MetaFilter

What's the deal with your nickname? How did you get it? If your nickname is self-explanatory, then tell everyone when you first started using the internet, and what was the first thing that made you say "wow, this isn't just a place for freaks after all?" Was it a website? Was it an email from a long-lost friend? Go on, spill it.

I like books. My nickname is Slavic but I am not. If you want to pronounce it, the first syllable is like book, not duck; the second syllable is like Rick, not rich; accent on the first syllable.

I started using the internet in the early 1990's when my employer put a unix workstation (a Sun SPARC) on my desktop. I first heard about Metafilter on Slashdot, where I once had a five-digit userid, but I don't have my password anymore and the last time I searched for my username there I couldn't find anything.