Two searches within a few weeks of each other - one for the difference between freezing rain and sleet, and the other for placenta stew (I had to know if such a thing were true!) and when both odd results turned up the Straight Dope, I knew I had found my home.
I ran across the original Straight Dope book in the Boulder bookstore in 1989. Bought it, and eventually bought all the rest. I’m not sure when I found the website. I remember finding the message board quite a while back (at least several years), but I have no idea what my username was or what long dormant e-mail account it was associated with. I’m not sure I made any posts. I happened upon the message board again a few months ago and signed up again.
Same here. I read all of Cecils coulms for like 2 years on here, then one day this February, I was bored so I clicked on the message boards. I read like 10 threads, got hooked, and have been hooked ever since.
I got here through a link on Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy website. I believe I was looking to debunk the Apollo moon landing “hoax” at the time, and he had a link to a discussion here. Never heard of Cecil or the Straight Dope before, and have never heard of either since in any context that wasn’t directly related to these boards.
My Dad had browsed AOL when we first got the Internet in 1997. He found The Straight Dope and showed it to me. I wasn’t interested in it, but I did keep this memory: My Dad read the site and wrote to Cecil and chided Cecil for being so arrogant in saying he knows everything. Cecil wrote back within days and scolded my Dad for being “clueless”, his words, about how it is all in fun. My Dad wrote back with an apology. I thought it was kind of cool that someone told off my Dad.
I kept the name “Straight Dope” in mind for later reference.
When I got my own AOL screename, I started poking around and suddenly remembered “Straight Dope.” I went to the AOL site and lurked there for a while, reading the columns and occasionally getting my feet wet in the message boards. I followed it to the normal Web where I signed up with the name JNoble (Remember the thread “Let’s Take it to a Million Posts!”? I started that thread under my old name. The thread has long since been deleted, but the memories live on.) I changed that lame name later on.
First, I started reading the column in the New York Press back in high school (circa 1989).
I lost touch w/ Cece for a while but, in college, I was in a bookstore with my Crazy Boyfriend Nate, and he picked the first collection off the shelf as something I’d “be into.” Reunited!
Later, after I graduated, I was surfing the web and wondered if I could catch up with the column online. It was then that I found the SDMB.
I found the SD while reading about the infamous '50 State Puzzle" that appeared on google questions a couple of years ago. Someone on Metafilter mentioned that some folks on the Straight Dope were puzzling it out too and so I clicked over.
Many Cecil columns and SD threads later, when I finally forced myself to get up from my computer, I knew my life would never be the same. Or something like that. 
(I never did find out the answer to that puzzle, either…)
I blame Alias for everything. But in this case, it really is her fault. She got me reading the books, she pointed out the website, she told me I had to read the LOTR “pants” thread. Now I post more than she does.
A friend mentioned the 1st Straight Dope book to me, shortly after it came out in 1984. I wish I could remember who told me, I would love to thank them.
I bought the book, was hooked, and waited for the next ones to come out.
Circa 1998 I became aware of the usenet Cecil Adams group, and read that regularly, without contributing. That led me to the newly-formed SD website here (just after being booted from AOL). I lurked for about a year and a month, before finally registering.
I believe I found the first of the *books * at Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore, around the time it came out. I don’t think that the column has been available in any periodical local to the Twin Cities (although I have a vague recollection that the City Pages or TCReader had it, but that may be a recollection of a conversation with someone who, like me, thought they should carry it…), so my Cecil fixes were in paperback format for years.
I got to the SDMB itself a bit later, mostly because of Dangerosa, who had gone from reading the column online (a habit in which I likewise indulge from time to time) to participating in the boards. I joined in order to post something, then lurked for years. Now I fear I have become active. I guess I’m trying to get my $4.95 worth. 
I used to watch the Straight Dope TV show on A&E. Several years later, when I finally got on the internet, I was bored and typed in www.straightdope.com on a whim. Read the columns for a few months, and finally got on the boards to post in a discussion about submarines that was in Threadspotting.
Did anyone else read this thread title as, “Who or What turned you on to The Pope?”
Like Siege and **Rufus Xavier ** I became a fan through the local alternative" weekly,D.C.'s the *City Paper * which carried Straight Dope as well as Life in Hell (I still look for Akbar and Jeff refs in the Simpsons - never seen it), Chuck Shepard’s News of the Weird and an unbelievable amount of pornographic ads and personals, mainly of the:
*MWM, 40 seeking S/MAF 19-29 for discrete fun *
variety . Don’t read the weekly anymore – I guess it was largely the Dope that made it “appointment reading” for me.
I found the Straight Dope on line circa 2000 and lurked a long time on the SDMB before I finally joined in in that crazy ugly September of 2001 – when I reached out in my life in a number of ways.
Someone mentioned it in a thread over at snopes. I haven’t been back since.
My son turned me on to the SDMB. It’s true, we learn a lot from our kids.
Like Gunslinger, my first exposure to The Dope was by watching the TV show on A&E. I hated it when the show was cancelled and looked for the companion books. (We now own the entire collection Soon afterward, my daughter found this message board and kept telling me how interesting it was. Eventually I tried it and got hooked!
hardcore (who unfortunately has inserted his head a ways too far up Star Wars: Galaxies’ ass to post anymore) is my dad. When I lived at home his browser was constantly stuck on this page, so when I’d use his computer, this was always up and sometimes I’d read it… eventually I figured out that there was really no better internet resource for answers-on-demand and smart-people-humor.
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I used to pick up a copy of the *Austin Chronicle * routinely on Thursdays on my way to work. The Chronicle carries The Straight Dope.
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One day, I noticed the WWW address on the article. I wound up punching it in, and discovering the Straight Dope website. I made a habit of dropping in periodically, and checking back articles and such.
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One day, I noticed the message board. I checked in, lurked a while.
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One day, while nosing around the message boards, I saw something that interested me, and I signed up and sounded off.
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Been here ever since, off and on.
Back in the early '80s, I read the column in Baltimore’s The City Paper, and loved it. Started collecting the books. The website has been our default homepage for about 6 years now. About 4 years ago, I started reading the Threadspotting threads. Lurked for quite awhile, but eventually, as the story seems to go, I needed more Dope. I needed better Dope. I needed my own personal Dope, and I registered. Now ya can’t shut me up!
It’s funny, I had AOL long ago but somehow never found the Dope while it was there.
I think I found the site through the snopes.com mailing list, which I used to be on long ago. I had found snopes while looking up whether aspartame was bad for people or not (the whole warm Diet Coke = poison thing).
I read a ton of articles when I got here, and still read them on the front page before coming to the board.