Jasrags(dot)net

Well I was tagged by Chris Cornutt of phdeveloper.org for a "Seven Things" blog entry so I guess it's my turn.

1. I play adult amature ice hockey - I started while i still lived in Denver in 1999, played for 4 years before I moved away. Just started playing in Dallas again this year for a D league team called the Inuits with my friend Brent (Who i also played with in Denver)
2. My degree is in Advanced Multimedia and Graphic Design - I started thinking I wanted to work for ILM doing special effects but 3/4 of the way through school realized I enjoyed programming more than visual arts. Finished out my degree and went to work for Lucent Technologies.
3. I have never broken a single bone - It seems most everyone I know has a "I broke ____ " story. This is not to say i am not clumsy, as I am. I just seem to have very strong bones.
4. I have dislocated my shoulder 12 times and have has 2 surgeries on it - First time was playing roller hockey at my local tennis court in 1995. I hit a rock while skating and started to fall backwards, I put my right arm back to brace the fall and out came the shoulder. It took 4 hours to get it back into socket that first time and it was the most painful thing I have ever experienced. Since then it popped in and out several times before I had my first operation, all was good for a while until I was playing ice hockey and was tripped by my friend in practice and out comes the shoulder again. My second surgery seems to have helped allot but it will never be the same.
5. I have no formal programming training - I started programming my first year in high school for a internet game called a MUD (CircleMUD) to be specific. I had been playing allot during junior high and was asked to help out, so I picked up "C in plain English" (ISBN - 1-55828-430-3) by Brian Overland and off i went. Stuck with C until 1998 when I needed to connect my MUD to a MySQL database as i was moving away from flat binary files for data storage, for this I picked up "MySQL" (ISBN 0-672-32938-7) by Paul DuBois and learned about this fantastic thing called PHP. I used to to create a stat website for my hockey team and started down the web path from that point. I did a bit of programming for the Avaya IVR system (Which i worked on while i was at Avaya/Lucent) and then got a job at Yahoo!
6. I am a closet system administrator - I love to set up my servers, *nix is so fun and easy to work with that i enjoy managing all my own servers. I at one time had aspirations of running my own server hosting company but the time required to do that was not available.
7. I want to be a history teacher - When it is time for me to leave this programming life I want to teach history. Not sure what level yet, but i think i eventually want to specialize in military history.

And now I get to choose 7 people to tag:

• Mike Bligh - My best friend since 6th grade.
• Knut Urdalen- A programmer that i have worked with on the PRADO and Yii frameworks.
• Hans Zaunere - Who runs NYPHP.com
• Andrew Hyde - Who has founded 4 companies including StartupWeekend and VCwear. He currently works for TechStars.
• Whurley (William Hurley) - Who is an open source evangelist currently working for BMC software.
• Marc Morgan - My former co-worker and business partner, he is a UI freak.
• James West - A friend, C# programmer and fellow RPG geek.

And, of course, the rules to pass on:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
• 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.