Oh noes—I've been hit. The inimitable Erik Kastner smacked me with an obligation to reveal five "little-known" facts about myself. Normally I don't comply with this sort of thing, but Kastner's a good fellow... I didn't want to let him down. It may be a bit duller than his, but keep in mind this wasn't my idea.
- I was caught in a flash flood hiking in a ravine in the mountains of Indonesia. We had just finished climbing (tumbling? scampering? There's a word for it...) about the boulders at the ravine's head and started for home when we were pursued by a torrent of muddy water.
- I got drafted into the basketball team in high school because of my height. I didn't stand a chance; it was decided behind my back from the very day I visited the school as a prospective student. I later found out that a few students stood up for me: "What if he doesn't want to be a basketball player? What if he wants to be a chef?" It didn't help, but it did earn me the nickname "The Chef" for a brief while. I was terrible at basketball.
- I witnessed an attempted attack on the Western Wall in Jerusalem. I was above the plaza looking out at the city and saw someone make a break from the checkpoint to the crowds at the wall. He didn't looked armed, but he had a bag with him. He was apprehended before he got 5m away from the security checkpoint.
- I got my start in programming on QBasic for DOS in 7th grade. I wrote a couple cool games, but I thought I should move on to something more serious and started learning C and CodeWarrior. I always thought the sheer amount of additional effort necessary to get something decent working in a GUI environment turned me off programming until university, but now I'm thinking it had more to do with people. I had a few friends who enjoyed QBasic, and I had nobody to work with on C stuff. It didn't help that I thought "real" programming had to be GUI-related and a huge pain, and that only "kids' stuff" was easy and fun.
- I've dislocated both my shoulders multiple times. You can make me quiver in discomfort by merely talking about shoulders the various joint-related problems which can happen to them. Please don't.
I suppose the traditional thing to do here is pass on the meme to others:
Unfortunately they haven't gotten back to me on that.
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