The Southern Yankee by Sue Ellen Ross

Although I know there is a wealth of information and entertainment on the Internet, it seems the only time I get to use it is when it is work-related.

I don’t have a lot of free time to surf, so when one of my girlfriends told me about a particular interesting ‘name’ site, I just filed it away in my memory bank.

I don’t know why, but the website came to mind the other day while I was waiting for the mail lady. I was expecting something important, and didn’t want to leave the house without it, so I decided to use my wait-time on the computer.

I was on the ‘name’ site for more than 45 minutes.

It seems that if you type your name in quotation marks in the engine search line of Google.com, you can find others that share your name.

When I typed in “Sue Ellen Ross,” I was surprised to find an artist from Seattle, WA and a home decorator from Westfall, VA that have the same name as mine. They both have sites linked to their names that allow visitors to buy their paintings, calendars, etc.

And in between their listings on the ‘name site,’ I found a few items that pertained to me!

A few months ago, I wrote an article about Identity Theft in this newspaper. It was picked up on the Equifax site, imagine my surprise when it was listed in its entirety.

Also, an article I wrote on Community Diversity was picked up by an educational digest in Washington, D. C. The strange thing about this is that I wrote this story in 1996 when I was working in Indianapolis, IN for TOPICS newspapers.

A few more stories I recently wrote for L’Observateur also were included in the site list.

Sue Ellen from the television show, DALLAS, was included on the website too, so I guess they add entertainment names in addition to professional people.

Here I was, thinking about those talented Sue Ellens that designed products to sell and made tons of money appearing on T.V; wondering how I measured up.

No need to worry. Somebody out there must like me, since some my stories seem to be interesting enough to catch their attention and listed on a website.

Now there’s a story – who looks where to put these things on the ‘name’ website?