A friend of mine and local SEO guru, Chuck Reynolds, recently passed the torch on to me to describe seven things that people might not otherwise know about me through random conversation or otherwise. I like to think of myself as open and willing to share things about me and my past. I though that this would be a great opportunity to give people a little more insight into who I am than that of a mini bio.

Played Horse with Byron Scott – Current coach of the New Orleans Hornets and former Los Angeles Laker, was close friends with my first High School Principal. Before moving to Arizona, I attended Santa Margarita High School in Southern California. Since I just wanted to play in the gym, some of my “dunk ball” buddies would scrimmage against the Freshman A team. Having performed well, I made the Freshman B team and ended up winning Most Improved Player recognition after not even being on the team for the team photo. I also earned the opportunity to start at our championship game at the Bren Events Center at the University of California, Irvine. Anyhow, we were practicing one night and Byron Scott showed up with the principal. I was there, as were two of my other buddies. We locked the gym and played Horse. I didn’t last very long but, the final two were Byron and the principal. Byron Scott won with a dunk.

High School Drop Out – Kind of… Born and raised in Southern California, I spent my Freshman year with some familiar faces at Santa Margarita High School before my Father transferred to Phoenix. In 1993, I attended Brophy College Preparatory in Central Phoenix and was on the yearbook staff before transferring again to Scottsdale Saguaro. While at Saguaro, I worked three jobs and had my own apartment at the age of 17. I left my Senior year to work full-time before joining the Marines. Since a high school degree was a requirement, I returned in the winter of 1995 to complete my degree and my remaining semester. I received my degree by mail while in Marine Combat Training at Camp Pendleton, California.

Nominated for U.S. Embassy Duty – Some of you may or may not know that I served in the United States Marine Corps. While in the Marines, I was meritoriously promoted to Lance Corporal and ended my enlistment at the rank of Corporal. Having an exemplary record of appearance, military knowledge, leadership training and combat training, I was nominated to guard U.S. Embassies overseas. Guarding a U.S. Embassy requires nomination from two senior officers, peak physical condition, no visible tattoos, excellent marksmanship, a psychiatric evaluation and a top-secret security clearance. Once all of the requirements had been met, I received orders for training at the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia. The orders included a 6-year extension which made me think twice about my decision. As it turns out, the training is a lot like the show “Survivor” where you can get voted out by your colleagues only to be stuck with the 6-year extension.

Spent 1999 in Japan – After denying the orders to Embassy duty, I received orders to Mainland Japan where I served in a support detachment at the Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni, Japan. While there I was placed in a unique position that the organization called an X-Man. I was not a comic book hero but a mission critical parts expeditor for the unit in Japan. Basically, I worked stateside hours and would show up to the office from time to time for reporting on procurement progress. The general practice was to find unique ways of saving money and expediting high-priority parts for the unit. As a result of success, the unit experienced a 100% mission readiness rating for two months. Might not sound like a big deal but with thousands of pieces of equipment either in maintenance with all of their parts or deployed in “Theater”, it was a big deal. I was then asked to train neighboring units on my research techniques that involved scouring the World Wide Web.

Have Prosthetic Porcelain Teeth – Seriously… I do. In a basketball accident in 1997, I lost four of my front teeth as a result of the most painful meeting with the basketball hoop’s pole. In a temporary reconstruction effort, my teeth were reconstructed temporarily before arriving in Japan. Japan just happens to be well-know for their military dentistry, second only to San Diego. They were knocked out again with the butt stock of a rifle in 1999, during a training exercise, before finally receiving the full surgery that year. The Navy dentists did a wonderful job.

Part of the Collapsed Arthur Andersen – My first job in the workforce was as a data entry guy. Arthur Andersen had entered the Outsourcing market in 2000 when they began hiring for a service center in Tempe. I saw the position and applied. At the time, I thought that I wanted to remain in Finance and Accounting and that would be an excellent name to have on the resume. I quickly moved from entering banking information to Accounting Analyst, becoming the first Analyst without a degree which caused quite a stir. While there, I designed an online application that would reconcile data transmission detail between General Motor’s vehicle plants and the GM Accounting Information System. The Andersen operation was purchased by Affiliated Computer Services right before I earned my degree in accounting and leaving the organization to be a software project manager for a local eLearning company.

I Have a Huge Family – I have six brothers and sisters and ten nieces and nephews as of this post. There are four sisters, three of which are older and two brothers, one older and one younger. My brothers and sisters are spread between Arizona and California but are a tight-knit group. My parents have been married for over 40 years, put up with some amazing changes in the family throughout the years and live in Scottsdale, Arizona. I love them all and I am blessed to have such an awesome family.

I am also blessed to have such great friends. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I would be interested to learn what surprised you the most. A special thanks to Chuck Reynolds for making me do a little reflection for this post and thank you to all who have supported me and my ventures throughout the years.

Matt Clower (@clowerpower) http://www.clowerpower.com

Xavier De Castillo (@Xavierism) http://xavierism.typepad.com

Tyler Hurst (@tdhurst) http://www.tylerhurst.com

Chris Altman (@ChrisAltman) http://www.chrismadethis.com

Chad Swaney (@chadarizona) http://chadswaney.com

Dean Ouellette (@deanouellette) http://deansellsaz.com

I’ll add the last one later.
These are the rules to play the game:
1.    Link your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2.    Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3.    Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4.    Let them know they’ve been tagged.