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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 lived in Stephenson Hall, alternatively known as Stephenson Hell or Steven Seagal, for three years during my time at the University of Kansas. When I made my first forays onto the Internet around 1996, I wanted an UserID that would be easy to remember. So, I typed in the name of my hall, Stephenson. No dice, that UserID was already taken at the site where I was registering. Ditto for Steven, Seagal, Hall and Hell. Growing frustrated, I wondered whether adding an "x" onto the end of my most recent attempt (hell) would work. It did. Now hellx is my default UserID. It's pronounced, in my mind, as "hell-ex."