Many web logs have a page called, 100 Things About Me. Being an overachiever by birthright, I've decided to start creating a list of my own with more than 100 things. Being anal orderly by nature, I've also grouped them into subcategories (this will make cataloguing easier when my website is added to the Library of Congress). I'll try to make more of them things about me (Brian Uri!, the Retrospective), instead of things I've done (Brian Uri!, the Biography).

(New entries are marked with a red exclamation point, , and updated entries are boldly vandalized with the word Update).

Potpourri


1. My favourite colour is blue. I have red-green colourblindess which isn't particular severe, but which makes me lose confidence and second guess all my colour identification. I may not be able to tell between Raw Umber and Burnt Sienna, but I can always pick out Blue. In 2006, I bought a pink watch because I thought it was silver. In the picture to the right, I cannot see the 45 at all.
2. I weighed 100 to 110 pounds in high school. Now I hover right at 130. I was 5'5" the last time I measured myself several years ago. I may have grown since then.
3. I was adopted within months of arriving in stores. I know nothing about the Korean lifestyle, language, or culture, except that their online emoticons are right side up and that tt is a crying face. Everytime I meet a new Korean person, they ask me about Korean stuff or say, "You don't look Korean at all".
4. I think bad parenting is the root cause of society's problems. Child abuse is a very close second.
5. I believe in ghosts and once saw a ghost (seen by at least one other witness). Ghosts don't scare me unless I think about them alone in the dark.
6. Little kids like me even if I don't always relate to them. I'd like to have kids some day -- I don't worry about my own parenting, but I often worry about what harm might come to them from the rest of the world. I actually read two books on serial killers by an FBI profiler guy, which I factor into my overanxious worry-quotient. I will worry about my own parenting when I'm within the ball park of being a parent.
7. Animals like me. I like cats. When you pet a cat, your hand doesn't come away smelling like dog. When you pet Booty, your hand doesn't come away smelling like Booty. I am still talking about cats. My second cat, Amber, is a basketcase and also sleeps in a basket.
8. I find jokes with animals in them inherently funny, especially if one of the animals is of the talking variety.
9. I used to have a very quick temper, but you'd never know it anymore.
10. I am probably a geek, but I can't stand talking shop with other geeks in mixed company. I don't care if you just overclocked your hyperphonics gigabuster.
11. I am very independent. If I have a good chance of success doing something by myself, I'll give it a try.
12. I get reasonably serious migraines, but I'm much better at coping with them than I used to be. I used to get them almost every week, but now I get one or two per quarter.
13. I can lead but it requires much less effort to follow.
14. I think human ventriloquist dolls with painted eyes are creepy.
15. I have never had a cavity. I brush my teeth whenever they feel filmy, which is usually two or three times a day. After a six year gap, I finally went to the dentist in 2005, then again in 2008.
16. I hate the inconvenience of going to the doctor so I never go. I've only been to a doctor twice since I needed physicals for college -- once when I went deaf in one ear and once when I was dying from the inside-out. I probably should go for my carpal-tunnely wrists, but I always put it off.
17. I don't project most of the items in this list. If the people who knew me best were to take a quiz, they'd probably know less than 20% of these things.
18. I make up percentages all the time. They don't always map to a logical amount (probably only about 12% of the time).
19. Whenever I reload a stapler, I'm always afraid it will slam shut on my hand. It never has.
20. There's a scar on my chin where hair refuses to grow. It doesn't even have a good story -- I was walking along the bleachers by myself in eighth grade and fell. It didn't hurt at all but it bled for an hour.
21. I couldn't snap or whistle until well into junior high. I now snap and whistle constantly, but generally not at the same time.
22. When the oven timer goes off, I whistle in different harmonies to it until I have stopped the timer. I have been known to make full chord progressions.
23. I would rather be too hot than too cold any day of the week. If I had to choose, I would die of dehydration in the desert over freezing amongst the penguins. This doesn't mean I want to be burned at the stake though -- that's a different kind of hot.


