Pascal, watch yourself, revenge is soon to come Seriously, I was hoping hard that I wouldn’t get caught in this f#$€£&@ game. I’ve been watching this “5 things you don’t know about me” buzz going on in the blogosphere for weeks, and had a feeling it was getting tired until you eventually sent me this e-mail. Aaaarrgh!

Well, since this blog’s entitled “Tech IT Easy”, I’ve tried to remain in the information technology waters – although, as you’ll see immediatly, it gets a bit personal in the end:

1. I discovered software programming when I was very, very young. For some reason, there was an Apple IIc standing in my room when I was a kid (I was maybe 8 or 10, I can’t remember). I remember having a really excellent lemonade bar management game, a game with the word Potatoe in it, hall-of-fame Arkanoïd, and a 5′ 1/4″ disk with a handwriting saying Learn Basic. So I learnt Basic, and had even started to write a chess game software. Unfortunately, I became lazy and got tired of it when my parents bought me an 8-bits Nintendo (256 colors vs. 2 colors for the Apple IIc, black & green – it was bound to lose), and even more unfortunately is the fact that my programming skills have remained the same since then…)))
2. I built my own PC (AMD 133Mhz powered; 3,8Ghz E-IDE hard drive; etc. I remember all the specs and still have it in my room at my parents) back in 1996 – 1997 alongside with my friends Antoine & Pierre when I was 13 / 14. We were, to say the least, not gifted for building PCs, since it took us 6 months to buy all the pieces and a burnt Asustek T2-P4C motherboard that now serves as a teaching tool in my former high school. However, I don’t know how and why some people came to me asking for help. So I had started a mini hardware consulting practice: I was giving advice on which pieces to buy (at that time, I knew all products and prices by heart) and went to these people’s homes to help them put all pieces together. The pocket money wasn’t bad. Later on, instead of studying hard towards my A levels, I started an underground Geek Squad named OrdiService: I put leaflets on cars in my neighbourhood and got calls at home from computer dummies (accounting practices, doctors, housewives and lawyers mainly) asking for help with installing printer drivers and downloading Netscape 3.1 after plugging in their US Robotics 28.8Kbits/s. modem and all (we derived most of our profits from the Millenium bug craze though, recommending Win95 people to evolve to Win98, and Win98 people to watch carefully for the Millenium release). Good fun and again, excellent pocket money for the age of 16 / 17 – I had over 20 other students working for me back then (paying no tax: I wasn’t 18 so as I couldn’t incorporate a company and didn’t want my parents to learn about the existence of the whole mess, we had all clients pay in cash – & they were happy to do so!) . I lost a good half of it gambling on the stockmarket (Valtech & FI System, remember…) during the new economy hype. It could’ve been worse.
3. I run the “Tech IT Easy” blog, right, but I actually used to take technology very easily. As a matter of fact, I’m a very late adopter of mobile phones: I got my first cellphone in 2003. But don’t worry, I’ve managed to catch up several decades of telephone bills since then.
4. When I’ll sign my first full-time employment contract (& it for sure will happen in 2007), I’ll become the very first member of my nuclear family (my sisters & I, my parents & grandparents, etc.) to be on an actual payroll. All are self-employed or entrepreneurs. I come from a family of immigrants from Poland & Russia (father’s side) and Morocco (mother), and nobody in my closest family has never ever, anywhere, worked for someone else than her/himself before I will – hope my DNA won’t make me crash and reboot. I did some tests taking internships and haven’t went through any fatal error so far. Good for me.
5. Although I’m yet to turn 24, I’ve been involved in a love relationship with Deborah for 6.5 years – with almost no interruption. When people ask me the usual, everything-but-original “how long” question, they usually have me repeating 2 or 3 times before they believe it. Funny thing, Deborah and I have hardly lived in the same city at the same time (maybe 2 years overall – she now lives and works in Leeds, UK, while I’m finishing my studies in Paris), and we shared the same flat for only 10 months overall (6 months in New York, 4 on campus at HEC).

Now is the time to torment 5 other bloggers. And the winners (they’re going to hate me) are: Michel, Olivier, Julien, and Kari & Alexandre who contribute on this very blog. I’d be surprised if prominent bloggers Michel, Olivier & Julien didn’t get an invite to play the “5 things you don’t know about me” game before.