The origin of your username/display name

[ejano]

Great biography! Your graduate student's frustration struck a chord....as a student of literature I've studied several different works that featured alchemy. .

 

What a fun thread to resurrect!

 

I chose "Alchemist" (originally for another forum - a knitting one I think) because I'm an environmental chemist. That really means I'm not a "real" chemist; people who study the environmental chemistry of water rarely have their PhDs in chemistry. (Environmental chemists with PhDs in Chemistry almost always do atmospheric chemistry; water is far too messy). What this means is that I have no degrees whatsoever in chemistry. My PhD, for example, was in a department of civil engineering (just don't ever ask me anything about concrete!), and my PhD advisor had his own PhD in chemical oceanography (but got incredibly seasick, which is how he ended up in a civil engineering department). I guess that makes me a charlatan.

 

It's meant that I'm a bit "betwixt and between" - somewhere in between being a scientist and being an engineer. I get disparaged by both groups. So there was some appeal in labeling myself as an "alchemist": someone who's not a real chemist but who has pretensions of such.

 

I also selected this screen name to remind myself to retain a sense of humility. One of my first students (who had an undergraduate degree in chemistry) was struggling to write a balanced chemical reaction pertaining to the system she'd been studying for her master's. I was trying to encourage her to establish intellectual "ownership", with little success, and had asked her to write down the reaction in question. I tried to tell her that the equation didn't seem balanced. This didn't help. I then told her that carbon on one side looked like it was being converted to chlorine on the other. She was still struggling. I, sadly, lost patience (she'd been studying this very reaction for more than a year), and told her that to me it looked more like alchemy than like chemistry. "How should I know," she snapped, "I never studied alchemy in college".

 

Ouch.

 

I try harder now to be a gentler mentor. Reminding myself that I'm merely an "alchemist" helps.

 

ETA: this is also why my avatar has a "buckeyball" in his possession. I know most of you think it's a "Holey Roller", but to me it's a molecule of what's also known as "buckminsterfullerene", very popular in the nanotechnology crowd. It's his favorite toy, but when people come to my office and my pup presents them with one, they invariably crack up. It's a nerd joke, goes along with the "Periodic Table" placemat beneath his water bowl.

[juliepoudrier]

I'm just struggling to understand how someone working on a master's and having studied a reaction for more than a year couldn't manage to balance an equation. That's pretty elementary chemistry, seriously (I have a BS in the subject, as well as biology, but have been writing, mainly science-related, and editing for years). I just got done editing some reports by R&D chemists, and I told the person I did the work for that I although I made sure the chemical equations balanced, I left it up to the author to make sure his math euations were correct!

 

Okay, back to the name thing....

 

J.

[rushdoggie]

I have two hobby interests: music (specifically progressive rock type music) and dogs. My favorite band is Rush and I am active on both Rush boards and dog boards, so everywhere I go I am The Rushdoggie. Some people actually call me Rushdoggie or RD in person! (My name is Beth).

 

It works on multiple level because my dog sport of choice is (was, before all of my dogs were broken) agility and my Papillon was pretty fast too.

[Dixie_Girl]

I thought those signs were just suggestions. I seriously misread signs all the time. My head seems to turn them into funnier things than they really are, usually. I can't blame it on age, so I tend to chalk it up to the ridiculous amount of brain cells I probably killed between 18 and 22.

 

A few years ago, when I was still driving truck, I was making a run down I-95 in FL. It was around 3:a.m. and I only had another 30 min. to my destination. I go by this sign on the side of the road about 1/2 mile from the next off ramp. It was a simple rectangle green sign with the word STADIUM on it, nothing else. I drove for the next 10 min wondering who St. Adium was!!! It wasn't until I kept repeating it real fast that it finally dawned on me what the word really was! I laughed about it and now we refer to St. Adium as the patron Saint of all football fields!

[kristinavb]

On most other boards i'm arooroomom (houseful of Huskies here) but I didn't think that was actually appropriate for a BC forum. My identity is my name for the most part.

