Man, I hate following memes, but my bro David slapped me with one, so I guess I'd better respond (and my apologies to anyone else who has hit me with one in the past, and I didn't follow-up — sometimes I just can't get inspired. In other words, it's me, it's not you ;).
Four jobs you've had in your life: Software developer, Instructional Technologist (yeah, it's a made-up job title, but I'm not the one who made it up), Arabic linguist, general purpose worker at a Southern Baptist summer camp.
Four movies you could watch over and over: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Terms of Endearment (it has great meaning for me), Top Gun.
Four places you've lived: Texas (of course), Greece, Spain, Washington DC area (first in The People's Republic of Maryland, but I finally escaped to Virginia).
Four TV shows you love to watch: 24, House, CSI (plus spin-offs), Cold Case. And as a bonus, I watch every season of American Idol just to hear Simon Cowell insult people. Especially Paula Abdul. Because she has a silly name, especially to someone who understands Arabic.
Four places you've been on vacation: Italy, England, France (feh!), Germany, Austria, Switzerland...oops, I got carried away. Anyway, the last four were all on the same trip.
Four websites you visit daily: SpamCop (I have an email account there, and process/report my spam through them), MSN (it's my home page, even in Firefox, but I seldom pay much attention to it — old habits die hard), the forums at my hosting company's web site, and a whole buncha blogs. As David said, have a look at my blogroll.
When you stop and think about it, though, this question is becoming less and less relevant to how people use the Internet. Some spend their life conversing over one instant messaging client or another. Others, like me, keep up with a lot of things through their RSS readers rather than visiting the actual web sites (except when they're very inconsiderate of me and don't put the whole post in their feed — ptui!). Email, of course, is still very popular. For me, I'm subscribed to about five billion or so email reflectors, most of them associated with Amateur Radio, so a significant portion of my free time is spent reading (and then deleting, since they're almost all in Yahoo! Groups) these emails.
So I think it's about time to start getting away from the concept that we only interact with the Internet through our browsers. While I can't imagine it going away completely, it's becoming less and less the tool that we use to interact with the Internets.
Four of your favorite foods: Barbecue beef, salmon grilled on my Weber with hickory and mesquite wood smoke, the bread at Macaroni Grill, and a nice, well-marbled ribeye grilled, again, on my Weber with hickory and mesquite wood smoke. Did I mention I like to cook food on my Weber? With hickory and mesquite wood smoke?
Four places you'd rather be: Texas, Texas, Texas and Texas. Oh, I can't do that? Hmm...okay, how about Texas; visiting my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters in North Carolina; visiting my son and daughter in Tennessee; and visiting David in Costa Rica, that work?
Four albums you can't live without (Albums? How retro! I've haven't played an album in almost 20 years! I'll do CDs): Best of the Doobies, The Eagles' Greatest Hits (both volumes), Dan Siegel's Northern Nights, Maroon 5's Songs About Jane.
This question was a tough one for me because it's not something I think about too much. I started off by looking at what artists I listen to the most, and then look for their CDs where I really like all or almost all of the tracks. To be honest, The Doobie Brothers and The Eagles just barely made the cut. But Siegel and Maroon 5? All of them. Without exception. I highly recommend both.
Satisfied, David? Now go away and quit bothering me.
