2009-01-27 25 things

There's this meme floating around Facebook, write 25 things about yourself. Here's the obligatory quoted text:

Once you've been tagged you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to "notes" under the tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) Then click publish.

If you're reading this, consider yourself tagged. see #2.

Now on to the 25 things:

1. When I was first tagged with this meme and saw "tag 25 people", I immediately went to calculate log base 25 of 6 billion, and did it in pieces because I knew that there'd be issues with numbers over 4 billion on a 32 bit computer. That I didn't immediately think "floating point will give me a reasonable approximation" is telling.

I hesitate to tag people other than the ones who tagged me because, despite the fact that I've danced naked in large groups of people and can push myself to socialize and schmooze fairly effectively, I'm somewhat shy and hate to impose myself on others.

1. Relatedly, I've often felt like there's a socialization gene that I missed out on, so I've had to teach myself to do it intellectually.

I miss cooking pasta. Charlene doesn't do wheat or much carbs, so though I like making my own pasta from scratch I don't often do it just for me.

1. I don't get as much exercise as I'd like. Back in my river guiding days I'd run 15-20 miles of class III/IV whitewater on Saturday and Sunday, and spend many of my weekday evenings doing reps with 1 liter soda bottles.

I did not have a significant other at the time.

1. I was born in Frankfurt Germany, and have vague memories of living there, but...

Any German I have comes from going to a Waldorf school through 7th grade.

1. When I was young, airplanes fascinated me more than anything else, and I wanted to be a pilot or an aeronautical engineer. I'd scrape through library sales looking for old books on aeronautics. Then I discovered computers.

Despite being good at computers, when I started in college I went down an art and graphic design track, because I was sure I didn't want to be a nerd. I'm not sure when I actually finally made peace with that.

1. I have mixed feelings about the Waldorf school, but one of the lessons that has stuck with me was baking bread. Starting with a hoe and a rough patch of ground.

My family also raised sheep, ducks and goats when I was growing up. We ate the sheep and the ducks.

1. I believe that cultural norms should be regularly subverted, if only just so that we can break out of the belief structures we've grown up with and been immersed in. I think that we accept too many precepts as fact just because that's what we've grown up with.

But I'm also aware that many of the rituals that look silly on an individual level may be strongly tied to traits that lead to a dominant culture when viewed on a larger scale.

1. I have had at least one diagnosed concussion, which caused me to lose memory of the better part of a day, and probably several more.

I broke my left arm in a tricycle accident, my left foot (climbing accident), and had sprains or ligament tears requiring immobilization in my left knee (skiing accident), my right(?) wrist (bicycle crash), and my right shoulder (inline skates in a skate park).

1. I've had pneumonia, which put me out of commission for much of the first semester of my sophomore year of high school, inflammation of tissue around my ribs, which made it difficult to breathe and even walk for several days, and campylobacter food poisoning, which put me out of commission for over a week.

I have trouble getting motivated to go out to professional meetings, or even just movies with my guy friends, because for the most part I really do just like hanging out at home with Charlene.

1. Taking Robert McKee's story class really did ruin movies for me.

I wish I could get paid for writing consumer-style applications on Linux. Or go back to the last good version of Windows, 3.11.

1. I used to be a rabid Ayn Rand quoting Libertarian, now I believe that all politics, indeed all society, is a detente between multiple potentially violent parties, and the pragmatic compromises which maximize my ability to get what I want are what I should seek. I'm not sure whether or not that makes my father's one time observation that I was, at the time, something of a "conservative asshole" moot.

I think there is great wisdom in S.L.A. Marshall's observation in "Men Against Fire" that "more than life itself, we value the approval of our peers", and I've taken that to heart in whom I look to as a peer.

1. A decade or more ago I reconnected with a couple of people from my high school, and one of them observed that we all became pretty much what we said we were going to. I don't know whether that's selection bias, or whether teenagers really do know that much. I suspect the latter. I value the enthusiasm of youth, and the lack of knowledge that it can't be done, a lot.

I think my parents did a really incredible job.

1. I'm not where I thought I'd be when I was 16, but I'm pretty darned happy with who and where I am.

Copied from my note over at Facebook in response to Dave and JT

Category: Dan Lyke life