Day: July 27, 2006

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Search terms

We all know people who have Googled past girlfriends or boyfriends (“just to find out what they’re up to,” of course).

Okay: we’ve all Googled past girlfriends or boyfriends. Fine.

Sometimes, the former partner’s name is common enough that the search is fruitless. Other times, the person has a really distinct name, like, I don’t know, “Gil Roth” or something. (Actually, a search on my name does turn up a few other namesakes, including a NASCAR racer and an exec at a supply chain software provider, but hey.)

I’m not sure what people are looking for when they do this. Optimally, the former partner

a) has come into lots and lots of money and

b) still thinks highly of you.

But this doesn’t happen often, I bet. In my case, when I look up absent friends and comedians, it’s generally out of curiosity. A bunch of years ago, I looked up an old college buddy to discover

a) he was in the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ original lineup

b) he quit shortly before they had their hit single

c) he died of a heroin overdose a few months before I looked him up.

That was pretty freaky, but it led me back into contact with another old college buddy, which worked out okay.

All of this is prelude to letting you know, dear reader, that your Virtual Memoirist has been Googled by Not Just Anybody. No, I get hits on this site all the time from people who look me up on Google and other search engines. I admit that it’s kinda befuddling, trying to figure out who’s searching for my name or site, based on the general geography of their IP address (thanks to the SiteMeter code on the page). Sometimes it’s a relative, or an old friend, or a reader of my magazine. Someone goes to a public library in Trenton, NJ and searches for “virtual memories gil roth” almost every day.

But this was Not Just Anybody. No, dear reader, I was Googled by the very first girl ever to, um, google me. That’s right; this site has been discovered by the first girl I ever had sex with (my brother’s been complaining for a long time about a lack of ex-girlfriend stories on this site, but this is as good as it’s going to get, so deal).

She sent me a very nice e-mail Monday morning about this discovery, and told me a little about the intervening, um, eighteen years. Once my proto-Art School Girl of Doom, she’s now living a much more conventional life, and seemed a little embarrassed by that fact. There were a lot of other details, but she might get really pissed off if I mention any of them.

I tried writing her back, and realized how insane it is to try to recapitulate the second half of my life. It was tough enough when a friend I both met and fell outta touch with in 2002 recently wrote and asked me what’s gone on in the last 4 years. Writing back to her, I started to look over old posts from this site. I had trouble figuring out who was writing here sometimes (guest-bloggers excluded). It made me think about the mini- and maxi-transformations we undergo, the revolutions, the minor fall, the major lift, etc., etc., amen. Eighteen years is more than half of my life. The good half.

Eventually, I composed a decent e-mail back to her, and we’ve corresponded during the week. Her life’s been tough, but she seems happy that I have my life together.

One thing to note (and she said it’s okay to mention this) is that she’s been clean and sober for five years now. In and of itself, it’s not that interesting a fact. People sober up all the time. What’s interesting is that it adds to the tally of my demented single life.

First girl I ever kissed: Clean & sober for 20 years

First girl I ever had sex with: Clean & sober for 5 years

Number of sexual partners who have gone on to do charity work for Habitats for Humanity: Three (plus another one’s father designs homes for them)

Which is to say either I really knew how to pick ’em, or I really knew how to wreck ’em. Or both.

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And they said I’d never amount to anything

I’m interviewing a pair of companies this morning for an article in my September issue. Their combined 2005 revenues were $126 billion.

One’s a major drug company, the other a major healthcare distributor. Margins are a funny thing: the drug company had around $52 billion in sales, with a cost-of-goods of $8.5 billion, while the distributor had $74 billion in sales, with a cost-of-goods of $70 billion. On the other hand, the drug company’s selling, general, and administrative costs were $17 billion while the distributor’s SGA costs were $2.8 billion.

Reminds me of those differences in R&D costs from a few posts back.

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Alta Vista

Microsoft is trying to get PC designers to get some of that Apple feeling, by incorporating such exTREME! trends as the use of black! and white!

The PC world used to be divided into two camps: those who made lucrative software and the poor schlubs who built the low-margin hardware it ran on.

Apple has turned that model on its head. From the beginning it has managed to create a unified design for its products by building everything itself, first with the Mac and then later with the iPod. Although Apple sells one computer for every 20 PCs, the iPod’s success has proved how crucial it is to create a seamless experience for consumers, who are buying much of the gear these days. Says a top PC design executive: “You’re going to see more and more of this desire to integrate hardware and software.”

Even if it means borrowing from Apple. Microsoft denies doing that, saying it’s simply responding to demand for good design. Yet its approach has more than an echo of the Apple ethos.

“We’re decomposing the look and feel of Vista and bringing it into a language that hardware designers understand,” says Steve Kaneko, design director of Windows hardware innovation. And here’s another Apple-esque detail: The Zune player will work only with Microsoft’s planned music service, sources say. In other words, it will be part of a closed system, like iPod and the iTunes Music Store.

Decomposing? Anyway, given that a huge chunk of the Wintel PC market is based on churning out units as cheaply as possible for a customer base that wants to pay $499 for a computer, it’s unlikely that this initiative is going to yield anything half as elegant as the flatscreen iMac or the Mac Mini. But I give ’em credit for trying, even if it does put me in mind of that great “what if?” video about Microsoft designing the packaging for the iPod.