# Seven Things


By Ben Ramsey

Published on January 3, 2009


Started by [Tony Bibbs](http://www.tonybibbs.com/2008/12/Tagged-By-Nobody/) (or maybe [Marcus Whitney](http://web.archive.org/web/20090207131307/http://www.marcuswhitney.com/tag-from-groovysoup) before him) and tagged by [Elizabeth Naramore](http://naramore.net/blog/seven-things) and [Jon Whitcraft](http://archive.h2ik.co/2009/01/seven-things-tagged-by-rob-allen/), I have succumbed to the 2009 blogging phenomenon known as "tagging." Initially, I was going to ignore the tag, but when Elizabeth tagged me "just because," I knew it was on.

So, here I am, writing the seven facts about myself. Happy, [Elizabeth](http://naramore.net/blog/)?

1. I was a youth minister for just over 4 years; I quit because I was burned out and tired of parents telling me what to teach their children; I have now become jaded and cynical of organized religion…maybe I'll get better some day.
2. I didn't drink any alcohol until I was 21 (honest).
3. I was in a short-lived, lounge-rock band in college called Not Quite Seven; we played mostly at Uncle Calvin's in Carrollton, GA; our last show was at GA Tech in 2000--I played bass and sucked.
4. My degree is in English Literature, not Computer Science.
5. I go by my middle name, so consider "Ben Ramsey" a pseudonym of sorts and not my legal name.
6. I taught myself to play guitar and hammered dulcimer, though I am long out of practice for both.
7. My first program was written in BASIC on an Atari 400, and it was a Mad Lib generator that prompted the user for input (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc.) and plugged these variables into a story it printed out; I was 8 or 9 years old.

And now I get to tag people! Yay! Here are my tagees:

* [Brian DeShong](http://www.deshong.net/) because he's my boss and keeps telling me to stop saying that
* [Aaron Wormus](http://www.wormus.com/aaron/) for being a good friend since the early days of #phpc
* [Eli White](http://eliw.com/), practitioner of anachronism and fellow lover of good beer
* [Michael Kimsal](http://michaelkimsal.com/blog/) who has PHPGUY on his car tag
* [Greg Stein](http://prng.blogspot.com/) for always knowing the best places for drinks at OSCON
* [Laura Thomson](http://www.laurathomson.com/) for despising all frameworks
* [Rafael Dohms](http://doh.ms/) who is Mr. PHP Brazil

And here are the rules:

* Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post--some random, some weird.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.