7 things you didn't know, or want to know, about me.

I was one of the later people to get tagged in the PHP community, likely due to my blog's low readership as most people simply can't keep up with quantity of blog posts I do.. so many posts, so little time... Thanks to Remi_Woler, you shall now be subjected to learning 7 things about me!

1. My first use of PHP was for a game modding website, mostly for Half-Life mods. Finding hosting for this site, and offering free hosting to game mods was how I ended up getting involved in the web hosting industry. The site was pretty popular, and I coded a custom CMS to power it. While working on the site, I made my first contribution to an OSS project, a security patch for phpBB.


2. I discovered Cross-site request forgery. Ok, maybe I wasn't the first one to discover it, but I discovered it before there was even a popular word for it. I remember a couple of years ago mentioning CSRF in PHPC, and it seemed like no one knew about it. Today, it's a known huge issue. Maybe in some small way I helped spread awareness of the issue.


3. I have monkey toes. Seriously! The gap between my big toe and "index toe" is about 3 inches. I enjoy wearing flip-flops around the house so I can easily use my feet to pick up objects. I also like eating bananas, and hopefully if I keep banging on this keyboard long enough, I will produce the programming equivalent of Shakespeare. PS: I can type with my toes.


4. I'm a lucid dreamer. Lucid dreaming is when you are asleep, but you realize you are in a dream, and you can alter the dream at will. Kind of like daydreaming, but while actually being asleep. I credit this to my brain being overly logical. If you read up on it, you'll find lots of ways to try and "learn" to be a lucid dreamer. I started lucid dreaming when I was a kid, without even knowing what it was called, or that it existed. What caused me to start lucid dreaming? I had a dream with X-men villains, and while asleep my brain logically concluded this must be a dream, as X-men are fictional. I've been a lucid dreamer ever since.


5. I'm a bit of a health nut and picky eater. I rarely drink soft drinks. Usually just lots of water and coffee. I haven't ate a hamburger or hot dog in over 5 years. I avoid anything with MSG in it, and as a rule, try not eat too much of anything that has ingredients with names I can't even pronounce. I love fruit, and eat lots of it year round.


6. I have no favorite type of music, and I own only one music CD: the Spice Girls album, which I found abandoned and ran over in a parking lot. Likely by some parent tired of hearing their teenage girl keeping "Wannabe" on loop 24/7 for a few weeks. My favorite book and movie is Jurassic Park, which I have read and watched so many times I pretty much know both by heart. I'm a sucker for anything Michael Crichton, and I was really saddened when he passed away last year.


7. I am not a nerd! I'm a geek, who may sometimes be nerdy. Should you need proof, stand back, as I'm about to blow away any nerd cred I might have: I've only seen Star Wars once. I've never played MMORPGs, Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering, but I hang around enough nerds to know what they are . I've never worn a pocket protector, and I don't read comic books. I don't "get" anime. And, as a final nail in the geek coffin, I only know pi to 2 decimal points..

Hope you enjoyed reading this, although as evidenced by the above post, I tend to rabble on about myself adnauseam, so if you've met me for any length of time longer than 5 minutes, this may all be old news to you. Now here comes the fun part, I get to try and find 7 people who haven't already been tagged, and get them in on the fun, here goes:

• Chris Spruck - Because he needs to get a blog, and now he is obligated to.


• Chuck Burgess - Because he normally does more working than talking, and we need to fix that.


• FoxyDot - Because she's our own little bobby tables. Corrupting DBs wherever she goes.


• Timothy Boronczyk - For being the only person to actually care about my tuna related injury.


• Eric David - For being cool and using my camera to take pictures of my pikachu presentation, so I actually had some pictures of me for once.


• Token Python Guy - For totally kicking my butt at running up those stairs in Atlanta, and generally being awesome. (For a Python guy )


• Ben Ramsey - Just Because

PS: Sorry about missing the 2008 blog post, I'll try and post twice in 2009.
PSS: Maybe even three times.
PSSS: I hate evil doors.
PSSSS: Btw, BACON!!!