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[#1]

It’s been a while since I bought my last video game console.  In fact, I generally hold myself to the rule that I’m not allowed to buy one until I have at least ten good reasons to own it.  It’s a wallet-friendly rule, and one that has served me well since the days of the SNES.  This past weekend though I decided to go against that rule – and perhaps my own better judgment – by purchasing a new one.

The entire setup process took about 25 minutes: 1-2 to unpack the console, another 2-3 to make the necessary connections, and the remaining 20 or so to untangle the rat’s nest of cables behind my TV.  Once I powered up the console though I ran into an unexpected problem: I had no idea what I wanted to my user name to be.

I sat there staring at the screen (and other random objects around the room) for at least ten minutes before I realized what I was doing.  Shouldn’t it be easier to pick out a screen name?  Isn’t there some nickname I’ve earned that I wouldn’t mind sharing with “teh internets?”  It couldn’t be THAT difficult to type a random combination of letter and numbers…could it?

I tried the names of seven or eight fictional characters I like.  None of them were available.  I tried a couple of them using alternate spellings.  No dice.  I thought about tacking on a few additional letters/numbers here and there, but decided against it – it just didn’t sit right with me.  One would think that for the number of characters J.R.R. Tolkien created at least a handful of their names would be available…

…

On second thought, it would be silly to assume that they wouldn’t be taken.

…

In the end I went with my old stand-by: I went to my desk, picked up the first non-fiction book I could find, and opened it to a random page.  The first word on that page that stood out was destined to be my user name.  And as it turns out, the word that caught my attention was the same unpronounceable mess that I had used to register for another online service a number of years ago.

I sat down again, punched in the name…and waited…

A few short seconds later the message appeared: “Your account has been created!”

Thankfully I didn’t wind up going through my entire bookshelf, but I can’t help but wonder if other gamers have the same kind of difficulty picking out their user names.

How do you pick out your user names?  Does your user name hold a special significance?

[#2]

For my gamer tag/s I use my old nickname when I was a kid.  Luckly I got my consoles early so no one else had the name I wanted. 

BTW PS3 rocks!

[#3]

When I used to go to Halo Parties, I would usually be the only girl. All the guys had macho sounding names for their gamer tags, and I really only played sparingly, so I set up a gamer profile on my friend's XBox with the name "Jane". Any time I play Halo or any other game where I have to creat a name to be able to play, I'm always Jane.

But for the most part, my sreen name is one that I've been called since I was much much younger, that my family used to call me as a kid.

[#4]

I usually think way too long about my user name too.  I mean it's the first thing other users see and pretty much determines how cool you are.  I usually stick to the middle ground in that respect.  By that I mean I don't go too far to either end of the lame/overconfident spectrum.  I'm not going to make a user name like SpongeBobby... that's really just like say "Here, please call me a child/sissy."   I'm also not going to make a username: I_WinEveryThing and get talked down to every time I lose.  I would go with something safe but still cool like RocketLawnChair.... that's actually pretty good, I should use that for something.