12.22.06

My part in the five things blogwave

Posted in Fluff at 2:26 pm by Dale Olds

I have been tagged by Pam and Gerry in the “five little known things about me” blogwave. Thanks to both of you, I think. I’m going to reply because I know there are those out there that are anxious to read what I write (hi mom!).

1. I take tuba pictures. As a teenager I found a broken sousaphone (often referred to as a tuba) in a neighbor’s garbage. Since I was odd and enjoyed photography, it immediately became one of my favorite subjects. I have photographs of the tuba in trees, mountains, wrecked cars, vacant houses, and college bathrooms. I was once ejected with it from Temple Square in Salt Lake City. You probably have to have a sense of humor warped in roughly the same curvature as mine to think it’s as funny as I do, but here are a few examples.

2. In the late 1980’s I believe I was hugged by Craig Burton. It was part of a Novell new employee ritual. I remember standing in a line that ended with Craig or Judith and thinking “please let me get Judith”. I  have no memory of what happened next. Perhaps I’ve blocked it from memory.

3. As a high school student in a very small town in northern Utah, I was a member of a comedy troupe called The Lumberjacks. The school administration thought it was wholesome humor. If any of them had actually seen the namesake Monty Python skit, it would have been scandolous.

4. Much of my current career path is due to a father-son project. About 1998 I made a deal with my oldest son (then 12) that we would try this new Linux stuff together. He was to buy the OS (I think it was Redhat 5.2) and I was to buy the machine. He came through. I did not. So he built a machine from spare parts sitting around the house. I did help him install Linux. That Linux machine was reliable, stable, and we learned a lot. In fact, that machine was later used as the basis of a demo that showed Novell’s directory service integrated with DNS and providing rudimentary federation between directory instances across the Internet. The demo was shown, with great success, to Novell’s CEO (then Eric Schmidt). I left the company for a while, the project was cancelled, management changed, etc., but, last I heard from my son, that machine is still running.

5. I find it more productive to mix work and play. When I was a university student I worked as a childcare counselor for the United Way. One of the activities that I did with the children was to send them out into the fields to pick dandelion blossoms. They enjoyed it and it got them to run outside for a while. I took the blossoms home and made many gallons of rather good dandelion wine.

So now I get to tag five: Pete, Paul, Mary, Dave, Lyndon

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