Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Name Game

Before Mermaid Girl was born I used to hit the Social Security baby name site like a slot machine almost every night, hoping that by some magic trick our chosen name would have dropped from the top 5 in the interim. I tracked names obsessively, both on the site and in our hip little corner of the Northwest, becoming something of a baby-name maven.

Which is all by way of saying that if NameVoyager had been around five years ago, I would have been a total goner. (Hah! Yeah, like I'm not a total goner even now.) Takes a while to load, requires Java, but if you're a name junkie it's so worth it. It's a name tracker! It's an interactive toy! It's a thing of beauty! It's going to keep me up too late again tonight, as I procrastinate on my book reviews!

Thanks to to Blogging Baby for featuring the NameVoyager and for having the good taste to hire Jay of the Zero Boss, thus inadvertantly pointing me towards it and giving me even more online stuff to compulsively check.

Now I have to go read the companion baby name blog. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

3 Comments:

Blogger Robyn said...

ok...am i losing my mind? i could SWEAR that i read this post a few weeks ago. and i loved the NameVoyager. but when i went back to your site....it was as if i had dreamed the post. weirdness. and NOW it's back. will it magically disappear again? thanks for that cool link!

6:18 AM  
Blogger elswhere said...

Robyn--you're not crazy; I had this up for a few hours when I first wrote it a couple weeks ago, then pulled it (not for any big reason), then decided to put it back up with some minor changes.

Anna-- that site cracks me up! Though I have to admit I like a few of the names (Like Loudon! Hey, Loudon Wainwright! What's wrong with Loudon?).

Everyone-- are you getting to see the NameVoyager through this link? Whenever I click on it, it mysteriously closes down my browser.

5:14 PM  
Blogger Robyn said...

Els,

NameVoyager works great on both my home and work computers. methinks yer 'puter's got the flu.

8:41 PM  

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