I received a rather perplexing bit of email today. It was sent to the email address associated with this web page (as opposed to my "work" email address). It was from a woman in a nearby town asking for help finding an address. No context. No explanation. Just a request. To wit:
Subject: help, need to find address
I searched on mapquest....no avail...can you help? Is ther a 1234 Stony Point, Ridge? Stony something??? Thanks!
Note that I changed the address to protect the privacy of the woman making the request. She'd sent her message from her work email address which included her contact info. So, I knew it wasn't your garden variety of spam. But, why send it to me? I was very confused by this request.
So, I did a quick search on Google for "1234 Stony" (again, not the actual address in the email message) and found a likely address listed for a business here in Austin. So, I wrote back:
I'm at a loss. Can you tell me why you sent this message to me? Just to satisfy my curiosity a bit, I did a Google search for "1234 Stony" and it came up with [...info deleted...]. I looked that up on Mapquest (specifying Austin as the city) and came up with a map to that spot. That address looks like it's in a residential area so I'm guessing that's a business run out of someone's home.
Oddly, that address is very near my home. Which made me wonder: do we know each other from somewhere and I'm just forgetting?
She wrote back explaining what she was looking for and said (in part):
I went into City of Austin, because I could not find this on mapquest...somehow I got into an Austin UT site and your name/article/something was there and I thought hey, since she lives there maybe she would know, so I took a gamble and sent you a message. And lookie here, you answered!
Still very confused about how she found my email address, I wrote back:
Good luck [...info deleted...]. I still don't quite see how you ended up contacting me but I guess it worked out for you.
She wrote back one more time and the mystery was finally solved:
OK, this is how I located you....I went into search for Austin Texas, gave me many sites, I chose austin.about.com, then you came up on the "article" first-Joanna.org and about her website, s0 I just asked YOU the question. And I am glad I did. :) Thanks!
Naturally, I had to go look up the austin.about.com site and lo! I found this at the top of an "About Austin" page:
Joanna.org
I don't know Joanna but I stumbled across her website this evening when I was searching for information on nostalgic sodas (I'll have more on that in a few days I hope). Any way, Joanna lives here in Austin and writes fairly regularly about any number of things happening to her or around here. Poking around I find she's been doing this site since at least 1997. The excerpts from the UT Campus Watch are amusing and she posts occasional funny photos with commentary. There's also Joanna's Longhorn Baseball Page which UT sports fan will enjoy. Take a break and enter her world at joanna.org
Saturday December 04, 2004 #
Isn't that just bizarre? The link to my page was put up on the 4th. Two days ago. I had no idea. And, then I got this odd email request two days later. It was just so out of the blue. I couldn't begin to understand why someone would just send me a question like that. But, now it all makes some sort of sense. My, oh my. The web sure is a peculiar organism, isn't it? Too funny.
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