I've Been Tagged!

Monday, January 5, 2009

Well, I've been tagged by the wonderful Newton's Ocean science blog. I had already decided a couple of months ago I wasn't doing any more memes (like awards and such), but that if I was ever tagged with a "Six Things You Didn't Know About Me" type meme, I would participate - once.  So here goes.

1) I am a cleaned-up alcoholic and drug addict. Many years ago, I was not only a hardcore alky (how does 10 to 12 double shots of Jack Daniels straight up, each with a beer chaser or two, every single day sound?), but a crystal meth and cocaine addict as well. I also had more than a passing acquaintance with LSD, hash, and opium. I was very familiar with the interiors of paddywagons because of misdemeanor offenses - thankfully no felonies. I quit the powder and other hard stuff eight years ago, and quit the alcohol almost five years ago. Why? Not because of a judge, or because of family pressure (although there was some family pressure). But simply because I had had enough. And I had seen several friends my age die because they wouldn't or couldn't quit. I was sick of feeling sick. I was sick of spending my entire disposable income on bottles of booze and folded-up little packets of powder. And mainly, I was sick of myself. I found out by going clean that we have strengths within ourselves that we don't realize. Yeah, I went to AA meetings for a while, but if you're not ready to quit in the first place, all the meetings in the world aren't going to help.


2) Many of you know I do things like interior painting as a way to generate extra income. So what else do I do? I'm a computer programmer. You may not realize this, but you all hate me - every single one of you. You see, back in my sophomore year of college I was offered my first computer programming job. It was in the then brand-new field of call center automation, specifically automated mass dialing systems. This field now employs tens of thousands of technical people, but at first, there were only about a hundred or so programmers. I was one of them. I was a pioneer in the art of pissing people off with automated sales pitches and collection calls at dinnertime. I was also a trail-blazer in IVR - Interactive Voice Response - a tech term for "Press 1 for this, press 2 for that". So, the next time a computer calls you up and immediately puts you on hold, and you think to yourself "I'd like to kill the person who makes these things", well... I ain't telling you where I live. Deal with it. In any case, I am largely out of the industry now, and what work I do in that field I now do from home.

3) When I was in high school, I had an opportunity to do something most people don't - stand on the peak of a 14,000 foot mountain in the Colorado Rockies (Mount Princeton, at left) and see the continental divide stretch away, seemingly into infinity. To this day, it is one of the two most beautiful sights I have ever seen. The other being the night sky in the high Colorado desert, something I experienced on that same trip. It's the only time I've ever seen the Milky Way Galaxy in all its glory, because everywhere else I've ever been has scads of light pollution.

4) I have been to way too many rock concerts. Metallica, Yes, AC/DC, Journey, Genesis, King Diamond, Jethro Tull, The Who, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, J. Geils Band, Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Foreigner, Rush, Santana, Judas Priest, Styx, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Phil Collins, Steve Miller Band, Blue Oyster Cult, Def Leppard, David Bowie, Guns'N'Roses... just some I can remember off the top of my head. Hell, I even went to see Pat Benatar because I was bored and back in the 80's she was a total hottie. I had my Led Zeppelin tickets in hand - great seats - and was all excited about seeing my (at the time) all-time favorite band. Then a friend called and told me John Bonham, Zeppelin's drummer, had died. I was devastated.

5) I was nearly kicked out of college in my freshman year for hacking into the university's mainframe. I wrote a CLIST "worm" program that squirmed its way through the system, picking up student engineering programming projects along the way. My program also nabbed a bunch of my instructors' "answer key" programs. In all truthfulness, in no way was I going to use that stuff. It was simply a thrill-seeking thing for me. I got narced-out by a tattletale kiss-ass ROTC cadet who was looking over my shoulder at the computer center one day. When asked by university administrators why I shouldn't be kicked out on the spot, I told them that since a college freshman could so easily get into a supposedly secure mainframe, then it was natural for me to assume the programs were all public domain, and therefore what I did could not be considered "hacking". The administration let me sweat bullets for a few days, and people in my computer classes were afraid to talk to me because of the whole "guilt by association" thing. Finally, I was informed they weren't going to pursue the matter if I agreed not to do it again and not tell anyone how I managed to do it. Ha, ha... they just didn't want to have the embarrassing truth of their inept security measures leaked to the student population. That was damned scary, though, I admit. The ironic part? The suck-up ROTC teacher's pet who ratted me out was himself kicked out of college for doing the exact same thing about a year later. I'm a pretty sympathetic person, so when I found out about it I laughed my ass off.

6) My sister, who is two and a half years older than me, used to terrorize me during my early childhood. Not only do girls grow faster than boys, but she was (and still is) whacked. Older, emotionally troubled sisters tend to beat their little brothers up. Any South Park fans out there? Think of Stan Marsh's big sister Shelly and you'll have a good idea how my sister treated me. Well, in the first grade, I broke my foot in a playground mishap. At first I was bummed, but found out that when you are in the first grade and have a big heavy plaster cast on, for some reason it makes you the most popular kid in school. In my seven-year-old way, I grasped that a cast is not necessarily just something that keeps a broken bone held together - it had some kind of power. So, I went upstairs to my sister's bedroom to inform her of that fact. I kicked the livin' shit out of that bullying bitch with that heavy cast, and didn't stop until she lay screaming on the floor, begging me to stop (I was getting tired anyway). The metal heel-plate protruding from the toe of the cast was a nice extra touch - I gashed her up but good. Knowing the cast would not be a part of me forever, I informed her that cast or no cast, I was going to whale on her just as bad, using anything at hand, if she got the idea to pick on me ever again. Through terrified shrieks, blood and tears, she accepted my terms. And she never beat me up again. Now them's family values.

I am not passing this meme along, but it was fun. Thanks Newton.