Seconded. Phil Dennison was a great poster who could be caustic, well-informed and harsh yet still retain a sense of humor.
For being here so long, I think I’m pretty much anonymous. Up until the last year or so, I virtually never left GD except to follow pittings. Aside from many stimulating and educational conversations, I do have one clear memory. I posted it in Manhattan’s end-of-modhood thread, but I’ll repeat it:
I was in Taiwan during the eathquake there in 1999; and it was touching when I finally got back online after a week or so to find a thread and several emails from people wondering if I was OK. Considering my own family hadn’t bothered trying to get in touch with me, it really meant a lot.
Phil Dennison once left me with an image I’ve never been able to shake from my mind. In a discussion about whether atheism is a religion, he quipped something like this — Yeah, I wish we could all come together in a giant Nicean Council so we could argue endlessly over piddly shit. 
Beautiful!
He is also the only Doper, to my knowledge, whom I ever convinced with my arguments for libertarianism. I remember him coming into a thread one Monday morning after a rather ascerbic series of exchanges the week before. I read, astonished, as he told me that he spent the weekend thinking over things we’d discussed and that, as a lover of animals and a champion for their rights as individuals, he could no longer begrudge me my inoffensive philosophy of noncoercion among humans in voluntary societies. I cried. I love that man. He’s my intellectual hero.
AOL SDMB General Questions is still accessible (AOL users only). A few months ago they finally branded it obsolete or discontinued or something and they have made it much harder to search, but it still exists.
I have been a member of this board for only slightly less time than I’ve been married. I find this both comforting and deeply disturbing.
Back to the AOL days, didn’t we have someone whose tagline was along the lines of “The Cowboy Way” - Not a sig, but almost a catch-phrase for them?
Just a guess, but that might be the same guy who posts as “Ranger Jeff” over at Fathom. A fan (as am I) of singing cowboy group Riders in the Sky, who use that as a motto. “Well, that would be the easy way… but it wouldn’t be THE COWBOY WAY…” I think Ranger Jeff (or whatever his SMDB handle is/was) was here way back when…
I remember the Ultimate Rochambo thead from -inky in late 2000. I felt kindof bad when Busta Rib came back a few months ago to try to resurrect it, and nothing really happened. A once in a lifetime event, perhaps.
Four years and change, and that’s the first time I’ve mistyped ‘SDMB’.
[sub]No really, I meant the Straight Mope Dessage Board![/sub]
That sig was drifting around post AOL, too, 'cause I remember it.
Wow. I just checked and I did start in 1999 (five years next month). Never saw the AOL board, but I was drawn to this as soon as I found it.
Of course, I’d be on discussion board for ten years at this point, so this was nothing new – just a higher quality overall.
That’s the one!
99 er here.
I miss phaedrus.
I wonder if he still lives near me…
Member Arg?
I remember thinking I’dbetter post some really great general question so they’ll think I’m cool here.
Wrong. 
I lurked in 1999. I know because I found this site at a contracting job I had while I was pregnant with my daughter. She was born in September 1999. Took me a while to register.
Its funny, 'cause I was just telling my husband the Chicken of Bristol story. And wondering what happened to Spirtus.
Sorry guys, but you ain’t nobody unless :
A : You’re not still asking yourself “Who is Mr. Ruda Duda?”
or
B : This character doesn’t still give you cardiac arrest : ~
Manny people ask me and now I wonder …
I was cruising the archives of the old questions in the AOL days. I would see the notices about it, but I didn’t have AOL. I must have seen the messageboard almost immediately, because I’m no. 502.
I’m the first reply in the legendary How to kill evil Nazi Groundhogs thread. I even remember that AlSmith became Scylla. Although why does he still show as the old name there, and I don’t?
What an ‘ageist’ thing to say “E”
Started as CatBiker, member #33 and continue uninteruped as GusNSpot.
Ols AOLer also. Still hit the AOHell board now and again…
Howdy! It seems I have a lot fewer posts than my other colleagues in the class of 99, but rest assured I am a regular here. I am actually a '98-er because I was part of the SDMB on AOL, along with other luminaries such as OpalCat >^,^< .
I think those of us from '99 should be referred to not just as “Charter Member” but “Founding Father”. Who is with me? 
Yes, I started on The Dope back when it still was on AOL, and the Straight Dope TV show was still on the air. Ah, the memories…
I’d like to think that, in all this time, I’ve grown from a “lamer newbie” into a full-fledged “barely-tolerated eccentric.”
Ranchoth
(Well, at least I’m not actively malevolent.)
User 107 checking in. I was here for the beginning of the ATGG threads, the Melin debacle, and Flora McFlimsey changing her name to Eve.
Thus making it hard to search her threads, dammit! But I’m okay with it - “Eve” just has a casual elegance that suits Eve. As I recall, she called you a polite young man for asking permission to quote her on your web-page.
I too remember Melin-gate, Contestant # 3 and PapaBear; and the Left Behind debacle; and Wally’s life and death 
; and the interminable Elias threads; little did we know they were just a prelude to the even more interminable Election 2000 threads; and matt’s attempt to be matt, M.P.; and lots of good discussions, wit and repartee from really smart people; and of course, being the Straight Dope, not a few total dipsticks.