Namestaking

My organization plans for this past weekend (to wit, conquering the holdout provinces of my dining room) did not survive contact with the enemy (to wit, my sinus and ear infection). Instead, I spent four days in bed with a fever hallucinating about objects embedded deep within my ear. In my subconcious' defense, it really did feel like someone had jammed a pair of disecting scissors down there. What little organization I accomplished was done theoretically, in the thrice-daily lucid hour between the time the Tylenol kicked in and the time it expired. During one such lull in my fever I contemplated the disorganization of my Internet identities, which is fortunate because now I can bore you with my musings.

Twenty-something years ago, I was universally known online by my initials because the 8-bit BBSs I frequented at 300 bps accepted three-character usernames. Conveniently, nobody else in the local geek subculture shared my initials so there was no danger of confusion. Many people chose pseudonyms (or whatever you call three characters' worth of cheap anonymity) such as 666 or YYZ and probably thought they were being clever; I suppose the same folks, or their teenage offspring, can be found today amongst the 1337. Except for a brief sophomoric period during which I pretended I didn't want to get in shit but really just wanted to be cool, I've always eschewed anonymity. Granted, I don't go so far as to plaster my e-mail addresses and phone numbers all over my blogs, but that's more to avoid the hassle of spam than to conceal my identity, which any determined person equipped with Google could figure out within a couple of minutes.

As the online world evolved around me, my online name grew in length and diversity. Sometimes, this was completely beyond my control (coughCompuservecough). Other times, I kept it as simple as I could. With my first ISP, I chose first initial last name. When said ISP was swallowed, I became first initial middle initial last name, because someone had inconsiderately given their child the same first initial last name as me and said child had subsequently subscribed to the swallowing ISP before me and laid claim to the shorter username.

After this happened a couple of times with various services I became aware of a couple of things that were troublesome to my organized mind, and frankly a little troublesome to my ego as well. First, it was quite easy to confuse yours truly with an alarming number of other people who shared some combination of my initials, given names, and surname. Second, I myself was known by several different names. By 1997 I had no less than four active and a dozen inactive e-mail addresses (I've lost count since then), not to mention scores of instant messaging names, forum names, shell accounts, etc. The problem grows monthly.

Around 1998 I did two things. First, I thought up a service that Microsoft (in parallel -- I'm not rich) implemented as Passport. If anybody were dumb enough to trust Microsoft, Passport would be great, but they're not, so it isn't. Second, I started namestaking.

I'm sure someone has already coined the neologism "namestaking" but I dreamt it up without hearing it elsewhere and I just Googled for it and didn't find much, so I'll take credit for it thankyouverymuchOxfordEnglishDictionaryguy. Namestaking, as you've probably guessed, is the practice of grabbing your prefered username on every Internet service you can find before the other yous out there beat you to it. The most prevalent example is domain names -- and, yes, I have firstnamelastname.com as well as mycompanyname.com and my-company-name-variant.com and so on. I also have first.last (my favourite) on Google, Skype, and a few other noteworthy places. Elsewhere, I am less fortunate, but I have hope. It bothers me, though. If it weren't for those pesky morals, I'd just hack.

Sadly, a somewhat media-prevalent imbecile shares my first and last names, and even within my hometown there's someone who does the same (interestingly, he's a medical doctor, and the local pharmacy staff mistake me for him often; I suspect I could get some Percocet without having to fake a torn ligament). So, despite my diligence, I confusingly remain an indiscernable one amongst many. Aside from trademarking my offspring's names (don't laugh; it's coming) I really don't know what else I can do. I suppose one day Larry Ellison will descend angelically from Redwood Shores and christen us all with numbers. Until then, I remain -- in this one facet of my life -- disorganized.