100 Things About Me

Thanks to my buddy Jim for tipping me off on the tradition of the 100th blog entry being 100 things about the author. So, here's my list of things you might not know about me:

1) I was born in Dunkirk, NY (at Brooks Memorial Hospital) on February 23rd, 1965.
2) If I had been born the day before, my parents were considering naming me 'George'.
3) I was actually born a few weeks early (maybe that's why I'm so wired for being on-time/early).
4) We lived in a suburb of Buffalo NY (Amherst) until I was four years old. Then we moved back to Dunkirk.
5) My fondest memory of the house in Buffalo was sitting in the playroom listening to "Meet The Beatles" over and over on my parent's hi-fi record player.
6) I'm five foot eleven inches tall when I stand without hunching my shoulders.
7) I sucked my thumb as a kid until I was four years old. That gave me an overbite that lead to needing braces.
8) I used to eat carmels and Sugar Daddys when I had my braces, often pulling my metal bands off my back teeth.
9) I have one brother who is four years old than me. We are opposites in quite a number of ways.
10) I've worn glasses since junior high school.
11) I did wear contacts for most of my college years and through the first few years of being married.
12) I stopped wearing contacts because staring at a computer screen all day tended to dry them out a lot.
13) I ran cross-country and track (running the two mile) the first couple years of high school.
14) I was on the golf team my junior year of high school.
15) I was a member of the editorial staff for 'the Candle', our high school magazine of poetry and creative arts.
16) I was also a member of the Computer Science Club and the Honor Society in high school.
17) I scored an 1160 on my SAT (530 verbal, 630 math).
18) I graduated fifth in my high school class out of 252 students. My GPA was a 96.0.
19) I went to Rochester Institute of Technology where I got my Bachelors in Science in computer science.
20) While at RIT I volunteered for the Student Orientation Service (SOS) all four years I was there.
21) For SOS, I was the chairperson of the Deaf Awareness committee on year, and I took over the Academics committee another year when a good friend needed a replacement for his spot.
22) I bought myself a sign-language dictionary and spent Thanksgiving break learning some sign to help in my chairperson role for Deaf Awarness. The five members on that committee were all hearing-impaired.
23) One of my college co-op assignments was in Randolph, NJ for the information processing company for M&M/Mars.
24) While working in Randolph, I lived in Dover, NJ - less than a three minute walk from the Joe Kubert School of Art.
25) For my other co-op assignment, I worked for IBM in Kingston, NY.
26) While in Kingston, we used to go out to the Hurley Mountain Inn which is a bar where they filmed one of the scenes in Tootsie.
27) While in Kingston, a bunch of us took a trip into Manhattan for the day. The highlight was an evening at a comedy club where we saw a young Dennis Miller perform a set after his SNL act.
28) That same year, a bunch of us took the trains into the city to spend New Year's Eve in Times Square.
29) Also while in Kingston I became a casual, social smoker (ie. only smoked when I went out to the bars).
30) I quit after a year and never picked it up with any type of regularity since then.
31) My favorite classes in both high school and college were those in the liberal arts.
32) My college GPA at graduation was a 3.36.
33) Upon graduation of college, I had numerous offers from IBM for a job. I decided to head south to Raleigh NC.
34) Part of the decision to do that was because my parents were planning to retire in North Carolina at some point.
35) The other part of the decision was I tired of all those NY state blizzards and frigid winters.
36) I was a member of the Raleigh Jaycees (the Junior Chamber of Commerce) for two years.
37) Post-college, I lived in an apartment alone for a year and then my brother moved in with me for a year.
38) I met my wife at a dance club in Raleigh called 'Cheers'.
39) We got engaged after two months of dating, and we were married just shy of a year from when we met.
40) We had our first house built while we were engaged and we moved our stuff into it a week before our wedding.
41) We lived in that house for thirteen years until our family, now including our son, needed something bigger. We moved a whole mile up the road.
42) We moved again in 2005 when I had to relocate for a new job - this time across state.
43) Despite my allergies to certain haired cats, I was able to adjust to the presence of my wife's cat Jazz which she brought to the marriage.
44) My other allergies include hayfever and pollen.
45) We've had six dogs so far since we got married (the max at any time was three). We have two right now - a beagle Buster and a boykin spaniel Cocoa.
46) Of the four dogs and the cat we've lost, we have the ashes of all of them save one. Duchess, a stray dog who we took in, had seizures so we donated her body to the local veterinary school for study.
47) I've been a programmer in the retail sector for almost 20 years now, and that was only with two different employers.
48) I taught myself HTML on the side in part so I could make websites for various hobbies I was involved in.
