Tagged, this is it

I got tagged again, and, rather than pay specific attention to the tag, here are ten random facts about me. As I’ve said before, I don’t like these tag things, and this is definitely it. I won’t be doing it again. I doubt anyone really cares to hear random stuff about me anyway, so this is definitely the last time I’ll clog my blog with it :-)

1. I have fought a severe addiction to caffeine for most of my adult life and have been known to go years at a time without drinking anything containing it. I’m currently back on the wagon and fighting the withdrawals and headaches that accompany giving it up. When I’m off the wagon, I’m known to go through multiple three-liter bottles of Diet Coke or Diet Dr. Pepper every day.
   
2. I am one of seven people within the last three generations of my family (i.e., back through my grandparents) with the same first name or a variation of it. Three of the seven also have the same last name. Family reunions were always hell.
   
3. I’m a big fan of old TV shows, and, when I watch TV, I watch shows like The Andy Griffith Show (in the Don Knotts days), All in the Family, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Star Trek (TOS), Magnum, P.I., Battlestar Galactica (1978 series), Sanford and Son, Hogan’s Heroes, and various others. I don’t watch much TV, but when I do it’s usually either something educational or something old. I never watched the first run (and have rarely caught reruns) of many current/recent shows, including: Friends, Seinfeld, Dawson’s Creek, Buffy, Fraiser, Everybody Loves Raymond, Home Improvement, Northern Exposure, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, The Simpsons, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The King of Queens, etc. I don’t really have any explanation for this other than that it’s easier to keep up with the plotlines of older shows when you don’t watch much TV in the first place (and especially when you’ve seen them before :-). I do watch the current show House, M.D., but that’s about the only one.
   
4. I love walking and have been known to walk several miles a day.
   
5. The nature of my day job makes it a struggle to keep myself in some type of physical shape. I’ve been known to gain and lose significant amounts of weight. My dad bears a striking resemblance to Hoss Cartwright, and I am beginning to take after him.
   
6. My favorite beer is a tie between the Sierra Nevada Porter and the Sam Adams Honey Porter.
   
   
7. My favorite cities are New York, San Francisco, Sydney, and London.
   
8. I’m a big fan of audio books and keep a subscription to audible.com for that reason.
   
9. I’m a bit of an electronics buff and have a number of unusual gadgets in my home. Some of the more interesting ones: a GORF arcade game, many hand-built computers, various voice-activated and voice-controlled devices, a miniature recording studio, several Xbox consoles which are networked together to allow for large multiplayer games, several Media Center PCs (also hand-built), etc.
   
10. I’m a night owl and frequently find myself reading or working in the middle of the night. This means that I often fight my sleep during the day and have fallen asleep at the wheel many times.