So here's the back story: we're working on migrating the reddit blog off of blogger and have a test environment set up that we were playing around with. We have a semi-private IRC channel that your coworker, as a close friend of the reddit team and heavy duty open source developer also hangs around in.
I asked if anyone wanted login to the new blog interface to which I got a "Me! Me!" from the gentleman in question. Since he isn't strictly speaking a member of the dev team, I did the natural thing and said, "ok, but in exchange you're going to have to dance for my amusement." Suffice it to say he called my bluff.
>as a close friend of the reddit team and heavy duty open source developer also hangs around in.
I know the significance of what he contributes to Reddit, I've been on Reddit for a long time and ran into him because of IRC. He's the one that got me my job :P
I'm not surprised at all that he called your bluff, he's quite the playful fellow. I was amused when he shared it with the rest of our dev team (the video).
Any other reddit anecdotes I can share for you? I shared a few on my blog (http://reddit.blogspot.com) during the startup, but we lucked into Chris because he went back to his PHD after doing YC that first summer and had 2 spare bedrooms, which Steve & I promptly moved into when summer ended and PG talked us out of moving back to Virginia.
Chris generally just made us feel guilty for ever needing to sleep (since he was helping us part-time and PHD-ing at Harvard the rest of the time -- oh, and he met & dated his future wife then, too!)
I don't know why but I always find anecdotes about how Reddit got started really fascinating. Perhaps personal interest.