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Journal Interrobang's Journal: Whut Th'Hell's An Interrobang? 34

Journal by Interrobang
I'm periodically asked (usually by ACs or trolls) what "an interrobang is, anyway." Basically, it's

?!

although more properly it's a newfangled punctuation mark invented in 1967 by (allegedly) the American Typers Association, and it's a fusion of the question mark and exclamation point (sort of makes a "D" shape with a dot under it).

I chose the word as my handle because an awful lot of things in life make me say "?!".

Interrobang Poll: What does your username mean, and where did it come from?
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Whut Th'Hell's An Interrobang? More

Whut Th'Hell's An Interrobang?

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  • My friend owns a domain (angui.sh), and we had been talking about skills we could put on a resume that more described what a sysadmin did.

    - christy@angui.sh -- Christy Gulley, Screwdriver Operator,

    - Wielder of SNMP, Dabbler of Perl, ksh Goddess, Sysadmin.

    I like the "Wielder of SNMP" and "Screwdriver Operator", myself. But kshgoddess is a good name, too, and shows that I'm not male.

  • I was going through a Beatles' stage, found this newfangled Slashdot site thing and figured I'd register for kicks. I wanted to be theWalrus, but it was taken (the bastard only ever posted two comments) so I ended up being aWalrus.

    Not particularly clever or significant. I'd rather be SpacemanSpiff (also taken, didn't even post comments) or something like that (that's from Calvin & Hobbes).

  • My Name (Score:2)

    by glh ( 14273 )
    Mine is real creative.. my initials :)

    I first started reading slashdot back in '98. I was an AC for a while, and finally wanted to get a UID for posting comments. I think I just rushed through the account process, thus the boring handle. I'm sure I tried a few other names but they were probably taken.
  • daoine is 'people' or 'folk' in gaelic...

    The fairies are the daoine sidhe, the commoners are the daoine maithe, etc...

    I just thought it looked cute.

  • Me (Score:1)

    by Em Emalb ( 452530 )
    I think you can figure it out.

    If not, well, I have some property for you all.

  • Light (Score:2)

    by Liora ( 565268 )
    Liora is Latin for light; lamp, not feather.
  • First syllable of my first name, last syllable of my last name. 'Tis a nickname given to me years ago by good friends. Also my preferred brand of fruit-flavored dairy product, but that has nothing to do with anything.
  • It's complicated. I can see how you might need to ask to understand it's origins.

    Or maybe not so much. :)
  • Dates back to the sixth grade.

    My body temperatute is lower than normal, so I don't get cold until its quite cold outside. When I was younger, I could go out in shorts and a tshirt and be fine until it hit about 20 degrees F.

    So, one day in the sixth grade, a friend of mine asked me, "What, did your mother feed you antifreeze when you were a baby?" And AntiFreeze stuck.

    So, in conclusion, my nick has nothing to do with hating things crashing, although I most certainly do.

    • My body temperature is also lower than normal (but not by much), and I'm always cold. Wonder why we're so different?

      I never had a really cool nickname when I was growing up; most people hated me too much, and I ain't a-gonna tell you what they used to call me!
      • My body temperature is _much_ lower than normal. It hovers around 96.8 (not 98.6) degrees F. My ability to stand the cold has gotten worse over time though.

        On the other hand, heat is _always_ a problem.

        What's even weirder though, is that stupid experiment where you put one hand in ice water and the other in hot water. I can stand the ice water _much_ longer than the hot water. Weird.

        Anywho, I know one other person with a low body temperature and the ability to withstand cold. It could just be a coincidence, I wouldn't normally equate low body temperature with that ability, but it's the only thing which makes sense. Other than me being a freak, that is.

        • I like the cold...much more than the heat. I can't tolerate heat at all.

          Conveniently enough, I also have a low body temp (hovers around 97.0)

          It doesn't seem to make a difference once it goes into the low teens. That's cold for me -- I need ski-type equipment to stay out. That's also when the low blood pressure / poor circulation takes over, 'cause my fingers and toes freeze. :(

        • I hate to do this to you, but I'm lazy and don't have the energy to go find a converter. My body temperature is just about always 36 C (normal is 37 C). I've never tried that experiment, but I do have a fairly high tolerance for cold water (I went wading in the Atlantic Ocean near Fire Island on 31 Dec.), and hot water that other people seem to be able to put their hands in just fine scalds me. On the other hand, my apartment was having heating problems, and the interior temp. went down to an illegal 17 C, and I was perpetually freezing. Once it came back up to 21 C or so, I was fine. I also hate being cold. (It's -10C outside as we speak, and argh!)
    • When I was younger, I could go out in shorts and a tshirt and be fine until it hit about 20 degrees F.

