It's kinda scary how easy it is to find somebody.
I've been trying to track down a former collegue for the past couple hours. It only took a couple hours to track him down, but still--think about 15 years ago. 50 years ago. I wouldn't have ever found him! And it took me only two hours.
An email that bounced back informed me that he no longer worked where I last knew him to have worked. I called that university, but the person who could have given me information wasn't available. So I turned to the internet. I checked out the membership directory of our international professional organization. Not there. Weird. He is the sort of person who would normally always be listed there.
So I facebooked him. Yup. There he was...with a new city/state next to his name. Next I had to research the universities and colleges in that town. Found the one I though most likely (he is Jewish, so I doubt he would work in a strictly Christian school). Then it took me next to forever to locate their housing website (they named their housing department something really wierd and I never would have found it without the help of a current collegue). There he is.
It's scary really how much information is out there and how many resources there are for people to locate one another. Whatever happened to privacy?