So C.K. tagged me into the “List five things people don’t know about you and then get five more people to do the same” pyramid scheme meme. (For those of you keeping track, the line back to the top of the pyramid is me » C.K. Sample » Jason Calacanis » Amanda Congdon » Michael Ambs » Rick Rey » Steve Woolf » Steve Garfield » Jeff Pulver.) So here they are – five things you (probably) don’t know about me, Chris Finke:
1. I used to write movie, music, and restaurant reviews for the Janesville Gazette’s JNL section; I probably did 40 to 50 of them over a four year period. I also won their Christmas creative-writing contest three years in a row.
2. I’ve played a tuba. While wearing a Santa suit. And beard. In front of 1,600 high school students. While getting booed. Loudly.
3. When I played third-base in Little League, I completed an unassisted triple play. Needless to say, I lucked into it: I caught a soft line drive while standing on third with the bases loaded, and the runner at second just screwed up and kept running.
4. I can gleek. This both disgusts my wife and makes her jealous that she can’t do it too.
5. I have surprisingly persistent career goals: in second grade, one of our homework assignments was to write down what we wanted to be when we grow up; I put “computer programmer or music teacher.” I went on to start college as a music education major before switching to computer science. (It was not until after I was well into my CS degree that I found the paper and was amazed by my second-grade self.)
That’s it for me, but as for my five people: tag-you’re-it, Alex, Muhammad, Derek, Fabienne ;-), and just for the heck of it, Ken Jennings.
http://fabienne.us/index.php?module=news&id=24
I also can gleek, although I’ve never thought of it as a skill.