Friday, March 20th, 2009

[JonPorobil]

I had to work a half day last Saturday. I don't have to work tomorrow. I'm looking forward to sleeping in.

My friends usually do a Friday night Rock Band gathering, but I have yet to be contacted about when and where it's going to be this week. I wonder if it's just not happening this week (after all, there's a whole lot of real rock bands in town right now...).

QotD (I know it's sort of similar to a recent QotD, but...): Do you post/enter using your real name? If you're comfortable telling us your real name, what is it? And why do you use the name you use?

My real last name is Porobil, but I don't use it because it's difficult to pronounce and therefore hard to market. Thinking about switching pseudonyms, though.

[bambamoozle]

I had to work a half day last Saturday. I don't have to work tomorrow. I'm looking forward to sleeping in.

My friends usually do a Friday night Rock Band gathering, but I have yet to be contacted about when and where it's going to be this week. I wonder if it's just not happening this week (after all, there's a whole lot of real rock bands in town right now...).

QotD (I know it's sort of similar to a recent QotD, but...): Do you post/enter using your real name? If you're comfortable telling us your real name, what is it? And why do you use the name you use?

My real last name is Porobil, but I don't use it because it's difficult to pronounce and therefore hard to market. Thinking about switching pseudonyms, though.

Yes, I am really John Kloberdanz.

Why do I use my real name? Because I've gotten to a place in my life where I'm comfortable just being me. If I had more people than me working on a song I would want to use a band name, but if it's just me, then it's me.

[jimtyrrell]

Aw, Silent Pipe is one of the Five Years Ago This Week fights. I was the n0ob of the month back then. And that fight was my best showing for a long time. (Damn you, Redcar! heh)

QotD: I use my real name here, and in most places. For a while I did instrumental loop music as Citizen Six because that stuff was confusing to venues that were looking to book me for shows.

[Rabid Garfunkel]

QotD: Nope; Facebook ruined the anonymity of the RG moniker (heard from too many search savvy old friends that I was nonexistent online whenever they'd look), so the last name's Boylan, which is Ellis Island for O'Baoighleghan (I think that's how it's spelled) and yes, St. Patrick's Day is a singular hell for me; Rabid just fits, though whether the cut of the suit is right or I eventually grew into it, I couldn't say anymore.

[fluffy]

My last name sounds like a profanity in certain dialects of English (it is of Lithuanian origin).

Not that it has anything to do with why I don't use it online - I learned very early on that Internet anonymity/pseudonymity was a good thing since there are a lot of creepy obsessive people out there whose mission in life appears to be complete destruction of everything they don't like, and a few of them specifically don't like me (or my creative output, anyway).

A note to anonymous people: It is not a reasonable response to try to DESTROY SOMEONE'S CAREER just because you don't like someone's art or gender identity.

So yeah I try to keep work and play as separate as possible.

[Bjam]

This is my last weekend of freedom before hell week begins for the musical, Jekyll and Hyde, that I'm a lead in. If any of you are in Boston April 2-4th, you should come see it!

QotD: My internet name is my real name's initials. Bjam = Bethany Jane Agnes Miller. Easy to find knowledge. It's been that way since I was first on the internet. I guess 10 years old? I don't use my 'Bethany Miller' because I've never had any real attachment to it. My family and close friends generally don't call me Bethany, and Miller isn't my real last name.

That said, I have a different username that I keep secret for internet things that need to be anonymous/not traced back to myself. Ooh, secrets secrets!

[Heather. Redmon.]

I use my real name, obviously. I've never really felt like I've got anything to hide. If people want to find me, for good or evil, at least they know where to start. Meh, whatever.

So, I'm sick with a head cold and I'm traveling for work tomorrow, yuck. I'm going to a conference and I'll be out of town and away from Phil and the kids for 5 days, the longest I've ever been away. I'm going to miss them bunches. I'm not packed or ready at all and I feel like crap. I have to be to the airport by like 9:30 or 10 tomorrow morning and I know I'll be up late packing and stressing. Ughhh!

[Spud]

I have three identities on this message board. None of them are my real name.

SPUD

[JonPorobil]

Apparently, last night the sale of the company that employs me was finalized. As soon as I find out which parts of my confidentiality waiver no longer apply, I'll post about it here.

[jast]

QotD: I'm really me. I don't see any reason to be anyone else (of course this is a purely subjective perspective). I use a nickname on the forum because I use this nickname in a lot of places already and it's short. It's basically the thing I automatically enter into username fields. I have a couple of variations I use when it's already taken; if all of those fail, I try different forms of my real name.

I do use a different nickname in a couple of weird places, but even then I don't really try to hide my identity.

[fluffy]

Oh, I guess it's worth mentioning that because of my use of the non-name 'fluffy' online that is what a lot of folks call me in real life now anyway. Pretty much everyone did in Seattle, although only a few of them do in San Francisco, because San Francisco people take things much more seriously than Seattle people.