Order


24. I love routine, and I love tweaking my routine with a little spice. I do not like wholesale changes to my routine.
25. I like to keep things orderly. If I have a multi-day project, I will neaten things up daily rather than let it be messy until the end, even if the next day's step will make things messy again. I realize this makes more work but don't care.
26. I like a clean house, but I don't mind organized clutter. My house is currently calling out for more knick-knacks.
27. My files are always neat and orderly, but there's always one file marked "Stuff I found too late to get filed" that's messy. Anything I file for the next three months after a major cleaning project will go in that file.
28. I regularly plan my daily schedule down to half hour increments. I like to see all my tasks laid out. I rarely ever do more than a quarter of the things I put down, which pretty much means that the schedule is useless. I don't mind. I also like to check things off the list as I do them.
29. I do not have a plan of where I want to be in ten years. I don't plan on making this plan either.
30. I like cleaning and mowing because of the orderly lines which appear on the carpet or grass after you're all done.
31. I make my bed every morning. This isn't hard because I barely move at all in the night.
32. I hate holding peoples' places in lines because I'm always afraid I'll reach the front and they won't be back yet.
33. I don't believe that our fates are fixed, but I do believe that many chance things happen for a reason, whether explainable or not.


Reason


34. I am always thinking about something. If I run out of things to think about, sometimes I will rethink something I just thought about.
35. I like to think about the "what-if"s in life.
36. I have a very short attention span and get bored easily, which leaves me with lots of incomplete projects.
37. I can do most normal math in my head. My brain does more permutations than necessary when calculating something. For example, 27 + 49 gets calculated in my head as 50 + 26. 12 x 25 becomes either (10 x 25 + 2 x 25), ((48 x 100) / 4), (6 x 50), or sometimes (12 x 20 + 12 x 5). I also tap my pencil as if marking the side of a Yahtzee die when adding a column of digits.
38. I spell words the British way just to be different. I also write my "a"s as you see them typed. I can no longer write anything in cursive except for my signature.
39. I never spell "occasion" correctly the first time. Sometimes I will change it even when it's correct.
40. I popped an exclamation point onto my last name in high school so it would be longer.
41. People say I'm very intelligent, but I would say that I just catch on very fast. People say that I work very fast, but I would say that I just work very efficiently. I don't know if I am right or if People is right.
42. I may not remember that there was an event on some day in the past, but if someone reminds me of the event itself, I usually have complete recall of who was there, what went on, and any funny things that happened.
43. I need to have a job with some visible end result -- I would not survive in a secretarial type of job.
44. I enjoy my current job. Other than the normal pressures of work, I have never suffered from job stress.
45. I try very hard to improve the parts of myself that I dislike. I hope to get rid of all my bad habits before other people notice them, but I am usually a million times more critical of myself than other people are of me.


