As I grow into my adult clothes, I some times find it a little embarrassing to introduce myself as the all mighty and feared “FergatROn” hailing from the great planet of Cybertron. Well, it really depends on what circle I’m doing it with. Since the dawn of my online adventures, I’ve always had a cool user handle. Don’t get me wrong, I love my /nick, but I’m doing more and more online business nowadays and telling a possible business partner that my Twitter or Identica account is “@FergatROn” is starting to get a little awkward.

In the Beginning

I’ll drag out this post by sharing with you my user handles from my earliest memory. I’ll have to say that America Online (AOL) was my first platform to create a sharable username. I was still in high school so you can imagine the crazy names I came up with. I do recall one – “DutiDred”. I’m Jamaican, but not a dred, DutiDred was also the name of a character I used to draw. I had countless others, but since they were all juvenile crap, I don’t remember any of them.

I believe my next major handle was in the Yahoo realm. It was my first year of college and Yahoo Games was a pretty decent platform. I believe I was working for Sears at the time thus I came up with the name “Paperboy_507″. If you can tell the name was a combination of the video game “Paperboy” and “Levi 507 Jeans”. Yup, that’s just how creative I was back-in-the-days.

The Mighty Hunter

The next evolution in my handle was related to my first major massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, Starsiege. I was a proud member of the 69th Penetration Assault Wing, aka 69 PAW. We had a web site and everything, I believe it was http://paw.cbj.net [nonworking link]. I think our fearless leader went by “Cybrid Lee [69 PAW]“.

I found that information with some intuitive Google searches. There’s no way I would have remembered that from my worn-out memory cells.

For some reason, though, I’ll never forget the person that recruited me. It’s funny because he’ll probably never remember me. I wasn’t anything special. Just another mech warrior trying to make his way around the galactic system. The person that recruited me was named “Mouse” and my glorious name was “NiMrOd”.

I think this was the first time I actually put some thought into my handle and wanted it to really mean something. I don’t know how I looked it up, but “Nimrod” was an Old Testiment hunter. Me, being the warrior that I am, thought this would be a great fit. Ironically; it wasn’t until much later that I realized that people don’t think of the “hunter”, but the other meaning of “nimrod”. Boy did I feel like a nimrod!

Linux

Handles are a major part of the open source community. Most folks (unless I’m in the dark) don’t go by their real name. Look on the IRC channels and the forums and you’ll see an array of interesting handles.

Funny; on my desktop I really don’t use a fancy handle for my login. I guess it’s because there’s no one else on my computer. Don’t worry, I’ve got a ace up my sleeve. My network id is “fergatron.deceptacons”. Yah; so even though I’m not using a cool handle to log into my computer… my computer has a handle and he’s also a kickass Deceptacon! Oh and if you’re wondering.. my wireless SSID, is “Cybertron”, with more than WEP as its encryption! I just blew your mind… didn’t I!?

Evolution

Because I think this post is going too long, I’ll wrap it up. So; over time my handles have evoled as I have as a person. My Star Wars handle is “Marfe Jokin”, I’ve created many names in World of Warcarft and other MMOs, but the name that trumps them all is “FergatROn”. It’s a mix between my last name, “Ferguson”, Transformers’ renowned Megatron/Galvatron, and an MMO I used to play alot – Ragnarok Online.

The cool thing I like about “FergatROn”, is I’ve been able to kind of trademark it through online services. Meaning, I’ve signed up for so many web sites (Twitter, Identica, MySpace, etc) using FergatROn that if you Google it, most- if not, all the results are belong to me! (No that wasn’t horrible grammer… it’s a play on “All your base are belong to us.”)

So; since I’ve opened up a part of my soul with you strangers… I’d love to see what your handles used to be or what you’re currently using. Come on- I’d be fun!

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