A lost Exit78 post, recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011
I’ve been using StumbleUpon for over 3 years now — an eternity it seems in time online.
On StumbleUpon, everyone has some kind of image — avatar — for their pages. When I began there, it was important to me that I have something that was uniquely mine. I started with an modified image of myself and periodically replaced it with a new version. These are the initial images that I created — I’m not sure if I used all of them. The original image was one that was taken at work, and by the way, it’s mixed in with these, though I never did use it as a StumbleUpon image.
I also used this image, I believe. It’s from drawing of a meeting of rebel and union pickets by Edwin Forbes.
This one was my second longest running image. It a composite of a civil war photograph and a modern photo of our late cat, Oddball.
I also used Oddball’s image in 2004 and 2006 to encourage people to at least consider voting.
Like many people, I was very disappointed with the 2004 results. However, in 2006, mostly because the results were a rebuke to the policies of the current administration, I celebrated a little by using the following image:
The final image is the one that I’ve used the longest, I believe, for my avatar on StumbleUpon. I’m the guy with the clipboard.
Perhaps it’s time to cycle back through some of them, but I doubt if I will.
Comments on “My Avatars (images) on StumbleUpon”
October 19, 2007
teeni @ 6:27 pm
You did some fun things with your image! LOL. Oh, your cat was adorable! So sorry to hear Oddball isn’t around any longer. So you are the important looking guy holding the clipboard? You ARE tall, just like you said. So, is that a real control room or a simulator?
Mike Goad @ 9:37 pm
Yes, I was the guy with the clipboard.
It was a simulator in Lynchburg, Virginia, the same one that the guys at TMI had gone to for some very basic training. After the accident at TMI, the training there was a lot more intensive. Our reactor was the same as the one at TMI where the accident occurred.
That photo was taken in 1982. The three of us of were in reactor operator license class. The company that owned the simulator was doing some pictures for some promo ads and asked us to participate. A few years later, after all of the US plants got their own simulators, this simulator was sold to a plant on the shores of Lake Erie in Ohio. It was installed in their training center for use in training technicians, if I remember right. I saw it when I was there on a business trip in the late 90s.
I was a simulator instructor at the power plant I worked at in Arkansas for over 20 years, though it wasn’t one of my primary jobs. I stopped by the simulator this afternoon, just to visit and, when I listened to some of a training crew debrief, actually thought of an earlier comment you made on Exit78. Something about all those acronyms.
October 22, 2007
Rose @ 11:05 am
Interesting avatars. Mine is boring. lol It is just a pic of me. I added you to my friends list.