Offline Habits


46. Some days, I can take something and run with it, finishing in record time. Other days, I can't even be bothered to try. I wish I knew how to always turn on the first approach.
47. I like washing dishes and doing laundry. I hate putting dishes away and folding laundry. To me, folding a shirt involves folding it in half, and then in half again. My shirts are very wrinkly.
48. I like rooms that lend themselves to rearranging. I have already rearranged my bedroom seven times since moving in (2004). Sometimes I will rearrange a room even though I know I won't like the new setup, just to have a fresh arrangement.
49. My life is usually boring, but I like it that way. When the FBI investigator interviewed me for a security clearance, I almost felt like I owed it to her to make up some salacious story.
50. I'm not very spontaneous, but I'm trying harder to be so.
51. I like calling people clowns. I don't have any particular love, hate, or interest in real clowns.
52. I like having deep pockets. I carry my wallet, keys, and chapstick all the time, and occasionally a watch. I hate when pockets are so deep that your keys jingle wherever you go.
53. I often shy away from doing new things because I worry that people will notice I'm not doing them right.
54. I hate getting up in the winter when the house is cold. After barely dragging myself out of bed, I will probably cower in the shower for a good fifteen minutes before dashing into my clothes.
55. I use lots of big words when I write, but it's not really about showing any literary superiority. I just like how words fit together -- a good sentence is like a good melody. I tend to overuse parentheses and double hyphens.
56. If there is no one in the way, I will always walk up the escalator instead of waiting. Walking the down escalator is about a 50/50 chance.
57. I like to take pictures of weird cloud formations and I don't know why. Usually I delete the pictures without ever posting them.
58. I don't know what to do with my hands when they're not doing anything. I am always carrying a drink at a party, even if it's empty, just so my hands are doing something. Maybe this means I'm 1/16 Italian.
59. I write everything with pens. I did not start using real ballpoint pens until after college. I still prefer the fake inky ones though, because they make for better doodles.
60. If there is a deadline, I will procrastinate forever. If not, the work will be done in a day.
61. I would rather be too busy, than be a little bored. However, if I get too busy I really regret it, and wish I were bored again.
62. I recorded a shorthand list of all my dreams between 8th and 12th grade, in a list that eventually filled 21 two-column pages. In those five years, I had 2843 dreams at night, and could not remember another 294.


Online Habits


63. I type really fast with all the wrong fingers. I make many mistakes but you don't notice because I press the Backspace key even faster.
64. I never type LOL unless I'm mocking it. "heh", "haha", "hahahah", and "hahahahahahahaha" always suffice.
65. I think most Internet-driven slang is incredibly retarded and only use it for absurdity. Absurdity for the win!
66. I am always multitasking. I think tabs are the greatest multitasking invention ever. I use tabs in my web browser, in my IM, in my text editor, and in my work editor. If they sold tabbed life, I would buy it.
67. My web browser's home page is a collection of my most visited links. I am OCD when it comes to these links, and will sometimes open them all up even if I know pages have not yet changed. I once opened CNN.com three times in the space of two minutes. People with counters on their pages either love me or hate me.
68. I think the User is typing... status message in AIM is the greatest invention ever after tabbed IM windows. Tragically, I'm one of those IMers that's notorious for interrupting someone's typing (a.k.a. a window stealer) by posting the first message.
69. I enjoy talking to lots of people at once on IM, but I'm hypersensitive about being "that guy" who says hello as soon as you login, or who always sends the first message. I try hard to not be an overeager IMer, but sometimes (read: often) I just can't control my tendency to talk to my people. If you're just like me and know exactly what I'm talking about, let me know and we can set up a hello-sharing program where we trade days for the first message.


Prehistory


70. In the first grade, my dad took me to the library to enter a Halley's Comet trivia challenge at my elementary school. My submission won the contest and I got a Comet Trivia Champion T-Shirt. If anyone had actually quizzed me on the spot, the only thing I would have been able to say would have been, "Every 75 years."
71. I skipped second grade. They took me out of Ms. Tutt's class and put me into Ms. Hutt's class. Ms. Hutt yelled at me because she expected a genius and I didn't know how to measure millimeters. If I had a redo, I would not skip again.
72. In seventh grade, I volunteered to get the projector from the A/V room and everyone laughed. I got it anyways even though it was twice my size.
73. Also in seventh grade, I used to run to every class. I could make it diagonally across the building in under a minute. Even now I don't know why this was important.
74. In eighth grade, I always ate lunch alone in the band room with a book. I never thought this was unusual.
75. I was an arrogant, obnoxious prick in junior high. I got better my freshman year. I was just obnoxious.
76. Our favourite band director retired after 8th grade. We spent 9th grade giving the new band director a hard time. It was my job to announce, out loud, the running count of hissy fits she had after each outbreak. An extra point was added if she threw a stand at someone, but that only happened once. We took bets to see if she would break 100 by the end of the year (the final tally was around 120).


