ell, it was the fall of 86, right before the Thanksgiving break. A friend of mine (Tarik Ghebish, acct blkeagl@b) convinced me I should get a b acct. So I went to sign up for one. My first choice was "wraith", because I liked the idea of nazgul/right-wraiths and things like that. I thought it'd be a neat account name. But the form wanted me to pick a second choice.

I had _no_ idea what I wanted my second choice to be. So, off the top of my head, I thought "hm, I just finished reading this Larry Niven story, and I really liked it, and I really liked those kzinti things ... and I sometimes play Star Fleet Battles, and the kzin are sorta cool there too. I'll just put down kzin ... what's the odds that someone else is going to have picked wraith?"

And, ofcourse, wraith was already taken.

But kzin seemed to stick to me.

There was a short time, after I had transfered to Ga Tech, when ForumNet was first starting (Apr and May of 89), that I used a different nickname on fnet/icb. My first couple sessions I was "RamblinSlug" (a contraction of "Ramblin Wrek" (one of Ga Tech's two mascots) and "Banana Slug"). But one time I used fnet from my b account instead of my gatech account, and was lazy, so I just showed up as kzin ... and I just stuck with that again.

I also dropped out of Ga Tech for 2 years, the last 9 months of which (Jan to Sept of 93) I didn't have net access. I decided to be "Oberon" for a few days when I came back, but everyone was calling me kzin anyway, so I went back to kzin.