DevBlog

First I was named Time magazine's person of the year. Now I've been tagged (thanks Alex and Martin). I was wondering how long it would take for that to happen and had considered making a preemptive post. The way this works is when someone tags you, you need to post five things about yourself that no one (or very few) knows. So, here goes:

1. One of my first jobs as a teenager was working for the circus. You may think I would have been a perfect candidate as a carny, but nope. Someone had to walk behind the elephants and clean up. Actually, what I was doing was telemarketing. Yes, I admit it. I was in that dreaded industry. Calling local residents and trying to sell tickets to the circus.
2. On the flip side of things, I once sued a telemarketer in small claims court and won. OK, actually, we settled the case, but I got money out of them so I consider it a win. Utah has a law that prohibits telemarketers from using automated dialers in conjunction with recordings. One day, I grew tired of getting a particular call. I back tracked the 800 number they gave me. It went to a company in Nevada, then to another, then another, etc, until I finally traced things to a Utah company that turned out to be a husband and wife selling Herbalife. The law allows me to sue in small claims court for $500 plus court costs, so that's what I did. I anticipated that they wouldn't show up and I would have to sell the judgement to a collection agency. To my surprise they were there. We settled for $250 plus the court costs.
3. I lived in Santiago, Chile from 1978-80 as a Mormon missionary. I once spoke fluent Spanish, but alas, I've lost most of it in the nearly 30 years since then.
4. I was very young when my father died. About a year later, my mother remarried and I instantly gained a brother and two sisters. I was an only child before that. My step-brother is 4 months older than me, but was a year ahead of me in school. One step-sister was a year behind me. The other, four years behind. So, we had three of us in high school at the same time.
5. I worked at several local radio stations in high school and college. I did everything from the standard disk jockey thing to selling advertising to producing sports to engineering to news to recording commercials. In other words, pretty much everything. My first college major was broadcast journalism (I ended up in Information Systems Management). Dan Rather had just taken over for Walter Cronkite and I envisioned replacing him someday. Boy am I glad that never happened.

So, now to pass the buck, I'm tagging:

Andy Kramek
Craig Bailey
Anib (XAMLChick)
Christof Wollenhaupt
Calvin Hsia

Update: Added link to Martin