[Ooky]

ETA: this is also why my avatar has a "buckeyball" in his possession. I know most of you think it's a "Holey Roller", but to me it's a molecule of what's also known as "buckminsterfullerene", very popular in the nanotechnology crowd. It's his favorite toy, but when people come to my office and my pup presents them with one, they invariably crack up. It's a nerd joke, goes along with the "Periodic Table" placemat beneath his water bowl.

 

Ha ha!! I always have a moment of vertigo when people call these holey rollers on the boards. Odin's has been a buckeyball in our house since the moment I brought it home.

 

"Ooky" is the name of my manx/tabby kitty I had in college and through grad school. She was such a sweet, crazy soul. This was the cat that often would not want pets for days but always slept on my hip - after I was already asleep. She was alternately the most loving and the most crazy cat I've ever known.

 

However, she wasn't very smart. Her older brother, a chronically fat black "mutt" cat named Mesto (short for Mephistopheles), was smarter in my estimation than 99% of dogs. He had this amazing talent for getting anyone to fall in LOVE with him - a total slut. And he was also totally my heart cat. When Ooky got the cancer that killed her, he would help her up the stairs by rushing over to provide her with a big meaty shoulder to lean on. This is after acting for her entire life like she was too stupid/boring to take seriously, which was all a big act. She loved him like nothing else, and worshiped him her entire life.

 

Anyway, I always TRY to be "Mesto" on message boards, etc., but it is always taken! So I choose Ooky, which never is. Story of both their lives, really. I've been Ooky since I was on my pet rat boards in the late 90's, and if you see an Ooky on the internet, it's probably me.

[Malvie]

I'm originally from Malvern, Arkansas.

 

When the internets first reared its ugly head, I started posting on a Razorbacks sports board. We all chose place names + "Hog", so I was MalvernHog (as opposed to BatesvilleHog, ConwayHog, RussellvilleHog, etc).

 

Several of us, having posted together on the internet, decided to meet for a tailgate party before a game. This led eventually to the formation of the WebHogs Razorback Club, which I served as Founding Vice President, then President. We hosted tailgate parties for 200+ people, all of whom met on the internet.

 

It was funny, because you'd go up to someone and say, "Hi, I'm Joe Blow" and they'd have that blank look on their face, like, "OMG, I'm supposed to know this person and I don't." I'd then say, "MalvernHog" and they'd say, "OH, HI! I'm whoeverhog!"

 

So some of them couldn't remember my real name, but they could remember MalvernHog. But MalvernHog is a mouthful and is sort of more formal?

 

Malvie. I've got many good friends now who call me Malvie.

 

The young ones call me "Uncle Malvie".

 

 

Lucy, Ethel, and Bessie just call me "Dad".

 

 

Update on Bessie: her heartworm treatment is going great! She had some rather amazing bouts with diarrhea the first little bit, but the vet gave me some stuff that nipped it, and now she seems like her old self. Only 3 more weeks to go and I can let her out in the back yard without a leash.

[NorthfieldNick]

I'm SO glad I'm not the only nerd who thinks Holey Rollers are buckyballs! I need to ask my dad if he's added one to his teaching tool kit- along with things like slinkies

 

Northfield, my farm name, was also the name of a group I used to sing with in Maine. The name comes from a Shape Note tune from the Sacred Harp song book. It's a lovely fugue with simple, but beautiful, harmonies, that always sounded great no matter how off everyone was or how many new people were there. We were a very informal group, singing old folk tunes of various traditions more for the joy of singing than to actually get the music "right." That group was my escape & refuge when I was writing my thesis, and it became my farm name.

 

 

Nick was my only working dog at that time. He's still number one, and I'll never have another dog like him.

 

I've just been "Ben" on every other board I've joined (mostly horse boards). I figured I'd try something more original this time around

[alligande]

Mine is basically simple but comes with a longer back story.

 

Alligande was the name of the boat that my mother and boyfriend went cruising on, they left the Channel Islands in 1979, and although not together anymore both made their primary homes on this side of the Atlantic in the West Indies.

 

Alligande was named after a rock that if you went the wrong way coming out of St Peter Port Harbour in Guernsey was the first you hit. There are a lot of spicky rocks around those islands and many have names.

