Oy, I sure showed everyone what an utterly fascinating and invaluable poster I was to become, didn’t I? :smack:
Thanks for the tip!
I was urgently called from the other room.
I did, but I’m not sure what it was and we weren’t terribly close. It might have been Aadania.
I was looking for ways and means to start up a plain, no frills marijuana farm.
I stayed anyway.
Read the books, then online.
Why-a no duck.
I did some sleuthing after you posted, and I think I figured it out based on your location and a picture post. Jill’s Place or something like that was where we met, right? If so, I do remember you.
Cecil’s column used to appear in the [it]Montreal Mirror[/it], a free alternative newspaper mostly about movies and popular entertainment. I discovered it when my younger son brought it home. Then he went off to college and I started picking it up myself. Suddenly, maybe around 15 years ago, they dropped it without explanation. I assume money was involved, but I don’t know that. After I got DSL and started using the web, I looked to see if his column was online and discovered the boards.
Many moons ago, Christmas shopping, looking through the “humor” section at the bookstore, I picked up a Straight Dope book along with other stuff. It was a remarkably funny and informative book I shared with everyone who would give it a look, and I was thrilled when OTHER SD books came along. Then in the 90’s we got a computer and i was encouraged to ‘surf’. For what??? I didn’t know where to go or what to do. Stuck at AOL, I came across a beautiful, sparkly, moving-lights SD site and never looked back. The internetz, they opened up to me. I followed the SD wherever it went and here I am today, enthralled as ever.
I’ve been around since the AOL days but I never posted much. The AOL board format was awful!
Something like that, yeah. There were a couple of boards, but damned if I can remember what they were called. I haven’t thought about them in years.
I found it because back in those days people still used Yahoo!'s list of websites organized by categories to find websites and the Straight Dope was mentioned in their humor section IIRC. I started reading the columns, signed up for the boards, and here I am.
I’m pretty sure that’s where I found it, too. If I had only signed up when I first found it, I would be a stupid '99er, too! 
I used to read the column regularly, and disdained the message board because it was a WWW message board and I had very clear opinions about WWW message boards.
Eventually, I followed a “Threadspotting” link and was a bit surprised.
I think the thread that prompted me to sign up was either a CCC thread or a regular thread that was featured in “Threadspotting.” I do recall that it had something to do with pee. An auspicious beginning.
I can’t quite remember but I think it was EQ related, must have been someone playing on there that pointed me in this direction. Always been more of a lurker than a poster though.
Sorry Charley (I couldn’t resist) that I don’t recognize you. Your story matches mine. I was on Snopes when it was young. I was one of the first to respond to the British School Kids of NFBSK fame. I also wrote a “legend” that can be found in the Troll section. I fully agree that the Snopes board has gotten out of controll and I never go there anymore. But that is where I heard of the dope and here 11 years later and almost 550 posts I’m really making an impression.
I had never heard of Cecil or the SD. But a link from AOL circa '97 got my attention. Since then - I’ve pretty much been an every day visitor. For the first year or so, I spent most of my time reading through all the old columns - back when they were still available. By the time I got ready to actually jump in and post something on the boards, they had gone pay-to-post. So I kept lurking and then finally signed up when it became free again.
Join?
**I **was recruited.
I read almost every single one of the SD articles before I noticed that there was a message board here. That means I wasted several years not being here, but at least I am here now.
This is the most interesting and well-run message board that I have ever encountered.
And that is saying a bit since I have been online since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Beleve it or not I was using Google, when everybody else was Yahooing, to research Trajan’s column for my 11 y. o. son and the second link was to SD.
Hook, line and sinker.
And, by the by, not one question that I have ever asked has not been answered to a grin of appreciation or a snorting howl of laughter.