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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.

I made it! Calloo, callay, hot damn I made it. Only a $5 cover charge, too. I've been reading Mefi forever and managed to miss any chance Matt offered to grab a spot (April 1, for example, arrrrrrrgh). I'll try to make this more about my nick and less ejaculatory about joining um... another time.

My nickname comes from about, gosh, 16 years ago, when I had a 1200 baud modem and I attempted to sign on to an "Electronic Bulletin Board". Wildcat, wow. I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of a "handle" it was asking for, and the SysOp gently chided me that I should enter something other than my name. I was playing AD&D at the time, and Unearthed Arcana was my book du jour, and I really dug the new character class -- you guessed it -- 'Cavalier'. I had a pretty healthy character and thus said, what the hey... it has stuck ever since. Especially in college, where my arrogant attitude lended a perfect definition for the more rude meaning of 'cavalier'.

Yes, people sometimes make cracks about me being a car. I ignore them.