25 Random Things

I originally posted this on Facebook, so some of you have probably already read this, but in case you haven’t… (I modified a few as well, so it might be worth skimming over.)

1. I am 6' -9" tall. (read this carefully)  But my height has never bothered me or slowed me down, aside from the fact that it makes dating harder.

2. I am definitely a night-owl... I usually go to bed at about 4am and get up around 10am. I like the quiet after everyone else has gone to bed, and I get far more done in the wee hours of the morning than the rest of the day combined, mainly because my phone doesn’t ring after 10pm.

3. I jump around from hobby to hobby, never quite perfecting any, but enjoying them all. Some that keep coming up are photography, video production, audio recording/production, woodworking, and working on my home theater. And sometimes I write software just for fun, when I don't have big projects filling my time.

4. My uvula (the little thingy that hangs down at the back of your mouth) is split in two, forming an inverted "Y." I think this is why I have a hard time swallowing pills.

5. I met the cast of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood when I was 4.

6. While going to high school, I was recruited into the Computer Club, where we went to regional and state programming competition all three years I was on the team. We placed 5th, 4th, and 1st in our region, and 10th, 9th, and finally 2nd place at state, tying the first place team's point total.

7. If I eat most green vegetables I get sick to my stomach. And I hate lettuce almost as much as my stomach does, so much that I get nauseated even when I smell it. I love fruit, on the other hand, and will always choose any fruit over chocolate.

8. It is often difficult for me to do things “the conventional way.”  I like to invent my own way of doing things too much to just accept the way that it is done by everybody else, especially when it comes to technology. 

9. I like bananas, but can only eat one half at a time. I have a mental block about finishing a whole banana. That same mental block nearly prevents me from eating the very last bite of a sandwich too.

10. I am much better at organizing social situations than I am at attending them. If I'm not the one in charge, or have a part to play, I get really anxious and want to find something else to do.

11. At the time, I was the only sophomore to ever have taken Physics in high school. I also took Physics II as a junior even though I hadn't yet had Calculus, which was a required prerequisite.

12. While going to BYU, there was one Computer Science class I took four times before I finally passed it -- with a "C". I also once took a Physics final exam and got a perfect 0% (yet still got an "A" in the class).

13. During my time at BYU, I was known for coming up with clever ways to ask girls out, and creative dates to take them on. My, how things change.

14. During my second year at BYU my roommate Dave and I entered the annual BYU computer programming competition sponsored by the Computer Science department -- and won!

15. Two of the hardest things for me to do are to sit down and read -- anything, and get up on time for anything that happens before 10:00 am.

16. I intentionally don't buy apple sauce because I love it. If I did, there's a chance I might not eat enough of anything else to be healthy.

17. The computer I spend most of my time on has 6 monitors (including one touch screen), 2 keyboards, 6 hard drives, 3 DVD drives, and 5 printers hooked up to it. And I use all of that hardware regularly. It also has two fingerprint readers, and scanners for barcodes, credit cards, and checks, all in addition to a graphics tablet, a Zune and iPod Touch. And a mouse.

18. As a freshman at BYU a couple friends and I started a radio station from our dorm. We broadcast to an area covering about 3000 students. (It was legal; I consulted with the FCC before turning it on.) It all went great for a couple weeks until I announced my name on air to say hi to someone, and within one minute a BYU official called me and told me to shut it down. We appealed multiple times until the executive council at BYU (the equivalent of the supreme court) decided they would not allow radio broadcasts on campus. Ever since then there is a rule in the student housing handbook prohibiting the use of radio transmission devices.

19. I have a hard time buying just one of anything. If one is good, two is usually better.

20. I hate snakes, even though I'm not afraid of them. Spiders and other insects don't bother me in the least, so I'm usually the one recruited to escort visiting "friends" outside.

21. People who come to visit my place will never believe this, but I actually love to have everything organized and neat. I just don't have enough space or time to make either of those happen to my level of satisfaction.

22. I LOVE putting together the technical side of any sort of event, whether that be audio, video, or otherwise. I love to make videos just for fun. I also love using equipment in my home recording studio. Unfortunately I haven't had many opportunities or time to do any of the above for quite some time.

23. I don't believe myself to be a good photographer even though people are always telling me otherwise. I always feel like I could be a lot better.

24. While in high school the media really liked me. Articles about me were written for multiple newspapers, several magazines, and I was on the local TV news for my computer programming adventures. As part of that I was featured in the cover story of the February 1991 "The New Era" magazine. http://www.maxoutput.com/djdj/newera.html

25. My sense of hearing is better than average. I can hear frequencies well above those of the average population. The down side of training my ears to be so sensitive is that it makes it hard to narrow down a single voice from across a loud room; I can't block out the sound of everything else around me.