Seven Things

• Fri, 09 Jan 2009 at 17:14:02 GMT
• 10 Comments
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I was going to let the Seven Things meme pass me by, but the generous prodding of Elizabeth Smith, Elizabeth Naramore, and Theo Schlossnagle has managed to convince me that some of my readers might like to know a little more about me. If you're one of them, keep reading.

Some of these things are mentioned on my about page, but here are seven things you might not know about me:

1. I once ran a marathon. My wife runs them all the time, and she finally convinced me to run one with her back in 2002. Her first marathon was for a good cause; mine was for bragging rights. :-)
2. I grew up in Tennessee in a small city with a population of roughly 500 people. I now live in a big city with a population of roughly 8,000,000 people. I enjoy both extremes.
3. I love to play soccer, but I didn't start playing until my senior year of high school. I was the team captain in college, and now I play in Prospect Park almost every weekend.
4. I haven't watched much TV since the '90s, when I stopped subscribing to broadcast TV. For important events such as the World Cup or the Euro Cup, I spend a lot of time at local bars. I miss a lot of pop culture references as a result, but YouTube, iTunes, and DVDs help.
5. I haven't been to see a doctor in over 15 years. (I received a mandatory checkup during the summer of 1993.) I did get sick in college, and again last year. I'm also not nearly as young and resilient as I once was, so I should probably start seeing a doctor regularly.
6. I have a computer science degree and a healthy respect for higher education. I'm wary of those who don't possess the latter; in my experience, those who think higher education doesn't matter are those who need it most.
7. My first computer was a Commodore 64. I wanted a motorcycle, and my parents thought a computer was a better idea. I guess they were right.

Here are the seven people I'm tagging:

1. Andrei Zmievski, everyone's favorite white Russian.
2. Sean Coates, who is probably trying to avoid this meme.
3. Jon Tan, who will spend longer than anyone writing his.
4. Jon Gibbins, the world's humblest accessibility guru.
5. Terry Chay, the PHP terrorist.
6. Ed Finkler, who is far too cool for this sort of thing.
7. Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson, because I like testing my Unicode support.

My rules are simple. If you're one of the above seven people, please participate by sharing seven things people might not know about you. If you want a gold star, tag seven other people and ask them to do the same.