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Right now, I’m not putting anything major, but it’s been brought to my attention that people ask where my AIM screenname, The Magistrate 8, came from. Since the story is rather lengthy, I figured I would write a total explanation about where it came from and post it here.

Enjoy.

About “The Magistrate 8″
In the summer of 2001 I taught at a computer camp, called ACE(American Computer Experience*) at Towson university. The campers were ages 12-18, and between classes we would let them check out games to play on the computers in the lab. One of the very popular games was called Starcraft. Anyone who knows about games, knows the addicting affects of Starcraft.

In the lab, the campers would play against each other over the network, as well as play single player games. Obviously, the campers would want me to play against them on the network. When you play against other people you need a username. In the single player missions, if played as the Terran species, you are addressed as “Magistrate.” I thought this name was pretty cool, and since I had never played online games before I chose to play with “The_Magistrate”.

After camp ended, campers wanted to keep in touch with me, so I decided to make a new AIM screenname. I had been using “The_Magistrate” in online games and forums, and it seemed an obvious choice for a screenname. To my luck, “The Magistrate” was taken, but I appended my lucky number, 8, to it and signed up.

To this day, I still use variations of The_Magistrate in everything I do online. If you Google search for The_Magistrate you’ll find a lot of references to me.