Michael P. O'Connor

My mind started to think about all the nicknames I have had in the past, for no real good reason. And since 95 I have only had 4, these would be either in real life (3 of them would count) and in virtual life (2 again would count there). They are: Crazy Mike; this one was in high school and was used in real life; Crazy Mike was a very short lived nick name I had, at first I did not like it but later I started to like it a bit; this one died when I graduated high school. Mpost4 that was in collage and only existed in the virtual world, this one did not fully die till the end of last year when I stopped reading Slashdot. This one came when I needed a name for /. but could not think of anything good, so I used my Pitt login for it, then I started to use it in more and more places online. I started to use it on my Linux box as a log in, I used it on many internet based BB’s so I count it as a semi-valid nickname because some people know me by that name. Mpop, first don’t ask to many questions on this one just believe me, I picked this one up in 2000 my last year at Pitt, this one has been used both in the virtual world and the real world (said m-pop) This one is still in use today, in fact 2 of my email address have it in it mpop at cs dot cmu dot edu and mpop at mikeoconnor dot net. And one I used for a few years in the Battle Tech league here in Pittsburgh was bug. I have one other nickname, but I don’t real count it as a nick name since it is only used for legal reasons, and when dealling with others at the times that it is needed, they also know my real name and for the most part will call me by my real name is KB3HCG and that is on the ham radio bands.

Well today was fun, I needed to print a poster from Visio. A 36″ by 56″ one. The plotter I would normally use was down, has been down for some time now. So I call up Kinko’s and ask if they can do it, they said yes, I asked if they could print from a Visio file, they said yes, I asked how much, they say $5. So I hope a bus down to Kinko’s to get it printed out. I hand them my Jump Drive with the file, and tell the guy at the desk the name of the file. I get told it would be done at 3:45. Ok cool, I got 45 minutes to kill, and I have not had my lunch for the day. I drop by the McDonalds next door for some food. Come back 45 minutes later and get told that they could not open the file. Ok so I ask do they have Visio (again) and they said no this time, this is the same store I called earlier. Next they suggest that they can send the file to a central place for it to be converted for an extra $10!! Ok, I will not spend 2x the price it would be to print it up just to convert it so I leave. So I go back to the office, and get the rest of the stuff done that I needed to do for the day. Get home get a few more things done that I needed to get done, had some friends over for dinner, then get back out the door and to Kinko’s by 10pm. This time I have the jump drive and my laptop, with Visio on it. So while there I find a format that they can print to that I can export to. We finally hit on one. I finally get it printed (at a cost of $6.50, but it was larger then I thought it would be, so I can not blame them there) and get the print out back to my office around midnight. What a day.