THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

So, I like Facebook. One of the things I do occasionally is look at the “Friend suggestions” of people that I might know. For the most part, they are either:

• People I know but don’t want to be friends with (old mission or high school people I barely knew then)
• Stupid things like “Laughter” or “Campfires” or “Subway”
• Local teenagers that are friends with the teenagers in my ward that I am friends with
• Other people that I do not know

It’s kind of an interesting dynamic – how to best populate these suggestions. It stands to reason that people that people that share a whole lot of mutual friends with me might also be my friends. For example, one friend I recently added was my cousin Jared. He had 15 mutual friends with me, so Facebook assumed (correctly) that I might also know him. Where it falls short is say this one guy from my mission. We share 7 mutual friends and Facebook is at least correct that I know who he is, but I didn’t really know him very well.

But what I find interesting are the people that show up that have completely random sets of mutual friends with me. I’m reminded of a situation a few years ago where we found out through a forwarded email chain or something that my cousin’s wife Candace was good friends with the sister of a family (the Wickmans) that lived in our ward here in Cincinnati.

I guess this kind of the whole point of things like Six Degrees of Separation and LinkedIn and such – that we are for the most part clusters of people, with occasional longer “branches” out to other groups of clusters.

So, here are a few examples. Note that I do not personally know any of these people (to my knowledge) but Facebook suggests them as my friends because I have several mutual friends with them.

• Brian Hanna, who is friends with the Brookses, a couple from my ward, but also friends (and I think related?) to my cousin Sarah and my cousin-in-law Candace
• Rachel Martel, who is friends with a guy from my church (Reed) and my cousin Sarah
• There were a couple of other ones that I noticed but did not write down – but similar things where it was just weird that this person knew 2 (or more) people that I also knew, but from completely different circles

Anyway, just thought I’d share….

Family and Friends:

I would like to invite you to the inaugural 1st Annual Miller Family Thanksgiving Croquet game.  I apologize for the short notice and I’m sure it is only this lack of appropriate notice that will prevent you from dropping everything and making it to Cincinnati for this amazing experience and not piddling concerns like “flying across the country” or anything so trivial.

When: Thanksgiving, sometime about 3 pm or so, depending on how long it takes me to able to walk again after playing in the Turkey Bowl earlier in the day.
Where: Our house, Cincinnati Ohio
What: Croquet course, carefully designed by master course designer Dan Miller
Obstacles: Our neighbors’ dog Max will at least hopefully be on a leash so as to not run and poo all over our yard, but if he’s outside he will still probably bark non-stop.  Also the very thick coat of leaves and the decomposing parts of the shed that we tore down a year ago that are still sitting around the back yard.

Hope you can make it, and if you can’t, feel free to take part in your own associated croquet matches and we’ll make this the biggest Croquet Day yet.  Take pictures and we can share!