shit together, from idealized road and transit planning to custom ads projected into our eyeballs on the fly. Frankly I _want_ ads to be targeted to me, correctly. I _want_ to be offered something I truly want, exactly at the moment I realized I wanted it. Well, it looks like we're a loong way off from Minority Report.
Here are bits of my profile preview.
Ok, we got that part right! Shouldn't be a big challenge, since I'm on the deed for this property.
I can see it now, "Mr Mahaney, it's an hour and a half after your usual time to get home. Would you like to pick up something for your wife on the way home?" Well, maybe, but I haven't spoken to her in ten years. I don't think another couple hours is gonna matter.
Here's the really fun bits! Let's see, I'm in a "below average" neighborhood, and a million dollar house. Right. I wonder what the better neighborhoods look like! [and clearly they don't even check their own data against each other]
Gemini are bad news, and I'm not one of them.
I barely read stuff outside of catalogs. "Keeping this dump from falling down" is hardly the same as "home decorating".
14 years is close to how long I've been here, if by "close" we can allow "off by triple"!
The uncannily accurate bit is the occupation. "Clerical/Service Worker" is exactly what I do! Never mind that my cards say "mechanical engineer", it's sadly true.
Hit or miss here, but one big miss is "has children". Thing is, I know exactly where this came from. When the ex-wife was a photographer, she was getting a bunch of bride and young-mother and baby magazines, because that was her clientele and she was keeping up with what they were seeing. To this day I get mail from people who use that subscription list, and it keeps up with the approximate age of my theoretical offspring! Not too many years now I'll be buried with unsolicited college applications...
Shouldn't be any problem paying for those 1-3 children to go to college. With 14 years in this million dollar house, it should be easy to get a mortgage against the equity. Maybe we can even afford to finish that swimming pool!
Yep, I got it made.