High School and College History


77. In high school I was on a crew that set up the stage so the Alexandria Symphony could practice in the auditorium. We would play soccer with a Nerf ball in the band room during the rehearsal. There's still a Nerf soccer ball up in the sound panels somewhere.
78. I wrote a murder mystery in high school. It was trite but the last half had very good tension building .
79. I wore unattractive glasses with giant lenses well into college. When I first got them, my reasoning was that I'd have a larger field of vision. Inertia did the rest. I also kept my hair in a constant crew cut because it was easy to maintain.
80. I was a coxswain for five years. I once nodded off in the boat on a fine May day (only for a few seconds). I got the MVP award my senior year which pissed off all the "real" athletes.
81. I wore contact lenses for two years before I got tired of the whole put-in-take-out process.
82. As a kid, I chewed Bubble-Yum grape gum nonstop. Bubblicious sucked. In high school, I ate Spree in bulk. Now I chew Ice-Breakers, since it kills your dinner and wakes you up on a road trip.
83. I was a drum major in high school and a section leader in college. In college band, I memorized about eighty songs sheerly because I didn't want to carry a four pound lyre around. I hate having extra stuff when I have to wear a uniform.
84. One of my majors was Computer Science. In my freshman year, I went to 100% of my classes and slept through roughly 25% of them. In my fifth year, I went to 25% of classes and slept through roughly 80% of them. I still came away with a 3.69. My other major was Music. I probably went to about 98% of all my classes, and slept through less than 10% of them, coming out with a 3.93. I figured that if a class didn't offer something you could learn just as well in the privacy of your room, there was no point in going. Even now, I'd rather read a book than take a training class.
85. When I lived in Ambler-Johnston, there was a serial arsonist who was setting fires in trash cans. I rarely went out for the nightly fire drills. I was on the ground floor anyhow.
86. At the Gator Bowl in 1997, I played in a 1 AM trumpet sectional on the beach. I was not one of the drunk trumpeters that hid in the ocean when the cops came.
87. I think that most CS Majors are arrogant blowhards. Part of the reason I went to music grad school was so I wouldn't have to work with them on a daily basis. Luckily my current company has a bare minimum of that personality type.
88. I lived with two girls once in college. I cleaned the apartment more than they did. I generally have the cleanest bathrooms owned by a guy in history.
89. I taught sightsinging at Florida State with my melodious baritone/bass voice. I can't do vibrato. It's okay because I hate vocal vibrato anyhow.


Conversations & Speech


90. I tend not to talk if I don't have anything to say. This can lead to awkward silences in one on one conversations. Sometimes I'll try to make small talk so the other person isn't uncomfortable -- I don't mind the silence at all.
91. My proclivity for silence makes for short phone calls. I generally only call people for a reason. Once when I called a girl I liked in high school, I wrote down a list of topics in case of awkward silences.
92. I suddenly become 100% more socially adept in a group of three to five people because I'm no longer responsible for half of the conversation.
93. I am also funnier in groups. My humour is very reactive -- generally a dry, witty quip about the situation at hand rather than a prepared joke.
94. If I go to a party where I only know a couple people, I will hang out with them all night long and never meet anyone new.
95. I try to mentally filter the things I say before I say them. This is partly why I don't talk much.
96. The fact that I mentally filter the things I say does not mean that I am lying when I say something; it just means I'm trying not to say anything retarded. I still say stupid shit far too often though.
97. I have a lisp and the cut of my teeth prevents me from forming an S sound the correct way.
98. I am a good prepared speaker, but I think I have some kind of mild speech impediment that causes me to stumble over words on the fly. It doesn't help that I talk too fast and have some kind of Northern Virginia / Blacksburg / Tallahassee patois going on which often makes my words unintelligible.
99. I hate when I say something and people don't hear it and ask "What?". This happens regularly because I don't talk very loudly.
100. I often say that things are "key", but I can't stand that stupid college football tradition where everyone shakes their keys on a key play.
101. I rarely express my opinions on decisive issues, because it's not like anyone will change their own. Why bring about unrest?
102. I have had extended conversations with my cats.
103. Puns are fun. Sometimes someone will say something in a conversation and my brain will immediately begin multitasking and figuring out a good pun related to the topic. Luckily for you, I don't say all of them out loud.


