Seems as though I got tagged by Matt Turland with this whole “Seven Things” viral blog entry stuff. Gotta keep it alive, so here’s my seven things:

• My degree is in art – yes, that’s right…further proof that no matter that you get your degree in, you can find something out there that makes you truly happy to do. I loved my classes and I still love art (I consider a trip to a museum for the day time well spent) and I’m always on the lookout for great design, not just in web sites but in the art world as a whole. Oh, and I hated normal history back in school but for some reason art history was completely different – I couldn’t get enough.
• Back in high school, at one point I could play six different instruments – while my main instrument was the trumpet, I could also play: trombone, tuba, french horn, clarinet and saxophone. I was in the band at my school and I managed a “free period” during a class time one year which I used to teach myself the other instruments. I also helped the drums come up with cadences for our marching band, though I only played the marching bass so I’m not sure that really counts 🙂
• PHPDeveloper.org started out as a weekly thing – when I first started the site back in college, I didn’t know nearly as much about the PHP community (or the people in it) as I do now. I picked up on a few things and made a post about them when I could. If you want to see how far the site has come, ask archive.org to show you the past. Hmm, not exactly sure when I made the switch from blue to red… The original machine it was hosted on sat in my dorm room – an old 486DX/100 (a Compaq I think?) and I used the ods.org dynamic domain service to map it to the domain.
• My wife and I met on Match.com – Yup, that’s right…we could be on one of those cheesy commercials. I had moved back to Dallas after finishing at school and she moved down from New York (she’s originally from Houston, though) and posted her profile out there. She’d gone on a few dates but hadn’t had much luck. Oddly enough, when we hooked up (she told me this later) I was her “last shot” on the site – if it didn’t work with us, she would close her account. I guess I fooled her enough and one thing led to another and we’re here, married with our little kiddo.
• I have an unhealthy fascination with pens – I can’t help it, I’m a pen snob. Not quite sure where it came from (maybe all those art classes) but there’s very particular requirements that I have for the pens that I use. It’s not about the price, either. Some of those costly pens don’t write worth crap anyway. I’m a fan of the fine point – the finer the better, at the largest 0.5 – and I love nothing more than the scratch that they make on paper. If you’re going to use anything larger than a 0.5, you might as well just use a magic marker. They look about the same. One of my current favorites is the Parker Jotter though the Uni-Ball pens come in a close second.
• Theres an art geek living inside of me – ever since I can remember, I’ve always been an art fan. I used to enjoy the field trips to the museums and liked learning about the different artists and styles. When I went to college and got to indulge in all of that, it was great. I’m still that way even though its a bit more limited these days. I still paint (though not as much as I’d like to) and like to sketch when I can. I’m also an architecture nut – my dad and I had an extra afternoon in Phoenix so I dragged him out to see Taliesin (one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s residences and art school) where we took the full tour. FLW is one of my favorite architects followed closely by I.M.Pei (what can I say, I’m a modernist). I enjoy architecture so much that, after I lost my first job out of college, I came *this* close to leaving the whole programming thing behind and going to architecture school. I was offered the job I’m currently in pretty quickly, though. I still try to make trips when I can down to the Dallas Museum of Art and the museums over in Ft. Worth (like the Kimball and the Modern).
• I’m an early riser – Seems like this is more and more of a rarity these days (especially in the industry I’m in) but I have no problem getting up before the sun is up and doing things. I currently get up for work at 5:30am and am in the office by 6:15-6:30am working away. Partly I do it so I can leave the office a little earlier, but I also do it because that’s the only time that its easy to get things done. There’s less people up (slackers – hehe) so there’s more time to relax or write posts for PHPDeveloper.org or read or whatever. I just grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the time to myself for a bit. So, all of you late sleepers out there – keep on late sleeping! I’ll be the one enjoying the peaceful sunrise, warm coffee in hand.

So, here’s the hard part – I’m not sure who else has been tagged for this, but I’m supposed to choose a few other people and pass the virus, er theme on to them – here goes:

• Chris Hartjes – CakePHP wizard and creator of the excellent Framework Apocolypse tshirt
• Timothy Boronczyk – creator of the uberpastebinsite Pasteninja
• Daniel Cousineau – fellow Texan and all around party animal
• Jason Ragsdale – local PHPer who, oddly enough, I only really taked to the first time at the Microsoft Web Developer’s Summit despite him being majorly involved with the Dallas PHP Users Group
• Paul Jones – head honcho behind the Solar PHP framework project
• Alison Gianotto – just because I like to give her a hard time

And, of course, the rules to pass on:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.