8 Random Things About Me
Aug 5 2007

A blogger I admire a whole bunch, Connie Reece of Every Dot Connects, tagged me for the 8 Random Things About Me game (meme?).  I’m not sure what a meme is but it seems like a ‘tag your it’ kind of game and then you have to spend a bunch of time crafting a respectable blog response. 🙂

She helped me get up and going with my first blog and has given me advice and suggested connections that I should make in the blogosphere.  All out of the kindness of her heart.  What a big heart!  I still have no idea what her “I’m my own first cousin” statement means.  I made the mistake of commenting on her post as follows:

Me: What an interesting post! I don’t even know if I could come up with 8 random things about me because none would be as interesting as yours.

Connie: Oh, Aruni, of course you could come up with 8 random things about you that would be interesting! Consider yourself tagged. Write that post, link back here, and tag 8 others — some of your fellow mom- or dad-preneurs or other Austin Business Bloggers. I bet that if you  get started on it, you’ll have fun.

Me: Yikes! You’ll see from reading my blog that I’m up to my ears in software testing, but I will certainly give it a go later this week. I think some of the people I have met in the blogosphere have already been tagged in this game.

So here it goes:

1. I was born in Sri Lanka.

2.  I used to ride on the University of Texas at Austin Equestrian team (which apparently does not have a working website) in undergrad.  I always seemed to pick the craziest horses during competitions!

3.  I used to work at Mr. Gatti’s Pizza my junior/senior years in high school and the summer after my freshman year in college.  I love their parmeson mix.  My co-workers had a nickname for me: Pep-Aruni.  Get it?

4.  I have lived in Sri Lanka, England, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Texas.  I have traveled to many more places than that.

5.  I have lived in Texas now for 27 years.  8 years in Lubbock (Happiness is Lubbock, Texas in my Rearview Mirror was my favorite Mac Davis song), 4 years in Austin, 4 years in Dallas, and now 11 years back in Austin.

6.  My first paying job was a paper route in Lubbock when I was 13 years old.  I remember the cold, icy mornings delivering the Saturday and Sunday papers and the sometimes hot, dusty afternoons delivering the evening paper.  I did this all on my 10 speed bike with one of those shoulder bags with pouches in back and front to hold the papers while I pedaled.  I threw the paper with one hand and tried to avoid crashing with my other.  Ah, those were the days…

7.  I like to sing but right now I usually only sing in the car to the Top 40 tunes.  After Babble Soft makes it (crossing my fingers), the next thing I will pursue is a singing career…probably won’t get too far since I’ll be in my 40s (or maybe 50s) by then. 🙄

8.  I’m married to a White guy named Erin who grew up in Mexico City and who you would never know is 100% fluent in Spanish.  He was born in the US and then moved to Mexico City with his parents because his grandmother (who is 86 years old) runs a restaurant there.  He’s sometimes smarter than me and that’s why I married him. 🙂

Now I am not sure if I know 8 bloggers to tag since I’m still a new blogger (4 months and counting) and I’m not Marc Andreessen, but here we go (in no particular order).  I’ve included links to the posts of those people who have already been tagged:

1.  Carole Hayes – Alias Tex: Telling thier story to every stranger that arrives.  Carole happend upon our company site by seeing a blog post at The Lactivist.  Carole is one of our biggest fans and she is awesome!  A news station in Dallas, WFAA, ran a story on Babble Soft on August 2, 2007 and she was the subject of the story.  Interestingly, one of my friends in Dallas saw the piece and called me to tell me that she and Carole where in the same Mom’s group when her eldest daughter was born almost 7 years ago!  Small, small world…

2.  Clay Nichols – Daddy Clay’s Blog: it’s only pee – A fellow Austin, Texas entrepreneur demonstrating that it’s OK to be a great dad!  He is co-founder of dadlabs.

