Blog Tag

Okay, so I just got tagged a few days ago by Ken Oestreich. It’s taken me a while to post a list of five things about me that you probably don’t know, but here goes:

1. When I was in high school, I sold my first computer program and accompanying article to an Apple II enthusiast magazine—Nibble Magazine. I sold them 3 articles and programs in total, but they only published one of them. It was assembly code and an accompanying bitmapped font set to display text with high-resolution graphics on the Apple II+.
2. In 1989, I started my own three-person software company (Victory Software) to write role-playing games for the Apple IIgs. We managed to sell a few thousand copies of three different games. However, we shut down the company a few years later after Apple killed the IIgs line in favor of the color Macs. All of this was in the pre-Internet era, but it’s amazing what historical references you can find on the web these days.
3. I don’t write game software anymore, but I have taken up golf. A few years ago, my daughter and I were playing at Blackberry Farm in Cupertino. The pro shop told us that Julie Inkster was playing two holes ahead of us. We did manage to see Julie and her kids from across the lake, but we never did close enough for an autograph. My golf swing and short game are nothing to write about (even in a blog), but I have been a pretty good swing coach for my kids. My kids and I never saw anyone else famous on the golf course, but my son is a big Tiger fan. He wears Tiger’s Sunday red-and-black combination when we play on Sundays.
4. When I worked in Rochester, Minnesota in the 80’s, I actually placed fifth in a city road-race. I ran just under 11 minutes for a two-mile road race— nothing great, but good enough for a small town of 60,000. I still have my plaque somewhere in the garage. The race was in early May, but it was 30 degrees outside and snowing! During the last 100 yards, I got passed by a teenager, which was a little disheartening. Back in my youth, I never did manage to break the 5-minute-mile barrier, but I did get within 5 seconds. I still run these days, but it’s more like 7:30 miles. :-)
5. I have a US patent. It’s patent #6,683,553. I got it when I worked in the Java Web Services group at Sun. The patent belongs to Sun, but I still have the plaque on my desk.

Okay, so now it’s my turn to tag 5 folks. Unfortunately, I’m a relatively new blogger, and I don’t have a bunch of blogging friends. So, I’ll tag Floyd Strimling and Rob Gingell. And I’ll put out 3 requests to folks who would be good bloggers. (I’ll just nudge them privately.)