People & Relationships


104. I treasure my alone time, but I don't like to be lonely.
105. I do very poorly at keeping in touch with old friends unless it's convenient. The oldest friend I still contact regularly I met fourteen years ago. If he wasn't my boss now, I probably would not be able to keep in touch.
106. Initially, I tend to be unfairly prejudiced against people who look or talk like a frat boy.
107. I am hypersensitive to the effects of my actions on the people around me. I am always aware of subtle things going on around me in a group.
108. I like to remember peoples' birthdays and give them good wishes, because it's an easy and pleasant surprise to orchestrate.
109. In the early years of college, I knew more people online than offline.
110. Despite my short attention span, I have unending patience when dealing with people. I still find some of them to be annoying though.
111. I think confrontation can be healthy when it's with people you know and both sides are willing to listen. I dislike confrontation with people I don't know. I have only ever complained about one loud party.
112. I believe all relationships, friendships or otherwise, need to be grounded in completely honest communication. However, I don't believe that this gives anyone the excuse to avoid that funny social thing called "tact".
113. I have been in love thrice and strongly in like several times. When I was a freshman in college, I had a crush on a girl I met online.
114. I usually have crushes on my female friends early on, but they pass quickly. I have more female friends than male friends. I have more younger friends than equal-aged friends.
115. I stopped looking for that "special someone" a few years ago. I quickly realized that though you might stop looking, you'll never stop analyzing everyone you meet, just in case.
116. I have been dating someone for over a year now and am also engaged.
117. When I was single, I disliked the fact that all the new women I met were engaged or married.
118. I used to worry that being so successful at independence would make me suck at my next relationship because I was getting set in my ways. Then I learned that this was not the case.
119. I rarely write about other people in my news updates, to respect their privacy, but I like seeing my own name in other blogs. I Google myself every few months. This is not slang for anything perverted.
120. I have a tendency to majorly overanalyze every little tidbit of interactions with other people. There are many molehill-mountains of irrational fears in my mind, but luckily I've gotten much better at recognizing that they're irrational.
121. I would rather have had a happy, private, loving life and be forgotten forever after death, than have a respected public life and be in a history book somewhere.


Music


122. Music is a key element in my life and there's music playing whenever possible -- in the car, at work, at home. This is surprising because as a kid, I only had three recordings: Handel's Royal Fireworks Music, the soundtrack from Dances with Wolves, and a Ray Stevens novelty tape.
123. I like corny music jokes, like "What do you get when you drop a piano on an air force base?" "A flat major" or "What do you get when you drop a piano down a mineshaft?"...
124. I wake up every morning with a random song stuck in my head. It doesn't exit-ear-left until I'm on my way to work.
125. One of my favourite sounds in jazz harmony is planing, where the root note moves up or down and the quality of the chord stays the same .
126. I think all musicals should be through-composed. If some clown is talking and then you hear a bell note and he bursts into song, that's not a musical, that's a play with songs in it.
127. I've seen Avenue Q, Martin Guerre, Les Miserables, and Miss Saigon live, but not on Broadway. Miss Saigon is my favourite. I know several other musicals like Rent and Aspects of Love by heart. I was in a high school pit orchestra for Fiddler on the Roof. After the shows, one student's father mentioned that "they used a great recording for the music parts".
128. I have XM Radio because I hate radio commercials. I listen to less than ten percent of the 150 stations regularly.
129. I will change the station if music with an annoying techno beat is playing. Your bass drum is not a snare drum. I will also change the station if I have to hear Pieces of Me one more time.
130. Listening to music from the fifties, before rock n' roll but after swing, relaxes me. I also like jazz, 70's funk, and 80's rock monstrosities.
131. I haven't composed a new song in years. I haven't played my trumpet in a group since 2005. I would like to, but the time it would take to get back to top form is daunting.
132. I like listening male singers who don't sound like cheap lounge singers and who don't treat every song like a giant fermata. I like listening to female singers who don't abuse vibrato and have interesting timbres. I like looking at female singers, with no particular qualifiers.
133. I would classify rap as accompanied poetry before I call it music. I like Eminem though.
134. I hate living in a building where a tenant has loud bass. I would rather hear the whole song twice as loud, than hear just the bass line thumping all night long.
135. I like Muse, The Cardigans, Coldplay, Dave Matthews Band, Kansas, Aerosmith, Guns n' Roses, Earth Wind and Fire, and the Stan Kenton Orchestra, among many other groups, pop or otherwise. I wish pop music were more like the classics from the 70s and 80s.
136. I also like harmless cheesy pop music by performers like McFly, Alizee and Girls Aloud.
137. I queue up my entire playlist on random. There are songs on my playlist that I've grown to dislike, but I never get around to deleting them, and rarely skip them.
138. I subconsciously analyze all the music I hear, not just the classical stuff. I can't help it.


