I'm it.

Dang, got tagged by Alan and now I’m it. Ok, Alan, I’m game. The game is tell five things most people don’t know about you:

1) Although I don’t seem to have any musical talent it’s not from a complete lack of trying. It’s probably mostly from being lazy and not practicing enough. I took Violin lessons for several years when we lived in Rochester, NY. I also took organ/piano lessons for a few years. And I’ve had friends try and teach me some guitar. I had no luck trying to teach myself the harmonica. I’ve not ruled any of it out but I’m not convinced I have an aptitude or patience for musical instruments, though I may try picking up the Kazoo or Triangle next.

2) I traveled a lot growing up. My dad had always wanted to travel when he was growing up and decided that he would as an adult and make sure he took his kids along to experience it. Before I even got to college I had been to Italy, Brazil, Hawaii, all over the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada, and various places in the US. Heck, I’ve got platinum status on Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines now after the Panama Canal cruise we did with my parents a year ago kicked up the number of cruises by 3 in one shot. We did about one big trip a year growing up and I’m really glad I was able to experience all of that and that I’ve been able to continue it.

3) I’m a ham. As in Amateur Radio. I’ve had my license for well over 10 years now and I regularly chat with local friends on UHF and VHF bands mostly from the car. I also play with IRLP which connects radios to VOIP across the internet allowing you to talk via short range radio to anywhere in the world. I have an IRLP node sitting right here next to me.

4) UNC or NCSU? Well, both… but NC State was my favorite and where I spent most of my time. I actually went to three colleges to get my BS. I started at UNC going for pre-med. While there I took a computer programming class and I was working part time as a programmer at a bio-medical company in Durham. I decided computers were what I wanted to do but NCSU had a better program (UNC was more theoretical and math based while NCSU was more practical and hands on). At NCSU I took all of the Computer Science classes and even though both schools are state universities they didn’t really like taking each other’s credits. Well, they’d take the credits just not apply them to your major so I would have to spend an extra two and a half years taking all the sequential clases to get all the core requirements done. I had a full time job lined up at a software company in Cary so I decided it was time to get out. I transfered all my credits from both schools to NC Wesleyan and they applied it all towards a BS in Computer Information Systems. A semester and a half later I was out. The day I graduated I ran over to NC State and filled out the form to get their Certificate of Computer Programming since I had taken every computer science class for the major (that’s basically like having a minor in computer science).

5) In 7th grade I won a NY state-wide programing competition. I took first place writing a BASIC program on an Apple IIe and got our school a whole bunch of free computer gear. In 8th grade I teamed up with a friend and our entry came in 2nd place state-wide.

Since Alan tagged Sri and he hasn’t replied yet, I’ll tag him as well. Is that legal?