      When I was at University, a bunch of us were sitting around at 2AM or so, and someone decided that they really needed an ice cream. Concensus was reached, and we decided to walk to the all night garage in town (about a mile and a half away) to get some ice creams. This was in the middle of winter, and it was snowing reasonably hard. One of the group was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and while the rest of us were wrapped up in warm coats, he seemed completely fine. He just kept insisting that he was a fashion trend setter -- "Just you wait", he said, "in six months, everyone will be wearing this" :-)

      As for my nickname, it's a contraction of "Tethys". Tethys is the wife of Oceanus in Greek mythology. The name has been reused for the name of the ocean formed when the supercontinent Pangaea split in two, and the name of one of the moons of Saturn, which is where I picked it up from. I just liked the name, so started using it as my nickname on conf (an IRC-like chat program in the pre-IRC days). One of my friends was inviting me to lunch, and in a fit of extreme laziness, he couldn't be bothered to type all 6 characters of my name, and stopped after the first three. Others picked up on it, and I've been Tet ever since. Because I liked the name so much, I legally changed my name to "Tethys" in 1989. 14 years on, my Mum has finally accepted that it's not just a phase I'm going through, and I'm unlikely to revert back to my previous name :-) I tend to use "Tethys" for formal communications, and "Tet" for everyday use.

  • Aliens (Score:2)

    by Bishop ( 4500 )
    My nick comes from the android in Aliens [imdb.com]. I have used it ever since 1986. For a long time it was my callsign in WingCommander.

    professor multigeek [slashdot.org] asked me "why Bishop?" [slashdot.org] Part of the reason is because Bishop was cool, and Lance Henriksen [imdb.com] did an interesting job of makeing the android oddly human. But I think the biggest reason was because I needed a login name on a new BBS and had just finished watching the movie. I have used it ever since.

    In the past it was easy to create new accounts with my choice of nick. It was not very common. Now it is much harder. Unless I get onto a board early my nick is taken. I am somewhat envious of those of you with (nearly) unique, and cool nicks. It is hard to come up with a cool and unique nick when you are one of an estimated 600 million users.
  • I picked it when I was a solaris administrator as sort of a play on words. I really like Sun things and run some sparcs at home, thus one could infer that Sun Mircosystems is the center of my universe. You've got mac pundits here on /. and obviously linux pundits, and MS pundits, and "just use whatever works" pundits, and I was poking fun at being the only Sun pundit. When really I think I fall into the "whatever works best" mentality as I realize that certain tools are best for certain jobs and there is no real all around tool for all things.

    Even though late night TV might say otherwise...

  • Partially obvious - Milo Bloom from the now-defunct Bloom County comic strip, and AB for the province I live in (Alberta).

    Milo

  • I needed a name, my usual was taken, so I took a loose (very loose) latin translation of the ring tone that I had on my cell. That and the name seemed to fit well with me. So bellus quies it was (and is).
  • But you did ask...
    Pythor was a spur of the momment choice for a MUD character name back in 1995. Been using it ever since. I ended up adding the LH when it started becoming common for Pythor to already be taken. LH are my initials.
    Once had someone on IRC assume that Pythor meant I was a fan of Python, the programming language. I had heard of it at the time, but never used it. That conversation spurred an interest, though, and I now can say I am a fan of Python. But the nick came first.
  • But a way of life.

    I'm surly, I'm a boy... 'nuff said. =D
  • but my nick is simply taken from my initials. First started using it when I was doing network admin for a local council and I didn't like their naming scheme (first name + first two characters of last name) so when I was creating my own account I just opted for a quick TLA. Not that my username would have been overly long, but I just didn't like the look of AmosBa...

