Oh, and welcome to the boards, Shill.
I watched the show years ago, and dug it. A while later, AOL had a link to their SD site on their front page. Of course I had to click on it. That was in 1997.
I followed a link to THE BLIMP STORY and I was fascinated! 
My husband (Echo23tc) had been nattering on about the site and then began to send me links. I read one or two, thought they were funny/good/interesting/angering etc. and started lurking. One day a thread came up that caused me to register and here I am…! Great fun, this!
AOL welcome screen, March 1997 => presumed demise of that board => birth of this one
My husband bought me one of the books on a whim for Christmas. I was totally and utterly hooked from the first page. A bit of searching and I found home.
To this day, my husband shakes his head and says, “I never knew what I was starting.”
I was surfing random LJs and found manhattan’s. He made several comments about something called sdmb. I had never seen a message board before, and I was new on LJ. Since then, manny has become one of my most valued LJ friends, and I went to my first dopefest in January. How did I get by so long without it?
One night I was at home quietly surfing for porn when I clicked on a picture of a woman offering wild explicit hot hot sex, and suddenly the SDMB popped up and I’ve not been able to get rid of it ever since. I’ve already deleted my cookies and cleaned my registry, but still it keeps getting back. Do you guys have any tips?
Okay, I see you’re not buying this. The truth is much more boring.
One night I was at home quietly looking for the meaning of the word ‘decimate’ (which I thought was being abused give its original Roman sense). Among several useless links Google handed me the Word Detective and ol’ Cecil. I bookmarked both. For a while the Straight Dope Front Page sat calmly in my favorites, biding its time, while I still bandied around in the wit and wisdom of the Word Detective.
On another fateful night I decided to revisit the Straight Dope Front Page for trying to find a column on some long-forgotten question, and wanted to see what that ‘Threadspotting’ refered too. Nice, I thought, when reading the thread and surfed on in blithe ignorance.
Little did I realise my fate had already been sealed. The precise circumstances of what follows have never been satisfactorily determined afterwards, but it appears that I somehow caught the Threadspotting for the LOTR satire thread, wasted costly hours perusing that, and afterwards had developed a craving for more. I looked around, found the other forums and threads, lurked for a while in such gems as the Funny things said during sex thread, and succumbed.
I registered. I did not have the presence of mind to first select a cool user name and am henceforth stuck here with the rest of you.
Moral of the day: never click an unknown link.
my friend Cazzle would occassionally mention something to me about some weird conversation she was reading on this message board… she gave me the link to a specific conversation or two but i never really looked beyond that.
One day i was checking out a local rival web design company and they had a site tracker on their site, out of curiosity, i clicked to see where their traffic was coming from…and there was a link to this thread. I just had to respond to what was said cause it involved me! - one of the webpages Cazzle mentioned as being tacky was one i had redesigned after the post was made (i offered the new improved page to the guy for $20 and told him i’d felt sorry for him having such a horrible website online - he accepted!) - so i registered and posted…turns out the particular thread had been dead for a while LOL…anway, never really participated much until the last month i guess… when i was really bored i’d check in and see if there was anything interested i felt like participating in… have been here kinda regularly the last couple of weeks
My inaugural reading of SDMB was a link to Scylla’s blimp story. I laughed so hard, it hurt. Haven’t been able to leave it alone since.
I was reading a bunch of stuff about religion, and someone (maybe on another message board) posted a link to the “Who wrote the Bible” article. I read it, then all of the archived articles, then went to the message board.
Followed a link on the lowcarbforum to Scylla’s blimp story, it brougt tears to me eyes, I wanted MORE MORE MORE…from Teemings to here. Addictive dope, damn if you don’t have me up waaaaaaay past my bedtime…Mille Grazie to all the Powers That Be 
Like another poster earlier, I found the straightdope site from www.bored.com. I only read Cecil’s wisdom and never really noticed the boards until I jumped into the boards looking for information on a science project. You guys were nice enough to offer advice so I stuck around.
And it’s been down hill form there. 
Many moons ago, when I worked at the U of G, I had a co-worker bring in Cecil’s first book. I read it right through and loved it. (Not really knowing what it was a the time.)
Years pass and a friend showed me the main site. I sat and read some of the articles and thought it would be funny to ask, “Why do men have nipples.” so I emailed the question in.
Over the next few weeks I continued to read the site and found that my question had already been answered. It was then that I realized that a lot of the articles were right from the book I read at the university.
It didn’t take me long after that to find the SDMB…and the rest is history.
I actually did just get on the internet one day and find it. I had a copy of the original Straight dope book and one day I just decided to type that into a search engine to see if it was still around. The rest, as they say, is history. I think at this point, they could eliminate every web page out there other than here, something awful, and ESPN, and it would take me some weeks to notice.
Me too:D
I was lured here by a link on another message boards to “The Horror of Blimps.” I then lurked for a while, but this weekend finally registered and began posting. Not sure if I should give credit to Scylla or Everquest for bringing me here, but I’m glad I stumbled onto this message board. Now just try to get me to leave!
Wow guys, that turned out well. The Straight Dope has a TV show? And books? I feel like such a newbie… (maybe that’s cuz I am):smack:
I’ve been a big fan of Cecil’s books over the years. One day, not too long ago, I decided to see if there was a web page for The Strait Dope. And I’ve been here almost every day since.
I f found the first book, ’ The Straight Dope’, at Coliseum Books on 57th Street in NYC. It was perhaps…1988? I was in tears, standing in the aisle and reading. I had to own it. I own the first three books, and when I caught wind of the AOL site, I went and enjoyed and have been involved ever since.
This is kind of neat, my next post will be # 3,000 and I get to reminisce a bit about finding the SDMB. I’ve met wonderful people through this Board and community, and believe I wil continue to do so.
Additionally, I do plan to stamp out all of my personal ignorance by early in 2006 and the SDMB figures heavily in my plans.
What?
WHAT???
Cartooniverse