Time for another installment of Blogger Insider, where Keith Berman pairs up folks to ask questions of each other.
My partner this bi-week is Michael Kuker, whose own blog (and the questions I asked of him) can be found here.
1. How long have you been on the Internet, and how did you discover it?
I can actually date this one pretty well. When, in April or May of 1994 I returned from my “Three Hour Tour” in Martinez, Calif. (a/k/a, “The Short Business Trip That Turned Into A Six Month Bataan Death March”), my company was just rolling out Net access. This was great, as I was a serious burn-out case, and I started hitting all sorts of Internet mail lists, two of which (Belief-L and B5-JMS) I’m still on today.
Nobody in my company was doing browser stuff yet. That came along, for me, about a year later.
2. Why do you blog?
A. It helps me to organize my thoughts and reactions toward life.
B. It lets me share (A) with folks who might be interested in knowing.
C. It lets me entertain people.
D. It’s the ego thing, man.
3. Where were you September 11?
I was at work. I got a call from someone who works for me in Houston, telling me that a plan had crashed into the WTC. This was an ironically appropriate phone call, since the person in question is in charge of Business Continuity Planning. I quick started hitting the web to learn more (figuring it was a civil aviation accident, some Cessna gone horribly awry), but couldn’t get in anywhere. It wasn’t until I got to the BBC site that I started learning more details.
I don’t remember a lot else about that day, except hitting Reload a lot and somehow getting home. It was, though, just after I had started my blog, so I can actually go back to then and see what I was thinking.
Odd way my life was affected: my folks had been staying the preceding weekend, flying out that morning. We ended up rescuing them from the airport and putting them up for a few days longer until they were able to rent a car and drive home.
4. What are your top five Desert Island Discs?
Had that one on before, but it’s worth trotting out again:
5. Doc Brown has loaned you his flying time-traveling DeLorean. Where and when do you go? Why?
Having just watched part of Part II, I’d be really leery about flying anywhere. My immediate thought, though, is to fly back to 10 September and try and warn someone about 9-11. Then that drags me back to 7 December ’41, or trying to kill Hitler, or something like that, and that way madness (and the Law of Unexpected Consequences) lies.
Two other thoughts, though.
1. Visit myself in, say, 1979. Just graduated from High School. Better grow the beard back, though. I’ve got this real desire to see what was going through my head, then, really. How I came across. On the other hand, I strongly suspect I’d seriously frell things up.
2. Hit Jerusalem around AD 35 or so. Keep an ear cocked for word of another of those crazy prophets making the rounds. Check him out.
6. Everybody has quirks and idiosyncrasies. What’re your oddest idiosyncrasy?
I could write volumes. (Actually, maybe that’s the answer in and of itself.) Hmmmm. I have a real Thing about folks flipping ahead in my page-a-day calendars (to see future quotes, cartoons, whatever the calendar is about). Bugs the living hell out of me. I get very rude when people try it.
7. Who was your biggest influence in your formative years? What values did this person give you?
I suspect it was my dad. (Though my mom would be a close second there.) He taught me about hard work. About high expectations. About responsibility and duty and being a father. Not a bad package to pass along, all things considered.
8. What was the worst movie you’ve ever seen?
Nightfall, starring David Birney. The only movie — the only one — I have ever gotten this close to getting up and walking out on, except I wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of moving me that much. Either this film killed Asimov, or else it caused him to spin madly in his grave. Words cannot describe this abomination. It is indelibly etched in my mind as the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a number of stinkers (and am notoriously charitable to them).
9. Describe the most traumatic moment of your life so far.
See #8. No, ah, let me think. I would probably end up picking one of several incidents with my first wife when she was going through some severe mental and emotional problems. That I came out of that relationship with a modicum of sanity and stability is a minor miracle. I won’t go into any details, both because it doesn’t seem right and because it’s, honestly, too disturbing to recall.
10. How old were you before you felt like a “grown-up?”
I will be perfectly honest with you. Even at 41 (yeesh!), with a wife and a child and a well-paying job, I still have this mental image of myself as just out of college, still verging on adulthood, but not quite there. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
11. Do you like gratuitious wacky questions to finish up Blogger Insider?
It beats my standard, “Why did you sign up with Blogger Insider?” question.
12. Do you want to slap that “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” kid as badly as I do?
I want to force him (the kid in the commercial, not the actor), as well as the ad team that made it up and the Dell execs who approved it, to sit through a three week marathon of Nightfall.
If that would cause problems with Amnesty International, I’ll settle for little Freddy’s mother slapping him, and then forbidding her son to ever see him again, and then calling store security, who rough him up and throw him in a dumpster behind the store. The one with all the broken appliances in it.
13. Are you sick of these questions yet?
Not when they’re as easy to answer as this one.
14. Do these questions suck?
No. Nightfall sucked. These questions were actually pretty good, even if they inflated your question count past mine. 🙂
Your comment about calendars makes me think of my grandmother (Dad’s mom). She always sais that turning thepage of a calendar early (or looking ahead) was like frittering your life away. Somehting about today not being good enough for you. It left me with the same compunction.