What is the meaning behind your GWJ name?

Well some cool stories here. I always presumed Elysium''s tag came from ''Elysium Fields'', and that he was a being come from heaven to bathe us in his glory. Turns out he''s just some dude who can handle himself in a darkened alley.

When my brother and I first got a computer with an internet connection, I used the handle Cthulhu, which he used to piggyback and use my account on online games. Eventually he used it more than I did, so a new name was required.

A buddy and I used to watch a lot of ''B'' movies, and we had just seen ""The Pit And The Pendulum"", which starred Lance Henrikson as Torquemada, the head of the Spanish Inquisition. This struck me as a cool and unique name, but there was no way I was typing that whole thing out all the time, so a shortening to Torq, and that''s the handle I''ve used for the past 8 years or so.

I like palindromes. I also like the duality of competence / incompetence. Fits me well.

Palindromes, eh? Here''s my favorite.

Data spins mom''s nips a tad.

"Lester_King" wrote:
Simpilot is my giving props to my father who recently retired from Delta Air Lines after 37 years.

Yo! My dad too!

You guys are brothers?

Thank you, thank you, I''ll be here all night, enjoy the buffet.

"Torq" wrote:

Well some cool stories here. I always presumed Elysium''s tag came from ''Elysium Fields'', and that he was a being come from heaven to bathe us in his glory. Turns out he''s just some dude who can handle himself in a darkened alley.

See, I thought that it was from Gladiator, You know ""If you find yourselves walking in green fields..."" And that''s where we''d end up if we played him.

"SwampYankee" wrote:
"Lester_King" wrote:
Simpilot is my giving props to my father who recently retired from Delta Air Lines after 37 years.

Yo! My dad too!

You guys are brothers?

Thank you, thank you, I''ll be here all night, enjoy the buffet.

Doh! I doubt it''s my brother as he hardly knows what a keyboard is for much less how to turn a ''puter on or do anything with it.

Doh! I doubt it''s my brother as he hardly knows what a keyboard is for much less how to turn a ''puter on or do anything with it.

You don''t have to talk like I''m not here... You always do that to me! I''m telling mom!

"Morrolan" wrote:

... it''s from a series of fantasy books I like.

As is mine, but as I don''t do any online playing, the name is in no way stuck to me. I also seem to have a habit of using names for computers somehow related to frogs, so this one just seemed the natural choice.

Hey, admin types, how''s about making this sticky, seeing as this is the second thread I can remember on our nicknames?

I''ve used this ''handle'' for over 20 years now. Started using it in high school when I got my first computer, a c-64 with a 300-baud modem. Had to have a name for BBS''s, so I created MacBrave.

BTW, it''s just a concatentation of my highschool and mascot, The Maconaquah Braves. Link here: http://www.maconaquah.k12.in.us/

My friends got lazy and could not finish the word neighbor... short and painless!

As much as Id like to say it was due to a career in pornographic films..

When I first got onto the net, I got into IRC in a big way. I used the nick ''Guru'' in the vain hope that I might appear like I knew what I was doing (I didnt, at first anyway)

Eventually I ended up helping out as an IRCop on a small network (castlenet) - They had this whole ''medieval'' thing happening and christened me ''SirGuru''. Given I was gonna get some kind of name change anyways, I changed to ''sirgooroo'' as it kinda mimiced ''kangaroo'' - being an aussie etc

In the end I dumped all that sh*t and just went with what everyone was calling me anyway!

"Sanjuro" wrote:
"Elysium" wrote:

and hissed his last word ... Elysium.

boooo!

Anyway, back to the XCOM thread derail-

I recently found a patch that lets you run the XCOM Collector''s Edition for Win95 perfectly on Windows XP. I mean, it even runs at 486 speed and the sound effects are perfect and everything. It''s goddamned beautiful. If any of you fools want it, PM or email me; compressed its only like 700k or something like that so I can email it or whatever.

