MetaFilter

What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

Please note that my hotmail address is now set to "exclusive" filter ... so if you want to make sure I see your e-mail, please include "Metafilter" in the subject line.

I was lost on my way to Rhetoric 1B -- and somehow ended up in the basement of Evans Hall, where I wandered among row after row of VT100 dumb terminals, until reached the back, where I found two ranks of old Apolla workstations and, hunched over them, the most intense geeks I'd ever seen, before or since. One of them looked up and said, "are you here to sign up for an OCF account?"

And it has been all down hill since then. Since MeFi frowns upon anonymity, I was not able to reuse any of my killer handles under which I spread joy and terror (in unequal doses, of course) on the Usenet starting from the basement of Evans Hall in 1990 and on a variety of topical boards and communities even unto this very day ... some of those posts I would not be particularly pleased to be linked back to me in my ordinary life...

... which is living in New York City, (not much) over 30, practicing technology and finance law, married to a bright beautiful girl who thinks I spend too much time on the Internet...