For Christmas 2007 my wife got me an Aqua Sphereing experience. The local centre is also only 5 miles from our house. Given that she was also the one who got me into SCUBA diving, I figured this would be fun. Unfortunately the weather in the UK this summer hasn't been that good, but eventually I managed to find the time and the weather held. Although the whole thing lasted only a minute or so, I had a fantastic time and now know what it feels like to be inside a giant washing machine. My friend Duane did something similar at JavaOne earlier this year, but I don't think there was water involved. If you get the chance, I'd definitely recommend the experience!
For our anniversary this year, my wife got me an EcoSphere (hmmm, there's definitely a spherical theme going on here!). It turned up the other day and it's fantastic. I love this sort of thing: mini-worlds, whether they're real or virtual, have always fascinated me. Maybe it's a god-complex or something, but I can spend hours just watching these worlds evolve.
I work for Red Hat, where I lead JBoss technical direction and research/development. Prior to this I was SOA Technical Development Manager and Director of Standards. I was Chief Architect and co-founder at Arjuna Technologies, an HP spin-off (where I was a Distinguished Engineer). I've been working in the area of reliable distributed systems since the mid-80's. My PhD was on fault-tolerant distributed systems, replication and transactions. I'm also a Professor at Newcastle University and Lyon.