One morning, I wake up and head over to the computer to check my email. I turn on the monitor, and I discover that my girlfriend has left a browser window open from the night before. Curiously, I take a look at the open webpages, and I find several blog postings and even a couple of webcomics. Strangely enough, they’re all about me.

Let’s rewind for a second. A couple months beforehand, in my dream world, Adobe announced a contest. They wanted to replace the default color palette in Photoshop, so they asked the community to submit their favorite colors. The winners would have their colors included in the default palette, and they’d get some random prize, like a Wii or something of that nature. Amused, I submitted a color and forgot about it.

In one of open blog postings, an Adobe staffer announces a huge list of the finalists with their colors. He asks his readers to list their favorites in the comments. As I’m reading through these comments, I keep seeing my name. That’s cool. Obviously, I picked a most excellent shade of green.

Something just doesn’t seem right, though. No one else’s name is listed in anyone’s comments. You see, the rest of the names happen to be names of colors. I quickly scroll back up to the list of finalists. Sure enough, it says “‘Josh Tynjala’ submitted by Josh Tynjala”. Apparently, that fateful day when I submitted my color, I misinterpreted the form. Rather than picking a clever color name like “Gregarious Green”, I thought it was asking for my name. Oops.

As this blog posting with the finalists made its rounds, other people started writing about it. Except the authors didn’t declare their own favorite colors. No, instead they called me a genius. You see, by naming the color after myself, I had figured out a way to get my name into Photoshop. Every day, a million designers would see my name.

That’s how I became a minor Internet celebrity… in my dreams.