anniversary post

10 years ago today, I gave in to peer pressure and registered for Facebook.  While it was still on thefacebook.com at the time, many people had already dropped the “The” when referring to it. My confirmation email is below. I love how simple it is. The subject line doesn’t even mention the name of the service. I wonder what it looks like when you register today.

from: thefacebook.com <register@thefacebook.com>
date: Thu, Oct 28, 2004 at 2:08 PM
subject: confirmation email

Michael Wyszomierski,

You are receiving this email because you just registered at thefacebook.com. To complete your registration, please follow the link printed below:

http://jhu.thefacebook.com/confirmation.php?id=5403365&code=630828304

Thanks!
thefacebook.com team

To orient you in the Internet timeline, I had signed up for both Gmail and Flickr during the previous month. 2004 was a big year.

Land’s End

I’m not usually spontaneous, but on Saturday, without any prior planning, I visited Land’s End and then boarded a party bus headed to an unknown destination. It was terrifying, especially when I accidentally started eating a veggie burger made with black beans. But hey I have pictures.

View of ocean from Land's End

bus exterior

party in the bus

party in the bus

bus

One of my favorite people

Beah recently did a talk at Walnut St. Labs in Pennsylvania about what she’s learned in her career, and I enjoyed watching it tonight during dinner. One of the things that I remember from when Beah first joined Google is that she actually had, I believe, three job descriptions, plus she was asked to learn Thai. I’ll be talking more about how inspirational Beah is in an upcoming post.

Reaction

I’ve watched this video many times today. I’m super-excited about this project even though I don’t work on it at all. My favorite part of the video might not be what you guess, though. It starts at about 1:43, when the vehicle accelerates. It’s currently the thumbnail for the video on YouTube.

Mountain lion in Mountain View

A few weeks ago while driving back to my apartment from dinner, I noticed a helicopter hovering overhead and police vehicles stopped at every block. On the sidewalk, I saw police officers turning people away from a certain area. I assumed that they were chasing a person. I later found out that they were trying to capture a mountain lion.


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