Mike Munhall

And finally, the conclusion to 1-25, 26-50 and 51-75:

76. The original spelling of my last name was O’Mulhall. It was then changed to Mulhall before it became Munhall.
77. I enjoy writing, but don’t take the time to do it well.
78. I used to be a perfectionist, but never got anything done because if it. I still do my best at everything, but have to put a limit on each project just to make sure each project gets done.
79. My NHL teams, in order: Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars.
80. My NFL teams, in order: Denver Broncos, Cleveland Browns.
81. My NBA teams, in order: Denver Nuggets, Dallas Mavericks, Cleveland Cavaliers.
82. I don’t really follow baseball, but I like going to Rockies games.
83. I care for all creatures, including insects. I avoid stepping on even the tiniest bug if I can help it. Except cockroaches. Die, roaches, die.
84. I fall asleep almost instantly when I’m in my bed. It makes it difficult to read at night.
85. I’ve never had a nickname that’s lasted more than a few months.
86. A favorite book: Ender’s Game.
87. The things that annoy the piss out of me are the lazy habits of Americans: throwing cigarette butts on the ground, leaving shopping carts in the middle of a parking lot (this is a big one), driving short distances (like, to a fecken mailbox), expecting everything to be delivered or done for them.
88. I don’t smoke and never will.
89. The person I’ve been friends with for the longest amount of time (19 years? holy shit.) is my first girlfriend. She married one of my closest friends. We’re all good friends today.
90. I don’t care about the lives of celebrities.
91. The peach is my favorite fruit.
92. If I had more time, I would categorize and rank this list.
93. I don’t like to shave, but I don’t like stubble, either. It’s a dilemma.
94. If I had a game system like XBox or Playstation, I’d probably be fat, drunk, and lazy. But I’d be good at games.
95. icanhascheezburger.com cracks me up. Most of it, anyway.
96. I have an odd sense of humor. Well, it’s more dry than odd, mostly. But I definitely have a sense of humor and I’m proud of that.
97. People have told me that I have a distinctive and enjoyable (even funny sometimes) writing style. I think those people are crazy and 95% of my writing is crap. Distinctive maybe, but definitely crap.
98. I have seen the aurora borealis and want to see it again.
99. Just for kicks, I wear a pedometer every day and record my steps every night. I average about 14,250 steps per day. Dorrie wears one, too. Her average is 15,000. It is 11:38 a.m. and so far I have 5222 steps which is about 2.71 miles and 251 calories burned.
100. My wife packs my lunch almost every day, and I appreciate it.

Don’t forget 1-25 and 26-50.

51. Funny movies I like: Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, Best in Show, Men in Black.
52. Funny shows I like: The Office, The IT Crowd, Family Guy.
53. My middle name is Patrick.
54. I’ve broken fingers, toes, my nose, and my left arm.
55. I’ve sprained both ankles many times, separated my shoulder, dislocated a clavicle, and many other things.
56. I’ve suffered from numerous physical ailments including osteitis pubis, tendonitis, hammer toe, and metatarsalgia.
57. One of my favorite people in the world is my nephew. He calls me Ike. He calls Dorrie Dodo.
58. My favorite pizza toppings are pepperoni, sausage and red onions.
59. I love Indian, Thai, Chinese food.
60. I just recently started eating sushi, and I can’t get enough of it.
61. The physicists that worked on the atomic bomb in the first half of the 1900’s fascinate me. Especially Richard Feynman. If you haven’t read about him, you should.
62. The only comic I care to read is Get Fuzzy. I like my Dilbert calendar, too, though. Oh, and if www.xkcd.com is a comic, then that, as well.
63. My favorite season is winter, my least favorite is summer. I like them all and look forward to when they change.
64. I’ve been in a couple television commercials, a television documentary and a few print advertisements. I have the VHS tapes prove it, but you probably won’t ever see them.
65. I’m not a Democrat, but I can’t imagine ever voting Republican.
66. My preference is to use a Macintosh whenever possible and avoid Microsoft altogether, but I see the pros and cons of every platform and operating system and won’t bash any. Well, OK… sometimes I bash Microsoft.
67. I would really like to learn shorthand, but lack the drive to actually spend the time necessary to do it.
68. My mother is a genius when it comes to anything related to grammar, writing and shorthand.
69. My dad is my go-to guy when it comes to anything related to photography, but I think I’m becoming his go-to guy since photography has become digital.
70. The only houseplants that I am able to keep are the ones that thrive on neglect.
71. I am punctual and expect others to try to be.
72. I love chess, but don’t really play right now.
73. One of the hardest things I’ve been through was when the house I was trying to sell just after I moved in with Dorrie fell apart and cost us $13,000 to repair.
74. There have been other trying times, too.
75. It’s taken me two weeks to come up with the first 75 items of this list.

