25 random things about me

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1. All through Elementary, Jr. High, and High School, my teachers would always tell my parents: “Ryan is a bright kid, but he just doesn’t apply himself.” In 6th grade, I was the only kid in G.A.T.E. with an F as a class grade.
2. My first real girlfriend was a girl named Claire, who was really cool. The first time she met my mom was on the way to Taco Bell, and Claire called her “Mom.” My mom still asks me about her from time to time, although Claire and I haven’t spoken since high school.
3. When I was a kid, my mom didn’t want me listening to “Devil’s music,” so I was only able to choose between opera, easy listening, or country. I chose country. I listened to country exclusively until mid-way through my Freshman year of high school when I went to Eric’s house after school. His brother Kevin and cousin Sebastian were listening to a little blue-covered CD with 4 guys standing there with the name “Weezer” along the top. That was the day I became a fan of Alternative.
4. In 1995, my best friends (Eric & Jeff) and I decided to start calling ourselves the U.F.K.S. (which stands for something that starts with “ugly” and ends with “suckers”). It was an inside joke about an inside joke that was satirized by the class clown. Over time it just became UFKS, and doesn’t really stand for anything anymore.
5. My sophomore year in high school, I wrote a story about my then-girlfriend and I breaking up for my English class. I wrote it in a writing binge that started at 9:00pm and went until I finished editing the story around 4:30am. I listened to “The Change” by Garth Brooks on repeat the entire night. I turned the paper in and got an A+. I turned the same paper in in 11th grade and got an A+. Same thing in 12th grade, and again in my first year of college.
6. I met my wife, Sarah, in 11th grade Chemistry class. I gave her a wedgie, she gave me her pager number. True story.
7. I asked the same girl (my long-distance, on-again-off-again romantic interest) to both my Junior and Senior proms. Both times she said yes. Both times she backed out after I’d bought the tickets.
8. When my best friends (Eric & Jeff) graduated from high school, I ran down to the field after the ceremony and wrapped them both in duct tape just for kicks. When I graduated from high school a week later, Eric and Jeff wrapped me and my girlfriend Sarah in duct tape.
9. One of the best things about college was that you didn’t *actually* have to go to class. I used this privilege liberally, and ended up failing all of my classes. Unfortunately, I also did the same thing the following semester, and again the semester after that. I ended up deciding to join the seminary instead. I dropped out of that too.
10. I spent a few months in 2000-2001 in the San Francisco rave scene making candy bracelets and dancing to trance and house music in underground clubs getting hit on by both girls and guys. I met some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met during that phase of my life.
11. Once I was at a party, and had unknowingly taken a hallucinogen. It’s one thing to be young and stupid and decide to get high with your friends. It’s another matter all-together when you find yourself having a conversation with a 6-foot lizard-person with a rainbow for hair, or when you’re talking to someone and suddenly their face morphs into a completely different person, or when you shout “go carpet, go!” and actually mean it.
12. When I was 21, I asked my girlfriend Sarah to marry me. She said yes. A few weeks later Sarah said that she thought she was pregnant. I woke up the next morning and found our roommate, Rick, snorting a line of some blend of speed off the coffee table. Sarah and I packed up and moved back to Morgan Hill that very same day. My little girl changed my entire life.
13. I told one of my best friends that I was going to go back to college and graduate valedictorian. He scoffed at me and didn’t believe I’d even finish. In 2003, I graduated with a B.A. in Design and Visualization with a 3.84 GPA.
14. My daughter, Julianna Grace, was born at the end of 2001. I came up with the name 3 years earlier when I was working at Berean Christian Bookstore in Fresno, CA. Sarah loved the name, so our conversation about what to name The Girl literally lasted all of about 2 minutes.
15. I’ve founded two open-source software projects: SimplePie has now had hundreds of thousands of downloads worldwide, and is considered one of the best pieces of software in its class. Tarzan reached a stable release in November 2008, and has already become a very popular piece of software for leveraging Amazon.com’s pay-as-you-go internet infrastructure services.
16. My son, Matthew Taylor, was born in 2005. His name consists of both my own middle name, and the middle name of Eric — one of my two best friends. We also kicked around Daniel (Jeff’s middle name), but preferred the sound of Matthew instead.
17. In 2006, I co-founded a company with the goal of solving the digital media problem. People were downloading music and movies for free on the internet, and the Media Industry was crying foul. Meanwhile the Media Industry was unsuccessfully trying to apply the old “Content is King” mentality to the internet, and were treating their customers like criminals. WarpShare was born out of our efforts, and will be launching in the next few months.
18. I have an INFJ personality type, which less than 1% of all people on Earth have. – http://bit.ly/SSeR & http://bit.ly/Rt5Y
19. I’ve moved roughly 25 times in my life. 19 of those times have been since Kindergarten. 9 have been since I graduated from High School.
20. I am a very pattern-driven person: I always keep a pen, chapstick, and my keys in one pocket, and my wallet in the other. I only take off my shoes in one of two or three places. I have a left-foot sock and a right-foot sock.
21. I hate wasting my life away. If I’m going to spend part of my life doing something, then I want it to be something I can be proud of. There only a few things I hate more than having to work on a project where I’m not able to make enough of a difference to be able to be proud of what I’ve worked on.
22. If relationships aren’t intense, they’re not worthwhile. Although I have friends, my closest friends are people that I’ve been able to be emotionally close to (as I’m sure is the same for everyone). If I can’t have that, then they’re just people who are in my orbit who I cross paths with from time to time. If you’re not in my daily orbit, call me, because I’ll only occasionally remember to call you.
23. Because I’m able to to do my hobby as a job (usually), I find that I struggle with workaholism. When I’m working on something interesting and my brain is firing on all cylinders, I can zone out for several hours at a time before realizing how much time has passed.
24. I Tivo every single episode of Scrubs that comes on throughout the course of the day, and on most nights I fall asleep watching it.
25. For about a year and a half (May 2007 – November 2008), I was the lead male vocalist for a band called “The 5-Afters.” Mary, Sandy and Ingrid were the lead female vocalists, Nick was our acoustic guitarist, Mike was our electric guitarist, Dave P. was our drummer, Tina was our percussionist, “Guitar David” was our bassist, and Dave K. was our sound guy. I had a lot of fun with those guys, and I’ve missed them terribly since I moved away this past fall.
26. (Bonus) I’ve suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder since I was 16. I’ve never taken any medication for it, but simply understanding *why* I get depressed in the winter (and, conversely, why I have so much energy in the summer) enables me to make adjustments in my life when I start feeling depressed or anxious for no good reason. A by-product of this is “reverse photosensitivity” in that I frequently have all of the lights on when I’m home, my home office desk is in front of a window, and I have a difficult time working in the current WarpShare office (which has no windows).

I already tagged several people on Facebook, so I’m only going to tag a few more here: Geoffrey Sneddon, Ryan McCue, Michael Shipley, Matt Clower, Vada Dean, Ron Bronson, and Christen Dybenko (whom I’ve not met in person, but should seeing as how we live relatively nearby each other).

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