The other Chris Hardies out there

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Back when the Internet was small enough to fit on my current 80GB hard drive, there were no other Chris Hardies in the world. I was it, and I was certainly the only one with any sort of online presence. Even though I come from a long line of Farquharsons, if you looked for my name in search engines, you could find all sorts of stuff about me, but ONLY me. I was special, a beautiful unique snowflake.

These days, I am apparently part of the same decaying organic matter as everything else. I have some company from other Chris Hardies out there, some of them surprisingly close to me in either geographical, occupational or metaphysical location. Here's a survey:

Christopher Hardie is the Director of Residence Life at Mount Aloysius College in Cresson, PA.

Chris Hardie is the Local News Editor for the La Crosse Tribune in Wisconsin, and editor of StrayVoltage.org. He has apparently won various awards for his reporting on the agricultural and health concerns related to stray voltage. That is likely the same Chris Hardie who is the Publisher of the Coulee News also in Wisconsin.

Chris Hardie is a Windows Network Engineer living in New Orleans. He's involved with the website thornhill.org, which is dedicated to the research of the Hardie family tree. I *really* need to bust out my grandfather's geneology stuff and get it online sometime.

Chris Hardie is a young Canadian hockey player with the Minto Hockey Association.

Chris Hardie is a Briton with a very simple website.

That may or may not be the Chris Hardie who lives in Shropshire, England. His family is from Glasgow, Scotland. He may have a real estate holdings company he's associated with, but I don't think it's related to the Australian-based Hardie Holdings.

That Chris Hardie is probably not the same Chris Hardie who is the Director of Residential Property at Brodies LLP, a commercial law practice in Edinburg, Scotland. It's important to recognize that that Chris "demonstrates a fresh and enthusiastic approach which endears him to a loyal client base." Go, Chris!

Chris Hardie is a web developer in Ottawa, Ontario in Canada, who has been popping up in various technical mailing lists asking questions about various design issues. Chris is excited about standards-based website design and open source content management systems, as am I.

James Hardie (my first name is James) is a world leader in fiber cement siding, backerboard and pipe. When I go to the local Lowe's home improvement store, I often see big signs with my, er, his name on it.

Did I miss any? Speak up, Chris!

The good news (from a purely selfish and egotistical perspective, anyway - are there others?) is that of the 374,000 results in Google when searching for chris hardie, I'm still number one. Boo-ya! Take that, Chris! 🙂 But really, I'm happy to be sharing cyberspace with my fellow Hardies and hope I can meet them all - online or in person - at some point.

9 thoughts on “The other Chris Hardies out there

  1. This is the Chris Hardie who is the former local news editor at the La Crosse Tribune who is now a publisher of nine weekly papers. I too am a Farquharson clan member and did publish the articles about stray voltage. Maybe we can start our own Chris Hardie Clan?

  2. So you're the one that stole my domain name! 🙂

    Ever wonder about the variant spelling of our last name? After traveling to Scotland, I discovered that our ancestors were quite illiterate for an extended period of time, long after they struck out to different parts of the country. When they finally had to learn to pick up a pen, some wrote their name "Hardy", while others wrote "Hardie". Scotland is the only place where I have ever been asked to confirm the spelling of my last name!

    If you want to check out your roots, visit the Deeside River, it is where our clan lived for generations under the protection of the Farquharson clan.

    Cheers,

    Chris (The one from Ottawa)

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