So, about this name, Carlos D. Rodriguez. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Like you’d just look it up and be done. Well, let me tell you, that name took over my life for a solid week not too long ago, and it wasn’t for any fun reason.
It all kicked off when my manager, good guy but sometimes a bit vague, gave me this task. “Need you to find the original research by a Carlos D. Rodriguez,” he said. “It’s pretty important for this new project. Shouldn’t take you long.” Famous last words, those ones.
My Grand Investigation Begins
Okay, so first thing I did, obviously, was fire up the computer and punch “Carlos D. Rodriguez” into a search engine. And wow. Just wow. I got so many results. It felt like half the Spanish-speaking world was named Carlos D. Rodriguez, and they were all doing something notable.
I started trying to narrow things down. The brief I had was super fuzzy, just “some kind of technical paper.” So, my practice became this whole routine:
- I’d dig through university staff pages. One Carlos D. Rodriguez was a history professor, another taught marine biology.
- Then I’d hit the academic search sites. Found a bunch of papers, but none matched the vague clues I had.
- I even tried looking through professional networking sites. Lots of engineers, a few architects, even a musician.
Each time I thought I was onto something, it’d turn out to be the wrong Carlos D. Rodriguez, or the right one but in a completely different field from what we were expecting. I was drowning in Carlos D. Rodriguezes. My desk was covered in printouts and scribbled notes. I was dreaming about the name.
The Big “Discovery” (More of a Facepalm)
After days of this, getting absolutely nowhere and feeling like a total chump, I started to think maybe the problem wasn’t the Carlos D. Rodriguezes of the world. Maybe the problem was the information I started with. I went back to the original email chain where this “important research” was mentioned.
I traced it back, email by email, until I found the person who first brought it up. Old Dave from the engineering department, works mostly on legacy stuff. I went over to his desk. Dave, bless him, took a long look at my desperate face, thought for a minute, and then said, “Oh, Rodriguez! Yeah, Carlos. Wait, was it D? Or was it R? Carlos R. Rodriguez. Yeah, that’s it. He wrote an internal memo for us. Must have been fifteen years ago. Don’t think it ever went outside the company.”
Carlos. R. Rodriguez. Not D. And an internal memo. Not some groundbreaking, world-renowned research paper. It was sitting in our own damn company archive, probably gathering digital dust.
So, my big practical exercise in tracking down the elusive Carlos D. Rodriguez ended with me doing a simple search on our internal server for “Carlos R. Rodriguez memo.” Found it in about thirty seconds. It was… fine. Useful for what it was, I guess. Definitely not worth the global manhunt I’d been on for Carlos D.
What’s the takeaway from my practice here? Always, and I mean always, question the initial brief, especially if it sounds a bit off or too vague. And maybe, just maybe, check your own backyard before you go searching the entire planet. Saved me a lot of grief since then, I can tell you that.
