I was tagged by Simone Chiaretta and Ryan Olshan on their blogs a while back and I am sure that I am the last of the five to continue on the chain, but better late than never as they say. Here are the 5 things that I'm not telling you about me.
1) I interviewed for a job a while back and spoke with the CIO, who said that he wanted to hire me and would get in touch with me. Although he said that he would hire me, he never actually did. Who knows, maybe he didn't really want to hire me and was just being nice. In any case, I just showed up to work one day with my desktop from home and started coding. A week later I just started sending invoices and the rest was history. It was a really fun place to work and I was there for about 3 years.
2) I used to play Table Tennis competitively and even competed in the US Table Tennis Open one year. I was fortunate enough to have one of the legends in Table Tennis, Marty Prager, as my coach. I also had a second coach, Therese Terranova, to help me with my serves. Marty was named to the Table Tennis Hall of fame just last year and Therese had been a world champion holder in Wheelchair Table Tennis as well. So, with all of this coaching talent, why aren't I a champion Table Tennis player? It wasn't for a lack of trying. It was simply due to a complete lack of talent on my end. I did have fun trying, though.
3) To save time on the highway, I used to drive with a Mannequin in the passengers seat so that I could ride in the carpool lane. Her name was Leonna, because she had a stone cold look on her face, like Leona Helmsley and she was always looking out the passengers side window. At the company that I worked at, people would see me get out of my car and leave her in the passengers seat. They thought that I was a total jerk for doing that. It is not very nice, they thought, to have your girlfriend wait in the car all day until you finish work. Soon, word spread about her and she was invited to a bunch of really wild company parties. It was a realy fun company to work for. On a few occassions, people would walk up to the car and almost pick a fight with Leona because they thought that it was rude that she was just staring at them. They approached the car with a "What are you looking at ?!?!?!" attitude and felt really stupid when they got close and realized that it was a mannequin.
4) In my first Table Tennis Tournament ever, I lost to a 6 year old girl. Before the tournament, I was so proud and full of hope.... I invited my girlfriend, some coworkers, friends and family to watch me show off what I had learned. In table tennis, though, you are pitted against people that have the same ranking as you, regardless of their age or gender. I remember playing against a little girl. A really cute little girl, in fact, who could barely see above the table. At first, I thought, she is so cute. I couldn't possibly beat her, I should just let her win. So, at first I was going easy on her. Hitting the ball right to her. Soon I found out that it didn't matter if I went easy on her or not, she was better than I was. At some point I tried to win, I really did, but wherever I hit the ball, she would return it. Apparently, the only advantage that I had over her was that I could count and she couldn't.
5) I woke up one day and decided to move to Australia. Simple as that. So, I started checking out flights and making plans. After I found out that it was a 24+ hour flight, I thought, "Hey, maybe I should stop off at a few place on the way to break up the flight". After seeing all of the places I could visit, I ditched the initial plan, bought an "Around the world" ticket and visited Iceland, Norway, Ireland, several countries in Europe, Thailand, New Zealand and yes, finally Australia (but only for 2 weeks). So the plan merged into a 4+ month vacation and I eventually returned back to the states to stay. It was an incredible trip, though.
Bonus:
After my long vacation, I went back to work at the company that I was working at prior to leaving. They never hired me back officially, but a friend of mine who worked there was told by the CIO that she could have any of the resouces that she needs. I think he really meant computers and training materials, not actual people. After the CIO saw me working there again, he said to her, "I never hired him!" and her response was a hurtful "You told me I could have any resources I need!!!". I worked there for another two years.
Tag, you're it
Now it is my turn to pick the next folks in the chain... Daniel Egan, Lou Vega, Joe Healy, Greg Young, Shawn Weisfeld, Rob Foster so guys.... Tag, You're It!!!