I'm famous!

So I was just pointed to this random post on the Harold B. Lee Library blog:

Apparently, I'm now famous for pushing the limits and getting BYU to actually allow pages to be created for networking on Facebook. It took about three months to get approval from the highest powers and my experiment was an utter failure, with hardly anyone joining the group and no one using it. It was, however, something new and it didn't cost us anything about the 14 minutes I spent putting the group together and led to a professional presentation about social networking sights here on campus.

Sure, it was an accomplishment being a pioneer, but unlike the comment implies, I doubt that this act alone could assure my Godhood status....

Flashback Friday

Stealing a note from Nancy's book....or blog..., here's my Flashback moment.

As a senior at BYU, I lived south of campus. Everyday, I would walk to school, which really wasn't very far and as such, was normally fairly uneventful. One morning, however, I saw a guy, who was talking on his cellphone, hit a deer. Being close to the situation, I managed to hear the cellphone conversation.

"Dude, I just hit a deer."

"No, I was walking!"

Seriously, this guy was walking up the path on the south campus hill (often called rape hill) and was talking talking on his cell, completely oblivious to his surroundings. A deer stepped out of the bushes and started walking across the path. Neither was aware of the other. Biped walked into tail end of quadruped, knocking the deer on it's rump and sending the young man staggering backwards. The deer took off running as the guy caught his balance. Then I heard the one end of the exuberant cellphone conversation. I seriously think that is one of the funniest situations I have ever witnessed.

Funny...

Yesterday, I was standing in line for a couple of value-menu tacos at Taco Bell (the only cheap food left in the CougarEat at BYU...also a funny name, but that's another post entirely). Interestingly, there were a couple of older visitors to the university who had one of those unexpected reunions. I gathered that they were friends or roommates at BYU many years ago but were discussing children and grandchildren.

As they were parting, one of them said, "It was nice catching up with you. Are you on Facebook?" The other replied in the affirmative and they discussed how they would add each other as friends. "My name is _____ on Facebook if you can remember that." "Do you remember ______ or ______? I'm friends with them and you can add me through their pages."

I must say, I was rather amused at what has extended while beyond a college phenomenon and has become virtually universal. My family even organizes family reunions on Facebook! And to think, I joined Facebook in 2006 when there were less than 1000 people on Facebook from BYU, 2 from my old High School in Alberta, and less than 100 from my High School in Orem. Now, I've found most of my best friends from my various elementary schools, old teachers, seminary teachers, aunts, uncles, and family of all kinds, and I'm even friends with my friend's cousin's mannequin head for her hairstyling school. Even my Brazilian friends are leaving their old Orkut accounts and being converted to Facebook.

I think the world has become obsessed.

I'm Done

Well, It's been two years coming, but I finished my Masters Degree. I don't know, it seems kind of anticlimactic. I think the biggest feeling is one of relief that it's over -no enthusiastic shouts of joy or exhilarating sense of accomplishment. I bought myself a set of Bocce Balls to celebrate...or it could have simply been an impulse buy. They were on sale and I wanted a new outdoor date activity. But now, I can put David Layton, MLIS on my letterhead. Not that I have any letterhead or would if I did, but just the thought that I can seems amusing.

Together with my MLIS, I completed the Masters Certificate in Management and, truth be told, I preferred the management classes to any other that I took. I'm now perusing the graduate school PhD options at BYU to see what I can do next, but I'm thinking an MBA would be a lot of fun as well. I'll have to keep my options open. It's a shame BYU doesn't have a PhD in any International Relations orientation. I would be all over that in a flash.