I feel very odd when I see a news story about some tech thing or another, and one of the people involved is someone I knew in high school or college. Or I suppose it's whenever I realize that they're working on something cool; but so far that realization only seems to come via news articles.
I guess on some level it's kinda cool because if they become famous or whatever I can say I know them, but mostly I get bothered by the "what if"... they are in a way demonstrating something that I very well could have done myself, had I gone in that direction back during school. I don't regret my own path, but I do of course wonder at times what it would be like if I had been a part of those other projects. And when I see stuff like that, well, it looks nice.
Life is annoyingly savestateless. As Deus Ex has most recently demonstrated (as have many prior games), I tend to try to explore all possibilities to see what happens. I need to get out of that habit...
I keep having this happen with people I know in music. I know at least three bands that are making albums and releasing them, and at least two of them have members that never would have met without my involvement. I'm musically inclined, and I can think of a few slightly different things I could have done that probably would have gotten me more heavily involved with these bands than just "music mixer" at a couple parties for one of them, or "guy we send our LP to for free" for another.
Then again, they all make pretty sweet music, so I can't really be annoyed.
Shell the unshellable, crawl the uncrawlible.
Row--row.