Why Joe_Elway?

I’ve heard this question some many times.  Where does it come from and why not use Aidan_Finn instead?

It goes back to when I was in college.  We first got Internet access when I was in 3rd year in ‘94.  Our main computing platform was VAX VMS on green screens.  That year we got access to UNIX on those same green screens for C/C++ development and access to some new fangled thing called “The Interweb” or “World Wide Net” or something.  I remember we got a few classes on things like FTP, Telnet, Gopher, etc.  There was all this stuff about CERN, and …, and …, and to be honest it was boring.  Then the lecturer announced we had access to this stuff now.

So rather unexcitedly, over the next few weeks we signed on and started accessing Internet services from command prompt only green screens.  Graphics came in the form of solid green blocks or ASCII “art”.  We tried out the different tools that were scribbled down in our class notes; this lecturer pretty much ran exams every month and was very detail oriented.  2 weeks of classes on the Internet meant that we needed to know about this stuff.

One of the guys told us of something he was logging into.  He was using Telnet to log into a Bulletin Board System (BBS) called ISCABBS in the USA.  He said lots of people were on it; in fact there were 1000 people logging in simultaneously.  That was HUGE back then.  There was a huge user database too.  They were all “chatting” on this pre-forum platform about subjects of every kind.  Word of it spread like wildfire in the college and pretty much half the people in the labs were using it.

Because the user database was so huge it was a challenge to find a username.  We’d been advised not to use our real names.  After lots of failed attempts to find a username I sat back and thought.  Joe Montana was my favourite player in the NFL.  Not far behind was John Elway.  How about merging those?  That was probably original.  So Joe_Elway was born.

After college, Joe kinda disappeared.  My online presence for a long time was E-Mail.  Time goes by and things change.  I found myself looking for a username to sign onto forums either to chat, get help or give help.  I needed a username and Joe_Elway was back.  I ended up starting this blog on Microsoft Spaces.  I was known by a few people out there as Joe_Elway so I stuck with the moniker for the blog.  Eventually I relented and signed onto Twitter and @joe_elway appeared.

And that’s the story.