Infinitely Meta The possibilities are endless.

25 things you probably didn’t know about me

It started as a meme on Friendfeed. Crank out a list of 25 things that you may or may not know about me. Here goes. Some historical, some behavioral, some just plain weird. What can I say, it's just me.

1. My first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model IV with a tape cassette drive. My project for the fifth grade science fair was a computer game I wrote in BASIC called Tank Wars. It was over 500 lines.
2. At 12 years old, my first "real" job was folding pizza boxes at $0.03/box.
3. At 14, I worked as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant (my friend Andy's parents owned it). I will NEVER forget what it's like to clean the inside of a Peking duck oven.
4. At 16, I worked for a summer doing pre-delivery DOT inspections and customizations of new school buses. We had a 300 line item list to check off for each bus. I learned how to install radios, backup alarms, weld and use plasma cutters at this job. Quite exhausting, but great work.
5. When I was a Junior/Senior in high school, I worked nights/weekends as "third oven cook" and then became "main chef" at a steak and seafood restaurant called "What's Your Beef?" in Manlius, NY.
6. As a teenager, during summers, I used to teach archery, windsurfing, swimming, and other outdoor activities at YMCA Camp Tousey (now closed) near Watertown, NY.
7. In my last year of college, I learned this thing called HTML so I could post my resume on the World Wide Web. Then I started building web sites. Then web apps. One Master's degree and over 15 years later, I'm still going strong having now worked over 9 years in my current gig in the enterprise software space.
8. I have an undergrad degree from Lewis & Clark College in Biology & Botany, yet I've never worked professionally in either field.
9. Technically, I'm qualified to be a librarian. I have a Master's degree in Library & Information Science from the University of Washington.
10. Since leaving my position at Microsoft in 1999, I've only been "hired" once, yet I've worked for 4 different companies. How is that possible? Joined startup DataChannel in 1999. DataChannel  acquired by Netegrity in 2000. Netegrity sold "Portal" technology and team (inc. me) to webMethods in 2003. webMethods was acquired by Software AG in 2007.
11. I have a passion (addiction?) for marine coral reef ecosystems and maintain a 300 gallon salt water reef tank and a 250 gallon salt water marine fish tank in my home. Check out some recent Flickr pics.
12. I currently have over 25 semi-operational or near dead PCs, laptops, and other assorted junk lying around my storage units. I call it the "pile-o-dell-hell" [Really need to do something about that]
13. I geek out hard on NASA/JPL space missions, especially the recent ones to Mars & Saturn. I've followed the Mars Rovers missions pretty regularly since they landed over 5 years ago. I even got to meet Scott Maxwell (@marsroverdriver) at Gnomedex this past year.
14. I am a big sports fan, but there are really only 2 teams that I am a die hard fan for - Syracuse Orange college basketball and  Pittsburgh Steelers NFL football. I went to the Final Four in New Orleans in 2003 and watched Syracuse win the NCAA Championship! In 2005, I went to the Super Bowl XL in Detroit and watched the Steelers win it all!
15. I quit smoking on Oct 28, 2007 and haven't had a cigarette since.
16. I absolutely can't stand being late. Ever.
17. Sometimes, I have a really hard time waiting.
18. At times, I have some pretty intense OCD tendancies. Think neatly arranged piles.
19. In addition to my day job in the software busienss, I own/manage 11 apartment/condos in downtown Seattle and live in one of the units.
20. I'm a jack of all trades and can do basic electrical wiring, plumbing, carpentry, and landscaping.
21. Right now I have 1013 cameraphone pics stored on my mobile.
22. I really like lighting fireworks off.
23. When I was in 6th grade, I had a bicycle accident and cut the tip of my right middle finger off.
24. My first car was a 1979 Ford Thunderbird that I purchased from a family friend for $400 and put a lot of TLC into it. Sadly, it caught on fire on the way home from work one night and proceeded to melt/blow up.
25. I like to collect rocks of all shapes, colors, and sizes.

There I did it. Pretty random collection if you ask me, but a rather fun exercise. See everyone else's on Friendfeed.