Some random facts about me...

Apparently, I've fallen victim to a 'tagging'. And now, I'm going to have to actually think about who to tag in return or I'm sure some disaster shall happen. I think this is where I tell about the bad luck runs and have all kinds of nasty mishaps happen....

Oh, anyway, Janet tagged me to post 8 random facts about myself! 8 random facts is easy, but 8 random interesting facts? Well.... Here goes...

1. I'm fairly certain that I'm the only guy in the history of time that liked (and owns) Phantom of the Opera, Ever After, and a couple other romantic comedies and "chic flicks".

2. I'm completely neurotic about emails and writing. I hate having to send any form of document (legal or otherwise) that I can't keep a copy of. Some reason, I always fear fecking it up. Even now, I'm pondering whether or not I properly did my taxes from 7 years ago, praying that they cross that mystical barrier before the friends from the IRS call. It's only really annoying when I have no access to whatever I sent off, so I can't check and make sure I didn't make some horrific mistake...

3. Entering kindergarden I still had difficulty with a great many things that were at my age level - I was actually placed in a "speech development" to learn how to talk properly, among other things. In 1st and 2nd grade things began to change radically. In 3rd grade, I became something of a child prodigy, writing my own "adventure" game for the PC. By 7th grade I knew assembly well enough to write my own assembler, a program to password protect the hard drive on my computer, and my very own bootsector on a floppy. For a final trick that year, I cracked fractal geometry and created my very own Mandelbrot renderer, which I used to save a BMP file I gave to the computer lab teacher. Needless to say, I had no life.

4. I was 6 feet tall by the time I was in 6th grade. This landed me in the very funny position of individually meeting several of the Harlem Globetrotters, as I happened across one on the way out of their show. The general reaction: hey guys, check out this kid, HE'S ONLY 12.

5. I have a background in child development and psychology and am qualified to teach High School in the state of Texas as soon as I fill out the paperwork. I swear, any day now, I'll get to it, I swear...

6. I lived out of my car and a friend's garage for a period of 3 months (mid May - mid Aug) when I originally came to Kansas City.

7. My brain is completely and totally split in terms of routine and organization and free floating ideas. I hate planned schedules, organized living spaces, and getting into a routine. At the same time, I'm extremely unlikely to change jobs - even the "temporary" assignments I've had in the past turned out longer than anyone originally intended or thought.

8. I'm a closet writer and have written chapters of novels, horror and science fiction and comedy short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, character sketches, nonfiction collections, music and music lyrics. Despite having collected a lot over the years, I have only shown people a select few of the things I've written. Writing to me is about as personal as sex - I put so much of myself into it that, I have a hard time hearing the often well meaning criticisms of friends. Probably has a lot to do with how I grew up, and the value placed on individuality by the people I was around. At one point in time, a series of technical tutorials I wrote on graphics programming had reached #1 in google page rank, and I received a fairly regular amount of email with detailed questions on graphics programming. I've done some editorials, but nothing I'd admit to now...

I'm going to tag .... Suzi!