Originally posted
by Craig Drummond on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 9:16pm
1. I am the oldest of 8 kids. My parents had 6 boys then 2 girls. My youngest sister is 13 years younger than me. When I was 18 I moved out of the house to go to college so I don’t know my younger siblings very well.
2. I grew up in a very conservative Mormon family.
3. When I was growing up I spent every summer from the time I was 3 until I was 17 in Sacramento California with my grand parents (Granny & Grampy). They would drive to Utah about a week after school got out, spend 3 or 4 days at our house, and then drive me and my brothers to their house in Sacramento. We would spend 3 or 4 days at their house then pack up and head to the mountains, “Camp Creek”, for 10 – 20 days. We would then return to their house for about a week, then drive back to Utah.
4. I got married when I was 18 years old. Big mistake! And while I have 4 wonderful kids that I love dearly I stayed married as long as I did (9 years) because I was afraid of what people, specifically in my family, would think of me. Bigger mistake!! I finally got the balls to face my family, and my fear of what they would think of me.
5. I have officially lived in
6. I am a terrible friend. I loose contact with people I really care about way too often. It is the one trait I am most ashamed of. One of the main reasons I am on Facebook is to try to be better at being a good friend. Alas, I still have a lot of work to do on this. Anne, Jason, Chad, Dave, Devin, Pat, Joe, Ron, Aaron, Ted, Dirk, Cheryl, Simon, Bill, Mike and probably a lot more, I am trying to get better.
7. I am a work-a-holic. Not that I love to work, but I am terrified of not being able to provide for my family. It always seemed to me that my Dad was regularly out of work, and it was my mom’s responsibility to “pick up the slack”. It obviously had a big impact on me.
8. I absolutely hated my Junior High and High School years. I was a puny, 90 pound, 4 eyed geek. I was never good at any sports, I had a very low self esteem, and I would intentionally isolate myself and was considered a loner. And while I have recently reconnected with people I went to high school with, some of them from all the way back to elementary school, I realize that my road to being a terrible friend (see #6) started way back then and I didn’t try to be a friend to most of them and my experience was my own fault, not anyone elses.
9. I love to read. I am constantly looking for something new to read. It used to be science fiction, then war stories (viet-nam war specifically) fiction and non-fiction, then it was biographies, now its self help and Poker.
10. I started programming computers when I was 11 years old. My dad’s cousin Curtis, who was living with us at the time, gave me and my brothers a TI99-4A computer for Christmas. After about 3 months of playing games I started looking into how to program stuff. I taught myself by getting sample programs from my Uncle Rob and combining them, changing them, and enhancing them. Back then I didn’t have a disk drive or even a tape drive or a printer so I would write out the code by hand in a notebook. If I wanted to run a program again I would have to re-type the whole program.
11. When I was in Junior High I had a math teacher, Mr Dietering, who taught an after school computer programming class, but he was teaching on Atari 400 and Atari 800 comuters and Atari basic was not compatible with the TI so he gave me the guides he developed and I converted everything on my own. At the end of my 8th grade year, Mr Dietering had a computer programming contest. I entered the contest with the understanding that I could bring my own computer to the competition. I won 1st place even though I never attended his class. In 9th grade I won 1st place in the competition again.
12. In High School my school was given 10 IBM 8088 computers. I took the programming classes they offered (a total of 2) but I already knew more than the teacher. I loved the class though because the cheer leaders, who would never give me the time of day any other time, where always asking me to help them with their computer work. It was at this time that I joined the FBLA. They had a district wide computer programming competition and I won 1st place. That let me enter the state wide competition where I placed 4th. And while I hated learning to type, I took ever single level of type class I could. In my senior year they started teaching WordPerfect 4.2 and while I barely scratched a C out of the class, it gave me the knowledge I needed for my first job to be a computer techie in college and then the start of my carreer at WordPerfect in the customer support department which is the corner stone of a 19 year career working on computers.
13. I have a very weird talent. When someone has a computer problem and they finally get around to calling me, about 70% of the time as soon as I touch the computer the problem magically disappears. It is so errie that my mom hates to tell me about problems she has with her computer because it always starts to work as soon as I enter the room.
14. My current life started in 1998. That is the year I got seperated from my now ex-wife, and I met wonderful friends who liked me for who I was instead of who they wanted me to be. They taught me how to have fun, how to take life a bit less seriously, and to take chances. To that end I started going to parties, and actually enjoying them. I went skydiving (see #15 below). And I started playing cards.
15. It took a good friend to remind me recently that I am the luckiest person that I know, thanks Anne. Here is my proof.