Religion


139. I sometimes think that the collective bad things caused by organized religion throughout history outweigh their positive benefits.
140. I hate when the people who pay their religion lip service are more salient than the good, honest people who truly believe in it.
141. I hate when bad things happen to good people.
142. I have attended seven Catholic services. Six of them were trumpet gigs.
143. I would not consider myself a religious person. I don't think this counts against who I am. I see a difference between religion and spiritual awareness.
144. I am a firm believer in personal responsibility and dislike when people use or blame their religion for a lack of responsibility. I think this world would be a much better place if people just took care of their shit.
145. I am more concerned with living a positive life than with what will happen afterwards. I would rob, cheat, and steal, and face any afterlific consequences if it meant preventing bad things from happening to the people in my life. I regularly make up words like afterlific, which probably deducts a few points from my karma tab.


Money & Shopping


146. I buy most things on sale and even go to the cheapest gas station, but the only coupons I ever use are for restaurants or pizza delivery. When I cut out coupons, they just sit on the fridge until they're expired. There are two expired coupons on my fridge at the moment. I read Consumer Reports, but rarely ever need to buy anything they rate.
147. I don't believe in giving to charities and I have never donated to a disaster fund, but I firmly believe that you should be willing to blow every cent you have to support or save the people within your sphere of influence. I have given large amounts of money to people in the past.
148. I save about 40% of every paycheck, but I don't know what I'm saving for. I have a 401K and some mutual funds but do very little proactively with them.
149. I only use my credit card when I have to. I pay for most things on a debit card. If I carry cash, I will squander it very quickly on fast food.
150. If I have no cash, I will go grocery shopping and get cash back, rather than take a trip to the bank.
151. 90% of my grocery basket is the same on every trip.
152. I bunch all my errands together into as few trips as possible. I will usually get bored after two or three stops, and abandon the rest of the run. This defeats the purpose of my efficiency.
153. I don't impulse shop. However, when I finally decide on something I want, I have to have it very quickly.
154. I will never buy anything if I don't remember to put it down on a shopping list. I've had the same fleece for six years because of this.


Clothes & Style


155. I have clothes from the tenth grade that still fit me. I still wear them on occasion.
156. I had corduroy pants in elementary school. I didn't know or care about it.
157. I'm wearing the same shirt in six consecutive years of family Christmas pictures. It was unintentional for the first four years.
158. I like wearing nice clothes, but I don't dress up often. I hate clothes shopping because I'm too big for kid clothes and too small for adult clothes. My last pair of comfortable jeans were a "16 Husky". I seem to wear a lot of blue.
159. I wish I could find simple shorts that end above the knee and don't have a million Dockers pockets all over them.
160. My waistline is never particularly tight, yet the button on my shorts always seems to fall off.
161. My goatee is not about style. I just got tired of shaving it all the time. I would let a beard grow if I could, but thankfully Asians are hard of hairing.