49) In the mid-90's, I was very into the Overpower collectible card game, and I had a website where I posted details and images for hundreds of homemade cards.
50) In the late 90's, I was involved in a DC Comics fanfiction club where I wrote over 150 stories - and even helped with archiving them to the club's website.
51) Over the recent six or so years, I've made images for hundreds for homemade product parodies similar to Wacky Packages which I collected as a kid in the 70's.
52) During my four years of college, I was part of a group which played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons every weekend.
53) As a kid, I used to write stories of my own super-heroes - many inspired by the comic books I was reading at the time. I still have some of those original hand written and typed tales.
54) In high school, I discovered Champions, a super-hero role-playing game, and I began to build my world under those game mechanics. I still play Champions once in a blue moon.
55) Today, I still write fiction involving my own heroic creations and post them on websites that I've put together.
56) I draw okay - well enough to get my ideas across. I am grateful for my artist friends who take pity on me and send me sketches as well.
57) Back in high school, my best friend and I would sit in the back of Sociology and Economics drawing our own comic strips. Mine were "the All-Fruit Squadron" and "the Unsalted Eggs-Men".
58) My favorite author in high school and college was Piers Anthony.
59) My favorite author today is Brad Meltzer.
60) I got to meet Brad in person at the San Diego Comic-Con a few years back, and we occasionally exchange emails.
61) My all-time favorite comic book artist is George Perez. I got to meet him in San Diego as well a number of years ago.
62) My second favorite comic book artist is John Byrne. I actually met him at a Greensboro, NC, convention back in 1990 or so.
63) My current favorite comic book writer is Geoff Johns. He writes a number of the current books I enjoy.
64) My all-time favorite comic book team is the Justice League of America.
65) My fictional heroic team the Justice Gang is very much inspired by the Justice League of the 70's.
66) My favorite Marvel comic book team is the Avengers.
67) I like team books over solo hero books because teams allow for varying dynamics and interpersonal connections.
68) My favorite solo hero would have to be Spider-Man.
69) The Flash would be a close second. He and Spidey have the widest array of fun villains.
70) Batman only comes in third because I hated how he got all dark and gritty after Frank Miller messed with him.
71) Logan's Run was the first PG rated film I ever saw in theatres (1976).
72) Saturday Night Fever was the first R rated film I ever saw in theatres (1978).
73) The Bee Gee's "Spirits Having Flown" tour (1979) was the first ever concert I went to.
74) Prince is my all-time favorite musical artist.
75) I have actually seen Prince in concert three times. His live shows are awesome.
76) My current favorite TV drama is Heroes (with Bones a close second).
77) My current favorite TV comedy is the Big Bang Theory (it better not get cancelled).
78) My all-time favorite TV drama is Freaks And Geeks.
79) My all-time favorite TV comedy would have to be Soap.
80) My favorite super-hero movie would have to be Superman II.
81) My favorite musical film would have to be Grease 2.
82) My first computer was a Commodore-64 which I got in 1983.
83) My current computer is a widescreen Toshiba laptop which I got in 2005.
84) We have a time share in Orlando, FL, right adjacent to Disney (you can hear the lions in Animal Kingdom roaring at night).
85) We've swapped weeks so we could travel to places like Palm Springs, CA.
86) I've been out of the country to Mexico once (Tijuana) and to Canada for business (Quebec).
87) Still, one my favorite places to go is San Diego (and southern California in general).
88) My first choice for ice cream would be strawberry. Vanilla is second.
89) When I make sauce for pasta and lasgna from scratch, I never make it the same twice. I just go by gut and taste when it comes to the ingredients.
90) Coke or Pepsi? I'll drink both but prefer Coke.
91) Actually, now it would be Coke Zero as I've switched over this Fall to the zero calories for health reasons.
92) I'm actually trying to lose weight. My highest ever has been 195lbs but my goal by next summer is 175lbs or less - in time for my 25th high school reunion. I'm halfway to that goal.
93) My favorite food would be Japanese steak and vegetables cooked in front of you.
94) I like to dip my french fries in a little mayonaise and ketchup.
95) I'm very much a creature of habit, perferring the routine to the unexpected. Spontaneous I am not.
96) I make schedules all the time, even in my head. Always ticking off that to-do list.
97) This is probably the biggest problem of mine as I tend to come across as a nag to my wife and son because things aren't happening to "my time-table".
98) This is one of the things I really need to change about myself, but see item #95 (I have a hard time with change).
99) I actually had to reorder items in this list a number of times, just to organize it better.
100) I enjoy the challenge of coming up with different things to blog about each day. Thanks for reading.