Five things you never knew about me.
Book of Joe tagged me with one of those question-answering memes and, while I generally ignore them…hey, it’s Joe. I also think I’ll enjoy this one. I’m supposed to list five things that you don’t know about me. What with my family and many close friends reading this, I’ll just go for what most of you don’t know about me.
- The Air Force was my planned career path, as my route into the space program. I even joined Civil Air Patrol. But the height limit for the shuttle is 6’4″, and once I hit 6’3″ with no sign of slowing down, I realized I’d need a new path in life. (I’m a shade over 6’4″ now.) I never did find that other path.
- I was the proud recipient of the first-ever e-mailed subpoena. But it was a Word file, so I couldn’t read it. This led to a heck of a legal case [1, 2, 3] that, with the backing of the ACLU, we (“The Peacefire Three”) ultimately won.
- Elementary and middle school were an absolute mystery to me. I had no idea of where I should be at any given time, how I could find out, or even what day of the week that it was or how to find that out. Once I was abruptly switched from one grade to another — like, first to fifth or something — and then switched back weeks or months later; explanation was neither granted nor did it occur to me to ask. You know the dream where you’re in school but you’re late to class and there’s a test and you didn’t study and didn’t bring your homework? Welcome to my childhood, right up to the sense of dreaming.
- My first car was the family’s old 1987 minivan that I inherited. It died before I could even fill up the gas tank. That was followed by a motorcycle, which proved to be a lot more fun.
- I became a licensed ham radio operator in middle school, but never once did anything with it. Not only could I not afford a rig, but I got internet access, and, really, I only wanted to become a ham to access the internet via packet radio. Being lousy at CW, I was lucky to get one of the first codeless licenses, Technician class, made available in 1991 just a few weeks before I took my test. (The FCC eliminated all CW requirements two weeks ago.) I was even a Harry Dannals (W2HD) fanboy — the former president of the ARRL, living right here in Charlottesville!
Breaking the chain, I’m tagging nobody with this, though I’d be happy to see some others pick this up and run with it.
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