1) In 1999 I went skydiving with some friends. To this day I don’t know why I wanted to do it, but I did. After 3 or 4 of my friends conquered their gut wrenching fears and made the jump, it was my turn. Everything started out peaches and I was having a picture perfect dive. When the chute opened however there was a problem and, to make a long story short, we had to cut away the primary chute, I had a second free fall and honestly I thought I was going to die. As my current existence is proof, the secondary chute opened successfully and I landed safely. I decided to have my dive video taped and anytime I need an adrenaline rush I just pop it in and watch it.
2) In 2007 I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, but with aggressive treatment, and a lot of people’s prayers, I am completely cancer free.
3) In 2000 I met the love of my life, convinced her to marry me, and somehow haven’t scared her away. I love you Heather!
4) Anytime I have been affected by job reductions or other adverse employment situations I have never been unemployed for more than 2 months. A new job has always just shown up, and usually a month or two before the bad stuff happened. For example, about 2 months after I returned to Hewlett Packard, my previous employer, Lehman Brothers went out of business. And that is just the most recent example.
5) On 4 separate occasions I have won over $1,000 from a slot machine. The biggest win was $2,500 that I won just 15 minutes after winning 1st place and $2050 in a Poker Tournament at the Golden Nugget in Vegas.
6) In 2006 I played in 60 poker tournaments over a three week period. Of those, I made 25 final tables, 15 times I made it into the money, and 8 times I won or split for 1st place. One day I won 1st place in 3 out of the 4 tournaments that I played in.
16. My biggest fear in life is drowing. I occasionally have a recurring nightmare where I am underwater and I can somehow breathe, until I realize that I am not really breathing, but sinking down into a watery grave.
17. For a
18. My favorite soda is Dr Pepper (however 18 months ago I stopped drinking any soda with High Fructose Corn Syrup, so no more DP for me). My favorite food is Pizza. My favorite color is Blue. My favorite car is a 64 Mustang convertible. My favorite number is 21. My favorite vacation spot is Vegas.
19. I hate to be cold. For the longest time I was always cold. I would always wear a jacket. My ex-inlaws were always offended because I wouldn’t take off my jacket. About 3 years ago I found out that I have a hypo-thyroid condition and one of the symptoms is intollerance to cold. The doctor says that I have probably had the condition for most of my life. (The weather was a huge factor in our decision to move to Las Vegas 2 years ago)
20. I have always dreamed about being an Author. In school I would write short stories but nothing serious. I have recently started writing (well that might be an exageration, I have started an outline) for two different books. (two years later one book is still an outline, the other is about 20% complete. At this rate the first book will be complete in about 10 years)
21. I have three tatoos that I intentionally got. The first, a shark on my right shoulder I drew. The second, a Royal Flush with a martini and a cigar on my right forearm was drawn by my father in law. The third, a fourties style pin-up girl on my left forearm was drawn by the tatoo artist. I have 5 other tatoos that they had to give me for my radiation treatments. (Since the original posting I have added a full sleeve dragon tattoo on my right arm, shoulder and chest)
22. My favorite movie is Star Wars. I own over 150 Star Wars books and comics that span from 10,000 years before the time of the movies to about 50 years after. I have over 70 Star Wars action figures about 90% still in the original packaging. When I saw the original in 1977 I was so caught up in the story that I was actually crying when I thought that Darth Vader was going to shoot down Luke Skywalker in the Death Stars trench. In 1999 I won a radio contest (Free tickets to The Phantom Menace on Opening day) because I knew how big a Womp Rat is.
23. I once won a different radio contest, in Michigan. I won tickets to see Garth Brooks in concert by standing on a busy street in a bath robe and underwear on my head getting 99 ½ signatures on a big poster board. The radio station planned a 4 hour segment for the stunt but I had all 99 ½ signatures in less than 45 minutes.
24. I won a third radio contest by being the 99th caller for free tickets to see Armageddon. I took my brother Aaron with me. It is still one of my favorite movies, and when Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) is saying good bye to his daughter it still makes me cry. Other movies guaranteed to make me cry, My Life, Shindlers List, and the Green Mile.
25. In High School I had an art teacher who convinced me that I was pretty good at art. I had drawn some charcoal drawings and he convinced me to enter one of them into a district wide art exhibit for students. I was hesitant at first but he was insistent. The night of the show I walked in and I was instantly humiliated. The art that was there was magnificent, except for mine, which looked like a 5th grader drew it. I was so embarrased I just wanted to crawl under a rock and die. To this day I never let anyone see anything that I draw (except for my tatoo).
