Thursday, October 23, 2008

I've Been Tagged

Well, I haven't posted anything substantial in about forever, so I guess it's fair that I've been tagged by my wife. Now I have to write something.



According to the rules, I am to share seven random and/or weird facts about myself. This might be a challenge. Only seven?



1. I wear size 14 W shoes. My feet have actually grown two full sizes and an additional one in width since I turned 25. I think that counts as a secondary mutation, but I'll have to check with Grant Morrison.



2. I have freakishly fast hands and feet that are equally as slow. I hardly ever drop anything that I don't catch before it hits the ground. Usually things don't even get a foot away from my hands before I catch them. But my feet? It's like being grounded in concrete. If I drop something like a knife that I don't want to catch with my hands and my feet are in the way? I'll be headed to the emergency room soon thereafter. My slow feet are why I never played college basketball. I could shoot, pass, rebound, and block shots, but I couldn't cut off the baseline on defense.



3. I earned a brown belt in Okinawan Shorin-Ryu Karate. In a past life, when I lived in Michigan City and worked in Gary, I felt the need to learn self-defense in spite of being a big guy. I was awarded Most Dedicated Student in my dojo in 1994. If I'd stayed there, I would have had my black belt in about another year and a half.



4. I hate football. I might be the only red-blooded American male who does, but I don't care. There has never been a home run called back because of a holding penalty. I hate TV time outs, instant replay refereeing, and Notre Dame.



5. I love the metric system. I love it so much that I wrote a paper on it for a grad course that the professor said was publishable. Anyone who doesn't prefer the metric system needs to be able to tell me how many furlongs are in a mile and how many ounces are in a gallon. No, you don't get time to think about it; the answer should be given instantly.



6. I've had a constant ringing in my ears for about two years. 99% of the time I'm able to ignore it, but sometimes it just drives me crazy. It sounds like a watch alarm going off, but with a solid tone that's on all the time. There doesn't seem to be any reason for it. I didn't spend my youth going to loud concerts or listening to headphones with the volume all the way up.



7. I know the decimal equivalent of any fraction with single digits in the numerator and denominator. And yes, that includes all the sevenths. 1/7 = 0.142857... and 2/7 = 0.285714... and 3/7 = 0.428571... Have you noticed that they all repeat the same six-digit sequence? The sequence just starts in a different place! 4/7 = 0.587142... and 5/7 is 0.714285... and 6/7 = 0.857142... So once you memorize 142857, you can say very quickly what any fraction over seven would be just by figuring out what the first numeral in the quotient is. The rules wanted random and weird stuff, and it doesn't get much more random than that!



Like certain vice presidential candidates, I am choosing not to follow all the rules and won't be tagging anyone else. But I'm glad I got tagged. It made me write!

2 comments:

Jeff McClain said...

I would say that #1 has a lot to do with #2. How can you have fast feet when they're the size of canoes?

Interesting that you should mention hating instant replays...aren't they headed to baseball? :)

The fact that you know all the decimal equivalent of single-digit fractions tells me that you need a life. Seriously. (yes, one word sentence intentionally)

Jim McClain said...

Instant replay is only used in baseball for fair/foul calls on home runs, and then only when the umpires can't come to consensus.

I hate it, myself. I think they should just put a couple more umpires in the outfield like they do for the playoffs.