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Forum Monikers/Handles/Names

Started by Doug Rose, February 08, 2010, 12:48:55 PM

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Ed D

I decided to go with my real first name, and first letter of my last name - for privacy on a public board.

Actually, we were so poor when I was a kid, my folks couldn't afford a last name.  All we could afford was an initial.  It wasn't until about twenty years later that we could finally afford to get a last name, and a used one at that...  :D

But seriously, speaking of names, does anyone recall this character...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoYsfbq3vMc

Ed

Adam

I suppose I never properly introduced myself as well.

I'm Dave Haber.  I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and my family moved to the suburbs on Long Island, to the little incorporated village of Massapequa Park, when I was a baby.

I was always interested in phones, in high school, I conned a telephone installer into giving me a 2500 off his truck telling him it was for a school project.  Later in high school, my best friend acquired a 1A2 key system with some rotary Call Directors from an abandoned building, which we went on to document and install with no manuals, simply from observing its previous installation.  Out of high school in the early seventies, I got a job with my first telephone interconnect company, installing business key systems.  I gradually worked up to installing small PBXs, and then went to field repair of all these systems.  I moved to Los Angeles in 1979 and continued working with telephone interconnect companies.  Over the years my career has transitioned from phones into computers, and I am now a Web Designer and Web Programmer.

I only started collecting a few years ago. In September, 2009, I discovered this web site:

https://www.ckts.info/

For many, many years, I had been lusting after having a PBX, like a Panasonic or a small Mitel in my home, but I never could justify the expense or figure out where to physically put it.  But finding out about Asterisk, I was hooked!  A real PBX FOR FREE, using an old computer I already had in the back of the closet!  By the end of that month, I was connected with the C*NET.  By the beginning of December, 2009, I took the plunge all the way and disconnected my POTS line from Pacific Bell (or whatever the heck they call themselves these days), having added the capability of getting incoming and outgoing calls to the PSTN using a SIP DID service.  Seeing as how the Asterisk PBX was now "my phone company", I felt it needed a name.  So I named it after my old hometown, and Massapequa Telephone was born.

http://www.massapequatelephone.com/

Hence, as you've probably figured out by now, my handle is masstel.  My goal in setting up my PBX, besides being able to connect to the C*NET, was also so that I could use phones that I remember from the period when I was "in the biz".  I now have a nice collection of Western Electric phones from the 60's and 70's which I actually use, taking them occasionally "out of stock" and switching around the different sets I have installed around my place.
Adam Forrest
Los Angeles Telephone - A proud part of the global C*Net System
C*Net 1-383-4820

deedubya3800

I can't remember exactly when I started using deedubya3800. It's been my eBay username for many years now, but I don't really remember if that was the first place I used it or if I used it somewhere else first.

D. W. Adams is my name, so it's not entirely improper to call me deedubya. That's how I pronounce it, anyway! :D And the 3800 part comes from my Buick fandom. They managed to take the worst idea ever conceived and relentlessly refined it into one of the finest powerplants ever built. It only took them 33 years to get all the bugs worked out, but once they did, it was one of GM's top engines for the next 21!

dsk

dsk
Just my initial letters. My name: Dag Ståle Karlsen generates  lot of questions.
That strange letter å (Å) is a Scandinavian letter for a sound quit near the o in HOW.
How shall it be pronounced etc.  so just call me dsk. May be not as important, just as easy as JFK ;D

dsk

GG



In this day & age where identity theft is rampant, and private snoophauses aggregate data to sell to others for unpleasant uses against the will of the people whose data are being collected, it's legit for people to go by userIDs that have little or nothing to do with their names.  Everything we say here is publicly readable by anyone regardless of whether they are signed in or not.  Including by spammers, snoophauses, identity thieves, and others.

One thing that strikes me as (sorry but there is no way to say this diplomatically) really really dangerous, is when people go posting their birth dates casually.  "Hey I just found a phone with my birth date on it!..."   Hey, someone you don't know just found your credit card, bank account, etc. etc.!

Ask ANYONE involved in communications/information security about that and they'll chew you out in language that makes mine seem mild.   That is a guaranteed way to get digitally darwinized.   Legal name + date of birth = consider yourself lucky if you don't get pwned.     

Formal suggestion to whoever owns & operates this board:  Set up a "vetted members only" section for that stuff, that is locked behind vetted userID + password, and has a warning at the top saying "danger, you might still get pwned if you post your birth date here!"  Move all the "birthday" topics to that section, and enable people to delete their birthday-revealing comments from other topics they may have posted them in.  Seriously.   Sooner or later someone here is going to get their identity stolen if these steps aren't taken. 

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but again, ask anyone in information security and you'll hear the same warnings or something very close. 


Doug Rose

#50
Quote from: GG on March 07, 2011, 04:15:04 AM


In this day & age where identity theft is rampant, and private snoophauses aggregate data to sell to others for unpleasant uses against the will of the people whose data are being collected, it's legit for people to go by userIDs that have little or nothing to do with their names.  Everything we say here is publicly readable by anyone regardless of whether they are signed in or not.  Including by spammers, snoophauses, identity thieves, and others.

One thing that strikes me as (sorry but there is no way to say this diplomatically) really really dangerous, is when people go posting their birth dates casually.  "Hey I just found a phone with my birth date on it!..."   Hey, someone you don't know just found your credit card, bank account, etc. etc.!

Ask ANYONE involved in communications/information security about that and they'll chew you out in language that makes mine seem mild.   That is a guaranteed way to get digitally darwinized.   Legal name + date of birth = consider yourself lucky if you don't get pwned.    

