I've got just five things to say to you

Apparently I've just been blog-tagged. I'm not familiar with the concept myself, although it bears a disturbing resemblance to a chain letter. At least this one didn't come with some threat about me falling down the stairs or something. Although given that I'm probably going to spend the next 48 hours snowed in at home with no company except two cats and a full liquor cabinet, that is a distinct possibility. :)

Of course this does have one advantage over a chain letter -- it's a great way to play the blogger version of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". Except this is on a blog, so it needs to have an annoying name involving a non-word. Perhaps "Six Blogrees of Jeff Pulver"? Regardless of the name, I'm at least 11 degrees from Jeff Pulver. I was tagged by Greg, who was tagged by Nick, tagged by Mark Fletcher, by Dave McClure, Oilman, Todd Malicoat, Ben Wills, Andy Beal, Avinash Kaushik, and ending with Dave Gale. Dave Gale didn't say who tagged him, so the trail drops there, but Dave isn't on Jeff Pulver's list, so there must be at least one more person in there. It might be kinda interested to see the tree of all those links. In fact, we probably even have the link data in the Newsgator database. I'm too lazy to do it right now, but maybe if I'm bored enough and sober enough tomorrow I'll give it a shot. Although writing neat little apps that'll probably destroy our database is really Nick Harris' specialty.

Anyway, enough digressing. This post was supposed to be about five things that relatively few people know about me. So here we go (in no particular order)

1) I'm incredibly annoyed by bad grammar and/or spelling. Maybe I've spent too long writing code, which doesn't tolerate such things, or maybe it's because my Dad was an English major. No matter why, it bugs me. A great example is using "your" instead of "you're". For instance, look at the last two words of Jeff Pulver's post that started all this. Argh!

2) Much like Scott Adams (and apparently half of America), I sometimes think about how blown away a caveman would be by modern technology. Usually I only think about such things when I'm alone in the car though. Usually. (I bet they'd think computers are lame thought.)

3) I'm a bit of a sci-fi junkie. Before I graduated high school I had read every single book by Robert Heinlein and Larry Niven. Which was actually kind of tough, some of Heinlein's books are out of print (and rightly so in many cases...) Coincidentally, I'm in the middle of a Niven book right now, Building Harlequin's Moon. I also watched every episode of Star Trek The Next Generation -- but I'm not enough of a trekkie to call it ST:TNG.

4) Despite growing up in Wisconsin, I AM NOT A PACKERS FAN. Actually, I'm not really a sports fan in general, but I actively dislike the Packers. Not because of anything they did, because I'm so damn tired of seeing Packers blankets, jerseys, paper, shoes, car flags, and so on during my childhood. Stupid packers.

5) I used to be a houseplant nut. At one point I had 45 houseplants -- in a two-bedroom apartment. It took about 30 minutes just to water them all. For some reason I don't really do that anymore. I've still got a few plants, but only the ones hardy enough to withstand my waning interest in taking care of them. But I still feel guilty when one of them dies.

So, I guess it's my turn. Tags go out to Timmy B, Nick Harris, Gordon Weakliem, and Cash (who mostly posts over at Urban Monarch these days). That's only four -- I'm emailing one other person to ask permission first, since I don't really know him all that well (ok, not at all). Update later.