I was working third shift a few years ago listening to Ron and Fez on the radio and thier guest was Cecil. I was so releived that I could finally ask the question that has burned inside of me for years. What does a Chinese typewriter look like? I’ve gotten the answer to that and many other.
The rest is history.
It was linked on a page in answer to a question.
I spent a long time reading every article in the archives. Then I’d check back once every couple of weeks to see if there was any intersting articles on the main page.
What got me hooked to the forums I’ll never know. I just checked them one day and lurked for months before I broke down and started posting.
Many years ago while a student at the U of Maryland I made sure to pick up the weekly free paper to read the straight dope column. Years later I decided to look to see if there was a web site. Found it 
I heard about it on another board. Someone asked the question “Why can we see the boom microphones in movies sometimes, they are so obvious” and then someone said the answer, and linked to Cecil’s article on the subject.
I used to watch the TV show. All I remember was being impressed that they answered the question “Why are barns red?”
One day I remembered the show and decided to see if they had a website. I’ve always hated message boards so I think I read every online article about 5 times before I finally decided I needed more and broke down and registered at the boards.
Last March someone posted a link to a game site I was on. The link was to Scylla’s masterpiece; The Horror of Blimps, that was all it took.
I honestly can’t remember how I ended up the Straight Dope site, but I remember the links under Threadspotting led me here.
I had been a fan of the column for years and had read all the books I could find. I think I just searched the web for info on Cecil and found the homepage. I devoured everything in the archives and then clicked on the boards out of curiosity. I think I lurked for all of about ten minutes before I registered. It was my kind of board.
I found the site while searching for ‘Hotel California’ lyrics. I browsed the archives for a while, then finally made my way to the boards via Threadspotting.
I found SD online by looking up the meaning of “colitas” from The Eagles’ “Hotel California” on Google. It linked to one of Cecil’s articles. Then I read the whole archive of his columns, and after that, I noticed the forums. Came in and lurked for several months, then joined.
Like Cisco, I used to watch the television show.
I’ve been reading the newspaper column for about 20 years, and was active on the alt.fan.cecil-adams newsgroup, where this website got mentioned a lot.
I don’t remember how I found the SD itself. I do remember I read the straight dope homepage alot for a while and had looked at the MB but was a bit daunted. I put in a question to Cecil and the reply I got told me to check out the MB because Ceece wasn’t going to answer my question. So far, this has sufficed 
The Ask Yahoo! section did put an ingenuous link (or reference, I don’t remember well) to The Straight Dope site. Bad for them, because instead of asking Yahoo! I always ask here.
Clicked a link on bored.com when I was working an overnight office job.
Read every single one of Cecil’s pieces (by doing a search for ‘the’ because I couldn’t figure out another way) then ran out and started reading the boards instead one night.
I used to read a sex column on sfbg.com by Andrea Neemerson (sp?). She got all kinds of weird questions about various devices and practices and whatnot, but one time someone asked her what a merkin* was, and she was stumped. So she dug through the SD archives here and found an answer from Cecil, “the guy who knows everything.” I was impressed that Cecil knew the answer to such a bizarre thing, and even explained it in some depth, so I started reading the archives, lurking on the boards, and now I have a bad habit of staying up too late posting here. Got a weird-ass question that makes your teacher’s head a splode**? Someone here will know the answer.
[sub]*It’s a wig for the pubic area.
**Someone here will also know weird-ass references such as this.[/sub]
Cervaise mentioned it on Coming Attractions once.
I’ve been a fan of the column since the early '80s, although I found it only intermittently. Then I found and read the books. When I got my first internet connection, “Straight Dope” was one of my very first searches. At the time I didn’t have access to a paper carrying the column and was hoping to find a list of papers (with, hopefully, one local to me) carrying it. Instead, I found the old AOL site. I registered that day and have been a member ever since. That was around 1997 or '98, I guess.
I’m going to leave this thread here, rather than move it to the IMHO forum. I think it’s debatable, and I’m just letting the other Moderators know that I considered moving it and decided not to.
The whirled is not ready for the story of how I found the website. I’ve written it up, though, and locked the papers in a safe deposit box at Charing Cross Station.
Had read the books and articles for quite a while. I found the main page first, as part of a linked answer to a question. Read the archives for pieces that I missed. On a lark I started reading the forums and then lurked for a few months. I finally registered my less than inspiring handle so that I could ask Una about a story she had written. She nicely replied and I have hung around since then.