TheGeoffRe(y)port

Christina tagged me for a meme, which for non-geek readers means that I’m going to disregard my normal penchant for seeking original inspiration for blog posts and I’m instead outsourcing mine to some unknown originator. This particular meme centres around obsessions, specifically listing (and briefly explaining) 5 of them.  So here it is - five of Geoff’s obsessions.

1. Statistics. It’s a running joke in the office that my favourite part of any workday is when I get asked a specific query about the number users signing into the web application that I help to manage. And I’ve signed up for way too many statistic services (recently even a “pay for” one) so that I can spend hours poring over the details of the 20 or so people that visit this site. I’m sure it’s  bi-product of having two maths teachers (albeit one a former maths teacher nowadays) as parents, but give me some numbers to analyze and I’m a happy little chappy.

2. Sport. This one became fairly obvious last night as I was walking along the road and managed to catch a TV on in the bar we were walking past, and saw that it was a footy game from what must have been the early nineties. Sadly, I still tried to catch what the score was. There are a few things like that which have been racking up for a while now. Every year I’ll get up at 2pm to watch the FA Cup final, despite rarely even really wanting either of the two teams to win and the almost inevitable truth that the FA Cup final will be a boring match (although Stephen Gerrard and Liverpool’s win last year certainly changed that). Like so many other Australian males, I’m a sport fanatic

3. Patterns. This is one that I keep a little bit quieter on because it becomes one of those things which gets you funny sideways glances when you do it. If something is layed out, I like it to make a pattern.  I don’t do it as much now but when I’m walking on tiles I’ll often walk as if there’s a chess-board and I’m only allowed to walk on the black squares. There’s just something inherently nice about having things work in a pattern. It’s not something I’ll get aggressive about, it’s usually only sub-conscious. So there you go - I’m a freak.

4. Stacking. It’s to Rebecca’s dismay and embarrassment, if given too much spare time on a dinner table, or even in a restaurant, it’s my natural instinct to start seeing if I can balance one thing on top of another. And after the first, it’s always worth trying another. I’ve had serviettes holding in toothpicks holding up  bottles that are balancing plates which have forks holding…. well, you get the idea.

5. Foreign accents. This has become much more of a thing recently - but I’ve got a thing for foreign accents, specifically trying to use them. French in particular, but I’ve almost got a decent Russian accent (my Russian “hello” sounds like Mikhail Gorbachev himself), my German is still there from learning German, and I’ve been putting in some work into my Spanish. Doesn’t make any sense, but it sure is fun.

So there you are. In maintaining my policy of encouraging original thought in the blogosphere, I’m not going to tag anyone, so I’m finished. Hope you enjoyed that one.