Longhound

My friend Nik pointed out today that I got another TUAW mention (that's two in April!) for GoogleFill. Nice enough of the TUAW folks except they called me "Longhound" which is substantially different that "Loghound"

But you may wonder, gentle reader, what exactly is a Loghound, and how I come across this canine handle.

The answer (as is often the case) is quite boring.

Back in the darks ages of the internet I could get accounts and email addresses with things like, well, "John". In fact until 1998 I was known as "john@hp.com" (totally true!) but then something happened. "John" was harder and harder to find so I switched to "johnmcl" for things like hotmail, forum's, etc. which worked for a year or two but about 2000 that stopped working also and I was often given the choice of login or account names like "john_47" which didn't really suit me because I wasn't 47 and even if I was that would only be a temporary condition.

So one night I was logged in and trying to set up a account (I forget for what) and I started my usual list

"john" - Nope
"Johnmcl" - Nope
"john_mclaughlin" - Nope
"John_F_McLaughlin" - Nope
"ccrjohn" - Nope! (this was my email at college)

I was in a panic with the idea of forever being known as something like "john_47" and as I sat there I looked down and saw my keyboard which was made by Logitech and I thought "Log" and then I thought about a movie I had seen earlier that day and I thought "Hound Dog" -- Ah Ha! "Loghounddog" but my plan was foiled when the site complained about the length of the name so i shortened it to "loghound" and It's been with me ever since.