GarrettBartley.com

I fell for it. I’m doing it, too. It sounds like fun, really. And why not?

For the FaceBook’ers:
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.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click post.)

Now, on with the show!

1. The only other city I could ever live (other than Chattanooga, TN) is Vancouver, BC Canada.
2. Aladdin is my favorite movie of all times. I know the entire soundtrack (the original, not the DVD re-release with the altered intro) and can even sing the Jasmine part in “Whole New World”.
3. I wanted to be a meteorologist when I was in 7th grade. I wanted to be a psychologist in 9th grade. I wanted to be a computer geek from 10th grade until recently. Now I want to be a physicist or environmental engineer.
4. I was attacked by a cocker spaniel when I was wee little (around 2, I think). It happened in the very backyard of the house I’m living in now (my grandfather’s). It took 35 stiches in my left cheek to patch it up. The scar is still there, but you can’t see it under the beard.
5. I love my MacBook Pro to death, but I still can’t get over the fact that I paid nearly $2,500 for what has amounted to a very, very nice web browser.
6. I am religiously conflicted. I was raised Baptist, but never cared much for organized religion. I’m atheist or agnostic–I can’t decide. But I hold many Christian morals. Sometimes I pray to God, but I don’t know what for. I think about the randomness and chaos that created this universe and the possibilities of many others and find a supreme being impossible. Then I think about life on Earth and that there is hope.
7. I have a scar on my left wrist. It looks like a suicide attempt, but it’s not. When my dad re-married and was moving to a new house, I was using a box cutter that wouldn’t cut hot butter. I jokingly moved it across my wrist. Sure enough, it could a few millimeters into the skin, but didn’t hit any veins (thank goodness!). Some paper towels and packing tape got that fixed up!
8. This is actually the list one I wrote (I did it in random order–but that’s not the point of this item). There are a lot of people I miss seeing and hanging out with. Sometimes the timing is never right, other times I can’t put aside my own selfishness to go out of my way. I think everyone is like that in one way or another, I just hate being one of those people.
9. I used to hate beer until recently. My coworkers got me to try it again, and I wiped the slate clean. I started out thinking about it by breaking down its constituent parts and searching for each flavor and what I could taste in the process. That opened a whole new world to explore. I still can’t get down much of the stronger stuff, but I’m actually enjoying it.
10. The best road trip I’ve ever been on was with George. We set off late one morning for New Jersey. What took us about 13 hours (with a stop in DC to have dinner with a friend) seemed to only take a couple of hours. We had a blast talking and singing along the entire way up. I’ve never had a car trip go that quick. And it was quick even coming home. Something about that little yellow Sentra was a time warp of fun. That, and we also visited the Quick Stop from Clerks, the Marina Diner from Chasing Amy, and downtown Red Bank (from other Kevin Smith flicks). And we visited Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash several times–and met Walt Flanagan!
11. I haven’t been to a single hockey game of the 2008-2009 season. I feel bad for not going to support my team (the Nashville Predators!), but I really don’t miss the long drive and getting home late.
12. The first computer I ever encountered was my aunt’s 286. I wasn’t allowed to play any games (she had Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune) until I learned Hello World in BASIC.
13. I have been quoted in the newspaper from Twitter.
14. Fall Creek Falls is my favorite place to go camping. Night hiking is the best! I nearly fell of a cliff at 3 AM one night. Justin and I also took a short weekend camping trip there before school one year and built a log cabin fire with the wood stacked up to 6 feet tall (no exaggeration). It was the greatest fire I have ever built. We worked ALL DAY that Saturday hauling wood in from all over the place to build it. That same trip, we had some of our food stolen by raccoons. Did you know that they are strong enough (and smart enough) to move a 24-pack of Mello Yellos on top of a cooler to open it up? Yeah, me neither. Crafty little boogers.
15. I used to hate my full name, William Garrett Bartley, until the 10th or 11th grade when my friend, Andy, started calling me “Sir William Garrett” or “Lord William Garrett”. It had that cool English nobility ring to it. I started to appreciate my name much more then. What is also cool is that the letter count is 7-7-7.
16. If you do a Google search for “Garrett Bartley”, you will come up with at least hundreds of hits for quotes sites. The quote is, “Never forget what you need to remember.” Yes, that is my quote. I came up with it in 6th grade while hanging out with my friend, Derek. His quote that he came up with was “I think I thought I started to think at least once today.”
17. I want to do something really and truly great. Ever since I was little, I felt that there was something inside of me that was a little spark waiting to ignite that was profound, life-changing, and world-changing. I’m still searching for that idea. Really, truly, movie-like destined for greatness.
18. I once dug a 6-foot deep by about 10-foot wide whole in the sand at Fort Walton beach with my new friend Adam. That night, we stayed up playing Twisted Metal on the PlayStation until we lost our voices. My cousin and brother got paid by a lifeguard to fill in the hole.
19. The most fun I have ever had was over the 2-day weekend of my wedding (Friday 6/13 – Sunday 6/15). Amy, Geni, Adam, and myself set off for Butterfly Hollow on Friday afternoon. We took a detour through Cookeville to visit and eat dinner with our friend Marc. From there, we headed west for Gordonsville, TN in the dark and sang the few lines that we knew to “You Are My Sunshine” over and over again. The rest of the weekend before the wedding, we sat around and played the Catan card game. It’s kind of fun to play a 2-player card game with 4 people (2 teams of 2).
20. The reason I moved out was because my mom found 4 stray puppies at the St. Nicholas School (off of Standifer Gap and Gunbarrel). I had been living with my dad, dog-less, for 3-4 years. I have always wanted to always have a dog in my life. So, 8 years ago, on the night of my birthday (January 17), I left my birthday party at Sparky’s house with a few friends, and we set out to catch the pups. It took 2 hours with my arms under a shed in the sleet to get the dogs out. We rescued 3 and never saw the 4th again. I still think about what could happened to the 4th and what life would be like now if the 4th lived with its other siblings.
21. I married my 3rd girlfriend.
22. I’m a little obsessive-compulsive when it comes to cleaning things and trying to optimize things or do something efficiently. My wife and coworkers can testify to that on a daily basis. When someone loads the dishwasher at home or at work, I typically re-load it the way I like. Everything has a nice order to it, everything gets clean, and never does a glass wind up on the bottom rack and break.
23. I love science. Physics and the cosmos and the theory of everything. One of my goals in life is to be able to finally grasp the concept of the 11 dimensions and be able to “visualize” them in my head. It’s said to be beyond human grasp to do so. I just don’t think anyone has tried the right method.
24. Even though my deep passion for video games has subsided, I have accumulated all 3 of the current major console systems. The Wii for its uniqueness (and promise that it hasn’t delivered for me). The Xbox 360 for the game selection and its excellent media center abilities (when paired with a file server running TVersity), and the PlayStation 3 because it’s a Blu-ray player that also plays video games.
25. My favorite book is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I read the entire series while on a 5-day vacation to Key West with Amy. And I really can’t stand sci-fi.