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Two mysteries and a rant
Aug. 24th, 2004 12:03 amI had a scary moment today in my junior colloquium on the Roman Republic. Dr. Rahe, the same genius professor who convinced me to become a history major, walked in with a huge stack of papers. He took a sliver off the top, which I assumed to be the class syllabi. Nope, it was one thirty-seven page syllabus. I contemplated walking out of the class there and then, but since Dr. Rahe is my advisor I didn’t want to be rude. As it turns out, each person in the class will do 4 research topics for a presentation in class and a six page paper on their topic. So most of the syllabus was just detailed questions to help us out. I breathed a deep internal sigh of relief.
Well, today I’m going to answer the question of how I came up with my nicknames for Xanga and LiveJournal. But before I do, I have a rant to go on…
Alright you people, I’ve had several of you tell me in person you like my writing. The slavedriver Mrs. Kropp would smile if she knew this. And right now I’m trying to maintain a post per day pace in honor of my LJ sensei. It would help me out a lot if you people took some time and commented in my journal. If you like one of my posts, click the comment link and say that. If you hate one of posts, click the comment link and say that. If you are apathetic to one of my posts, click the comment link and say that.
I know, I know, it’s shameful to go comment begging. But part of the reason I’m doing this is to become a better writer. I want to know what people like and don’t like. If I want to write for myself, I can always write in my paper journal. However, my paper journal can’t write back to me. Feedback comes from living breathing humans who will click a link and comment.
You don’t have to comment every time. I understand I have some powerful posts from the past, so you don’t necessarily have to comment on those. But, for the love of God, if something I wrote touched you, made you laugh, or hit a freaking bell inside your head, click the comment link and say that.
I just want to feel loved, people. Please…
Ratstrike0 was the screen name I came up for my AOL account back when it was still 2.0. Yes, my parents have used America Online for that long. According to the Chinese zodiac, I’m a rat (the same applies to most people born in 1984). Though the dragon is the leader and most powerful of all the signs, the rat leads the pack because it won a race between all the animals through its cleverness. Even in fourth grade I knew I possessed a monster intellect. The strike I believe was supposed to be striker, the forward position in soccer. My dad loved soccer as a youth growing up in Vietnam, so much so that he became a soccer referee for high school games in Arkansas. I liked soccer, so I wanted to choose a player position to put in my screen name. Striker sounded the coolest to me at the time. But I also wanted a random number in there, and I was limited to ten characters at the time (shocking, the limits of programs at the time. Does anyone remember all of the finagling you did to name word documents because you were limited to eight characters?). I’m not sure why I picked zero. Zero’s a cool number. Hmmm, maybe it’s because I give a zero chance to most dating relationships. Okay, no fourth grader would have thought like that but maybe subconsciously the fourth grade Daniel already enjoyed pessimism.
As far as GreyBeta goes, that’s my StarCraft name that I used for blizzard.net circa 1998. Blue and grey are my favorite colors (I just killed two birds with one stone by explaining my xanga colors). In that war, grey defeated blue. I did argue with myself on whether to spell it gray or grey, and the British grey won. Then I wanted to include a Greek letter, which was pretty leet at the time for online game names. The first three Magic The Gathering sets happen to be Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited. But alpha is so overused in nicknames. Beta it is then, plus it had the added bonus of being linked with beta testing for video games.
The world just became a little more boring as two more mysteries were solved. Now if you skipped the rant, shame on you. Go read the rant now, even if you’ve read it because it’s a great rant, right? Oh, I’ll try to update shortly after midnight now so try to check my journal some time during the day before the next update comes. I’d apologize for the long post, but you know it was worth reading.
Well, today I’m going to answer the question of how I came up with my nicknames for Xanga and LiveJournal. But before I do, I have a rant to go on…
Alright you people, I’ve had several of you tell me in person you like my writing. The slavedriver Mrs. Kropp would smile if she knew this. And right now I’m trying to maintain a post per day pace in honor of my LJ sensei. It would help me out a lot if you people took some time and commented in my journal. If you like one of my posts, click the comment link and say that. If you hate one of posts, click the comment link and say that. If you are apathetic to one of my posts, click the comment link and say that.
I know, I know, it’s shameful to go comment begging. But part of the reason I’m doing this is to become a better writer. I want to know what people like and don’t like. If I want to write for myself, I can always write in my paper journal. However, my paper journal can’t write back to me. Feedback comes from living breathing humans who will click a link and comment.
You don’t have to comment every time. I understand I have some powerful posts from the past, so you don’t necessarily have to comment on those. But, for the love of God, if something I wrote touched you, made you laugh, or hit a freaking bell inside your head, click the comment link and say that.
I just want to feel loved, people. Please…
Ratstrike0 was the screen name I came up for my AOL account back when it was still 2.0. Yes, my parents have used America Online for that long. According to the Chinese zodiac, I’m a rat (the same applies to most people born in 1984). Though the dragon is the leader and most powerful of all the signs, the rat leads the pack because it won a race between all the animals through its cleverness. Even in fourth grade I knew I possessed a monster intellect. The strike I believe was supposed to be striker, the forward position in soccer. My dad loved soccer as a youth growing up in Vietnam, so much so that he became a soccer referee for high school games in Arkansas. I liked soccer, so I wanted to choose a player position to put in my screen name. Striker sounded the coolest to me at the time. But I also wanted a random number in there, and I was limited to ten characters at the time (shocking, the limits of programs at the time. Does anyone remember all of the finagling you did to name word documents because you were limited to eight characters?). I’m not sure why I picked zero. Zero’s a cool number. Hmmm, maybe it’s because I give a zero chance to most dating relationships. Okay, no fourth grader would have thought like that but maybe subconsciously the fourth grade Daniel already enjoyed pessimism.
As far as GreyBeta goes, that’s my StarCraft name that I used for blizzard.net circa 1998. Blue and grey are my favorite colors (I just killed two birds with one stone by explaining my xanga colors). In that war, grey defeated blue. I did argue with myself on whether to spell it gray or grey, and the British grey won. Then I wanted to include a Greek letter, which was pretty leet at the time for online game names. The first three Magic The Gathering sets happen to be Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited. But alpha is so overused in nicknames. Beta it is then, plus it had the added bonus of being linked with beta testing for video games.
The world just became a little more boring as two more mysteries were solved. Now if you skipped the rant, shame on you. Go read the rant now, even if you’ve read it because it’s a great rant, right? Oh, I’ll try to update shortly after midnight now so try to check my journal some time during the day before the next update comes. I’d apologize for the long post, but you know it was worth reading.
