My son introduced me to Straight Dope about a year and a half ago and I have been lurking ever since. When he was home this past Christmas I asked him if he had registered and he said he had so I decided to as well.
My antie GingeroftheNorth has bene on it for a while. And, since I adore her and want to grow up and be just like her, I decided to join the site.
Hey, I’m working on 3000 over here. Hmph. 
I started reading Cecil in The New Times here in Phx way back in the late 70’s - I think. It was a long, long time ago - before there was much of a world-wide-web. (Unca Cec called us the Teeming Thousands back then. Har har.)
From there it was the books, then there was a TV show (THAT didn’t last long!). I figured that he’d turn up on the web sooner or later - otherwise this would be a pretty worthless technology, eh? I’ve been cruising the website for a few years - I just now got around to registering… And people think I’m lazy - ha!
From a link to the ubiquitous “LotR: what if other authors…” thread, that was posted on Swordforum.com - I followed and signed up - I’m a sucker for playing with words.
And I’ve really enjoyed reading other posts since. 
I found it very enlightening thankyouverymuch.
Oh, how did I find it? I wanted to find out the rate of the expansion of the universe, and seeing as I am mathematically/scientifically retarded, this was the only place that I could pose a question that I could understand the answer to. Now that is not to say that the answer was necessarily correct, but, hey, who am I to argue!! 
I used to lurk at snopes and it was mentioned over there.
My dad gave me one of Jan Van Brunveld (SP?)'s books on urban legends, and they had many links to Cecil’s columns on this website. I came here and read through the archives, and then jumped onto the boards.
Howyadoin,
I collect facts, pseudo-facts and urban legends in my never-ending quest to be the most insufferable pompous know-it-all I can be
I was doing a google search on the lyrics to Louie Louie and ran across straightdope.com’s archive.
That was when it all changed…
-Rav
Turned left at Greenland…
Had been reading the Straight Dope books and wanted to see if there was an online version of it.
When I was about 10, I started reading all the trivia books in the library, and that happened to include Cecil’s first three tomes. I got hooked to them, and when I first found Amazon.com, I heard about and ordered the fourth book. I think when I read the forth book, there was something in it about the AOL SD place. I found that, posted there a few times, and was very sad when it went away. Around that time, I found the straightdope.com site. I started reading the columns, and lurking on the messageboards. When I was 17, I got the courage to make my first post (in GQ, no less! I was brave!). . .which was completely awkward, and got me insulted by Scylla. I didn’t post for about five months, then I tenatively stuck my toe back in the water, and I’ve been addicted ever since.
Someone linked it from another message forum and I started lurking in the Great Debates forum around September 2001. I slowly expanded my lurking to General Questions, but didn’t go beyond there. I registered in February 2002, I think, but didn’t actually post until June, in which I posted a question in General Questions. Then I didn’t post for a while, and recently decided to check out the other forums. So I’ve started posting a bit more. And thus ends my life story.
Link from http://www.skeptics.com.au/ (I think)
Then bought the books and read the archives for 6 months.
Found the SDMB link, subscribed and lurked for 1 year.
I was googling for the answer to a question I had and came accross SD… was totally my thing. I lurked for several months before joining. Although a newbie myself, I found myself going through ‘dope withdrawl’ with the recent outage… ha!
Welcome!
I was looking for the meaning of “Antidisestablishmentarianism” and searched for it. Cecil had answered it in a classic column, so then I went to the homepage and from there to the Message Board.
I was helping a friend research on Cams and Camgears for his car, and he stumbled across a thread on cars here. He looked at the rest of the titles, and e-mailed me the URL.
Been here ever since. I’ve gone under (gone to lurking) once now, but I don’t think it’ll happen again.
To many good people here.
I’m with NoClueBoy - the duck quack e-mail. I could buy that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo. I just couldn’t believe that no one knew why.
Surely, somebody knows why!
Fark.com, on the thread about “Who wrote the Bible?”
I got bored while I was looking around on Snopes and decided to try the “Similar Pages” feature on the Google toolbar. The Straight Dope popped up and I was hooked.
I also found this site via Bored.com. I asked a friend to reccomend me a good website (because I was bored) and he told me to go to www.bored.com. I hung around the message boards for a few months before finally deciding to register.