PLATE I- The Knight

ell, I've had a lot of logins although "angel" is probably the best known. Here's the history on some of 'em:

1) detctiv: first ucscb login. This back in the days when you were limited to seven characters. Had it for two or three years. Chose it because I thought logins should be like a secret ID or alternative personality, and at the time, I was really into spying on other ucscb users via ps -a, checking for "secret" readable directories, etc. Jon Luini wrote a program that allowed users to customize their masks, which I made extensive use of, so that if someone was to check my tasks, reading mail would be shown as "Interviewing sources", reading forum would be "Gathering evidence", etc.

2) angel: Nothing too exciting here. My second ucscb login, later transferred to resort.com and abattoir.com. It's the letters of my first name rearranged, and I thought it was a fun choice because I'm not exactly angelic or full of grace. I didn't tell anyone it was me for a couple weeks and had a bit of fun with the old "pretend I'm a new geek gurl and watch the geek guys come running" trick. I remember Steve Lerner was on the hook for a couple of days, but he'd just been burned by the same trick so I couldn't reel him in.

3) reala: My current ISP account. I wanted something short and easy to type, and angel was already taken. "Reala" is the name of a villain from Sega's "Nights Into Dreams" for the now-defunct Saturn. It's a damn fine game, and I figured I could use for website ID's since it's a nonsense word. Hah! I got it on eBay, but "reala" was already taken on almost every site I've tried since. Maybe it means "huge tits" in Spanish or something.

4) champagne: icb/fnet username, although I'm never really on anymore so someone else may have grabbed it. Angel was already taken, and I wanted something that wouldn't be grabbed by someone else since I go through extended periods of time without using icb and the old system used to clear our user registration info after a month or two of no log-in. I was also sick of the typical choices for icb nicks: either the person's normal login name or some obvious geek culture reference. Champagne is a good conversation starter with people I don't know, and (like angel) it took those who knew me aback since I'm not exactly a high-culture maven. Plus, it's a good nick for occasionally playing "I'm a geek gurl, wanna flirt" with icb nebbishes.