Another *%$@#! survey

Here's another one of those survey things.* This one is courtesy of Anne.

Four Jobs I've Had
This is more interesting if I group together jobs by employment location or period.
1. Stock boy at Jean Nicole at the Wyoming Valley Mall. So there I was, a seventeen-year-old kid trying to earn some walking-around money for college, and I managed to get a job running a vacuum, dusting display racks, and maintaining stock at a womens' clothing store. I was the only guy working with a bunch of older (twentysomething) women. It only lasted a few weeks in the summer of 1985, and was less fun than it sounds.
2. Final Selecting/Forming Selecting at Owens-Illinois. Three summers in college - 1986, 1987, and 1988 - spent working rotating shifts at a glass factory that made TV faceplates. Owens-Illinois became OI-NEG after they "partnered" with Nippon Electric Glass; a few years later they dropped the American-owned pretense and became TechNEGlas. Now they're gone, but my tinnitus and carpal tunnel syndrome remain.
3. Solar Cell Manufacturing, Astropower, Newark, Delaware. This was a pick-up job after I dropped out of the Physics grad program at the University of Delaware. I wasn't prepared to run home with my tail between my legs right away, so a few friends and professors steered me in the direction of this place. We made solar cells out of scrap silicon wafers that had been rejected by the semiconductor industry. It was pretty cool. I worked there from March of 1990 to August of 1991, during which time we occupied three separate locations. They moved and expanded several times since I left, but seem to have fallen on hard times in recent years.
4. CD Plater/CD Preproduction SPC Coordinator/"PSG: Statistics"/DVD Asset Manager. When I finally got back from Delaware in late August 1991 I spent a few months taking care of my grandmother, who was flat on her back due to sciatica. I kicked around for a while, looking at various employers, not sure of what I wanted to do. Some friends steered me to a local CD replicator who had done some work with the University of Scranton (my alma mater) in the past. I put in an application in January 1992 and waited patiently. When I was just about ready to give up, I got called in for an interview in May of 1992. I would start on the night shift in a relatively lowly position that would be basic production gruntwork (not that basic, really, and not that grunty), but word was that the company was hiring people with college degrees in the intent of grooming them for something else. It turned out to be true, and I quickly took on a new position of CD Preproduction SPC Coordinator. This job mutated through the years and the ensuing management changes into something else. In 1998 I decided it was time for a change and began the prep work to throw in my lot with the newly-formed DVD department. I began working for them in February of 1999, and am still doing much the same job (in a far more polished and streamlined way) seven years later.

Four Movies I Could Watch Over And Over
1. Monty Python's Life of Brian. I have watched this, beginning to end, and rewound the video tape and started over. I don't think I have it on DVD yet.
2. Trainspotting. Start to finish it's an amazing movie. After seeing this I decided to start going out to clubs, looking for Kelly Macdonaldish girls. Hey, Diane the character was underage, but Kelly Macdonald was wonderfully legal at the time of filming.
3. Toy Story 2. Way better than it could have been. I did once spend the better part of a Sunday watching this movie over and over and over again, beginning to end, at the request of a four-year-old girl. It never got boring.
4. O Brother, Where Art Thou? I love this one for the music as much as anything else. If any movie demands a special edition DVD, full of commentaries and making-of documentaries, it's this one. You'll end it singing "Angel Band" ("...o carr' me away on your sno-ow white wings, to my e-ter-nal home") and start over again with "Po' Lazarus" and "The Big Rock Candy Mountain."

Four Places I've Lived
1. Nanticoke, PA. It's where I started out, and it's where I am now.
2. Pittsburgh, PA. Five weeks in Hamerschlag House at Carnegie-Mellon University in July and August of 1984 for Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Sciences. Technically, I was also living in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, since Fred Rogers lived in a neighboring maximum-security apartment building. I saw him once while I was there.
3. Scranton, PA. September 1985 - May 1989. If there's ever a choice between living on-campus and commuting to college, choose the on-campus option. It's worth it.
4. Newark, DE. August 1989 - August 1991. First for grad school, then to prove a point.

Four TV Shows I Love
1. Star Trek (the original series). It was way ahead of its time, and a product of its times. It was social commentary sold as science-fiction, presented on simple sets with spare, underwrought writing and special effects. A good, fun show with lots of classic characters that have touched and inspired millions.
2. Monty Python's Flying Circus. Laugh-your-ass-off wet-your-pants stuff.
3. South Park. Social commentary presented as a cartoon.
4. MTV's 120 Minutes. It doesn't exist anymore, but in the late 1980's and early 1990's this was the best place to see and hear the newest and greatest new music every Sunday night. While I'm here I may as well add in Daria, the Beavis and Butthead spin-off, just because I'm in love with Jane Lane - and they had great music.

Four Places I've Vacationed
1. Ireland. Going there again in a few weeks.
2. Cocoa Beach, Florida.
3. Disneyworld.
4. The New Jersey Shore - mostly Stone Harbor and Avalon.

My Four Favorite Dishes
1. Fried Fish. (Cod or Haddock, dusted with flour, salt, and pepper, dipped in egg, coated with flour/cracker crumbs, fried in oil.)
2. Apple Fritters.
3. Linguine and shrimp. (Boil linguine. Fry shimp in olive oil. Add garlic, onion, salt, pepper, red pepper, herbs, and white wine or lemon juice. Drain linguine thoroughly and add to frying pan. Toss over high heat until linguine just begins to to show some signs of browning.)
4. Broiled salmon. Microwaved salmon is pretty good, too.

Four Websites I Visit Daily
I visit a lot of websites daily. I mostly visit blogs. Many of these I have set up on RSS feeds as "Live Bookmarks" in Firefox so I can see when anybody's posted something new. New postings almost always earn a visit from me.
1, 2. Sammie's sdfsdf.wox.org and Camilla Henrikke's wallflower.nu aren't set up with RSS feeds so I have to check them manually - and I do, every day.
3. Adam Felber's Fanatical Apathy is on an RSS feed, but more than half of the attraction of his site is the comments - in a sense, Adam and the regular and irregular commentors constitute almost a "group blog" - and I have to check the site to see the comments.
4. Oh, hell. May as well admit it. I check my Sitemeter every day. Actually, I have Sitemeter set up so it's the first page that opens up when I open Firefox.

Four Places I'd Rather Be
1. In bed. With several beautiful and insatiable women.
2. Swimming in Uncle Scrooge's Money Bin. Also with several beautiful and insatiable women.
3. In a place where there is no dying, with every person and animal I've ever loved. I guess that's where the idea for Heaven came from, huh?
4. Right here. With several beautiful and insatiable women.

Four People I'm Tagging
I don't tag. If you're reading this, consider yourself tagged. If you're a beautiful and insatiable woman, consider yourself tagged and contact me directly and I'll go over these questions in depth with you. If you're a woman who has a thing for bloggers and is good at giving backrubs, feel free to contact me, too.

*I won't call it a "meme". A meme is something else completely different from these surveys, and calling the surveys "memes" just makes it less likely that people will understand the real idea of the meme as a self-replicating unit of information, which is very unfortunate. You could just as accurately call these things "cucumbers" or "defenestrations."