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.

Finally free of corporate overlords. Bye-bye, rat race. Hello, million hobby projects and volunteer gigs that I put off forever! I'm still rotating between three different cities, but for personal reasons now, with a few meta-vacations in between.

I spent a decade as a UI/usability guy before the web made those terms, like... terms, and then another decade screening and hiring mini versions of myself for others. In between there somewhere I wrote words for money and taught people stuff for other money and built intricate riddles for kicks. So, y'know, ask me about Lisp GUIs and workflow wireframes. Or PATS screening. Or the passive voice. Or baseball. Preferably baseball.

MetaFilter is my combination breakfast reading material and insomnia medication. My nickname here is what a fan (?) who didn't know my real name called me once while trying to be polite. It was funny to me.

This is my pony.

Moral waiver and pre-apology: damn near everything I type on MetaFilter is from the hip, without editing, without preview, and without sober second thoughts. Sometimes the words come out snarkier than intended, and sometimes they're even downright dangerous. But as an upside, they're always well-intentioned, and at least most of them are actually true*, which is more than you can say for the bulk of the internet, right?

[ * Names, dates, chronologies, precise locations, job titles and other indicia of life may be altered to outright lies from time to time in order to protect the innocent, frustrate lawyers, and/or confuse ne'er-do-wells. Any resemblance to actual ex-clients, ex-roommates, ex-crazy-girlfriends or ex-inlaws, living or dead, is purely coincidental, occasionally contradictory, and/or guardedly ambiguous. Oxford commas are good. Oxford shoes are sexy. Oxford rulers hurt. ]