Subject: How did you get your nick?
Date: Fri Aug 7 16:21:36 2015
User: Katya
Message:asking as a question deserving its own discussion (it's a subtopic on TNMountainman's post of August 7th).
I picked mine which is a diminutive for the Russian name for Katherine simply because I was looking for a one word girl's name - no numbers or anything weird. This was the first one I could think of that wasn't already taken. If you try to pick a "usual" first name you'll probably find they are already taken - years ago by someone who never played or played one game after that. Denny, did you guys do that? At one point I played as NinthRock as a mild protest to Pluto's demotion to nonplanetary status.
My daughter created a nick a few years ago -something like NinetyDegreesSouth, I forget exactly what - to celebrate playing a game of FreeCell at the South Pole.
Date: Fri Aug 7 16:38:50 2015
User: ix
Message:mine is short for ixtapolapoquetl. i had been rob_sco previously but was watching the simpsons one day with the subtitles on, and mr burns had just rewarded bart (for a blood transfusion) with a big olmec head. when i saw the word onscreen i just had to have it as my new nick. i used it for a while but switched to the more portable version.
Date: Fri Aug 7 16:42:23 2015
User: TNmountainman
Message:The nick "ixtapolapoquetl" was one of the first things that fascinated me when I first came to this site. I thought there must be some cool people here, for someone to have that C.A. nick. Little did I know........
(And it's too bad that previous thread is apparently "lost".)
Date: Fri Aug 7 16:51:06 2015
User: calicokid
Message:We're going to need a new server if Firenze shows up to answer this one LOL.
Date: Fri Aug 7 17:16:17 2015
User: dcn21
Message:Great story, ix. My nick is my initials, the number is just one of my many attempts to have a perfect score at 8x4. I got all the way to dcn99 before I gave up. I use dcn21 exclusively now as an attempt at being one of the best overall streakers (lot of work to do still) because I own the 4x9 variant with that nick and I don't think I'll ever improve on that record. I also have Theaddictformerlyknownasdcn, which I used for awhile, it's origins are pretty obvious. I also have snickne which was what a dear friend of mine who passed away 4 years ago called the six of diamonds back in the day, I also like the sound of the word and I still call the six of diamonds the snickne today.
Date: Fri Aug 7 18:15:50 2015
User: Katya
Message:Glad I asked the question - interesting results so far. Keep it up peopl. Thank you.
Date: Fri Aug 7 20:25:11 2015
User: hotnurse
Message:For those of you have have met me, you know it's obvious that my nick isn't because of my looks but rather for the fact that before finding this site I played MS Freecell and I thought I was pretty good (hot) and I was proudly a nurse. Also, one of my specialities back in the day was working with an oncologist in the o.r. and it was part of my job to fetch the lead wagon which transported the radioactive material for the procedure. With that particular nursie-job you were considered "hot" while transporting the wagon if it contained the iridium or cesium. So, hotnurse it is and the only one I have ever used.
Date: Fri Aug 7 20:44:05 2015
User: bugbiten
Message:Realized my old nick was also used being used at another site identifying me and could not think of a new one for several days. Then one evening rushing home from picking bunches of wild mushrooms, just in time to play my favorite "zany". Still not having chosen a new nick, caused a panic decision based on my actual situation.
Since I forgot to bring any insect repellent I was totally covered with insect bites and scratching furiously all over while trying to think of a new nick. Could wait no longer as the game already started, and nothing else came to mind as my present condition overwhelmed my thinking.
Date: Fri Aug 7 22:05:44 2015
User: FilthyMcNasty
Message:I thought you had to use your real name. No?
Date: Fri Aug 7 23:57:33 2015
User: joeygray
Message:If I was graying 18.5 years ago when I picked this name, imagine how gray I muss be by now. .e shudders. Of course if you have my Facebook page you already have survived that visual assault.
Date: Sat Aug 8 08:29:25 2015
User: bugbiten
Message:Filthy...
just wish I had your ( & many others here) sense of humor...
Date: Sat Aug 8 09:40:45 2015
User: lambchop
Message:mine was a logical thing since my name is lamb. My friends and others called me lambchop after the puppet with Shari Lewis
Date: Sat Aug 8 14:33:08 2015
User: powerlifter
Message:Nothing real imaginative. Used to be a world class heavy weight power lifter back in the day. Now I spend most of my time at my desk power lifting my never ending mug of coffee.
Date: Sat Aug 8 16:18:07 2015
User: retiredk9ed
Message:This is a fun discussion. I'm a retired police officer and handled K-9's for 13 years. First name is Ed. Next.
Date: Sat Aug 8 18:24:43 2015
User: LightRider
Message:Spur of the moment thing. I work for a spiritual organization where the focus is, not surprisingly, Light (capital “L” for the divine source of said Light). Family name is Rider (actually related to Sir Henry Rider Haggard - “King Solomon’s Mines”). Put the two elements together. Not very imaginative, I know… but there it is. I’ve been using freecell for years to keep my neurons happy and slow down the effects of Parkinson’s Disease. And it’s working! Woo hoo! I thought about either What’sShakin or HokeyPokey as an appropriate nickname, but decided I’ve already got enough reminders as it is.
