Everything shows up online now. Bit by bit, pieces of my journalism and personal past are popping up here and there. Some I’ve put there, some I haven’t, and all of them make me glad that I’ve been relatively circumspect in my personal life.

Example: This 1982 column about Donkey Kong. 1982! Donkey Kong! I was 22 at the time and had just moved to Cape Girardeau, Mo. from my home town of Jefferson City. I already was on my second job in the business (NPR is Job No. 10), and Donkey Kong had swept the nation. All I can do now is look at  that column and groan.

There’s this 1994 American Journalism Review article about the Little Rock paper’s sudden high profile in the Clinton era, in which I was quoted several times. Sixteen years later, the exact same author threw me under the bus.

If you look around, you can find a 1993 online mailing list post in which I discuss harmonica technique, or a 2008 post from a former co-worker in which he discusses a croquet club to which I  belonged in the 1980s. There’s a cruise review I wrote in 1998 and a Vegas trip report from 2002. And I’ve got articles printed all over the place from all sorts of dates, thanks to the magic of syndication.

Every once in a while I’ll put on my Serious Boss Face and interview a job candidate or two. I often wonder what they think — especially the younger ones — if they Google me before or after the interview. The results probably perplex them. I think that’s a good thing.

Previously: Albert Pujols is dead to me | Hokum home