Politics


162. Politics evokes disdain in me. I think politics has become "who is less offensive?" rather than "who is more qualified?".
163. I think the effect of money on democracy has broken it beyond repair, so we might as well keep on truckin' with it.
164. I would not consider myself a liberal or a conservative. People who read my page would probably not consider me a conservative.
165. I dislike when morality oozes into politics. I believe people should be able to know right from wrong without having to make a law.
166. I read the newspaper every day. I know a lot about history and current events but don't care enough to do more than whine in my news updates.
167. I disdain the media more than politics though.


Driving


168. If there were no such thing as traffic cops, I would always drive as fast as the road is designed for. I think speeding tickets should be punitive rather than preventative (cops shouldn't pull you over for speeding, but if you wreck and you WERE speeding, the penalties should increase).
169. If I pass a State Police car camped in the median, I will watch it in the rear view mirror until I can no longer see it, just in case it's going to pull out and pull me over. I also realize that watching has no effect whatsoever.
170. I hate driving long distances. If I have to drive a long distance, I'd rather drive by myself.
171. I'm good with directions. I would rather give someone complete directions than have them follow me.
172. I signal every turn, even lane changes and turns from "turn only" lanes.
173. I am always singing, humming, or whistling in the car. I am never doing so when other people are present. I can generally match pitch to the radio and also harmonize.
174. If I sing along to the radio, I will always use the same accent or twang as the recording, regardless of how foolish I sound.
175. Even if there were a Metro line directly from my front door to my work, I would still probably drive to work. I like the freedom provided by cars.
176. I live seven miles from work. It takes me 10 minutes to get there in the morning. If I go during rush hour, it takes me 15 minutes.
177. I let people go before me in merge lanes and at stop signs. When I motion for them to go, I will also say "Go ahead" even though they can't hear me.
178. On long trips, my brain constantly recalculates how long it will be until I arrive, based on my current speed and how many miles are left.
179. My car is very clean. People who enter it for the first time always feel compelled to say so.
180. I'm very bad at driving or walking around with no destination in mind (except on vacation at the beach).
181. I get paranoid when someone flashes their headlights at me, and expect a cop to be around the corner, or my tires to be deflating. Usually the person was just driving over a bump in the road though.
182. When other people on the road are driving badly or cut me off, I talk to them as if they can hear me, like "You really didn't need to back out in front of me, assclown."


Food


183. I like to cook but hate collecting ingredients. I rarely cook but it tastes pretty good when I do.
184. I like eating at restaurant chains. I tend to get the same thing every time. I also order the cheap things on the menu because they taste just as good as the expensive stuff. I rarely order alcohol in restaurants.
185. The only real pizza crust is Pan Pizza.
186. Most of the meals I make without real cooking are single course meals. I have been known to eat a box of macaroni, a bag of stuffing, or just cook lots of rice for dinner.
187. I like golden delicious apples, but I don't like apple-flavoured foods of any kind. I think I may have become allergic to apples.
188. I like soft-boiled eggs. I could eat them by the dozen.
189. When I make a sandwich, I invert the top slice so there's no top and bottom crusts, just two mixed crusts. Otherwise, I wouldn't eat the bottom crusts.
190. I cheat with hot chocolate -- I use warm water so I can drink it immediately without burn worries.