 

I would never have ended up living in the states or had many of the adventures I have been on if they had not departed on that adventure. How many 18 year olds get to take their break between school and university working on yachts in the Carribean , so the name is in honor of the island I grew up on but could never move back to, due to restrictive local housing laws and the boat that started my adventures. And as an added benefit the name is never taken!

 

My real name is Karen

[urge to herd]

I'm a sort of wanna-be science geek, (a poser, to those of you who have a couple years history on the BC Boards,) and I think of those dog toys as BOTH buckyballs and holey rollers. Having been reared Baptist in the South, Holy Roller brings up a particular set of memories.

 

I'm pretty sure I already replied to this thread, and thanks to whoever resurrected it. urge to herd could not be more obvious. Never actually tried my hand at it, but I might one of these days.

 

Ruth

[Alchemist]

I'm just struggling to understand how someone working on a master's and having studied a reaction for more than a year couldn't manage to balance an equation. That's pretty elementary chemistry, seriously (I have a BS in the subject, as well as biology, but have been writing, mainly science-related, and editing for years). I just got done editing some reports by R&D chemists, and I told the person I did the work for that I although I made sure the chemical equations balanced, I left it up to the author to make sure his math euations were correct!

 

Okay, back to the name thing....

 

J.

 

Ah, Julie, so you'd have agreed that there was an element of "justifiable impatience" on my part with this particular student! Let's just say that she sparked some new policies that were subsequently implemented in terms of graduate admissions.

 

We do get some seriously awesome PhD students in our program. By the time they graduate, both the chemistry and the math are at a very high level. My students take a lot of graduate courses in chemistry and it always irritates the faculty there no end that our students are constantly blowing the curve for the rest of the class. (Our undergraduate students are also outstanding).

 

But when I first started, the same could not be said of many of our MS students.

 

Back to dogs...

[WildFlower]

My first dog's name is Daisy. She is a very soft dog - and a suck up. For some reason I started to call her Daisy Doodle. At any rate, a friend of mine (that's how we met a few years ago - through dogs) has a dog that is also a softie and she referred to him as a Doodle before we met. Our dogs are like carbon copies of one another and found out that we both call our dogs "doodles". So, now in our small world, a "doodle" is a soft dog. We love our "doodlers".

[Laurae]

Glad to hear Bessie is doing well, Malvie!

 

My user name couldn't be more boring--my name is Laura and my last name begins with an e, but many of you know my alter ego on the internetz is tazimodo. Tazimodo was the nickname given to then-ten-week-old Taz by my then-four-year-old nephew after he saw the movie Quasimodo. Tazimodo is the name of my blog and my user name on a couple of other forums (because laurae is always taken). Unfortunately that is also the user name of someone else out there, so if anyone comes across another tazimodo it may or may not be me. If it's related to sheepdogs, it's probably me. If it's related to Ogre or Drupal, probably that other dude.

 

I did once meet up with a guy from a snowboard forum to ride a local mountain, and while I thought it was just a nice chance to ride with a friend, he apparently thought it was a date and was disappointed to find I wasn't his Japanese fantasy girl!

 

ETA: I guess there wasn't a Quasimodo Disney movie, but I can't imagine my preschool nephew had read The Hunchback of Notre Dame...not sure how he knew about Quasimodo!

[Lewie'sMom]

My user name is obvious. I suck at thinking up names, so much so, that I really struggled with a name for Lewie when I got him. I almost named him "Diesel", which seemed appropriate since I drive a Jetta TDI and he was kind of a bulldozer as a puppy. I think I considered "Dozer" also. But, neither one of those felt right.

 

So, out of desperation, I pullled from my family tree and named Lewie after my maternal great-great grandfather, Lewis Hansen. I don't know if Granddad would have been pleased or insulted to have a dog named after him, but it works for me. My late golden who preceeded Lewie, was named Sam. The name Sam was a variation of my great-great-great grandmother's married name.

 

 

To Lewis Moon:

When you joined the board, the first time I saw a post from you, I remember thinking, "Huh? I don't remember posting THAT!" At a glance, Lewis Moon and Lewie'sMom look quite similar. I got a pretty good chuckle from it.