Formal suggestion to whoever owns & operates this board:  Set up a "vetted members only" section for that stuff, that is locked behind vetted userID + password, and has a warning at the top saying "danger, you might still get pwned if you post your birth date here!"  Move all the "birthday" topics to that section, and enable people to delete their birthday-revealing comments from other topics they may have posted them in.  Seriously.   Sooner or later someone here is going to get their identity stolen if these steps aren't taken.  

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but again, ask anyone in information security and you'll hear the same warnings or something very close.  


So with all the information you give us and not your name? Cool. I will make myself as generic as possible. My daughters Wii picture is a dead ringer, although it need a little padding around the middle....Kidphone
Kidphone

Russ Kirk

This is going to be simple.  My user name is my name.  I guess you already figured that out.   I could not think of a phone related moniker while registering. 

My background is over 3 decades in telecom.  I have always been interested in old phones ever since some"fell" off my installers truck years ago. In the last 10 years my interest in telephone collecting has increased at the same time my astronomy interest waned.   Now my problem is the amount of space my phones require. There is always a struggle in in my house between my wife's Basset Hound collection (over 2000 items) and my phones.  I think the bassets are winning due to sheer numbers.

I did make some headway at this weekend's phone show,  picked up seven more phones!

GG make some points about protection,  but as long I don't give out my SS# I feel rather safe.  I do have other personal finance protections in place to allow my freedom to share my name.

My avatar is my Basset Hound Howie; one of our 3 bassets.  He is wearing my switchboard headset. He was NOT too cooperative and it took many shots to get the photo. 
- Russ Kirk
ATCA & TCI

Dennis Markham

Russ, interesting photo.  Can you post it full size so we can see it better?

Russ Kirk

Quote from: Dennis Markham on March 07, 2011, 03:12:51 PM
Russ, interesting photo.  Can you post it full size so we can see it better?
Here he is sitting on my lap.
- Russ Kirk
ATCA & TCI

Dennis Markham


Greg G.

#55
Quote from: Doug Rose on February 08, 2010, 12:48:55 PM
All...I have been a member of the forum for almost two months and enjoy it immensely. I have been on the ATCA and TCI lists and this is head and tails above them. BUT....I have one thing that bothers me. I really don't feel like I know you. Most everyone signs their posts with their moniker or doesn't sign at all.  Is there a reason for it?  When I started, I signed off as"kidphone" but began to feel foolish and stopped. I'm Doug, not kidphone. Kidphone was my eBay handle for a long time. Even at Flea Markets, people who knew me by sight, called me the "phoneguy" or "phonedude" etc, never kidphone. After the relationship with them developed, I was just Doug. Hasn't the relationship developed? This is is no way a criticism and please do not take it as such. Just wondering why, if your name is Alexander, why you'd sign your name phoneinventor...Just my two cents....Doug

"Handles" have been part of online community forums since the days of XT's, 2400 baud modems, and Bulletin Boards, probably longer, but that was the level of technology when I first got online.  It's just carried over.  I use this handle for most boards.  It has an aquatic theme to it because I used to be an avid scuba diver.

Actual names are more personal and some aren't comfortable giving them out right at first. 

Greg
The idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane.
- Mike Row
e

bushman

Well mine is pretty simple. My name is Chris Bush. Hence the Bushman handle. I was in the automotive repair trade for many years, and for the last ten years, I am part of the crew that maintains and operate the drawbridge between Portland and Vancouver.

Bushman

Tribune

Great thread, glad its been revived.

Well, my real name is Mark Furze - pronounced Firs. Not Furtsa or Fursay. Some people think that's of German origin, if you know German you'll get a giggle out of it (ask me if you want to know!). But its actually Westcountry English, another name for a yellow-flowered spiky bush of the pea family that's commonly called gorse. As for my handle, well, I was signing up to the forum here and scanned around the room for inspiration and set eyes on a bright red British Telecom touch tone 9802AR Tribune phone on my desk. Ironic to name my self after a touch tone unit on a rotary phone forum I know, but it caries a certain Roman dignity. Perhaps I should have used my old school nick-name "Fuzz"

In real life I'm a university professor, teaching and researching geomorphology - the science of landscapes - how rivers and glaciers etc act to sculpt the land and how we can use landforms and sediments to reconstruct the Earth's history. Spend most of my summers up north on fieldwork doing research in the Canadian Arctic. Originally I'm from Cornwall in the UK, but moved to Canada about 7 years ago where I developed my two interests of 4x4 exploration and phone collecting, to go along with my love for the outdoors. Only been phone collecting for about 2 years with only 30 or so units. Mainly interested in Northern Electric Uniphones, black plastic 1950s-1980s desk sets from around the world, and hazardous area phones. Guess I should post some pics of the collection when I get round to it!

Cheers
Mark
Mark Furze - TCI, ATCA

To miss-quote "Bones" McCoy . . .
                     "darn it Jim - I'm a doctor, not a telephone engineer!"

AE_Collector

#58
Quote from: Tribune on March 08, 2011, 10:49:02 PM
Well, my real name is Mark Furze - pronounced Firs. Not Furtsa or Fursay.

Well I find it hard to comprehend having ones last name mis-pronounced (and/or mis-spelled).  ;) :o ??? ::)

Terry Biddlecombe

Tribune

Must be a Canadian thing - like to call me Furzé - darned French influence, lol
Mark Furze - TCI, ATCA

To miss-quote "Bones" McCoy . . .
                     "darn it Jim - I'm a doctor, not a telephone engineer!"