3.  Maryam Scoble – Maryamie: Maryam Ghaemmaghami Scoble’s musings about Life, Love and Everything Else… I heard about Maryam from none other than Connie Reece.  She met Maryam’s husband, Robert Scoble, during SXSW, a music and film festival to end all festivals, held in Austin every year.  Connie actually gave him a 6 month gift subscription to Baby Manager because apparently Robert and Maryam announced their pregnancy on twitter (still haven’t figured out what twitter is yet) but as of today we don’t know if Robert lost it or left it somewhere or even remembers meeting Connie.  Maryam is so nice and responds to my comments on her blog.  I’ve commented a few times on Robert’s blog but he seems to think I’m not worth acknowledging….probably because I’m not Marc Andreesseen.  I just saw that he got Faceslammed by Bill Gates which makes sense if you think about it.

4.  Thom Singer – Some Assembly Required  – Thom is a fellow Austin blogger who I’ve known for years.  He writes books on networking and how to be the best networker around!  He recently got back from a trip to Ireland and said he kissed the blarney stone.  My challenge to him is that the next time I see him, he has to demonstrate his newfound ability to persuade people to do things he wants them to do.

5.  Mack Collier – The Viral Garden: blurring the line between company and customer.  Mack has given me some links to some informative articles about business blogging and much needed words of encouragement!

6.  Randa Clay – Randa Clay Design (already tagged) – I love her current ‘juicy’ lime graphic on her blog!  I know I need to change my blog header but I haven’t had time to figure out how to modify the css file.  I would love to have one as vibrant as hers someday.  Her lime graphic makes me wish I was on a beach sipping margaritas. 🙂

7.  Jennifer Laycock –  The Lactivist: nursing out loud! (already tagged) – I admire her ability to get the word out about breastfeeding and offer her support and insight to so many of us who need it.  I like the fact that she’s not preachy and aims to highlight the facts and the laws surrounding breastfeeding.  She acknowledges that breastfeeding doesn’t work for everyone and we should not look down on women/families who choose to bottle/formula feed.  I totally agree!  I found her site, while doing follow up research on our launch press release and she posted a “not so flattering” post about Baby Manager.  I think I have since recovered…barely…  😯

The following are ‘long shot tags.’  They are people who I know are extremely busy at the moment but would I’m sure have great responses if they have the time to respond.  However, if one of them does answer (or points me to the post where they have already put down their answers to this game), then I would have met my requirement of 8!

8.  Wendy Piersall – eMomsatHome: starting, running + succeeding in home business and blogging.  I have learned SOOO much from her blog about ‘how to blog.’  She’s amazing.  I will be doing a guest post for her in the near future.   I heard about Wendy from again, none other than Connie.  Connie met her at a conference and told her about me and later told me about her.  Thank goodness because I wouldn’t have made as much progress on this blog without Wendy’s tips!

9.  Marc Andreessen – Blog.Pmarca.Com: Often Wrong. Never in Doubt.  I am fascinated by his writing on high-tech business start-ups especially since I’m on my second high-tech startup.  When he was accepting comments, he actually replied quite often to my comments which was like ‘wow, Marc Andreessen responded to me on his blog.  Totally cool.  I matter in the universe now!’  He recently wrote a post called Why a startups initial business plan doesn’t matter that much.  I totally agree.  Now I can just mention Thomas Edison when someone asks me for a business plan.  I emailed him to see if he would mind me tagging him, but haven’t heard back.  I so enjoy his thoughts on startups that I’m hoping he will have the time to tell us 8 Random Things about himself.  I even created a category just for him. 

I think the protocol is that you link back to this post when you make your post.  It has taken me days to construct this post from contacting people to see if they would mind being tagged, to determine if they had already been tagged, to adding links, etc.  I’m cross-eyed now.  I’m not sure I can handle another tag but I hope it’s clear why I could not leave Connie’s tag unanswered!

Author: Aruni | Filed under: blogging, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, Just For Fun, marc andreessen | 7 Comments »

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