Aaron Mentele, Charisma 18 personal blog of Aaron Mentele, web developer and partner at Electric Pulp

Relax your gag reflexes, I’m about to propagate a meme. I’ve been asked by Mike Langford of Tweetworks to spill 7 things you wish you didn’t know about me.

The Rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• 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

Okay, whatever.

1. I rank Roxanne very high on the list of best and greatest songs in the world.
2. I maintain two superstitions: $50 bills are bad luck, and I get to make a wish if I spot a clock that reads 11:11.
3. I have tattoos, a brand, and pierced ears. You’d never know.
4. I can watch Dream a Little Dream on mute. I already know the words.
5. There are handlebars named after me. I used to spend more time on motorcycles.
6. I have never found Sarah Michelle Gellar attractive. Her starring role in one of the best television series of all time did nothing to change this.
7. I have degrees in art, biology, and architecture. If my career in web folds, I hope to create well-planned structures for fruit flies.

I think I did pretty well. I didn’t even complain once about how this is like the *forward this on* emails my mother forwards me, or how I’m too busy not fitting in to play along with such things. I also successfully avoided gushing about my awesome family only to later realize kidnappers may have read this post.

Now, to pick 7 people who will enjoy this as much as I…

• Stefan Hartwig is gonna love this.
• Andrew Hyde [@andrewhyde] has probably already done this.
• Joshua Strebel [@strebel] - this is your chance to tell us about your rugby days.
• Ethan Marcotte [@beep] will not be made fun of at all for participating.
• Micah Baldwin [@micah] will be awarded one inbound douchebag link for playing.
• Guy Kawasaki [Holy Kaw!, @guykawasaki] — this could be your 15 minutes of fame.
• Deane Barker [@gadgetopia] will be the first to complete.

I’m told failure to participate results in the clubbing of puppies. See the rules above. Enjoy.

This is the second U.S. recession since we’ve been in business. Electric Pulp had been a full time gig for 3 years when the last recession began in March of 2001.

We had some bad months. I’m not sure we can credit the stress to any single event or economic snap shot, though. We had adjustments to make. Either way, we made it out just fine, and 2004 more than made up for anything we might have missed out on.

That’s probably more personal history than you care to know, but it backs up a basic point. The web doesn’t contract. Uncertainty is short-lived, especially when it occurs inside a growth industry.

As a sidenote, I wrote a longer version of this post last week after seeing recession-proofing advice hit my feed reader from five sources in two days. I was so distracted by a particular post, though, that I wasn’t really making the point that these things bounce. Keep that in mind the next time you read a post on the topic. The negative forecasts would reverse if they’d widen their scope slightly.