In other words did you join this board due to Cecil Adams’ column and books?
Yes. Back when I joined in '99, Cecil’s column was a strange and wondrous thing, and not available where I lived. I had seen a couple of the books and wanted more. Plus, this whole Internet thing seemed pretty cool!
Hub gave me Cecil’s first book for a Christmas gift. The rest was history. I lurked for a couple of years before I registered, though.
A friend mentioned the book and I got a copy back in the early 90s. Found this place in 1999.
I had never heard of the Straight Dope before I found this board. Maybe I should’ve lurked a couple of years…
Yes. I had an interest in discussing and sometimes debunking urban legends. That led me to a forum at about.com, where links to Cecil’s columns could be found from time to time.
alt.fan.cecil-adams
Found his column in the Austin Chronicle in college and got hooked. Moved back to Dallas and found it online.
I came here because my friend told me about it. I’d seen the column before though.
I was a regular reader of the column and had all the books.
I just checked my ‘join’ date - 12/31/99. I guess I followed you over here, kunilou. I have NO IDEA why I wasn’t doing something a little more exciting on New Year’s Eve 1999, but I’m glad I’ve been a part of the SDMB all this time, for sure.
Stumbled across the online version of the comics via Bored.com in early 2000, give or take a few months, but didn’t look at the message board for a long time because I figured that (like most message boards) it’d be stupid, filled with idiots and their ungrammatical opinions. Eventually figured out this wasn’t so. Hung around here ever since.
Cecil.
I recieved the first Straight Dope book as a Xmas gift from a teacher in middle school. I was absolutely mesmerized… and it was years until I found the next book because the copy I had listed book #2 as ‘more Straight Dope’, which of course wasn’t correct, so it took forever until I found it. By accident in a used book store! 
I absolutely fell in love with the SD, and indeed it helped cement my desire to be an educator (yeah, Cecil had/has that much influence on me).
Knew about the SDMB but didn’t give it much thought until I got a smartphone and could browse threads on a regular basis. So here I am.
Still love Cecil’s work. Want a new book! Why no new books in over a decade? 
Sorta…I got here from the columns, but not in the newspaper. The article about if it was possible to die from picking your nose was on the front page of AOL one day so I clicked on it, from there I read a few more and eventually stumbled on to the BB set up for us to discuss the articles (as well as anything else) on. Eventually we migrated here.
I’ve been reading the SD column for looong time but then I couldn’t always get my hands on the Reader. Then I forgotten about it until I stumbled upon Cecil/SD forum and I’m glad.
Yes-ish. I found a link to the column archives on Bored.com. I read most of them and moved onto the threadspotting archives. Once I realized that there was a forum that made the threads, I lurked there incessantly. I didn’t really go back to the columns though.
I was watching a show on TV about crime and punishment and they mentioned some criminal who blinked some number of times after being guillotined. It sounded like a load of BS to me, so I went searching online and not only found that it was indeed BS, but my search also led me to one of Cecil’s columns. I got hooked on the columns right away and read the books as well.
I’m not one for message boards, and it took me a very long time to warm up to the boards here. I read them a few times but didn’t care to join. It probably took a year or two before I read them again and decided to join.
I read the Straight Dope column (in the print version of Portland Phoenix) back during college and only discovered that there was a message board when I finally wanted to ask Cecil a question a couple of years later.
I had never heard of Cecil or the columns/books until I was directed here one day.
I was directed to this message board from another message board. I have one of Cecil’s books now, but hadn’t heard of him before I joined.