Heh. Not to derail the thread overmuch - but it *is* what got me thinking X-Com again - I went and found a copy of the game online (with afforementioned patch) last night. Graphics are obviously dated, but you know? It''s still a spectacular game. Great concept. Great mechanics. I do actually own a copy, but who wants to go digging through the garage at 21:00?

Seriously. I think I''ve put more hours into XCOM than into most other games put together. I''m certain that it also holds the record for most continuous time on my hard drives, maybe 10 years now?

SKIPPY LeBEEF....hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Well I used to play Quake with a bunch of guys from work. They all had these bad-ass names, like DEATHBRINGER, WAR-KILL, THE ASSASSIN, BLACK FLOOD

...I was new to Quake and wanted the sissiest sounding gamertag I could think of...and it worked...because every time I got a kill and it would pop up on their screen SKIPPY LeBEEF FRAGGED THE ASSASSIN I could hear them scream from down the hall....

It stuck.

I like Terry Gilliam movies. ""Thorhild the Sarcastic"" proved to be too long for MMO-style chat interfaces. My first MMO toon with any longevity or social bonds was named ""Berthold"" (and yes, there was a Gustavus, an Albrecht, and an Adolphus), and I got stuck with it...

Well, I took my net handle shortly after Pulp Fiction came out for Vincent Vega. Unfortuntely most of the time when I''m playing something online people are like, ""Dude.. Street Fighter roxxored, Vega was my favorite character!!!11oneone"". I''ve never even played SF before.. but I hate it just because guys like that liked it.

Us older guys will remember a Vega as a car. A really crappy one at that. Sorry bud.

My name comes from my favorite race (the Velox) from my favorite game (Starflight).

I''m from the school of not naming yourself.

I am the middle of 3 brothers. When we lived in Toms River, NJ we had some friends that were also 3 brothers. The youngest brother from each family was just learning to talk around this time so their english was very broken with baby talk.

My older brother and the older brother of our friends created a langauge out their pronunciations of their words, mainly of their names not a talking language. This was called ''Bebe Talk''.

Vin became Shin
Corey was Cowey
Michael was Mahoo
Brandon was Bannon

I didn''t get a name, because I''m not cool like that. So one day Shin and I were shooting freethrows and I asked why I never got a name. He made one up on the spot. I''d be eezy (pronounce izzy) bordone. I was only 13 at the time and as time went on I found out about the girl who killed her family and all that but it was like 7 years later and I was too lazy to change my alter-ego because that''s what it is for me.

I''ve called myself that ever since.

SKIPPY LeBEEF FRAGGED THE ASSASSIN

Oddly enough mine is a similar story.
I just started playing quake(2 i think) online and it amused to see-

""SoAndSo fragged phragged""
(because of course I sucked and was on the receiving end)

I''m not sure why it amused me, because looking back on it, its really not that clever. But oh well I was in college, what do you?
Too late to get rid of it now and it has the advantage of being relatively unique.
Although there is some bastard on the CodeProject site that has it as a username.

Tallon Karrde is the name of a smuggler in the trilogy of Star Wars books written by Timothy Zahn.

"Eezy_Bordone" wrote:

I''m from the school of not naming yourself.

I am the middle of 3 brothers. When we lived in Toms River, NJ we had some friends that were also 3 brothers. The youngest brother from each family was just learning to talk around this time so their english was very broken with baby talk.

My older brother and the older brother of our friends created a langauge out their pronunciations of their words, mainly of their names not a talking language. This was called ''Bebe Talk''.

Vin became Shin
Corey was Cowey
Michael was Mahoo
Brandon was Bannon

I didn''t get a name, because I''m not cool like that. So one day Shin and I were shooting freethrows and I asked why I never got a name. He made one up on the spot. I''d be eezy (pronounce izzy) bordone. I was only 13 at the time and as time went on I found out about the girl who killed her family and all that but it was like 7 years later and I was too lazy to change my alter-ego because that''s what it is for me.

