Tag, I'm it.

Hello all, welcome to my new blog. My dear wife just "blog tagged" me, and announced to the whole world that I would be starting a blog, so here it is.

Now for the fun part; I'm supposed to mention seven things about myself that not very many people know. Without further ado:

1. I busted my nose pretty bad way back when I was just a toddler. If I understand correctly, it involved a relative, a ball, a concrete foundation, and my nose (of course). My dad had converted the old garage into a living room. Unfortunately, due to the way the foundation was set, there was a little concrete ledge around the perimeter of the room, inconspicuously painted the same color as the walls. Apparently some relative was playing a go-fetch-the-ball game with me, the toddler. After a few rounds, the ball rolled over near the side of the room, I chased after it, and tripped at the wrong time. I was rushed to the hospital and had several stitches, which all got pulled out by my grubby little nubbies over the next few days. Stitches itch. Disclaimer: this story is entirely constructed from vague memories and things that other people have told me, any part may be entirely inaccurate.


2. The tag line of my blog says that I write computer software for a living. What is less known is that I started doing so when I was a little kid. One day my dad brought home a new computer (a dinosaur by today's standards). A few years later he showed me that if you turn it on without a cartridge or disk, it started up in a mode that let you write computer programs. I don't remember what year I started, but I'm guessing that I was 7 or 8 years old.
   


3. When I was in third grade, I had a full-blown epileptic seizure in the middle of the classroom. I guess my teacher handled it pretty well, because I'm still alive. Yet again I was rushed off to the hospital and had to stay there for a week. I was diagnosed with epilepsy. The doctors prescribed a medicine called Dilantin, which I kept using for the next ten years.
   


4. I played the clarinet in the school band for seven years.
   


5. I once broke a tooth by biting into a pea pod. No, really, I did! Well, it wasn't a real tooth, it was a fake one. It was actually the third generation, after two other fake teeth that met similar fates. The second one was lost due to a less glamorous reason; I got sick, lost my previous meal, and lost the tooth with it. The first one broke by biting into an apple. The real tooth had a hard history during my childhood, it became aquianted with a metal bar on a playground, then later with my sister's kneecap on the trampoline, and finally met a basketball that was thrown at my face in a particularly violent game of basketball in the middle school gym. It finally gave up. Yes, all of my fake teeth since then have been the removable kind, and no, I'm not interested in getting a permanent one.


6. When I was a junior in High School, I wrote a piece of music to be played by the high school band. Yes, I transposed the different parts and all of that business. We played it at the end-of-school-year band concert. It was the only 5 minutes of fame I ever got during my entire high school career. It even got a standing ovation. I put together another piece the next year, which I dare say was much better than the first one I did, but the new band teacher wasn't the least bit interested in letting us play it. Oh well. That leads to my next one...


7. One of my dreams is to someday make a little home music studio, with a collection of both acoustic and electronic instruments, a rack of recording/playback equipment, and whatever other sound gadgets I can collect. It could be a sound-proof room so that people can use it to practice instruments as loud as they want without anybody else getting upset. You get the idea.