[SecretBC]

I was hesitant to register as "Secret" because I always worry that moderators will think I'm a troll who won't give out my name. lol So I added the BC, mostly because SecretBC is also my blog address.

 

For years and years and years I have always gone by SarMoniet on all of the various internet forums. This was the name of my horse that I had from a teenager on. He passed away a couple of years ago and it didn't seem right to keep using his name when I logged on to new boards -- So then I started to go by KarissaKS. But this being a dog board devoted to Border Collies, I figured I would base my name on my BC.

[Pippin's person]

I did once meet up with a guy from a snowboard forum to ride a local mountain, and while I thought it was just a nice chance to ride with a friend, he apparently thought it was a date and was disappointed to find I wasn't his Japanese fantasy girl!

 

Now, really, can you blame him? I'd have been disappointed too (actually, I guess I was )

 

I started on this board as funwithpip when we got Pippin as a puppy. Little did I know what was to come. I changed to Pippin's person once we had several more BCs and I was having fun with all of them, so it seemed a little too exclusionary. There are multiple meanings, most of them ironic, that go along with being Pippin's person. Mostly, though, I've always figured it was a good way to keep myself humble....

[Tommy Coyote]

Tommy was the name that popped into my head the minute I saw a picture of my puppy. And it really fits her.

 

I call her Tommy Twoshoes.

 

Coyote is after the American Indian character Coyote who was a jokster, prankster in Indian lore. It also helps that Tommy grew up to look a lot like a white coyote - little but with long legs and funny prick ears and a long, narrow nose. And she does that hoppty thing that coyotes do when they are after mice in a field.

[ejano]

Hm.....can you change? ejano is just something I thought I could remember if I had to sign on again!

Now, really, can you blame him? I'd have been disappointed too (actually, I guess I was )

 

I started on this board as funwithpip when we got Pippin as a puppy. Little did I know what was to come. I changed to Pippin's person once we had several more BCs and I was having fun with all of them, so it seemed a little too exclusionary. There are multiple meanings, most of them ironic, that go along with being Pippin's person. Mostly, though, I've always figured it was a good way to keep myself humble....

[Mark Billadeau]

I bet noooo one can figure mine out....

Bet mine is harder to figure out.

 

The other user id is our farm name.

 

I've not worked with Buckyballs but I have worked with MWNTs, a tubular cousin of buckyballs.

Nanotubes and Buckyballs

 

I think I too would have lost my patience with your grad student's in ability to balance the carbon on both sides of the equation.

[bcnewe2]

I used to read Laurae's as Lar Ray.

See no one is boring in my mind's eye!

[Pippin's person]

I used to read Laurae's as Lar Ray.

See no one is boring in my mind's eye!

 

Me, too!

 

@ejano, you can change your display name, but I don't actually remember how I did it and couldn't find it in the control panel. Maybe you can't anymore--you could PM Eileen and ask her, I suppose.

[muttlycrew]

Mine is not very imaginative. My pack has always consisted of mostly mutts and I always refer to them as my crew. It has nothing to do with Mötley Crüe (people always assume I'm a big fan)

[Laurae]

Now, really, can you blame him? I'd have been disappointed too (actually, I guess I was )

 

:D

 

I started on this board as funwithpip when we got Pippin as a puppy. Little did I know what was to come. I changed to Pippin's person once we had several more BCs and I was having fun with all of them, so it seemed a little too exclusionary. There are multiple meanings, most of them ironic, that go along with being Pippin's person. Mostly, though, I've always figured it was a good way to keep myself humble....

 

I noticed yesterday that someone had signed up with the user name Pippin People. Are you starting a club?

[ejano]

Might just do that....I feel like I've got a new lease on life these days -- now, to think of something creative....

 

Me, too!

 

@ejano, you can change your display name, but I don't actually remember how I did it and couldn't find it in the control panel. Maybe you can't anymore--you could PM Eileen and ask her, I suppose.

[Root Beer]

Having studied Latin in High School, I always hear Laurae in my mind as Laur - aye (the "aye" pronounced like "eye").

 

Agricola, Agricolae

Nauta, Nautae

Laura, Laurae . . .

 

Yeah. Kind of odd!!