Tag, I'm it. Five things you (probably) didn't know about me.
Jeff Beehler has tagged me which means it's my turn to write five things about myself which most people may not already know about me. Here goes...
- When I was 5 years old I learned to play chess. It was my favorite activity back then, and I became quite good at it. Of course I was no Bobby Fischer, but I was playing (and winning) against people three or four times my age. I even competed in a national tournament and finished pretty high for my age category. Alas, nowadays my chess skills are pretty much average. I think it's much easier to be good at something like chess when your mind isn't filled with the usual worries an adult has (paying bills, completing projects, etc.). At least that's the excuse I tell myself for why I'm not as good as I was when I was a kid... <g>
- When I was in middle school, my friends and I made a lot of homemade movies for fun and for school projects. Back then we didn't have any editing hardware and there was no such thing as consumer-ready editing software so the quality of the scene stitching was pretty poor, but we had a lot of fun and the movies we made are fun to watch to this day. I think my early appreciation for filmmaking is why I really enjoy filming Channel 9 videos today.
- I absolutely love a good crawfish boil! I think it's the addictive nature of the endorphins your body releases as you taste the spices. I can easily eat three or four pounds in a sitting and be happier than a clam. I'm hoping to take a trip to the south as soon as they come back into season.
- My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was Daniel Boone. And I'm also related to the only baby who was born on the Mayflower: Oceanus (see here). Oceanus died before she was able to bear offspring, but my grandmother has traced our genealogy back to her parents.
- My family is diversified across the technology industry. I obviously work for Microsoft; my older brother, Brad, works for IBM; my sister, Paige, is a graphics designer so she tends to use a Mac from time to time; my brother Danny was a Linux geek for a while but now he works for Microsoft as a Systems Engineer; and finally my youngest brother Drew is still in school at the University of Florida pursuing his MS in Decision Information Sciences (the same degree that Danny and I have). We're pretty sure he's either going to wind up at Microsoft or take an ironic turn and head off to somewhere like Google. But in the meantime, he's working as a Web Programmer for the company I co-founded.
Since it's my turn to tag someone I'll pick Grace Francisco, Mike Swanson, Dan Fernandez, and Brian Goldfarb.