Old meme - 100 Facts

[mikekn]

Ok, this is an old meme that been around since at least some time in 2002. jducoeur brought it to my attention several months ago when he posted a link back to his list from early 2003. Ever since then it's been rattling around in my brain collecting information and looking for a way out (making it the only "real" meme I've encountered so far, or at least the strongest).

Edit: It has been about ten years since I posted this. I was thinking about it the other day and decided to see what has changed. A few edits have been added in bold. 7/14/2014

So here we have 100 facts about me:

1. I was born in North Carolina. (My mother was born in Indiana, my father in Pennsylvania, and my sister in Georgia).


2. When I was very young, I cracked my head on a door frame while visiting my grandmother - I still have a big Y shaped scar. As my hair recedes it has become more visible.


3. By the time I was seven, I had lived in four different states: North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Pennsylvania.


4. My parents got divorced when I was 8.


5. I was the best man at my father's third wedding.


6. Had I been attending school in this day and age, I would have probably been arrested for making terroristic threats. Thankfully they were more tolerant back then.


7. During my freshman year in high school, a friend of mine shot me in the eye with a needle blown from a straw. I lost most vision in that eye and my depth perception.


8. For some reason, I wanted to attend my senior prom. I picked someone that I didn't really know (and who didn't know me), got to know her, started dating and went to the prom. We stopped dating when we went to college (she broke up with me).


9. When I was born my parents had a cat named Katzer (from the German for "cat"). She was with us until my junior year in high school. She died of kidney failure at age 18.


10. For most of her life, every year Katzer would have a litter (or two?) of kittens. Some of my earliest memories are of cats.


11. Apart for nine months in the dorms at Drexel, I have never lived in a place without cats.


12. I've also owned birds, dogs, guinea pigs, and fish, but I'd rather not.


13. Twice I've been bitten badly by my own dogs. In both cases it was my own fault (tried to stop a dog fight and tried to grab a running dog, but only caught her tail).


14. During my sophomore year in collage I stopped cutting my hair. It now only gets trimmed when it gets a few inches past my waist. I've been losing my hair for awhile now, and it is barely past my shoulders.


15. I'm fine with complete strangers coming up and playing with my hair at SF conventions or SCA events, but at the 7-11 it's a little weird. This hasn't happened in years (see above)


16. I'm allergic to cigarette smoke - and as a result rarely hang out in bars or clubs. I'm a huge fan of the no smoking laws - now I visit bars fairly often.


17. At the time I attended, Drexel required you to take a swimming gym class or pass a swim test. I somehow managed to avoid both and instead took three fencing classes.


18. I do know how to swim.


19. Since high school, all of my jobs have involved computers to some extent.


20. I have never successfully gotten a job from just an interview.


21. I have never been fired or left a job.


22. Once, the company I worked for went out of business the two weeks before Christmas; this was at the same time that I was trying to buy a house and get married. I found a new job and started on Jan 2, settled on the house two weeks later, and was married a week after that. I've had a few different jobs since then, gotten divorced, and still have the house. I'm also back to working for the same guy whose company went under.


23. I rarely feel stress.


24. At our wedding reception, we entered the hall with our two attendants to the Banana Splits Theme song.


25. We cut the cake to Weird Al Yankovic's song "Eat It". We had a great DJ.


26. Our wedding cake was a model of Neuschwanstein Castle made out of lemon pound cake.


27. I don't belong to a political party, but I tend to vote against Republicans.


28. I'm pro-choice and anti-abortion. Meaning: I think abortion should be legal, safe, accessible and rare. The rare part should come from a lack of demand due to better education, better access to birth control, and other such things.


29. I am penny foolish and pound wise.


30. I believe that if someone wants to know something about me, they will ask. And if they want me to know something about them, they will tell me. I recognize the conflict in that, but don't know what to do about it.


31. I am not religious. When asked what religion I am, I either say Discordian or Apatheist depending on the time of day and who's asking.


32. In spite of this, I have two god children.


33. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons in 1979. I still have all my books.


34. The first comic book I collected (and for many years the only one) was Elfquest which I started reading in 1983.


35. The second comic was Sandman, which I started reading in college.


36. I currently collect about 40 different titles, but at times it was up to 60 different titles. At some point I fell behind on my comic reading, and then stopped buying them altogether. There are a handful of titles I'd like to catch up on, but it will be awhile before I do.


37. While I now read some superhero titles, I still prefer non-superhero books.


38. I also read about 30 web comics. None of them are superheros.


39. I've still got a rather large Elfquest collection, but I no longer keep up with it the way I used to.


40. I'm not a car person - cars are for getting me and my stuff from one place to another as cheaply as possible.


41. I don't watch or otherwise follow any sports.


42. I didn't play any team sports in school, but I was on the computer programming team.


43. In college, twice my team went to the ACM programming competition finals but we never won.


44. My first computer was a brand new Franklin Ace 1000.


45. I spend way too much time on the computer and internet, but I rarely get around to playing computer games (with NetHack being a notable exception). Still only play a few games, usually just focusing on one at a time. These days it is Puzzle and Dragons


46. I am a co-inventor on patent #6,684,705 - "Roller mechanism using an array of ultrasound elements to interrogate wood properties"


47. I sometimes view my life as broken into 9 Lives, each separated by some sort of life changing event. By my count I'm on my fifth; I'm hoping not to need all nine. Currently on #7


48. I am interested in personifications of death.


49. I was a member of the DUsers, a computer users group at Drexel. I organized and managed the shareware library for a while.


50. I was one of the founding members of the Drexel Anime Club.


51. We once drove to Waltham, MA just to buy some imported anime laser discs (from Sight & Sound), visit a comic store (no clue which store) and hang out with some folks one of my friends knew at MIT. We returned to Philly that same day (12 hour round trip).


