25 Random Things About Me

Stolen from Facebook...

Rules: 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 at least 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 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.)

1. I don't normally participate in silly Facebook memes, but I'm really quite bored with Super Bowl XLIII (and American Football in general), so why not?
2. I've seen Poison live in concert 5 times, but never since C.C. Deville left, then rejoined the band.
3. I'm a doctor, but as my mom likes to say, "Not the kind that helps people." (Ph.D. in chemical engineering from University of Texas at Austin)
4. I flew solo in a private airplane the night before my 16th birthday (one day before allowed by law).
5. I never flew solo again in a plane after that night and never got my private pilot's license.
6. I've been awarded 25+ patents in the United States and also have patents granted in the EU and in Japan. Unfortunately, AMD and Yield Dynamics (now MKS) are the assignees on all my patents.
   
7. I was a pretty decent basketball player in middle and high school and attended Coach K's basketball camp at Duke when I was a kid.
8. When in grad school, I used to run a website for local bands in Austin, TX at hepcat.com and now I wish I had never sold that domain name.
   
9. I once finished 5th in the nation in Orienteering at the National Science Olympiad by gaming the scoring system (because I got majorly lost using my compass!)
10. I really would like to go to Disneyland Tokyo and DisneySea but can't really fathom what a trip there with the kids would be like.
11. Running the RailHawks' supporters club isn't my first flirtation with fandom, I once co-ran the Jimmy Buffett Listserv (mailing list) and was Historian/Liturgy Director of the Church of Buffett, Orthodox.
12. These days, I spend much more time listening to the artists I discovered through Jimmy Buffett's music -- like Steve Goodman, Todd Snider, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jesse Winchester, Willis Alan Ramsay -- than I do listening to Buffett anymore.
13. I met one of my lifelong best friends (whom I was able to reconnect with after many years thanks to Facebook), when I was in 8th grade, sitting on a bench reading the greatest book of all time -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- and this girl I didn't know came up and slugged me and said: "Cool book". She was the one that introduced me to Jimmy Buffett.
    
14. I've been an Anglophile ever since studying in London, probably my favorite city in the world, during the summer of 1994. I really hope I can get there for the 2012 Olympics.
    
15. I wish that American TV seasons were reduced to 6-8 episodes like British series...so I don't keep losing interest in shows after just a few weeks.
16. I love the "idea" of books. I like the way they look on my bookshelf. I love to flip through them. I obsessively collect them. I just never seem to have the attention span to read them.
17. I always thought I'd like comic books, but never seem to get the hang of the rhythm of reading graphic novels until I read The Watchmen recently in anticipation of next month's film. Now I'm reading Ed Brubaker's "Sleeper" and really enjoying it.
18. I fulfilled a lifelong ambition in 2005 when I rode my bicycle 100 miles in a single day at Lance Armstrong's Ride for the Roses in Austin, TX. My next cycling ambition is to ride L'etape du Tour one day.
    
19. While I love living in The Triangle, I dearly miss Austin where I spent 7 wonderful years in grad school, my first real job, and where my son was born.
    
20. The only other place in the US that I think I would like to live is Portland, OR, where Liz and I almost moved before making a last minute decision to move to Cary, NC instead.
21. I love to cook and wish I had a bigger kitchen and more cool utensils and cooking apparatus.
22. I have no real palette for wine and can never remember the name of a good bottle I've drunk, but I'm a major beer snob.
23. I love the fact that two of my favorite beers -- Belgium's Hoegaarden and Austin's Celis White -- were actually brewed by the same Brewmeister, Pierre Celis, on two different continents about 30 years apart.
24. My dream vacation is to go on a folksong tour of Scotland with Ed Miller
    
25. Much to my surprise, I ended up rather enjoying the Super Bowl, especially the last 3 minutes.