{"id":43555,"date":"2014-05-05T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T17:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43555"},"modified":"2014-05-05T12:30:39","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T17:30:39","slug":"mitch-like-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43555","title":{"rendered":"Mitch Like Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Are you that<\/em> Mitch Berg?”<\/p>\n

When I moved to the Twin Cities, I looked in the Minneapolis phonebook. I counted seven Mitchell Bergs. To the best of my knowledge, I was number eight.<\/p>\n

I didn’t think about it much, again, until probably the early 1990s, when I was trying to make a living in the IT business. During the five years I was a technical writer, and a few more times when I switched to user experience, I’d go to interviews, and be asked “are you the Mitch Berg that used to work at Control Data”?<\/p>\n

Apparently, there is a Mitch Berg in the IT business \u2013 or was, anyway.\u00a0 He is at least a few years older than me, and more of a programmer than an analyst\/designer. But a Mitch Berg nonetheless.<\/p>\n

And though over the years I’ve met all sorts of people who had met the other Mitch Berg, we’ve never met, nor have I actually met anyone who has but we met the other Mitch Berg. At least, not the Control Data Mitch Berg.<\/p>\n

Of course, about the time I was getting into my career as a user experience guy, I got a lot more of the “Are you Mitch Berger,\u00a0the Vikings punter?” But I haven’t had that one in a few years.<\/p>\n

Of course, a year or two ago a number of Twin Cities liberal bloggers and other such bilge hit their pointy little knees every night praying that I was the Mitch Berg, City Councilman of some eastern border town along the St. Croix River, who had apparently resigned under some kind of fire. Because in the narrow, gray, lumpen, claustrophobic public restroom of the Lefty blogger “mind”, a juicy “gotcha” is really the highest joy one can aspire to. But no such luck \u2013 Not only have II never been elected to any office, I will never run for one.<\/p>\n

And now, I’m told the circle was turning; a colleague of mine knows of a family with a young fellow named \u2013 you guessed it, Mitch Berg. I think he may have just graduated from high school, or is at least in that general age bracket.<\/p>\n

And I can only hope he goes into IT, and has 10 or 15 years of being mistaken for me.<\/p>\n

Or that other Mitch Berg.<\/p>\n

Or that other other Mitch Berg.<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 The initial draft of this story was written entirely using my phone’s “Voice to Text” feature. As, indeed, some of you noticed.<\/p>\n

But my mental reminder to “edit the post before\u00a0 you publish it” apparently didn’t sink in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it showed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

(There is no “Natalie Berg” – that I know of…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Are you that Mitch Berg?” When I moved to the Twin Cities, I looked in the Minneapolis phonebook. I counted seven Mitchell Bergs. To the best of my knowledge, I was number eight. I didn’t think about it much, again, until probably the early 1990s, when I was trying to make a living in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43555"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43561,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43555\/revisions\/43561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}