An Assignment

I got tagged by Najma, a very good friend of mine. Najma is the one who really inspired me to start this blog, and even a year ago when I'd be lucky to get 3 or 4 visitors in a day (and she was getting hundreds), Najma was a regular visitor here.

I don't usually answer chain letters, but this one is rather cute and comes from a friend of mine, so why not? This chain letter has a bit of an interesting history - it looks like it started in English, got translated into Arabic, then got translated back into English.

Anyway, here goes... :)

Seven things I plan to do:
1. Start my own company and earn a billion dollars.
2. Use some of that billion dollars to fund education in developing countries.
3. Meet in person as many of the friends I have met through blogging as possible.
4. Learn to fly an airplane.
5. Learn to play the piano.
6. Join a jazz band.
7. Visit every continent in the world.

Seven things I can do:
1. Give a speech in front of a large crowd - the bigger the crowd, the better my speech gets.
2. Break into a computer system.
3. Prevent some other schmuck from breaking into my computer system.
4. Design a computer network.
5. Fix almost any broken household appliance.
6. Speak French.
7. Cook a gourmet dinner.

Seven things I can't do:
1. Read Arabic (Arabic writing still looks like a big scribble to me).
2. Fly an airplane (yet).
3. Play the piano (yet).
4. Sit still for longer than a minute or two.
5. Get to work on time - I am usually at least 30 minutes late getting to work in the morning.
6. Leave work on time - I am usually at least two hours late in leaving work (which is why I can get away with #5).
7. Buy decent clothes - if it wasn't for my wife, I would go around looking like a real nerd.

Seven things I say most often:
1. "I love you." (to my wife and kids). I never let a day go by without saying this at least once to each of them.
2. "Excellent." (when I'm happy with the answer I get to a question I ask)
3. "Not particularly." (as in, "are you concerned about such-and-such")
4. "Hey!"
5. "Extremely busy... is this a sales call?" (When you spend a lot of money as part of your job, you get a lot of sales guys calling you. This is my typical answer when some sales guy I don't know calls me at work and says, "Hi, how are you?")
6. "I'd love to know what those engineers were smoking when they designed that bloody mess!"
7. "If all this computer stuff did everything the manufacturers said it does and worked exactly the way the manufacturers said it's supposed to, me and all the people working for me would be out of a job." (a little IT humility lesson I teach my staff sometimes)

Seven people I want to pass this tag to:
Najma tagged a few of the bloggers I would have tagged, so let me start with a few people who sometimes comment here but don't have blogs:
1. Strykerdad (I know you don't have a blog, but you sometimes read this one, so perhaps you'll see this. Strykerdad, you can leave your reply in my comments section if you like).
2. Programmer Craig (I don't think you have a blog... please correct me if I'm wrong)
3. Melantrys
4. Laila el-Haddad
5. Riverbend
6. Khalid Jarrar
7. Lynnette in Minnesota (I don't think you have a blog either... please correct me if I'm wrong)