Date: Sat Aug 8 19:10:06 2015
User: sking
Message:Mine is the most simple reason - my name is Sandy and no matter how I entered it Freecell rejected as in use. I was enjoying a Stephen King novel at the time and though - Why not?
Date: Sat Aug 8 20:39:56 2015
User: Punster
Message:I forgot to mention in the previous posting, ....I think it's a good idea to find out the origins of the many different "nicks", thanks to hotnurse, Katya & TN to start the ball rolling again !!
Date: Sat Aug 8 21:33:13 2015
User: hotnurse
Message:Pun, do you mean "origins" as in who the original nick was to have a spin-off...like all of the Ed's, e.g.?
Date: Sat Aug 8 21:37:33 2015
User: TNmountainman
Message:That's it, Punster. Thanks. Or at least one of them. I actually remember more names being 'splained, so maybe there's yet another one still undiscovered.
Date: Sat Aug 8 21:54:58 2015
User: firenzes_mother
Message:His father named the boy. After about six years, Dick got tired of calling him "hey you" and told me to give him a real name.
I asked him what he thought was a good one.
Dick said "Well, you know I have always liked the fir around your enze."
And, the rest is history.
Date: Sat Aug 8 21:55:17 2015
User: Punster
Message:Hottie, whomever wants to divulge their inspirations for their nicks, whether original or spinoffs....as far as I'm concerned, but others can weigh in.
Tn, yes, I think there were a few discussions on nicks, but I found that one just by searching on "nick". :-)
Date: Sat Aug 8 21:58:43 2015
User: TNmountainman
Message:I did that, too, but I think I used "nicks", which is apparently how I missed that one. I also did a fairly thorough google search (which turned up many *other* interesting threads, but not what I was looking for, obviously).
Date: Sun Aug 9 20:53:12 2015
User: watersmooth_silver
Message:My nick comes from my love of poet ee cummings (he didn't capitalize his name). Here's the poem I lifted the nick from, but I use an underscore instead of a hyphen. He often scattered words around the page, ignoring "the rules" (like punctuation and spaces between words). Some of his poems have titles but not this one.
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
Date: Sun Aug 9 22:31:22 2015
User: Katya
Message:Thanks, silver or do you prefer watersmooth? I often see you ahead of me in the tournaments (sigh, when will Denny and they return?) and always wondered where you got your nick.
Date: Mon Aug 10 10:48:36 2015
User: Halifax
Message:I used Halifax only to represent my home town--knowing that there are Halifax's in the US it didn't give away the fact I am in Nova Scotia, Canada!
Date: Mon Aug 10 14:02:51 2015
User: Katya
Message:Hi, Halifax
Being ignorant of the fact that there are Halifax's in my own country, I always assumed you were in Canada. Were you in northwestern canada a few years ago? I seem to remember some discussion about a possible Cellstock up there.
Date: Mon Aug 10 14:03:22 2015
User: watersmooth_silver
Message:Katya, you can call me silver or watersmooth or smoothie or watersmooth_silver! I, too, miss the tourneys. I'm definitely going through withdrawals!
Date: Mon Aug 10 14:44:04 2015
User: hotnurse
Message:watersmooth, very interesting! For some strange reason I thought it had something to do with your profession, as in watersmooth-silver being a code for liquid mercury. Maybe I had a dream about that....
Anyway, I love this thread and hope more chime in.
Now, since I have time, I will have to google ee cummings.
Date: Mon Aug 10 15:24:00 2015
User: hotnurse
Message:ok, not bad stuff. I found these words hit my spot:
"then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis"
Date: Mon Aug 10 15:28:14 2015
User: watersmooth_silver
Message:Hotnurse, "Since Feeling is First" is one of his most famous poems. Love it.
Date: Mon Aug 10 23:07:01 2015
User: sprucegoose
Message:I don't know why I chose that, not particularly interested in Hughes or his plane. Just what popped into mind long, long ago when I first signed up.
My favorite plane is actually the F4U-1A Corsair first flown by marine squadrons from Guadalcanal in WWII - I've sat face-to-face with six of these pilots. My father-in-law was the first one, and after I read an official "Battle Action Report" of the day he shot down three zeros, decided I needed to find the pilots who escorted his crippled plane towards home (had to ditch the plane, but he survived) to tell them thank you.
A couple years ago, I spent a week at Quantico, and the National Archives in College Park, Md digging through now-declassified official records of this squadron.
Date: Tue Aug 11 10:26:04 2015
User: watersmooth_silver
Message:Cool story about your father-in-law. Nice that you wanted to track down the pilots to thank them, too!
I'm not sure how long freecell.net has been around--I signed up in 2001, I think. Wonder who has the "oldest nick" on the site?
Date: Tue Aug 11 15:03:40 2015
User: Katya
Message:This thread is turning out to be amazing. So many great stories. Thank you all and thanks to TNMountainman and others on his post from August 7th for initiating this idea which obviously deserved a life of its own (actually a rebirth since there are old threads out there).
