And once again, LinkedIn's network analysis is creeping me out

This morning, I decided to do my once-every-six-month trawl through LinkedIn's "Do You Know These People?" recommendations of connections. (Mainly because someone has, once again, endorsed my skills. Which is appreciated, but I do wish the system was better at getting endorsements for things I am actually current in and enjoy, like Scala, as opposed to words people recognize, like Java.)

As usual, it's a pretty good list of connection suggestions, and I can see how they came up with most of them -- I don't actually accept most recommendations, but that's because my LinkedIn flist is restricted to people who I know well enough either personally or professionally that I can recommend them for a job. (About 75% of their suggestions are people I know, but in most cases by now, don't know quite that well -- or sometimes, wouldn't recommend.)

But in the middle of the list, it suggested Lynne Stockman. How the bloody *blazes* did it recommend Lynne Stockman?

Lynne's my realtor, the one selling my house. She's reasonably good at her job -- she and her husband Phil sold our previous place in three days flat, and while I'm disappointed in how slow the process is going this time, I have to be realistic that that's mostly because the market is still fairly wobbly.

But that's my only relationship with her. She's only a third-degree connection in LinkedIn, which is practically the other end of the world socially. Not only is there nothing in my personal information that would point to her, she's not even related in any sensible graph-theory way.

I can only assume that LinkedIn is hoovering up vast amounts of public information, and hooking it together behind the scenes, to find that she is the realtor for the house that I am selling. Either that, or (creepier still, but seems unlikely) they have some deal with Google, to spy on the social graph inherent in emails, which is our one significant online relationship. Either way, it's pretty bloody disconcerting...

Life in one city is much like another

We had some errands downtown today, so Kate and I decided to go have lunch in the North End. Following that, Kate discovered that I had never been to Mike's Pastries, so we headed over there to pick up some dessert for tonight. (Mmm -- espresso cannoli.) Thence back towards Faneuil Hall, where we went our separate ways -- her to work, and me to quickly poke around, since I hadn't been to Quincy Market in an age.

After a quick reminder that Quincy Market is just like any other mall (aside from an exceptionally good food court), I started to head home. But I quickly decided that Park Street was out of my way, so I headed towards Charles MGH.

When I got to Charles, I was still slightly tipsy from the monumental cocktail at lunch (a tasty but idiosyncratic "Manhattan", dominated by cherry liquor), and I wanted to walk it off. So I headed across the Longfellow to Kendall.

By the time I got to Kendall, I was finally clear-headed again, and enjoying the walk. So I kept going towards Central.

By the time I got to Central, I was fully up to speed, and realized that the stubborn side of my brain had engaged. So I gave up on illusions of the MBTA, turned right, stopped in Whole Foods for a bottle of iced tea, and walked home to Ball Square.

All told, it was about six miles home from Mike's -- add to that about two miles of walking before lunch, and it's been a good day of exercise.

And the thing is, it doesn't feel *strange*. My feet are a tad blistered, but it reminds me of nothing quite so much as a good day at Pennsic, where I probably average about six miles of walking per day. The details are obviously different, but the general notion feels very similar: starting from home, walking downtown, doing some errands, having lunch, hitting some neighborhoods and walking home again. Granted, here I'm not carrying a big bundle of archery equipment, but the effect is nonetheless much the same, and it's really quite lovely.

I have a feeling that I'm going to get very used to city life, very quickly. I suspect I'm never going to be comfortable in the suburbs again...