MONDAY MUSINGS

 In 2004 I was working for a peanut-whistle small radio station as a news director, a title that didn't really mean anything because I didn't really have any change in my duties nor did I get a raise in pay from when I was *just* a reporter.

It was a long way from my *glory days* but I just needed a modest paycheck for a couple of years to get me to good old Social Security.

And after many decades out of "the business" and seven years of scraping by in a barely surviving bookstore with my wife, I was enjoying myself.

But I had no dreams about the future.

Meanwhile, far across the country at Harvard University, a young lad had started a silly little website called Facemash the year before but it was shut down only a few days later by the school administrators who charged the student with breaking security and violating copyrights and the privacy of his fellow students.

They threatened to kick him out of the hallowed halls but in the end they dropped all the charges and let him stay.

Then in 2004, while I was still muddling my way toward retirement, that student, Mark Zuckerberg, created a variant website which he called "TheFacebook".

Seems like a long time ago, doesn't it.

Zuckerberg's creation, which a year later dropped "The" from it's name, nearly instantly created controversy with several other students claiming he had stolen their ideas and sueing him.

(They finally won their suit in 2008, gaining about 300 million smackeroos in then Facebook stock.)

Over the years, a number of shall we say unsavory characters have aligned with the Facebook empire and later gone their own ways but it hasn't seemed to have hurt Zuckerberg.

As of last year his site claims to have nearly three billion users around the world, he makes between 6 and 12 million dollars every DAY and he's worth around 123 billion bucks.

Well, until today.

With Facebook's problems today the stock took a header and Mark Z. lost nearly six billion dollars.

Probably that young giddy Harvard student isn't quite as cheerful tonight as he and his minions try to figure out what happened.

Me?

I'm a few light years away from his even-reduced net worth but I'll bet I sleep better tonight.