Happy Cake Day to me!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was just posting in GQ (or FQ I guess) and I noticed today is my SDMB cake day! I joined the board 25 years ago today after lurking for several years both on the web and on AOL. A quarter century as a member, almost half my life.

In fact, given the lurking I think I have been visiting the dope for half my life. I remember Cecil published the first book and shortly after that I found the board. Was it 96’? 97’? Hell, I don’t know. But I remember it as a huge escape and crutch as I went through college.

Damn. :astonished:

2

Our board is made brighter by your presence. :slight_smile:

3

Congrats!

4

Thanks! Does it make you feel as old as it makes me?

Damn, lot’s of memories.

5

Thanks.

6

I hope that wasn’t a taunt.

7

I thought it was icing for the cake… or maybe syrup.

8

Hooray for 25th anniversary cake!! I’m a mere 21-1/2 yo Doper. I salute you!

You might enjoy this thread

9

Kinda makes me jealous. . . my IRL birthday is this week, but my SDMB Cake Day isn’t until May. . .

Tripler
Wait, I can have cake twice this year!! :cowboy_hat_face:

10

Happy Cake Day!

And many more…

11

Not only can, but will. A mere slice on your Doperversary, but a whole cake on your B-day!

Life is good here. Outside? Not so much.

12

It absolutely was NOT meant as one.

I was making a silly “Game of Thrones” reference, that’s all.

Meant in a cheerful spirit.
If it didn’t come across that way to the O.P. I offer my sincere apology.

13

I didn’t think so, but I just wanted to be sure, because of the warning.

14

I have to say, I really enjoyed that thread. Lot’s of names there from the past. I also tried to use the wayback machine to view the dope, and wow, that was a blast from the past. Unreal.

Anyway, thanks for posting.

15

I hoped you might. Yeah, a stroll down memory lane for sure.

16

Looks like you beat me here by two days, then. I remembered that it was sometime in January, 2000 that I joined, but I didn’t remember the exact date. And I hadn’t noticed that this was my silver anniversary… Wow, more than half of my life has been here.

IIRC, my first post was in reply to a Mailbag column by Jill, about poison ivy. But the thread that really made me realize I’d found the place where I belonged was Galileo, a Hammer, and a Feather, about a month later.

17

God cake us, everyone.

18

I have always read all your posts with interests! I am happy to have shared this journey with you!

19

Actually, I wanted to edit my post because you really had an effect on me and that is worth sharing. Sincerely. It was too late, so I replied again…

I believe I started reading the dope in 95 or 96 on AOL when I was in a physics undergrad program and struggling. I wasn’t struggling with physics (I had straight A’s, was a member of Sigma-Pi-Sigma and Tau-Beta-Pi, was president of my college’s physics club, tutored at nearby high schools, ran the regional science fair, etc…), but with the more mundane aspects like depression and having a life. I ended up dropping out of college in my senior year to the dismay of my professors and standing up several interviews I had at Cal Tech, Stanford, and Berkeley for grad school. I lived for a year off my savings drinking, clubbing, and wearing jeans and a bathrobe. I spent the next 4 years working menial jobs as a secretary, or a drafter, or as an assembly line worker in aluminum can plants. All kinds of jobs. I was a mechanic for awhile. I am not going to say it was a dark time, because some of it was the brightest and I did end up understanding a lot about myself.

But, and this is important, I remember reading your posts. I was always reading the dope. Not posting, I didn’t feel like I had much to contribute, but I rad the dope like teenagers scroll tik-tok today. I remember you posting and being a physics grad student and I felt… awe,… and jealousy,… and regret. I still remembered my physics (I was good at it), but reading your posts you were clearly better at it or at least had a better grasp and I always looked for your posts while I lurked.

After a couple of years I went back to school in 2002, finished my bachelors, got a masters (MSEE with a specialization in optics at my state school), and then enrolled in a Ph.D. program for optical computing (thesis (paraphrased): spatial/spectral holography in cryogenically cooled erbium doped crystals and their applications in range/Doppler lidar - there is more, but this is really the pinnacle of my work). I did not finish. By 2008/9 my research was funded by a small defense contractor and the great recession forced them into bankruptcy in my 3rd/4th year. Having a kid and a mortgage, I took my MS and ran. I currently work in remote sensing for NASA (as a contractor at a University).

But you had a part in this. You didn’t know it. How could you? But you (among others at the dope) had an effect on my views and the trajectory of my life. Seriously.

I don’t know why I wrote this. But it is all true.

-Happy Fun Ball, aka L.G.Butts, Ph.D., aka Eyer8

20

Thank you for the kind words. And as it happened, I also “took my MS and ran”. In my case, though, it wasn’t so much about the money itself (I was in a theoretical field that had very little research grant money, so I mostly supported myself with TAing). In my case, the proximate cause was that my original advisor died, and the new advisor who took me on was… not a good fit.

My introduction to the Dope was in high school, some time around 1993, when a friend had one of the books (the one with the column on rectal foreign bodies, whichever one that was). Then in college, I was surfing random links online (remember that? Everyone had a homepage, with random links to anywhere and everywhere else, all connected in a random mish-mash, so you’d just sort of wander, instead of opening a new tab directly to Google and just going straight to where you were looking for), and stumbled upon a link to The Straight Dope, and recognized it.