originally chose "cmraman" (for Camera Man) in 1988, after 4 years as a yearbook photographer in high school, plus hobby photography dating back to age 9.

as for the icb nickname "Phantom", that also came from yearbook - I was called The Phantom Photographer for always being in the right place at the right time.

pretty boring, eh? :)

Some other accounts i've had:

b8smotel@b (a pseudo-account originally created so I could cheat at Planets). Came from my then-favorite Hitchcock film, _Psycho_. Registration came from one of Laura's hall-mates at Crown.

qntmcat - Quantum Cat, aka Schroedinger's Pet. Created without the knowledge of one of my dorm-mates in 1992 (I helped her with online pre-enrollment and obtained her SSN that way.). Originally used by a friend of one of my housemates, then I took it over when I got kicked out of UCSC in 1993 and cmraman got starred.

After that, forum was network-enabled so I just used cmraman@deeptht (and occasionally @gorn when I couldn't dial in to deeptht) until I got back into UCSC. then I got cmraman back when I went to work at UCSC in 2000.

-Marc