Pushing String

Uh, thanks, Tim. I think. (And congrats on becoming a Distinguished Engineer!)

Here’s a list of five things most people probably don’t know about me:

1. I have a bit of graphite embedded in my left palm from a knife game — only with pencils! — gone awry when I was five years old.

2. I have a severe case of bovilexia.

3. There are nine distinct versions of Bohemian Rhapsody on my iPod:

   • The original (three copies, from A Night at the Opera, Queen Greatest Hits, and the Wayne’s World soundtrack)
   • The live version from the Wembley ‘86 concert
   • The We Will Rock You musical soundtrack (coincidentally recorded in London soon after the first time I saw it there)
   • The London Symphony Orchestra version
   • A rap version by Molotov on a Spanish-language “tributo a Queen“
   • Two substantially different versions by the Braids (a capella and instrumental), along with two extra mixes based on these
   • Two versions (Constantine and the Flaming Lips) off the intermittently amazing Killer Queen: A Tribute to Queen album (if you like the song Stone Cold Crazy, check out this version)

   And I don’t even have the ID Gang Choir’s version of Bohemian Rhaps-ID on there yet.

4. I have performed in a strip club.

   I used this in playing a game of three truths and a lie with Sara Gates, Michelle Dennedy, and some other great folks at a conference last year, so I guess they know this about me, at least. It was supposed to be the one “ringer truth” that everyone would assume was a lie, but I got tripped up by Michelle, who independently joked, just before my turn, about my “stripping career”… In fact, my first band Sleeper did play in a club (I think it was somewhere on the Pearl Harbor military base) that did indeed have, y’know, dancers as part of the entertainment. A weird experience, especially since the poor dancers had to cue up their own music on the jukebox.

5. I think watermelon-flavored Jolly Ranchers are an abomination.

Conor, Pat, Paul, JeffH, John: tag, you’re it! (As if there’s anything left we don’t know about Conor. Or Paul.)

Just doing my part to be a vector…

[UPDATED to fix link to John’s blog.]