This is a follow-up to 100 Random Things (1-25).

26. I was raised Catholic, but I no longer have anything to do with religion.
27. I won a jet ski when I was about 19 or 20. I rode the hell out of it for two years and then sold it because I couldn’t afford the necessary maintenance.
28. My first real job was at a hip (not really) clothing store in Irving mall.
29. I attended first and second grade at St. Bernadette in North Olmstead, Ohio, then third through eighth grade at Holy Family of Nazareth in Irving, Texas, then went to MacArthur public high school in Irving.
30. I’m an only child.
31. I like only obscure music. If it’s played on the AM or FM, I usually won’t listen to it.
32. My favorite music is ambient-dub-downtempo-spacey electronica, but I listen to all sorts of other music short of country and opera.
33. My favorite hobby is photography.
34. I was born on the same day as Charles Darwin, and I think that’s fitting.
35. I fear what global warming is going to do to humans and the planet and it makes me angry.
36. It takes a lot of energy for me to refrain from ranting about global warming, the Bush administration, and Americans in general.
37. I’m a morning person.
38. I’m afraid to photograph strangers.
39. I’ve been to Munhall, Pennsylvania.
40. I worked a night shift at one particular job until I became depressed (because I was working nights) and quit.
41. I have too many hobbies and interests and I can rarely accomplish anything because I’m always switching from one to another.
42. I photographed the destruction of an apartment building set ablaze by a guy trying to kill his wife and infant. My photographs and the story made the front page of the paper the next day. I was called to testify and showed up at the trial, but I didn’t have to actually testify.
43. I like beer and red wine. I don’t care for liquor so much.
44. I love developing web applications with ColdFusion, but I’m bored silly at my job right now.
45. Cash, our rescued greyhound, is my first dog.
46. I’ve always had at least one cat.
47. My favorite place on Earth is the beaches and shores of the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I want to live there.
48. I’d like to change careers some day. Maybe soon.
49. I like to read science fiction, books about programming and computer science, and photography periodicals.
50. I think I’m very intelligent, but I turn into an idiot when I converse with really smart people.

Over the next four days I’ll be posting 100 random things about me. That’s 25 useless facts each day (25 * 4 = 100). When all four lists of 25 are posted, I’ll consolidate all of them into a single list and post that. Then I’ll write a post about how this is the most posts I’ve ever done in a single month. That’s how you artificially raise your post count.

Here’s 1-25:

1. I was a club DJ in my late teens and early 20’s.
2. I don’t like mushrooms or olives.
3. I love Google’s online applications (Docs, Reader, Calendar, GMail, Notebook).
4. I’ve lived in various suburbs of Cleveland, Dallas and Denver.
5. I’ve been in only one fight. The kid I was “fighting” let me up and then walked away. I thought he left so I claimed the win. Turns out he had just gone around the corner to see if his mom was there to pick him up.
6. I sleep on my side or on my stomach.
7. I snore when I sleep on my right side, but not my left.
8. I’m an introvert.
9. In middle school I was in a spelling bee. Going into the event I knew that I would have trouble with chauffeur if it was given to me (long shot, right?). Ironically, they gave me chauffeur and I lost. (I just had to use dictionary.com to get the spelling of chauffeur.)
10. I’ve played in soccer, hockey, football, basketball, softball, and tennis leagues and I wrestled.
11. I skateboarded my way through my teens.
12. I’ve been to Ireland, Mexico and Canada. I’ve been to Canada a lot, actually.
13. I’ve had ear, nipple and tongue piercings.
14. I have no tattoos.
15. I barely graduated high school, but I have a perfect 4.0 GPA in college (I am still chipping away at a bachelor’s degree.)
16. I don’t like country/western music. Furthermore, I think that dressing up like a cowboy is silly and is acceptable only on a ranch and on Halloween.
17. I like teaching and mentoring.
18. My favorite bands today (it will be different tomorrow) are Autolux and the Pixies.
19. I enjoy being organized and I enjoy organizing.
20. One of my favorite things on weekends is to wake up, make some coffee, and sit at the computer.
21. I consider every failure as something to learn from, and therefore something to benefit from.
22. 22 is the number I have on most of my hockey jerseys.
23. I eat way too much butter.
24. I feel most at ease when on a rocky shore or beach in the Northwest. I think I’m supposed to live in British Columbia or Oregon.
25. I love rain, and too much sun depresses me. Maybe it’s Seattle where I’m suppose live.

How fast is our greyhound? He’s feckenfast, that’s how fast. Our little pony runs nearly 40 miles per hour when he isn’t being lazy.

Check out this photset on Flickr. There are some cool photos of Cash running on the baseball field near our house, and a many other photos of Cash just being the loving creature that he is. We love this dog. And he loves us.

A facial steam massage from a cup of coffee?  NO.

I know I’m beating a dead horse when I say how glad I am to have time to do things now that I’m out of school, but man, I’m really glad to have time to do things that don’t involve getting ready for exams or studying a subject I don’t care to study.

Right now I’m on a kick to be more organized and productive and actually do things rather than daydream about them.  A couple weeks ago, as I started to list all the things I needed/wanted to accomplish, I came across some information on the web about one of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done.  Getting Things Done (or, GTD, as it’s devoted followers refer to it) is essentially a system for getting all of the things floating around in your head into a variety of lists on paper or in a computer.  And the lists aren’t just a series of to-do items, the lists are actually comprise a system for accomplishing the things you need or want to do.

Now, I’m not real big on self help manuals, but the posts I was reading struck a chord with me, particularly because I was already doing many of the things that GTD proposes.  The book is a fairly quick read (for those of you that can read at anything quicker than snail pace).  So, even if you don’t feel you need a kick in the ass to get organized or be more productive, you should be able to get get something out of the book by just spending a few hours getting through it.

Being out of school is especially nice because my To-Be-Read shelf was filling up with things to be read and I was running out of room to put new things to be read.  It’s too bad it took me nearly three months to actually finish a single fecken book.  (I’m a sloooooooow reader.)

Endymion is the continuation of the Dan Simmons’ Hyperion.  I really like Hyperion when I read it four or five years ago.  I thought that the second book in the Hyperion series was the end.  Somehow I stumbled upon Endymion a few months ago and it was then that I realized that I had never finished the Hyperion series.

Endymion is the beginning of a brand new story, not a continuation of the Hyperion saga.  There are some familiar characters and it is good to know the Hyperion story, but you could really just pick up Endymion without reading Hyperion and be just fine.

I think I liked Endymion much more than Hyperion.  And since I really like Hyperion, I guess you could say that I loved Endymion.  I can’t say that it was flawless, though, so let’s say… 4 out of 5 stars.

So, there’s one more Endymion to tackle.  I’ll get to that after Deathly Hallows.

And here’s mine.

Yesterday was the four-year anniversary of my first date with Dorrie. Last night, we were flipping through the channels and landed on Rachel Ray’s travel/dining show. (We generally don’t surf the television, but there was nothing on our DVR that we cared to watch.) We decided to give the show a try since they were talking about Colorado and small breweries. Funny thing was, they just happened to do a quick spot on the Wynkoope brewery here in Denver, the place Dorrie and I met for our first date. Not only that, but they showed the very booth where we had dinner together. It was our four-year anniversary of sorts, and on the T.V. we stumbled across the very booth where we were exactly four years ago that day. Crazy, eh?