The improbable happened; I've been tagged by Jens Schaller. I've never continued any chain letter, I don't like those... but since I still feel it's an honnor to be tagged like this, I won't do like Tim Heuer and stop the chain here. Furthermore, if he really is against chain letters, he should have spared us his 5 things list in the first place.
1. I like experiments. When I was five, my parents woke up one day and discovered I had removed all door nobs in the house. I managed to find a screwdriver and thought it was fun to try! At six, I taped two small wires to a 7 volts flashlight bulb, one on the side, and one on the tip (I knew how it worked!), and tried to plug the two wires in an electric plug (120 volts). You can't imagine how noisy can be such a small bulb. Even recently, I opened my dying Black & Decker hand vacuum cleaner, tested the rechargeable batteries inside, noticed two out of five were dead and acted as a resistance. I bypassed them, and the vacuum cleaner is now working great, though it's now 3.6 volts instead of 6.
2. My nickname used to be Max, and has nothing to do with my name. In high school (in Quebec = 13 to 17 years old), I liked doing presentations in front of the class. On such an occasion, in an English class, I decided to immitate Max Headroom, and brought a Coca Cola bottle in class as an accessory. During other presentations, I spilled the bottle on the floor twice, causing quite a distraction and a mess (Coca Cola is sticky!). Let's just say my presentation was remembered by everybody, and the nickname stuck too.
3. I wanted to be a lot of things when I was younger, but not a programmer. I could have tried baseball, as I was a very good catcher. I even catched for Claude Raymond during a little leagues all star game. I was very interested in becoming a comedian/actor, but it was too easy for me to stay in science and follow friends in this area. I also wanted to be a veterinarian, but was rejected because my CEGEP grades (17-19 years old) were too low. I finally started university in chemical engineering. A year and a half later, I had enough and finally switched to computer sciences. I always thought my interest in computer programming, since I was 14 years old, would serve me in another area, not computers themselves. That's why it took me so long to realize I was a programmer first, and the rest would come.
4. I demolished a brand new VFR 750. It wasn't mine. I wasn't insured. I didn't have a driver's license. I only had scratches myself, and the scare of my life. My friend lend me this motorcycle while he was attending motorcycle race training. He came back from the training one day earlier than expected, and saw a towel with blood in his bathroom, and no sign of the motorcycle. He called home and I told him I'd pay him back. He said he didn't care about the motorcycle, and was only interested to know if I was fine. Turns out he came back early because another friend of him killed himself in a car accident the same day.
5. I met my wife in a theatre course. We were 24 and part of a 15-25 year old group. It was a lot of fun, and we played husband and wife in the final play, in front of friends, family, and her fiancé! They split before the wedding, and we catched up not much later.
I'll pass the puck to Maude Vézina, Dan Fernandez, Miguel de Icaza, Raymond Chen and Tommy Carlier.