I''ve called myself that ever since.

Excellent story!

You can blame my nom de plume, like so many other things, squarely on Microsoft.

I went to register on The Zone for multiplayer gaming (likely for Allegiance or something like that) and the original name I had entered was taken. In an effort to be helpful, the site would throw out suggested alternate names that were some sort of variation on the name you entered.

Somehow, in only the mind of an algorithm from Microsoft, it spit out ""Dramatic Marlin"" -- which in no way shape or form was remotely similar to the name I had originally entered. Go fig.

Anyways, I figured the odds of two people encountering ""Dramatic Marlin"" as a randomly generated name were slim to none, so I''ve used it ever since.

Pyro wrote

Amid the confusion we also explained that in the future score was counted the opposite way, then proceeded to knife each other to gain the lowest score. I think that''s how it happened anyway.

Thanks for that Pyro. It actually made me laugh. I didn''t expect to but I did. It really helps.

I got my name when I went to X-Men 2 with my Colombian friend and my ,now, ex-girlfriend. I was making them laugh so hard that they called me Vector (a biological term that describes the thing that spreads disease) because I was spreading laughter. I just have used it as my handle ever since.

In short, I'm not a morning person. Heck, sometimes I'm not a day or night person, either. Since my teen years, I always have at least one "Grumpy" hat (via the Disney corporation) courtesy of my mom. All of this led to my S.O. "classifying" (in the genus/species sense) me as a Grumpicus Maximus Nofunicus.

I eventually got tired of using anagrams and other variations of my name (none of which ever "stuck") and embraced the Grumpicus moniker. At the time, the only other reference I found was an article on GolfOnline so I figured it would be a pretty safe bet that I wouldn't have to worry about running into another person already using that handle and have used it ever since.

"Dramatic Marlin" wrote:

You can blame my nom de plume, like so many other things, squarely on Microsoft.

I went to register on The Zone for multiplayer gaming (likely for Allegiance or something like that) and the original name I had entered was taken. In an effort to be helpful, the site would throw out suggested alternate names that were some sort of variation on the name you entered.

Somehow, in only the mind of an algorithm from Microsoft, it spit out ""Dramatic Marlin"" -- which in no way shape or form was remotely similar to the name I had originally entered. Go fig.

Anyways, I figured the odds of two people encountering ""Dramatic Marlin"" as a randomly generated name were slim to none, so I''ve used it ever since.

I did something similar to that with Trillian-but I figured that Wholemeal Apollo, while apt, was just way to silly to use on a daily basis.

Hm. Wholemeal Apollo.

. o O ( New CoH character, the amazing Wholemeal Apollo to the rescue! )

Buzz was my dial-up login to my original ISP. A buddy of mine used to say I sounded like Buzz Lightyear when I called back orders at the restaurant we worked in at the time. When that little geek-faced bastard at the ISP put me on the spot and asked me for a login, it was all I could think of. Still it managed to stick for quite a long time, and I tended to use it during all those LAN parties we used to throw in the Project Labs at school. Eventually, it fell by the wayside when bigger and badder internet options came available. Did you guys know that Buzz was a common nickname?

Vang was my original Jumpgate login. A couple of old college buddies that had moved turned me onto the game and I wanted to play with them. I was looking for something short that was easy to type, and since Buzz had (naturally) been taken, I settled on an obscure part of a sailboat.

I always hated losing Buzz, so at some point, maybe around a year ago, I put the two words together in an effort to keep something lasting and unique. It resulted in total gibberish, but what the hell? People still call me Buzz for short, and that makes me happy.

Back in late 1996, I needed a character name for Terris, at the time an AOL-only MUD (hey, back in 1996 your ISP choices weren''t exactly plentiful, OK?) Anyway, I started leafing through my books looking for a name that I liked but that wouldn''t be prevalent. I decided on a name from Philip Jose Farmer''s World of Tiers books- Jadawin. I''ve used it in games ever since.