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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 couldn't come up with a nickname (and I am writer, mind you), so I opened the first book on my desk, which happened to be Rodale's The Synonym Finder, and blindly picked an entry. It happened to be "poorhouse."

I first used the Internet in the mid 1980s. I remember my excitment when I managed to connect to a univesrity in Sweden....

Then, years later, stuck in the suburbs and hating to drive, I discovered that I don't need to leave home to get around....