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.

Well my nickname is my name. Enough said there. I started using the internet in the early to mid 90's, when I was in high school. My parents had AOL (I know, I know) and I would spend some evenings checking out chatrooms, but quickly tired of the ASL U 1 2 FUX and really didn't spend too much time on it for a couple years- until someone linked me to Diesel Sweeties in 2001, and I discovered dumbrella.com and it's forums. The first time I had really seen the internet used for (sometimes) intelligent discourse by people who didn't feel the need to abbreviate three letter words. A moderately paced forum populated by smart, witty folk (or, used to be anyway- won't say much for the state of it now), which has provided me over the years with links to the web's most interesting sites. A lot of it came from MeFi, so at long last I figured it was finally time to register.