52. I filmed the entire trip on 15 minutes of 8mm film, taking one frame at a time.


53. My first true science fiction convention was Disclave in May 1987. I attended with some friends of mine who needed a ride down - I had a car, they had a driver's license - it worked out.


54. I was supposed to stay with my father on the other side of DC, but the trains didn't run as late as I wanted to stay, so one night I hung out in the film room, filk room and con suite, until I could no longer stay awake. I slept briefly in the car, and the next morning borrowed a shower from folks staying at the con.


55. Creation Cons are/were not true SF conventions in my mind. I went to them for Dr. Who stuff for several years in the 80s.


56. I attended Disclave, Balticon and Philcon regularly for years, but not so much any more.


57. I went to Unicon 13 during the summer of 1989 for the stated purpose of seeing Clam Chowder perform their last show on their Farewell Victory Tour, and for the unstated purpose of meeting up with a girl I had met at school. Many years later, Clam Chowder is back together making music, and the girl is long gone. I believe Clam Chowder retired within the last year or two.


58. My first WorldCon was Noreascon 3. It made quite an impression on me and while it took me a few years to get to another one, I attended them regularly for a few years after that.


59. I miss going to every Worldcon, but I can't justify the costs. I hope to start making all the east coast Worldcons, but even that looks doubtful.


60. I've never gone to a World Fantasy Con, but I'd like to some day.


61. I have played with wolves, and will again some day.


62. I first discovered the SCA during my freshman year at Drexel. I attended fencing and dance practice in the Barony of Bhakail.


63. I attended one or two events, but didn't get hooked until violet_amy got me back into it, over six years later.


64. Once I got back into it, I attended two events (Pennsic 25 & 26) before going to any of the local activities.


65. I enjoy playing with the Seven Deadly Sins.


66. I'm proud of my problem solving skills.


67. I tend to waste food and hoard alcohol.


68. I envy folks who can easily express their feelings.


69. I don't read the articles.


70. Twice I lost complete control to anger - but it was a long time ago.


71. I can never have too many books.


72. I can easily waste a day surfing the internet.


73. I am a fairly bad writer - English was my least favorite subject in school and I spent most of my time ignoring it. For me to write a clear and meaningful post, email, message, or whatever can take forever.


74. It took me months to write these facts.


75. I love spell checkers, but I'm not thrilled with grammar checkers.


76. Half the stuff I start to write for LJ never gets past my internal censors and editors.


77. I get most of my work done in the mornings. If a new project hasn't gotten started by the afternoon, I'm likely to put it off until the next day.


78. I don't play any instruments, but tried to learn several.


79. I want to find something that is as easy to play as whistling.


80. I whistle using the roof of my mouth - so I can whistle without it looking like I'm whistling.


81. It would be ok if I looked like I was playing an instrument while I was actually playing an instrument.


82. I rarely remember my dreams - and those times I do remember something, it's usually gone within a few minutes.


83. Until recently I was not a beer drinker. Too much time hanging out with brewers has introduced me to styles of beer that I like enough to seek out. I still don't like the typical American beers. Much more of a beer drinker these days - still not a fan of the American lager


84. I'm not a Star Trek fan. I've seen some episodes of each of the series, and most of the movies, but I can just as easily miss them. Nothing used to annoy me more then trying to explain about science fiction conventions and having the person respond, "So you're a Trekkie?"


85. I'm not a fan of the word "geek", even though I fit most definitions of it (apart from the biting the heads off of chickens bit). I've softened somewhat on "geek", but I'm even less of a fan of "nerd".


86. I have little patience for small children - one of many reasons why I don't want kids of my own. Nothing against them, just nothing for them either.


87. I like getting hugs, but feel very awkward giving them.


88. I collect games, focusing on specific game designers or game publishers. My favorite is still Cosmic Encounter (CE), Eon version. We used to play CE regularly in college.


89. I had to build up a complete CE set after the person with the set moved to Pittsburgh. I tracked down one of the creators of the game, years after Eon had gone out of business, and was able to purchase several old bits of the game from him.


90. Favorite designers and publishers are Steve Jackson Games, Looney Labs, and Cheapass Games. I've gotten a lot more into Euro games giving me a lot more designers to follow.


91. I like dark chocolate a lot, milk chocolate a little, and dislike white chocolate.


92. I don't like most seafood - the sole exception being shrimp. We never ate much fish when I was growing up - at least not beyond fish sticks, and I'd usually drown those in something (interestingly enough, it was usually applesauce). Shrimp makes me ill, so I had to give it up


93. My grandmother used to live in Kennett Square - mushroom capital of the world. The area always smelled of fertilizer, so to this day I associate mushrooms with manure and do not eat them.


94. The rest of my food dislikes all seem to be texture based.


95. I enjoy live plays and musicals (but not musical movies for some reason - especially animated ones). But I don't get to go to the theater nearly as often as I'd like.


96. I collect books. Mostly science fiction and fantasy with the occasional main stream novel or short story collection. In this case collect means that I buy them and don't get rid of them when I've finished reading them.


97. I started to make a list of my favorite authors, but it was too long to be a useful fact. They can't be ranked because so many of their styles are different or I like them for different reasons. So, all you get is: I like a lot of different authors.


98. I have a good sized collection of Emperor Norton I stuff, including books, magazine articles, newspaper articles, photos, reproduction money, stamps, postcards, and trading cards.


99. I've tried tracing my ancestors, and have mostly discovered they've been here for a long time (at least on my father's side). Additionally all of them are of German descent.


100. FNORD