
arrived at UCSC in the
fall of 1989 with my Mac Plus and 1200 baud modem fresh from crawling
BBS-s over the summer ready to get one of those 'free computing accounts'
I'd read about in the college literature. (They had *banks* of modems...
ooooh)
Eventually I find my way into the bowels of the CATS building. Thinking
I'd
pick some cool name I start filling in the form and realize the name is
too long. That end of the hallway might be too close to Elf Land because
I was at wits end trying to compose an interesting name in the allotted
letters. So 'bagera' was born to be pronounced 'bagheera'. (Think 'Jungle
Book').
I
started out on fnet mostly. I think I went by 'blue eyes' or something.
It was a huge time sink but it was fun to sign on and have people greet
you, get invited to private rooms, run your own room or just lurk. I got
pretty bored with it after a couple months.
Working in the computer labs got me rubbing shoulder with the geek crowd.
I think my first event was a latke party in Kresge grad student housing.
(It might have been thrown by 'falcon' and 'dove'.) After that it was
all down hill. Late night doughnut runs, drunken debauchery at the Resort,
married women, women with boyfriends, Hell's Geeks and movie nights. The
only permanent damage is that I prefer 'vi' over 'emacs'.
Rarely someone might ask what my name was, but mostly it just 'was' and
I stuck with it because it was different even though it wasn't as cool
as 'lettuce', 'tripstr' or 'amity'.
I'm your 'Out of Body Buddy'!
|