[roymond]

Lots of people shorten their name. Mine was pretty short so I made it longer as an internet identity (it can mean "roy's world" which made sense), and always liked the one-name shtick (actually my friend's girlfriend called me roymond in high school and I sort of liked it). I don't worry about online anonymity for most purposes.

[rone rivendale]

QotD: I don't use my real name for SF but I don't hide my real name. I use it for soundclick and it's listed on my myspace. Rone Rivendale is my internet personia but it's also one of the main characters from my novel that I started in 1998 and won't ever finish.

[fluffy]

Lots of people shorten their name. Mine was pretty short so I made it longer as an internet identity (it can mean "roy's world" which made sense), and always liked the one-name shtick (actually my friend's girlfriend called me roymond in high school and I sort of liked it). I don't worry about online anonymity for most purposes.

I thought "roymond" came out of people always asking you what "Roy" was short for.

[Albatross]

I used to be real anal about protecting my online anonymity. Not so much anymore. Hell, my song blog has my real name right there in the URL.

[fluffy]

I'm not that anal about it - I'm sure a large number of people here know my real name, for example, and it's easy enough to find anyway - but at the same time I don't want to make it easy for people to stumble across it. That's what has always led to problems in the past. Anonymous Internet retards deciding they don't like me and thinking it'd be funny that, armed with the knowledge of who I am and where I work, sending emails to people I work with, or posting stuff under my name where potential future employers/business partners/etc. would find it.

For a very specific example, at one point when I was still in grad school but starting my job search, I had posted a rant about how much I hated a particular common piece of software (which was, thanks to pseudo-anonymity, frank and brutal and not the sort of thing you'd want in people to find on a Google search on your name), and a troll reposted it on a blogging site using my real name and Googlebombed it so that it was one of the first things which turned up on a Google search for my name. It even managed to show up on the (then-new) Google News, which was at the time treating blogs as actual sources of useful information. I managed to get the blog site operator to remove the troll's account and all the posts, but said operator also thought I was making too big a deal about this because my name "was common knowledge anyway."

The same troll also proudly claimed that he was going to contact my department head and try to get me kicked out for "wasting grant money" or something similar. He also contacted all the local religious organizations and told them I was having a "crisis of faith" and wanted someone to come to my home and talk to me, so for a couple weeks I had to patiently explain to several proselytizers that no, I didn't order a bible, sorry, it was some jerk's idea of a funny prank. And until I moved away I still got constant brochures in the mail for "religious vacation retreats" and so on (apparently, Mormon-themed tourism is big business).

So yeah, I'm a bit sensitive about people using my real name on the Internet.

[inevitableguy]

Oh, I guess it's worth mentioning that because of my use of the non-name 'fluffy' online that is what a lot of folks call me in real life now anyway. Pretty much everyone did in Seattle, although only a few of them do in San Francisco, because San Francisco people take things much more seriously than Seattle people.

Yeah - as a matter of fact, so many Seattlites refer to you as Fluffy, that I didn't even know your real name until we received a gift from Amazon and had to puzzle out who the heck sent it to us! (And frankly, I've forgotten what it is again.)

QotD: I find myself somewhere in the middle - my real name's easy enough to find if you're looking for it, but I usually don't go out of my way to call attention to it, either. My username is just something I've been using since the last millenium, and I've never bothered to think of something new. People like it, and it's almost always available when I join a new forum.

[Niveous]

I think it's hilarious that this thread was started by Jon Eric. I can remember many conversations 5 years ago when Mr. Porobil wanted to protect his last name from the internet at all costs.

As for my last name, it has gotten around. No big deal.

[jack]

yes, my name is actually jack shite.

[fluffy]

Oh, and the irony of all this is that if you do Google my name, about half of the results are things from my career, and the other half is twinky stuff crapped online by a distant cousin who has the same name as me.

[Billy's Little Trip]

I don't care about anonymity. If I was someone important in the public eye and anything I said could be damaging to me, I'd care more. If someone wants to find me, they will.
The only reason I use Billy's Little Trip as my band name is because I had hoped that my band would be apart of our Song Fight entries, but they came here once or twice and said no thanks. So I did a solo thing. I have thought to change my band name here, but I'm now known here as BLT and I'm too lazy to make the transition. I may just change it to BLT.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Oh, and the irony of all this is that if you do Google my name, about half of the results are things from my career, and the other half is twinky stuff crapped online by a distant cousin who has the same name as me.

Ok, I'm game. Even though I typed fluffy, the first thing to come up was Fluffy in wikipedia. All of the choices made me chuckle, but none referred to you, I don't think. But this one was interesting, because it sound sexy.
The fluffy (fl) gene of Neurospora crassa is required for asexual sporulation and encodes an 88 kDa polypeptide containing a typical fungal Zn2Cys6 DNA-binding motif.