Movies, TV, and Entertainment


191. I like to go see all the movies that get critical acclaim, unless they look really boring. I don't walk out of bad movies, though I did see Thin Red Line and Gosford Park in the theatre. I watch all genres of movies, though I usually wait until they're on video.
192. I like movies with intricate details that come together like Memento and Two Days in the Valley. I don't like most Quentin Tarantino movies.
193. I don't know which is worse: The Matrix or Star Wars.
194. I hate bars, but only because of the large crowds and the inability to carry on a conversation without shouting.
195. I can shout very loud but I never need to unless I'm in a bar.
196. I love the pace of life in Northern Virginia even though I hate the traffic and don't go out on the town much. I will probably live here forever.
197. The only primetime TV shows I watched with any regularity growing up were Malcolm in the Middle, Home Improvement, and Roseanne. I had never seen an episode of Friends until my fifth year in college. I have now seen every episode of Friends.
198. I have been known to watch America's Funniest Videos just to see the funny animal clips.
199. I don't like watching extreme sports, clips of people wiping out in painful ways, or gory, gruesome Internet sites. Yet, movie violence and gore has no effect on me whatsoever.
200. I'm afraid that I look incredibly stupid when dancing so I never dance. I bet I'd actually be good at a dance with real steps and moves or whatever, but I've never learned how.
201. When I watch movies or TV shows, I like to watch the parts of the frame that you aren't supposed to focus on to catch the little extras. I also like looking at the unimportant details in photographs rather than the subjects.


Reading


202. I have read lots of books, and I read very fast. I don't buy new books very often, but I have reread most of my library multiple times.
203. I still reread books I liked as a kid. Gordon Korman was my favourite childhood author, possibly followed by John Bellairs or Lloyd Alexander.
204. I like reading or learning about unexplained phenomena and unsolved mysteries.
205. I always read in the bathroom.
206. I reread things I write, even if they're very recent. I have reread this list multiple times. I reread my own comments on other people's pages even when I can plainly see that no one has replied yet.


Sports & Activities


207. I like swimming in pools where I can see the bottom. I don't like swimming in rivers or the ocean. I wear my glasses while swimming, because I like the gift of sight. Once I lost my glasses in the ocean and found them again.
208. I go to the beach to dig. I can dig holes all day long and never feel like swimming. I never plan to make something, and I don't like it when someone tries to bring design and planning to my empire of sand.
209. I can't throw a football well but I excel at badminton, which no one ever wants to play. I was once on a music major basketball team that went 0 for 16 in the community league.
210. I have no interest in regular golf. I don't understand why people like golf games or Golden Tee. I love mini golf, even more so when there are cute props.
211. I like sprinting. I don't like running long distances because I get bored easily, and I have to run back when I get to the end.
212. I love the outdoors, but I am never outdoors.
213. I like long walks on the beach. Seriously. I have been known to walk for miles along the beach with no particular destination in mind.
214. I hate bug bites. I never wear bug spray though.
215. I am in a physical fitness poster with Arnold Schwarzenegger, as Token Asian #1. He came to our school when I was in sixth grade to promote the previous the National Physical Fitness Award. I never received this award, since I only ever passed Sit n' Reach and Pull-ups.
216. I took gynmastics classes for four years in elementary school and then assisted with teaching them for another couple of years. I used to be able to do a split and some bar routines. I could never do a back walkover.


Games


217. I think Scrabble, Monopoly, and Clue, are fun board games. I also think that Scrabble and Monopoly are the most likely games to lose interest in before someone has won. Once I studied the list of two-letter Scrabble words to be competitive with my Florida friends, then promptly forgot them all when I moved back to Virginia. I also wrote a Java program that calculates mortgage and income tax costs in Monopoly. We actually used it three times.
218. I own all the Nintendo's except for the Game Boy Advance. I have beat less than a quarter of the games I own. The only sports console game I ever liked was NFL Blitz 2000, because it really wasn't a sports game.
219. I started playing text adventure games in the first grade with Zork I. I wrote one of my own sixteen years later. I don't think anyone plays it anymore .
220. I wrote some of the original play-by-play reports of Starcraft games back before it became widespread. I sucked at Starcraft. Three of my highly rated reports were completely contrived and not based on a real match. Apparently I didn't suck at fiction .
221. I played World of Warcraft for over twenty-five months without getting tired of it. That could be a record. I finally cancelled my account in early 2007 but then reactivated it in December 2007. I'm still playing it today.
222. I started organizing weekly games of Texas Hold'em in my basement in 2004. Nowadays I host one or two games per month.