Just Plain Chips, redux

A long time ago (this May) I posted about the fact that I like a lot of plain foods. And this was kind of an explanation of the name of this site. Well, I didn't really explain where I came up with the name. The story behind that is a bit more involved...

A couple of years ago I was living with Brian in a very small apartment. It had one bedroom and I lived pretty much in the kitchen. We both had our computers up and networked. Brian and and his best friend Keith loved the game Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. A fun game to be sure, but the thing with Shogo is that it isn't that great of a game, even for when it was released. Shogo came out in 1998, when you compare it to games of today it doesn't even come close.

The fun thing about the game is that you fight while in giant robots. Who doesn't like giant robots? Plus, the whole game has an anime feel to it, which we all liked. Anyway, so it was 2002, Brian and Keith played their game from 1998 all the time. One day Brian was out and about and Keith was going online to play and thought I should join in. Let's get a couple things out in the open:

1. I like playing games.
2. I don't play games as much as I used to.
3. I never played games *that* much.
4. I never played many FPS games, my time was spent with RPGs (or Civilization and SimCity).
5. When I do play FPS games, it is in single player mode. It is easier to kill computer opponents while trying over and over, than it is to kill humans who have played the game tons more than me.

So I went online knowing that I would be fodder for anyone else playing and I'd probably end up with a negative score from accidentally killing myself more than getting off a lucky shot on someone else. No matter, anyone can play, no matter how bad. The only thing I needed was a cool online moniker.

Hmmmmm.

Hmmmmm.

Hmmmmm.

Nothing was coming to me. Keith had a cool name of some street (I believe) he saw in Europe, Turfdraagster. I don't remember Brian's name. All the "cool" (or should I say "1337") people had names. What was mine to be. I certainly wasn't going to go for a known character name from a book or game. That's too cheesy. I wasn't going to have "dragon" or "death" or any of a million other "hardcore" words in the name.

What was a man to do? I spent a ton of time online, but I didn't have an identity there. I wasn't a part of any community or something like that. I just surfed and lurked.

Wait! What had I eaten for a snack just that night? Something that most people wouldn't have. Something that says something almost unique about me? Something that would sound a little funny and maybe slightly clever if used as a name?

I had chips for a snack. Plain chips. No salsa, no cheese, nothing to dip in. They were Just Plain Chips. And that was my name.

So there you have it. I said I needed to cool online moniker to play. I guess that mission was never accomplished. But I had a unique name, and that works, too.