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I've been tagged! Doh!

I normally don't do viral activities but ... this is in the technical world so ...

What happens is that someone tags you and you have to tell 5 things about you that are not common knowledge. In turn you must tag 5 others. I have Rick Schummer to thank! :D  Rick was tagged by Alex Feldstein who was tagged by Claudio. Here goes. Are you sitting down?

  1. I have a dog. Okay. So I'm not starting out big. But I think my dog is special. She's a Great Dane named Gala. Her real name is "Lady Galadrial of the Woods" after the elven queen in Lord Of The Rings. You know, Elronds mother. In the story, Frodo initially was fearful of this tall white witch of the woods, but later found out that she was kind and wise. I thought it fit her perfectly. She's 145lbs of love. She's the only person in my family that gets up to see me when I get home. When we play sometimes she ducks down, runs between my legs and stands up lifting me off of my feet. Scary at times! Enough dog talk!
  2. I once worked at Lockheed (before it was Lockheed Martin) on a R&D artificial intelligence project. My part of the project was written in LISP and took CAD drawings and called other systems to determine how to cut the part from stock materials such as aluminum, titanium and CORE. One of the test parts is the engine intakes on the F-22 fighter. CORE is resin coated honeycombed paper that goes inside of the wings of airplanes.  It's cool to think of these big machines cutting blocks of paper.  While the program that I worked on was not top secret, the geometry of the part was secret. Thanks goodness I've forgotten everything about the geometry from a national security perspective. ;) Lockheed was a short lived job as peace was breaking out all over. The Berlin wall was coming down and I was about to find myself out of a job, so I decided to leave Lockheed as I was a junior member of the team.
  3. While working at Lockheed, and about to lose my job, my wife and I were planning a trip around North America. We both quit our jobs and drove 17,000 miles in three months. Left Georgia, up the East Coast, across the Midwest, into the West, up through Canada, into Alaska, down the West Coast, and back through the heartland of the country. Plenty of kool-aid (not the Microsoft kind) and granola bars. Do you know that McDonalds gives our free ice to travellers? This saved us as it kept our food cold. I wish I could do that trip again. I'm going to be too old and tired to do it again, I'm afraid.
  4. For all of the technical stuff that I do, most of my web traffic comes from one of my hobbys: Water Rockets. I have a "How To" web site that gets lots of traffic. Sigh. Check it out here: Kevin's H20 Rockets. I'll be know for Water Rockets and not for technology or programming. Oh well.
  5. I am a member of the Patriot Guard Riders.  I am a newbie in riding motorcycles and I've been doing it for just over a year now, but I'm proud of being a member of the PGR.  They pay honor to those that paid the ultimate sacrifice for this country.  All politics are left at home.  Pro war, anti war, hawks, doves, liberal, and conservative.  The PGR is just there to honor the families that have lost so much.  Its not easy crying in front of these big burly guys.  It's even harder crying in front of family and friends when they ask what it is like at the PGR missions.  Truly humbling.

Whew.  That was painful.  So.  Who should I tag?  Stay tuned!