What's in a name?

Almost every website nowadays has an option for registration that gives you access to certain areas of their content, personalized settings, etc. I'm often plagued by the notion of coming up with a good username. Maybe that's because I always thought the handle you chose was a defining characteristic of your online presence....or maybe I'm just nuts.

You see, while I'm not THAT old yet, I have been a computer nerd since the days of 2400 baud modems and BBS's. As a matter of fact my father reminded my just last night about how busy my old BBS was (200 users and 150 calls a day - yes, it was THAT cool). My parents never understood what I was doing or even what BBS stood for, but they were understanding enough to help pay for two extra phone lines for their grade-school son who was getting more phone calls than their teenage daughter. (Then again, while her calls tended to be long conversations about how hot Patrick Swayze was, my phone calls were loud screeching noises that scared the hell out of my grandmother...but we'll save that story for another post).

But I digress.

In the time of BBS's, everything was about the handle you had. Anonymity was not really a concern at the time, but there was a measure of "coolness" that was associated with your handle. It wouldn't have been interesting to say "John Smith messed up Tradewars again, so I had to delete his account." But it was incredibly cool to say "I just kicked Slaughter after fucking the Tradewars Door.... AGAIN!" Your handle tended to get spread around to all of the other BBS's since we transferred messages between rings of BBS's every night (if you don't know how all that works, it's not even worth trying to figure out unless you are as big a dork as me, in which case shame on your for not understanding). It ended up that most people that you knew online only knew you through your handle, which at the time wasn't a problem because there were only a few thousand people online. The chances of two people using Neo (I never have, for the record) for their handle was very slim. But nowadays, with only about 8 million people signing up for sites everyday, finding a unique identifier has become exponentially more difficult.

So I ask - how did you come up with your handle? Was it your personality, an obsession with sci-fi, sex, books? Or did you go for the ever-original BillGates43928503? Oh, and if you're asking how I came up with my current one (I feel compelled to change them all the time if you haven't guessed by now) - Folk Metal was how Jack Black described the music of his prolific band Tenacious D. I think maybe I was watching them on TV when we started this blog. Maybe the impulsive decision-making is the reason that I use 5 different handles now?

Bonus Points: for those of you that will see me tonight, I'll buy you a beer if you can guess the first handle I ever used. Hint: Darkwing Duck.