I’ve been tagged…

Oh dear. I’ve been tagged by Alan Ridlehoover. I’ve seen it go around, and I figured once it got past Brady Gaster I’d be safe, but I guess not. So, here’s 5 things you may not know about me:

1. Like Alan, I am a drummer. And a Guitar player. And a keyboardist. And a bassist. In fact, I spent many years in a Christian Punk/Ska band called Atomsmashers Named Suzie. Our really good friends were in a band called SaGoh 24/7, but they kept going and are hitting it big as Anberlin. I also own two gigantic stuffed Animal things, one of which is in the picture hanging over my cubicle wall at one of my previous jobs.

2. I’ve always been a geek, but I wasn’t always going to be a geek as a career. A lot of my family is in the medical field as nurses or paramedics, so I was going to follow in their footsteps. I ended up joining a local fire department, and made it all the way to Assistant Chief before I got married and moved.

3. I don’t have any certifications, nor do I have a college degree. Actually, I think I got the Java Certified Programmer certification one time, but that’s about it. Of course, my current job requires me to have them, so I’ll probably have several before October (since that’s when my review is).

4. I grew up in a household my friends wanted to film a Sci-Fi movie in. We had 5 satellite dishes (all working, one of them a 40-footer), a 200′ tower in the front yard, a generator housed in an old army shelter that could power ours and our neighbor’s houses, and all sorts of other random stuff.

This is the main satellite dish. He bought it for $40 from a local TV station under the pretense that he move it. Luckily we already had a base for it (it was supporting a measly 32′ dish at the time), so it was a no brainer. You can also see yet another tracker – it’s the domed looking thing which rotates 360′ vertically and nearly 180′ vertically. The one in the front yard has 2 10″ telescopes last time I checked. You can also see yet another tower.

5. I have a secret passion to take over Microsoft with Ruby. I was very excited when I heard MS hired John Lam, because I want to see the Ruby/.NET platform grow. Perl’s fun, and I never really got into Python, but something about Ruby tickled my ribs, and I hope to find new and creative uses for it.

So that’s it. You’ve just wasted probably 15 minutes reading meaningless drivel about myself. But, since I had to play along, so are Corey Haines, James Carr, Tobin Titus, Ron Jeffries and Andy Hunt.