So I’ve been tagged by my wife. This is essentially a chain letter across blogs. Luckily I don’t think anyone reads my blog. Or at least no one that hasn’t already done this, so it dies here.

Here are the rules:
1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules. (if you don’t have a blog, email me)
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1) I can’t stand hearing someone trim their nails. Its horribly noisy. People at work will do it occasionally. I then make it my personal goal to mock them about it. “So, can you do mine next?” “When did we open a nail salon?” “Do you do paint those when you’re done?”

2) I have been to a party where a cow was present. Not only that but the house wasn’t owned or lived in by anyone present. I was a naughty child. Or at least I hung out with naughty kids.

3) I was “in jail” twice in Webster growing up. See #2. I also was involved in a rock throwing incident where we threw dirt clods at each other. The police were not amused. Nor were our parents when they picked us up from the police.

4) One of my biggest regrets in life is not staying at UT Austin and transferring to UT Tyler. At the same time this is how I got my wife, so its one of my biggest good moves. She broke my heart when years later she told me she had thought of transferring to UT.

5) As my wife alluded to in her random facts, I don’t like feet. They really are quite a disgusting part of your body. They sweat constantly, they’re in contact with all sorts of crap from the ground and its almost impossible to get them truly clean. People with a foot fetish creep me out.

6) My favorite animals are Otters, because they are the only non mammal I know of that uses tools and they are so playful. They also travel in packs. There’s a really cool video I saw at one point of a bunch of them harassing a predator to keep it from messing with them. Very cool.

7) I hate meetings. Not really a big secret, but I’ll do a lot to avoid meetings. Most meetings are so poorly planned they just waste peoples time. The only person who seems to care about them often is the organizer, and sometimes not even them. A good meeting is short, to the point and has a well defined purpose. Meetings for meetings sake are just too common. John Cleese has a great training video called “Meetings Bloody Meetings” that should be required viewing for everyone in the world.

8) I hate talking on the phone. I suppose this isn’t a surprise to most either. In management training we have been told body language constitutes about 60 percent of what we “say” in a conversation. 30 percent comes from tone and 10 percent is the actual words. To me this often means when you’re on the phone you’re missing a lot of the conversation. I’d rather talk in person. If there isn’t really a big need to talk in person, say for example when passing along just facts, then just send an email. For people that are separated by distance then the phone may be more useful, but when someone in my office calls me I ignore the phone. I’ll either walk over to their desk while they are still calling me or wait for them to come over. My biggest problem is the tendency to want to avoid the phone even when it makes sense to use it, such as calling someone far away. Oh well.

As far tagging other people…. Pikachu I choose you. Just kidding. It ends here.