Where "dingledoink" came from

This is sort of bike related, and I don't have any other public blog to post this, so this seemed like a good enough place as any.

Here's the story: when I was like 15, my best friend since grade 2 and I had started dabbling in both computer stuff (think dial-up to BBS time-frame here) and 'higher end' bicycles. You are now wondering how these things could possibly be connected, read on.

We lived in a smaller town called Richmond, just outside of Ottawa where nobody else was really into higher end bikes, but one day we saw a guy go whizzing by on a snazzy bike. We chased him down, and had a conversation. He took us to his place, and showed us the bikes he had and we were pretty keen to get to know him better. He was like 2 years older than us we figured. Got his name, John Dingledine, and went back home. You're likely already guessing, and you're pretty much right....

A few days later, we decided to play around on the computer one afternoon. We then started logging in to some new BBSes where we hadn't been on before, and had to create 'handles' to get on. We naturally tried "coolguy" and "theman" but they were already taken. We were dejected. Left the computer, and went for a bike ride.

While riding, we were talking "what was that guy's name again?? Dinglenuts? Dingledoink? Dingledine?" (think Dumb & Dumber) We didn't remember it, but rode over to his house anyway. He wasn't home. We rode back home and jumped back on the computer. Tried a few more variants of "thebest" etc. and finally got so fed up we tried "dingledoink" and "dinglenuts" as we thought they were hilarious from our conversation early in the day. Go figure, they were available.

So ever since, when I sign up for something new I try webhead first (highschool nickname due to my last name and being a bit of a computer geek) and if it's not available I go with dingledoink, which is very rarely taken.

There you have it!