July 2005

For my birthday, I received an iTunes gift card purchased at Circuit City. Great gift!

Unfortunately, due to some unusual sales methods the card was almost useless.

This is what the card looks like upon purchase:

I, as the purchaser did, assumed that the code used to redeem the card was either contained on the back or within the folded cardboard that makes up the card.

But in fact, the relevant code is not contained anywhere on the card! Here’s the back:

(click thumbnail to enlarge)

That’s right, the code is contained only on the receipt. I didn’t notice this until I went to redeem the card two days after receiving it. Thankfully, the receipt hadn’t been thrown out yet.

Apple’s instructions inside iTunes itself for redeeming gift cards claim that the codes are contained on the backs of cards. Circuit City does not follow this model, and the cashier did not mention it at purchase time. I’m sure someone has overlooked this fact and ended up with a dud card. Just wanted to give a heads up.

Prompted by a number of blog posts recently, I’ve been thinking about managing one’s online presence.

I’m very aware of the fact that potential employers can easily Google my name as a sort of introductory level background check. As I send out my applications, what will they find?

I’m not sure why I haven’t noticed this before, but a search for my name as “Chad Haefele” does not bring up Hidden Peanuts until page 2 of the Google results. Perhaps I haven’t used my last name enough on the site. My natural inclination is to hide personally trackable information online. But maybe in the case of this site, where I’m trying to establish a professional reputation, calls for different rules.

Despite not bringing up this site, all of the page 1 Google results, except one, are for the correct ‘version’ of me. I have a somewhat uncommon name, so this isn’t surprising. However, a couple of them are rather odd results. Perhaps foolishly, I used my real name in an online game tied in to the release of Halo 2 last fall. I made it onto a couple of sites related to the game, and will probably be out there to be found for a while yet. While there’s nothing too embarassing in the pages in question, they aren’t first sites I want a potential employer seeing.

Is this something we should be teaching college students? Or high school? Even younger? Everyone makes youthful indiscretions now and then – kids growing up in this hyper-connected era need to be aware that on the Internet, publication is often forever. As the old saying goes, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. And carefully crafting your apparent personality and participation online could be a big part of it.

Interestingly, if you have a generic name like “Bob Smith” this is probably a non-issue; there’s no way to make yourself stand out to Google from such a large crowd.