Five Not So Well Known Items about Scott Cate
I've had the pleasure of being tagged twice today, by James Shaw, and Evan Hoff. Thanks guys, now my "I wanna be a cool kid" ego is in check. :)
Here you go.
- I grew up Roller Skating. Looking back, it was the cheapest baby sitter my mom could find. I loved hanging out with friends, and it usually gave my mom 5-6 hours of time for around $3.50. Like ScottW I also played roller hockey, but not enough to win a gold metal. "Skate World" was a place that I spent 5-7 days (yes days, not hours) a week growing up. Where most people gain life-long friends from their education facility, mine came from Skate World.
- My first company (if you can call it that) was a window cleaning company. I was working for Alphagraphics (ya, the retail print shop) around 15 years old. An guy came by, washed the windows of our shop, and in 10 minutes we paid him $13.00 for inside and out. With that as motivation, I left Alphagraphics, spent around $40 on a bucket, a really nice squeegee, and some gloves. Then I headed out to start washing windows. After a while I had a few strip malls that I'd wash every other week, and one corporate (single story) building that I'd wash once a month. In a few months, I'd get a job at a software company, sell the windows cleaning business (for 3 months revenue), which I used to buy my first car; a White Honda Civic EX.
- I love to travel. In my first real job, I moved from Tech Support (ya, answering phones) into Training, and then to the Training Manager. My official job was to travel around the country, on the corporate credit card, stay in nice hotels, and teach physicians and their staff, how to use Medisoft. I traveled to one, two, or three U.S. cities a week teaching Medisoft and loved every minute of it. Because of all this domestic travel, I was able to use my mileage awards on Delta, to do a lot of European travel. After all my years of flying around the US and Europe, my highest achievement in the airline awards status is with Delta Airlines, where I'm a life long "Million Miler". This is the club that you're enrolled in, after you fly over a million AIS miles. AIS in the airline industry is "Ass In Seat" which basically means actual land miles flown, not counting bonus miles, and hotel, car rental points, in your frequent flyer account. This training job is what built my public speaking skills (that most people like :) and has helped tremendously with all the public speaking events that I've done with .NET over the years.
- I don't read enough. I like to read, but just don't allocate enough time to do it. Shame on me for not reading more, and blogging more. Ironically; for not being an avid reader, I've written a fiction novel called Surveillance. I had this crazy idea, and then a friend of mine (to become one of my best friends) and I got together to put pen to pulp and bring it to life. Thanks Marco. Marco is now a move star.
- Scuba Diving is a pleasure of mine. Another thing I don't get to do enough of. Lucky for me I have a public speaking gig in Hawaii lined up in March. You can't go to Hawaii without scuba diving can you?
And now I get the pleasure of tagging others. I know it's more than five people, but these are guys I work with a lot, and would be good (OK fun..) to know more about.