Date: Tue Aug 11 16:25:29 2015
User: hotnurse
Message:So Spruce, by chance, did we meet in Waynesboro a few yrs. ago?
Date: Tue Aug 11 17:07:00 2015
User: kangaroo
Message:Denny's Netcell ... "draining workplace productivity since 1996" ... seems to have been around for that long. He would have had the first "nick".
I joined in June 2002 and used "wasteofspace" for a few months before settling on kangaroo because I wanted something Australian.
Date: Tue Aug 11 22:22:17 2015
User: Punster
Message:I'm assuming that the nick "Denny" is the oldest, eh ? But that's just a guess. :-)
Date: Tue Aug 11 23:35:44 2015
User: Dr.Dirt
Message:Have PhD in horticulture. Acquired nick of Dr. Dirt along time ago. It just stuck.
Date: Fri Aug 14 17:54:32 2015
User: free@last
Message:Mine is an obvious (I think) double entendre. A shortened version of "FreeCell, at last!" and quote from MLK.
I had a proof-of-concept FreeCell bot that played under the nick "Dr.SethBrundle" (see link for a demo). Seth Brundle is the main character from the movie The Fly. I chose this nick because I had to help the bot get started and so somehow we were like a hybrid form of player. Also, I wanted a Dr. name so as not to screw up the tournament standings. It made a lot more sense back when I picked it. :)
Link: FreeCell autobot!
Date: Sat Aug 29 13:03:54 2015
User: dcn21
Message:I'm still wondering where CubicSprock got his nick from.
Date: Sun Oct 11 00:54:25 2015
User: dcn21
Message:I have to keep bringing this thread back till someone can explain what a CubicSprock is.
Date: Sun Oct 11 00:54:25 2015
User: dcn21
Message:I have to keep bringing this thread back till someone can explain what a CubicSprock is.
Date: Sun Oct 11 08:11:32 2015
User: svengali25
Message:
Date: Tue Oct 20 12:26:30 2015
User: lambchop
Message:Therre is an English rock band called Toad the Wet Sprocket??
Date: Wed Oct 21 16:40:39 2015
User: gumbybros
Message:When we were little, my brother and I went to a birthday party. They played a game where you had to pick up a paper bag with your mouth, your hands behind your back, and without bending your knees. Each round they cut a couple inches off the bag. We were the only ones that could go all the way to the floor so we were called the gumby brothers. I shortened it by using the abbreviation for brothers. Now I'm lucky if I can get within 2 feet of the floor doing that.
Date: Thu Oct 22 02:44:45 2015
User: damgud
Message:i think i 'splained mine on the old thread, but i'll repeat it here...i used to play on a "trivia" league...at a local pub (you may have seen it, usually found at sports bars!). a few months into it, the changed their sign in rules...and limited your "nick" to 6 letters. i was sitting trying to think of one, and spotted a keychain hubby had bought for me years ago, which read, "damn i'm good!" ...and damgud was born. am usually taken for male, for some reason.....not just here, but on the trivia league as well.
.shrug
Date: Thu Oct 22 16:36:51 2015
User: Katya
Message:Man,this thread has legs. So many interesting anecdotes. Keep 'em coming,people.
Date: Mon Oct 26 04:32:03 2015
User: Tasmanianmom
Message:My first nick was "mrs.bob", ...I think.
I took my name from the love of my life "mr.bob".
he got his name from my daughter who didn't know how to refer to him in name. Bob was Robert Bruce +++. My children"s dad, my first husband was called "Dad". when he died . Our family , like others after the grim reaper visits, went into a tailspin , filled with grief.
Bob literally walked into my life , flowers in hand 9 months later. We were smitten! The kids adored him as well. Bob had a rhy sense of humor.He proposed five days later, after I propositioned him. He said , "NO!" He wanted to marry me. We married 2 months later, among all the NAY sayers, and the kids said , "What do we call him?"
The children said he is not 'dad'," Mr. Nelson ' is too formal , so our daughter came up with "mr.bob". It stuck. ....Later in loving time mr.bob was asked by the children at different times if they could call mr.bob dad or daddy. He became their new hub in their circle of life, as he was in mine.
" A name is what you call yourself ", is what mr.bob said is the legal definition of a name.
mr.bob played free cell.net for many years, dealing with cancer,radiation chemotherapy , and many surgeries. "Freecell. net" is what kept him sane.
After five years of stage 4 cancer, our doctor asked why he was still alive. Bob pointed to me, and said my wife and free cell .
With warmest respect , Tasmainianmom
Date: Mon Oct 26 04:52:06 2015
User: malr
Message:I had just started using the Dvorak keyboard (I've now reverted back to Qwerty with a view to changing job in the next few months). I was looking for a nick with m and a at the beginning, since they are the only two letters Dvorak shares with Qwerty. I am a big Firefly fan, and wanted a short nick - so Malr is short for Malcolm Reynolds.
Not nearly as good a story as some above, but it's my answer.
Helen
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