I volunteered to be interviewed in the form of five questions from loyal reader Sarah from Dreamdust. Without further ado, here are the questions along with their answers.

I turn up on your doorstep demanding a Tour of Dave’s Favourite Places. After you’ve removed the u from favourite, where do you take me?

Hrm. At first thought, I really feel like I never go anywhere. I’m a terrible homebody, though I suppose there some some places I really do enjoy, even if I don’t have a chance to be there often enough. I’ve already talked with Jennifer about this and for some reason she didn’t seem at all put off by the fact that that the first stop on the tour is:

• My bed. No, really. Bed is great, ask any parent. Nothing bad ever happens there, and I probably fantasize about napping at least 20 times in a given day.
• My folks’ cottage. We’ll all be going next month. It’s so relaxing to be out, away from the city, hanging out by the water or in it. Last year it was a little stressful because Tara was in danger of falling in at any time, but for this trip I think we’ll just have her wear a life jacket and loosen the reins a bit. There’s a tiny little golf course nearby where I go with my brothers and dad to talk smack and carve up the fairways. It’s a par 3 course, so the fact that we’re on the fairways at all should be a good indication of how (not) good I am at golf. However, I dare anyone to best me at holding down a hammock.
• Alaska in the summer. I’ve only been once, but it was just awesome. So pristine, so clear, and so unpopulated. I have something of a hermit side that wants to get away from all this technology and return to nature, at least until it’s time to use the facilities.
• Stockholm in the summer. I really like being surrounded by water, and each island in the city has a different feel to it, there’s every kind of activity within a short bike ride.

What’s the most manly, testosterone-filled, possibly even swashbuckling thing you’ve ever done?

This is a really difficult one for me, because I’m not a man’s man by any stretch of the imagination. When I think of swashbuckling, I think of Errol Flynn swooping in to save a damsel in distress, which is something I can’t recall having done. Actually, I take that back; just a couple weeks back I was with a group at a bar and one of the girls with us was being hit on by an annoying drunk soccer player. I swooped in and asked her to scratch my back or to help me find my contact lens or what were the names of her eleven children by fourteen fathers or something like that.

I’m not much of an athlete, and never played sports in school, but now as an adult I really get pumped up playing volleyball. There’s something about squaring off against a big hitter with the game on the line, jumping up and stuffing a hard hit back at him. You pump your fist and talk some smack and it feels pretty good. On a couple occasions I’ve stuff-blocked a former pro volleyball player. Then there was the time I was playing hockey and batted down a slap shot, just about destroying my finger in the process. Later, I had to poke a hole through the fingernail with a red-hot paper clip. That was pretty cool. What was the question?

Where do your moderate skills lie? This isn’t where you excel magnificently, or fail miserably; I want to know what you’re just pretty good at.

What an interesting question! I talk often about a few things–photography, cooking, playing volleyball–all areas in which I find much joy, work to improve, and yet consider myself to be moderately skilled, but I don’t think that’s what you’re after. The truth is that I’m a generalist. I like doing a little bit of everything, but I get really bored if I have to do more than a little. Thus, I’m moderately skilled at almost everything, because by the time I’ve developed a moderate amount of skill, I’ve moved on to something else.

You’ve been crowned King of the World and now there’s to be a suitably spectacular inauguration party. What’s on the programme?

It’s very hard to think of an answer for this because my mind immediately wanders to all the new rules I’ll be creating to outlaw all the things that annoy me. But if I must focus, let’s go with the following. The only appropriate venue for such an occasion would have to be Las Vegas. I’d just rent out the entire strip. Oh wait, I’m King of the World, they would just have to clear out to accommodate me.

I love all sorts of music, so the lineup must include

• A classic rock cover band. Not the original bands, because they’re always trying to do new versions of their own songs. I want the live performance to sound like the record.
• A DJ spinning mashups of opera and heavy metal. Or Evanescence. Same difference.
• A Terra Naomi or Margo Timmins or Sarah Maclachlan type performing with an acoustic guitar.

The menu would have to include some of that Wagyu beef that my palate and wallet have been fighting over. Anyone ordering their steak well done would be served a leather boot with A-1 sauce on it. There would be seafood risotto and corn dogs and pulled pork sandwiches, and a ridiculous array of desserts. I figure if I’m King of the World it’s ok if I pack on a few pounds, as long is my ordering-around finger is still in shape.

Since we’re already in Las Vegas, the entertainers would be there already. Penn & Teller would start out. Then there would be one of the Cirque du Soleil shows, but only for 20 minutes because they get boring after a while.

You admit to having a gadget fetish, so what are your current top 5 contraptions and why?

• My various computers. At any given time, I have five devices in the house running Linux (not counting my desktop nor my laptop) but I’m going to count them as one. I really enjoy fiddling with all of them. One of them serves streaming media to my TiVo and cell phone, and I’m adding a touch panel to control the stereo and serve as a digital photo frame and DVR.
• My cell phone. It’s a Nokia N80 that I got earlier this year and it totally rocks. I love that there are a ton of apps for it, and it’s without a doubt the gadget I use most often. I occasionally even talk to people on it.
• My Canon 20D. I really want a full frame camera, but I can’t justify it at this point.
• The widget that I’m developing at work. There’s nothing particularly interested about it, and it’s the cause of a lot of stress in my life, but I am learning an awful lot in the process of working with it.
• The all-important next gadget, for which I am always looking. For this reason, everyone comes to me for advice on which gadget to get, because I have researched all of them.