Meme me!

As I mentioned in yesterday’s procastination excuse/hypnotic-cute-fuzzy-critter post, I was, without warning or provocation, viciously tagged by The Apprentice Lab Rat with a nasty case of the “5 Things” meme. O Cruel Fate!

I still need more audio to assemble Stir-Fried Random Episode 3. Meanwhile, here’s me meme:

(Note: These answers should not be used for psychiatric evaluation purposes. Unless it amuses you.)

5 things I was doing 10 years ago

• Slowly making my way through the “two-year” Biotechnology program at American River College a class or two at a time
  (Had I not had to move away, I was only an “American History” and “Technical Writing” class from an A.S. degree…)
• Clumsily (but, I’m very happy to report, successfully) pursuing a woman even nerdier than me
• Cursing the high cost of living, unpleasant weather, and pollution in the Sacramento Valley (and indeed most of California…)
• Celebrating my first year of being full-time “Microsoft®-Free” (on Slackware)
• Working at the first truly enjoyable job I’ve had (at a small biotech company)

5 things on my “to do” list today
(Note: This is a “to do” list, not an “actually will get done” list…)

• See if I can find information about some even-older papers mentioned in the paper I’ve already picked for next month’s “Giant’s Shoulders” contribution. (Hooray for Victorian-era biochemistry!)
• Finish preparing the little fish-tank I intend to use as a small native-species aquarium.
• Get some more audio recorded and edited for Episode 3 of “Stir-Fried Random”, including picking this week’s Nerd Word.
• Taste the chunks of cut honeydew melon that I fermented last month.
• Experiment with the erythritol that I picked up and see if I can formulate homemade sugarless Cinnamon Bears.

5 snacks I love

• Cinnamon Bears
• Sushi
• Pecans
• Cheeses
• Smarties®

5 things I’d do if I were a millionaire
(How MUCH of a “millionaire”? Exactly $1,000,000? Or “Millions”? I’ll assume the latter…)

• Pay off all debts
• Probably move to a cooler wet climate
• Build myself a really kick-butt home-science lab with spiffy lab equipment (Microscopes, Incubators, centrifuges, FTIR Spectrometer, GC, HPLC, MALDI, -80°C freezer, lyophilizer, and of course an X-Ray Fluorescence spectrometer for my lovely wife…) and outfit it with generators, batteries, solar panels, etc. to be “Grid-Optional”. Oh, and at least a dedicated T3 line and a collection of publically-accesible IP addresses. (Yes, I am a nerd.)
• Do a lot more travel by train
• Become a self-employed full-time Mad Scientist

5 places I have lived

• Southport, North Carolina
• Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania
• Various places in California (Several times)
• Southeastern Idaho (Twice)
• Southeastern Texas

5 Jobs I’ve had

• Credit collections (My first real job, where I learned to hate phones)
• Retail clerk at an “Electronics Boutique”
• Full-time tech-support lead at a proprietary software company (where I learned to really hate phones, as well as proprietary software)
• Full-time college student/Kept Boy
• Linux nerd in a college biochemistry department

People I’ll tag
(I’m afraid I’m not very meme-infectious at this stage…)

• Someone who claims to be my sister (from whom I actually got the “World in an Ehrlenmeyer Flask” graphic I’ve been using everywhere…)
• Joshua M Charles who is trying to bankrupt me by posting a link to an online science-nerd shop.