Blog-Tag

I've been blog tagged by Loek Bakker. The idea, which started here, is to write 5 little known things about yourself and tag 5 other people. I won't go through the whole grumpiness of "usually I don't do this kind of thing, but I'll make an exception this time..." So here goes with five things you probably don't know about me.

1. At age 15 I started my first company. I translated Dungeons & Dragons to Hebrew (yes, I'm a total nerd) and received the rights from the American publisher, TSR at the time, to be the exclusive distributor and publisher of D&D in Israel. I did that with my brother, Guy, for several years. Later we also received the rights to Magic: The Gathering and other popular nerd products. The  most memorable time I had was spending time in the home of Gary Gygax, the "father" of D&D, in his castle in Lake Geneva, WI.
2. During the first Gulf War I served in the Israeli Navy. I happened to stand on the deck of my ship when the first Scud attack hit Haifa. The ships were out at sea anticipating the attack. We did not, however, anticipate that the Iraqis would miss Haifa by that much and a Scud landed 200 meters from my ship. My face got splashed by sea water blown by a Scud.
3. My best career decision ever was to join GigaSpaces - 3 years ago. It was post-bubble times and I had just come out of a very bad business experience. I was tempted to join a big company. I have the top-10 b-school, Ivy League MBA so I had options, but I decided on the following criteria: a) early stage, b) the technology has the potential to be HUGE, c) the product works!, d) no assholes.
4. My current residence in Tiburon, CA is the one my wife and I have lived in for the longest time since we got together. Prior to this we moved 10 times in 12 years: Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem (2 places), Ramat Gan, New Jersey, Manhattan (2 places), San Francisco, and finally Tiburon.
5. I DID break my arm twice when I was a kid despite the fact that no one in my family, including my mother, remembers that I even broke my arm once, and they all say I am just making it up...

I tag Owen Taylor, Guy Nirpaz, Michael Krigsman, Fabrizio Giudici, and John Allspaw.