  • The nick "imroy" came about a number of years ago when I was in university. In my senior years in High School I had slowly gotten into Star Trek, starting with repeats of TOS. Being a geek I like the Vulcans, all logical and supressing their emotions. I had found some Vulcan resources on the web, among them a small Vulcan dictionary. Now, at the time I was doing a lot of walking, mostly walking home from University. I had also been trying to come up with a good nick for use online. So I looked up "walk" in the vulcan dictionary (it wasn't very big) and I found "imroy". It was simple and looked good. I started using it from then on. It's quite unique as far as I can tell. And since I still haven't gotten my drivers license or a car, I'm doing even more walking now :P

  • Alt.Callahans (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MonTemplar ( 174120 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @08:15AM (#5286663) Homepage Journal
    My first port of call on Usenet, posting-wise, circe October 1991.

    Since everyone else there had a handle, I thought I should have one too.

    'MonTemplar' just popped into my head.

    Probably inspired by the film `Zardoz`, but with Sean Connery picking up `The Saint` instead of `The Wizard Of Oz`... :)
  • Well for awhile I followed the TV show Lexx - I enjoyed the main villain for one of the seasons: Mantrid.

    -Grand Bio-Vizier for His Shadow
    -Fused with the insect essence into a biomechanical device
    -Used von-neuman devices to change the universe into floating arms
    -Destroyed the light universe (was tricked into moving too much mass to the centre of the universe)
    -Got squashed by Xev
    - ended up roaming the corridors of the Planet Fire

    Heh I also liked the baddy 'Prince' but that is hardly a good user name!
    • Oh yeah and I went around two servers (Innoruuk briefly, Saryrn for much longer) as Mantrid Dronemaker - though by that time the character reflected my character and I was too nice to be Mantrid from the series :) I think someone else has Mantrid now, haven't played in years. Good 'ol Ring of Shadows!
  • i have some geek tendencies, but i am not an expert in all things geeky. i am a linux user, not a unix hacker. i only did 3 years of my comp sci major in college (because i decided two majors were enough) so while i understand programming, i lack mature programming skill. there is also an enjoyable amount of ambiguity. it could mean not quite geek, sub-optimal, not quite optimum. it could mean less than a geek, like subhuman. it could be that i have the underlying geek essence, that which is beneath / supporting all that is geek, like subconscious or subliminal.

    i remember when i finally decided to get a login name i wanted something that was the same accross a few different sites. subgeek was still rare enough back then that i could use it without worrying that maybe it would be taken. but not too long after that i started encountering others using the name. it still irritates me that it isn't as unique as i had thought. i think my slashdot journal is only number 3 for subgeek in a google search. it is even behind something titled SUBGEEK.NET which has a geocites URL and isn't even a working website. yeah, definately not very unique. had to go with halbergeek when i finally started using aim.

    i am so damn long-winded. and i didn't even say that much. i know me, so this is no longer surprising.
  • Named myself after the planet in Nightfall by I Asimov and R. Silverberg. Kalgash is a planet with 7 suns and nevers knows the dark of night. Really interesting novel.
  • It all starts with clerks- you know the scene I'm talking about... 'Do you want make fuck with me, BERZERKER!'

    At this time, some friend in undergrad were also creating Super-hero names for themselves- One was Killor Destruktor (had to have that cheesy spelling), Lazear Wulf, Totale Enihilhaytor, etc.

    Given my penchant for large robots, I opted for Mekka Berzerkor. Who just so happens to be my alter ego giant blue fist (Approx the size of the continent of Africa) studded with nuclear war heads that smashes through planets.

    Given my inherent laziness, berzerkor is FAR to much to spell at once- so it was shortened to MekkaB.
  • Well, on Usenet I started getting annoyied by how far back people would leave context, Since I was using TIN (threaded Internet News) as a client, I made a handy dandy 'snip' file that would replace the text that was annoying me, with a phrase that went something like:

    Which later became my handle, except I got bored of it later. So I attempted to translate it into an acceptable form of romaji, that would mean delete key. So kesuki is supposed to mean delete key. However, like the babelfish some of the meaning is lost in translation, but it does mean delete key, but I've had people ask me wierd questions about what they thought it meant.
  • neat. I'd assumed you must have made it up. happy birthday.

    me - I first used shorespirit as my e-mail alias. it made me think scary-but-potentially-helpful beings that complicate river crossings and haunt beaches. I often find myself on boundaries between cultures and trades, plus I love actual shores, so it fit.

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