Unfamiliar Facts: 25 Things You Don't Know About Me (possibly TMI)
Related Post:
Unpublished Book: Memoirs of a Reluctant Cult Observer (Fiction)
This is a "me too" post inspired by FriendFeed's "25 Things You Don't Know About Me" meme.
The FriendFeed thread is over here.
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- 1. Born in California, LA area.
- 2. Ran wild in Santa Barbara. Chinese Mansion, Banana Road, Mountain Drive!
- 3. Parents went full-bore with rich-widow neo-hippy crazy-artist themes. Fun while it lasted!
- 4. Parents got sucked in to (and spit out by) a Cult (I Am merged into Children of the Light). Mother was a "High Priestess". They had their own branch!
- 5. Witnessed brain washing and "aggressive" therapy, and forced labor, insomnia and fasting. And a melange of beliefs such as Theosiphism, Christianity, Buddhism, and anything else lying around. Everyone had glamorous past lives, and the lucky ones were planning to "ascend" this plane by "transmuting" their "substance" (and leaving no corpse)
- 6. Escaped Cult with parents at 5a.m. unannounced, and traveled across the U.S. then to Europe. One of the nicest people, Anne, never escaped. The photos below are hers.
- 7. Attended Catholic school in a tiny village in Mallorca, Spain, where I learned French and a little Catalan.
- 8. Attended a Community College near Brighton. A Yankee mutt tested well enough for "posh schools", so they placed him in this alternative co-ed school for O-Level prep. 2 hours each way. Invaluable to his spotty education.
- 9. Studied piano in SF with Robert Sheldon, a student of Egon Petri. Petri taught Victor Borge.
- 10. Worked as an ESL and music teacher in Barcelona
- 11. Attended City College of San Francisco, where I started to program computers at the Electronic Music Lab
- 12. Got a job playing piano, then one programming children's games for Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. In "Forth."
- 13. Went on to work and live in the Silly Valley for a few years in the 80s.
- 14. Learned on the job from graduates of SRI, Xerox Parc and Stanford AI Lab
- 15. After long stints at companies in the North Bay, career as a C++ programmer flamed out in the crash of 2000
- 16. Co-inventor of ImagePump, which was sold to several people, even without a patent. Still in use today. People said nice things!
- 17. In 2004 I started working with Robert Elvin to provide music for his indie film "The Savant" released in 2008. People said nice things!
- 18. Started full-time programming again in 2007, this time Eclipse, Java, GWT, GXT, MySql, tomcat
- 19. 2 sisters live in Ireland, one sister lives in Las Vegas
- 20. I'm highly Skeptical, even of these "facts."
- 21. I have a large extended family on my Mother's side, as she had 6 sisters and a brother
- 22. I wrote a "pocket primer" for the "Performing Pianist"
- 23. I prepared my own edition of Isaac Albeniz' Navarra for piano
- 24. I have been known to mess around with multi-track digital audio. Magix Samplitude is my weapon of choice.
- 25. I am a frustrated radio producer, not much of a blogger, and not a journalist either - I like to help journalists, though.
