Ok, so the 5-things meme has made it’s way to me by way of Jennifer Wagner. Here’s hoping these couple of personal items help you understand more about me!
- I am 29 years old, married to a wonderful lady, and have two beautiful daughters. You can see the photo gallery at www.familiacraft.com. I don’t update it too often, because I am running up on Google’s 250 MB limit. I shy away from Flickr due to the public nature. I like that if I don’t tag my photos in Picasa Web Albums, they won’t really show up in a Google search of the site. I don’t mind the world seeing my pictures, but see no need to toss them into the wide open area that is Flickr.
- I speak fluent Spanish. My wife is from Peru, where I spent some time as a Christian missionary. She attended the church with which I was ministering, we met and the rest is history. Her English is lacking, but she’s working hard to learn. Believe me when I tell you I understand the whole native/immigrant discussion a lot better than most, because I have been both. While here I am a native and she is an immigrant, but when we travel, boy the tables turn. I have learned SO much about Peruvian culture, but I can never claim to be from there, or be anything but a big blonde immigrant. I don’t even remotely look the part! For the record, my Spanish is good. I mean really good. I speak it like I were a native Spanish-speaker. I push onto my kids the idea that accent is as important as vocabulary knowledge. Are you seeing the parallels between the native/immigrant technology discussion? Interesting, eh?
- I have held lots of different jobs in my short life. I dropped out of college at one point to become a firefighter. The fire department sent me to emergency medical technician school, and then I went to work for the county ambulance service. They sent me to school to become a Nationally Registered Emergency Medical Technician – Paramedic. I spent roughly five years answering 911 emergency calls on an ambulance. Because that wasn’t enough, I also found time to become a state police officer so I could help the local law enforcement agencies. With my experience as a firefighter and medic (not to mention bilingual) the agencies were headhunting me. Truth is, I was on a hunt for glory. This is a large part of my testimony. I wanted the hero glory to fill a void in myself that only God could fill. Finally at age 25 I bent my knee to Christ and turned my life over to him. I turned in my badge and gun and resigned from the fire department. I kept the highest paying job and went back to school. I graduated in 2004 with a Bachelor’s in Spanish and took off for South America. Once I got married, I had to find a job with decent benefits to take care of a family (my wife had a daughter, now I have a daughter). My mom is a career math educator, my brother teaches 4th grade, and my sister-in-law teaches middle school special ed. Needless to say, I kept hearing I was a natural teacher. Plus I am quite the self-taught computer geek, so…
- I studied acting and singing in high school. I went to a magnet school in South Florida that focused on the arts and I chose the track the centered on acting and singing, entitled Musical Theatre. There I took classes on topics such as Shakespearean English (meant for the accent and understanding of the time) and modern dance. I learned interpretive movement and improv comedy. I’m pretty shy, as I don’t think what I have to say most of the time is all that interesting, but if I get into a performance situation (read: teaching/presenting/etc) I get fluid. I can also do accents from other parts of the world, although not quite as well as I would like.
- I still read Archie Comics. It is the only comic book I have ever read, and I never got Jason Lee in Mallrats obsessed with the condition of the books. I used to read them over and over and over again. I can recall going to the grocery store and browsing the checkout line for new issues. Sometimes I could rack up as many as seven, and my mom begrudgingly bought them. I still have quite a collection, although they are in boxes in the garage. I am not as big a fan, partly due to age and partly due to the apparent decrease in morals. Just noticing the front page (which may have changed) notes Betty and Veronica in skimpy clothing. They are perpetual high-schoolers who I think should model appropriate dress, not mimic the halls of most modern high schools. I have episodes of PEP that ended up being the basis for the Archie series. I don’t buy them myself any more, but to this day, whenever I have a birthday or Christmas, my mom always makes sure to include a few issues for me, and I gobble them up.
Silly stuff, personal stuff. There it is.
So now it is my turn to tag, so here is my list.
Doc Searls (my longshot)
Open Source Classroom » Hacking up the new theme says:
[...] What I cannot figure out is how to add some padding after each of the line items in an ordered list. For example, look at my five things meme post and look how jumbled it looks since there’s no spacing. I tried manually adding ’s after each line but no dice. I emailed the theme author, we’ll see if he responds. In the meantime, anyone know how to do this in CSS? I don’t see anywhere where ordered lists are defined, that’s the odd part. Unordered lists have a padding below them, at least according to the file. Maybe I need to add a definition for the ordered list. [...]
29th December 2006 at 8:22 am
NextGenTeachers » Hacking up the new theme says:
[...] What I cannot figure out is how to add some padding after each of the line items in an ordered list. For example, look at my five things meme post and look how jumbled it looks since there’s no spacing. I tried manually adding ’s after each line but no dice. I emailed the theme author, we’ll see if he responds. In the meantime, anyone know how to do this in CSS? I don’t see anywhere where ordered lists are defined, that’s the odd part. Unordered lists have a padding below them, at least according to the file. Maybe I need to add a definition for the ordered list. [...]
29th December 2006 at 5:38 am
always learning » High Five! says:
[...] Technically speaking, I’m still on holiday, but I also happen to be in an extremely comfortable and surprisingly chic Bangkok hotel with free wifi, so now I can finally get down to the important business of responding to the “Five Things” meme everybody’s been talking about these last few weeks. Way back in December, just a day after we set off for Vietnam, I was tagged by Graham Wegner, and just recently I was tagged again by Silvia Tolisano, Susan Sedro and Chris Craft (update: sorry it took me so long to figure out who tagged me! Internet was spotty, to say the least, in Vietnam) I guess that means I really have been much too slow in posting this sure-to-be-thrilling list of 5 things you may not know about me. Hold onto your socks folks, here it comes: [...]
29th December 2006 at 1:02 am
Kim Cofino says:
What an amazing set of careers you’ve had Chris! I know you’re a multitasker and a quick learner, but this is very impressive! Sorry it took me so long to catch on that you tagged me – I’m still catching up from the web-void that was Vietnam. Thanks for sharing!
29th December 2006 at 1:05 am