High School Reunion of sorts

I joined Facebook a while ago, but I can't really remember why. I find their asking for passwords of mine to well known social sites and web email providers intrusive and a little unnerving. But occasionally I get mail from some random girl claiming in a vague way to know me (I suppose she's running an adult website and wants my credit card) so at least there is some minor entertainment to be had as I sift through internet tarts for long lost army buddies or what not.

Anyways, a few weeks ago I got a mail from someone who claimed to know me in high school but that appeared completely unfamiliar to me. Turns out he was in my graduating class, but I really didn't know him. But that got me thinking about what had happened to my former friends from high school and what had happened to them. I drug out my year book, one of the precious few things I have from that time in my life, and started looking for people I knew way back when.

I recently watched a video by a private investigator at defcon (a computer hacker conference) tell me that privacy is dead and if he had a name he could know the most intimate details of your life by just googling your name. Well, his kung fu must be better than mine because I couldn't get anything except random hits on unrelated people. The one person I did find had a very unusual last name and actually was a match. The crazy thing was, it was a dedication site on myspace calling for people to write my former friend in prison. He evidently had been in since 1996 (4 years after we graduated high school). By the time I was enlisting in the army, he life was effectively over.

I haven't been able to do anything but find an arrest announcement from 1996 in the local paper of what happened to my old friend. I find myself thinking about how alike we were; I might have been in his position had things not been tweaked a little causing me to split off from all my former high school friends. I wouldn't have joined the national guard and then the army. I might not have been motivated enough to finish my degree, and working for Microsoft would have been right out. I might have been wherever my friend was when he made his choices that caused him to surrender over a decade of his life to prison. It's a very sobering thought to realize how different life is based on a handful of decisions, and where you could be otherwise.

I think Sharry's getting tired of the introspection though, so I might have to cut it out soon. :)