So Pete tagged me with the "8 random things" meme. So many things about me are random it's hard to choose where to start. But here it goes:

1. One of my first words as a baby was "birdahonk" -- hence the name of by site. My family teased me about it for years. On my 15th birthday, my entire family played a recording of me saying it and they were all dying to know what it meant. Like I remembered. They're all crazy. But they kept teasing me so I decide to shut them all down by buying the domain name and making it my cyber-identity. The rest is history. (For what it's worth, we think its a reference to the days my dad used to hold me as a baby and I'd look out the window and see the geese flying over head, honking -- bird-a-honk!)

2. I'm told, although I cannot verify this, that my half sister's grandfather (on the side of the family I'm not related) invented the paper toilet seat cover. So the next time you're having a sanitary public restroom moment, you can think of me and my brush with fortune.

3. My dad, 50 years old when I was born, was a bombardier in WWII. Hey flew in the B-24 Liberator.

4. Every Saturday morning as a child, my little sister and I were interrupted at 9am so my mom could record Star Trek (the original series in syndication). What a drag on your Saturday cartoon watching.

5. I played the viola from the 5th to 9th grade (with a brief attempt at resurrection in college that didn't stick). I wasn't very good. However, I was a fairly decent tuba player in high school and college. I even majored in instrumental performance in college for about a year. Then I realized there was no money in that and I just focused on business (not sure there's much money in that either after my last raise). As part of my performance art-type experience, I was a member of the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum & Bugle Corps in 1992 and 1994. I played the contrabass bugle and the euphonium, respectively.

6. After the dotcom bust (c. 2001), I took a year off and spend an amazing time in Alaska (I camped out in a sleeping bag on the top deck of the ferry for the 3.5 day ride from Bellingham, WA to Juneau). Then I crashed with a buddy in San Diego and basically hiked every day and hung out at the beach. I also manage to get accepted to grad school during that time (go Tartans!).

7. I recently learned that I have a long lost brother.

8. While at college as an undergrad I was the editor of an underground newspaper that really rubbed the administration the wrong way.

I'll pass this along to some old buddies:

- Kenneth Berger
- Chad Thornton