A Shout Out To Austin

No, not the city, the person.

I was trying to sleep, but since that was not coming easily, I checked my Site Meter statistics quickly. What did I find, you ask? (OK, soyou didn't ask, but I will tell you anyway.) I found a hit from a Mac user in Hawaii. That alone is not too strange. People find their way to Caveat: Venter through all kinds of searches, but this user had Googled my name.

Now, there are two other people named Andrew Purvis who come up in these searches: one is a restaurant reviewer in England, and the other is the Time magazine Middle East bureau chief (he used to write about medicine for the magazine, so I have yet to work out that change of specialty). Anyone Googling my name could easily be looking for one of those two, though the latter is the more likely. Still, it was Hawaii. This got my brain going.

Back in high school I knew an Austin Sloat. I am not entirely certain why he put up with me back then (I was even more difficult than I am now), but we got along the entire year. He was only there for one academic year while his mother was on sabbatical at the University of Washington. She was a professor in Hawaii.

I put these pieces of information together, along with the fact that many of the people with whom I got along in high school are now Mac users, and Googled '"austin sloat" hawaii.' What did I find? An architect whose years of graduation seemed about right for someone in my high school class and who did his MS in Hawaii. Interesting, if perhaps merely circumstantial. This is all conjecture, but given that we are talking about a Mac user and that I have two widgets out there, perhaps the pieces really fit.

In any case, if it was you, Austin, and if you return, it's good to know you're out there. If it was someone else (someone who returns), leave a message to let me know.