The following is a detailed description of last Wednesday, 2008-07-23.
I started the morning by driving to a park and ride next to the San Antonio Cal Train station. I was aware that parking was $2 but I didn’t have the common sense to break my twenty prior to arriving. Fortunately there was another person in the area, and I asked him if he had change for a $20. He did not, but he was very generous and handed me $2. I made it clear that I was very thankful and then took care of my parking fee.
This was my first train ride, so it was kind of exciting, but other than that, there wasn’t too much to it other than speaking briefly with three traveling Egyptian hotties who were also going into the city. Upon arriving in San Francisco I walked to the location of the event and checked in at the front. The hottie who handed me my badge was also a UCSB alum so we chatted briefly.
From noon to one I basically walked around and collected as many tshirts as possible. I ended up collecting 6 shirts prior to attending the keynote. The keynote was quite interesting, however I don’t really want to write about it. Following the keynote I sat down on a couch to check my email, and a few minutes later a Facebook employee sat down next to me. Naturally I struck up a conversation with him in which he and I conversed about our jobs and college background. It was then, the unthinkable happened. After drinking half of my espresso my hand must have decided that drinking espresso wasn’t as effective as direct contact with the skin, because my hand lost the ability to hold the cup, thus spilling coffee all over my pants.
After attempting to clean coffee off my pants I realized all I could do was just hold my head high as I walked around and smile at the people who noticed the huge wet area on my pants. I had additionally thought of leaving, but I didn’t pay $50 for just the keynote. At this point I simply wanted to hide for a bit while my pants dried, so I sat down to browse the internet some more. It was then I realized I only had a few minutes of battery left and had forgotten my power adapter. I simply thought, “today is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”
After a few talks my pants were dry, however they were horribly stained and the smell of espresso was inescapable. Nonetheless the day was looking up as dinner and beer were now available. After chowing down a bit I spoke with some more Facebook people. I got a very strong impression that Facebook is an awesome company to work for, and am now interested in interning there next year. Anyway I asked them if they knew this guy Chris that my UCSB advisor is in communication with and they pointed him out.
I’ll simply say I wasn’t sure how this introduction would go, however Chris had a beer in hand so I thought it was the perfect time, if any. I approached him, asked if he was Chris and without hesitation he looked at me and said, “yes, and you must be Bryce.” I was blown away that he knew who I was as he is Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer. Anyway he introduced me to his wife, and joked that I was one of the trouble makers from UCSB. A quick minute or so of chatting and we parted ways. I got the impression from him that our research group should be successful in collaborating with Facebook, which is great news.
Following that introduction I was feeling awesome, despite the pant/espresso situation. I went to talk to some UCSB graduates I had met earlier who created a Facebook application for their service called Zimride. While talking I spotted Mark Zuckerberg, or Zuck, as the Facebookers call him. I excused myself for a second to introduce myself to him.
Now we need a quick bit of back story before continuing. Facebook had released their new layout earlier that week, which I manually switched to Tuesday night. After a few minutes of using it I started to get infinite redirects thus killing my Facebook experience at a critical time. As a developer I wanted to file a bug and I figured Facebook would have a support email address so I tried many different combinations of addresses, all of which were immediately bounced. So I sent an email to Mark directly, explaining the problem, thinking he’ll never read this.
Well I was incorrect. I walked up to Mark and said something along the lines of, “Hey Mark my name is Bryce Boe, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to meet you.” To which he replied, “Nice to meet you, and thanks for the email you sent me last night. I forwarded it to the appropriate department.” So I once again was shocked. Mark Zuckerberg, a celebrity amongst the technology crowd, was able to recall something I did. I told him that Facebook essentially revolutionized the college experience as all parties were organized and later remembered through Facebook events and Facebook photos respectively. I then asked for a picture, and the coolest thing happened. He said, “Sure! Hey dad can you take this for us?” Mark is only a few years older than I, however one doesn’t expect a billionaire’s parents to be around. I think it was awesome that his parents were there to share the experience with him. After our brief chat Mark played Rock Band with his family and I returned to talking with the Zimride people.
Shortly after I rode the train back with one of the Zimride guys, Kylan, and we chatted it up for nearly an hour. Oh and the Egypt hotties from earlier, happened to also be on this train so we had a little laugh about the odds of the situation.
Thus my seemingly great day, turned awful, happened to swing around again to be one of the most awesome days this summer, despite now needing a new pair of jeans and continuously worrying that I smell like espresso.
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