n the summer after eighth grade I was first exposed to the world of the BBS. I had a friend who introduced me to pirate bulletin board systems, where no one wanted to use their real name. After seeing everyone else with their 'cool' and 'tough' handles, I decided to come up with something a bit more silly, and as far from implying that I knew a lot about computers as possible. So, manipulating my last name a little bit, I came up with zeke.

After four years of high school in which I spent much of my online time on BBSes, most of my non-high school friends (and that would be most of them) knew me as zeke. I had moved to non-pirate sites, but kept the nickname, and that's the only name by which some people knew me. When I got to Santa Cruz it was no tough decision to keep using the same login. Different jobs have given me different email addresses (dziring, daziring, ziring) but none of them were as compelling as zeke. And the world already has plenty of Davids anyhow.