Seven things

I was tagged by Lukas for the "7 things" meme, and meant to do something about it, but I've been kind of preoccupied with the new baby and the sprinting toddler and work. Anyway, it seems like a heck of a lot more reasonable than the evil Facebook's "25 things" meme, so I'm going to take a few minutes to try to play along.

1. I was an early riser until I was around 15 or 16 years old and discovered the surrealists. At that point, I began experimenting with sleep deprivation as a means of stimulating my prose and poetry. This is also when I began drinking coffee. After about a month, I was no longer capable of being an early riser--and the fruit of writing experiments was, uh, not too impressive.
2. Rather than going directly to university after high school, I elected to take what is now termed a gap year. No trips to Europe for me, though; the goal was to refine my bass-playing and music-reading skills and head to a post-secondary music program. I recorded a few prog-rock tracks in a studio with a fantastic couple of guys (hey Pete and Mike!), but ultimately didn't put enough effort into my bass to carry out the plan. Let me assure you that a year of working night shifts at a convenience store in the entertainment district of a small city is not a waste of time; I can't count the number of experiences that I'm thankful for having had during that time.
3. Although I roast and grind my own coffee, I'm not a coffee snob. In fact, I possess almost no sense of smell and I suspect that my sense of taste is limited in comparison to most people, and I'm quite happy to drink diner coffee. I cannot stand the taste of Starbucks coffee, however.
4. The first time I was able to run a full kilometre without walking was when I was eighteen. Since then I've run a couple of 5K races and and a sprint duathlon.
5. I'm pretty sure I was destined to become a systems librarian. When I was 10, I used to hang out at the local college's computer room until the students would log me onto a completely restricted Gandalf mainframe account so I could pretend to be Matthew Broderick in WarGames. My first real job, when I was 14, was as a "computer page" at the Barrie Public Library Children's Annex. It was my responsibility to oversee the use of the bank of Commodore 64s that the library made available to children, luring them in with games but requiring them to complete their allotment of educational software first. Oh the power.
6. I occasionally wrote reviews for random CDs that came into the campus newspaper office. Nobody else wanted to review this orange CD called Tragic Kingdom by some West-coast band, so I took it on. I gave it a savage review; I wasn't impressed with faux-ska and couldn't stand the lead singer's voice. Six months later No Doubt's "SpiderWebs" was in high rotation on every radio station in North America (look, folks, that song is repetitive enough without being played twice an hour!). I'm sure that my negative review still gnaws at Gwen Stefani today as she weeps bitterly in her platinum mansion.
7. In grade one, my report card read Dan is too critical of his classmates. In my defence, if they weren't so stupid--come on, sound it out buddy--I wouldn't have been critical. Okay, not much of a defence.
8. I am not a very demanding friend. I (almost) never call, (almost) never write, and (almost) never visit. Okay, scratch that: I'm a crappy friend. Most of my close friends found out that we were expecting a second child only through Lynn's Facebook account. I called one couple shortly after Arik was born and his quasi-namesake (one of the Eric's in our life who bring honour to the noble name) asked me after a few minutes: "So, uhh... did we know that you were expecting a baby?". No, no you didn't, and that's not your fault. Man I suck.
9. I'm really good at arithmetic.

Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.

• Share seven facts about yourself in the post — some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Wow, that was fun. Lemme see, I'm going to break the rules and just tag two people: Helmut, because he's one of the only other people who worked on the ibm_db2 PHP driver out of passion rather than as a job assignment. And Gabriel because I like his style.