The first part, madscientist, originated from my best friend Eric. If you have read my bio you'll known that I graduated with a B.S. in Life Sciences, which is basically a biologist. So when I obtained my first job as a researcher my buddy gave me a name placard to put on my desk. I suspect he got it at a place like Things Remembered in the mall. For anyone not familiar with that store it has a selection of nice nick-nac items that you can get engravings put onto. Long story short, he got the word Madscientist put on the placard and gave it to me as a gift. I kept it on display throughout my time at the research facility and now it sits in a nice predominant spot on my desk at home. This was the year of 1998 and I was just getting into needing a internet presence and therefore required a login name for things. What better name to pick than that which sat in my line of sight while sitting at my desk. Yeah I know, real original huh?
On a side note, in case you were doing the math, yes I was on the internet before 98 but not under the name of Madscientist254. I'd guess I was on the net somewhere in my early college years of 92 or 93. You know back when color pictures had not really hit email yet. Folks were still using green screen cmos and unix based systems to transmit messages back and forth to one another. At any rate, originally I had been using the name Cokeman. That name was directly related with my last name. All through college and even to some extent my career folks have just called me by my last name, Koch. The correct pronunciation of which is "coke", like the soda brand. So naturally my nickname evolved into Cokeman from that.
Okay the text part of the name is out of the way, so where did the number part come from? As many folks have come to understand picking an internet ID is a fun challenge, especially when the name you choose is a common name, which apparently Madscientist is. So to understand the number we have to travel back to my college years again. The last few years of university life for me was spent not only deep in the books but also deeply searching for funds. I was fortunate enough to have some terrific friends and roommates that helped me get on-board at the campus police station. It was a pretty swell job too. I helped them with campus events, parking, building patrols, and even some dispatching for the police officers.
As you can imagine communication is very vital organization to a police department. So to keep confusion to a minimal each member of a police department, even the student security officers, were given a number designation. Our department was small and therefore we used three digit numbers to represent us. Mine was 254 and I'd use it for all of my radio transmitting with the base. For several years this number became a part of my daily lingo to identify myself to others I worked with. Naturally it was easy enough for me to remember and truly dear to my heart. So when yahoo told me Madscientist was taken (Dang-it) and that I needed to pick another name I just combined the two and thus Madscientist plus254 were united forever into internet infamy.
Some folks have been amazed at just how quickly I can type the ID of After a decade of using it though, I'd have to say my fingers know where the keys are quicker than my mind is registering. Maybe its the other way around, I don't know but basically it is a subconscience thing at this point. Especially when you take into consideration that I really don't know how to type very well. My fingers don't rest on the home keys, rather they hover over the keyboard like a vulture on the side of the road picking away at the latest roadkill. If I had to figure out what my natural home keys were ...hmmm... let's see... left hand w-d-f-v and right hand n-j-k-p. Oh, and yes I do have to stare down at the keyboard as I type, so I make sure to do a lot of proofreading before I hit the submit key. Gee-sh, I wish everyone did more proofreading, but that is a story for another day.Well I guess we learned a couple things about me today, my name and my typing oddities hope you enjoyed my little diatribe today.
Oh one last thing, the avatar of mr. bunsen. Yeah guess I geeked it whenever I chose that one. Madscientist when typed into the search engine like google returns with lots of odd stuff, one of which is good ole mr. bunsen. Now please don't date yourselves by asking who he is or isn't. Let's just say he's a great character whose adventures with his pal beaker will live on well past their time.
Beaker rocks- great pic of Mr Bunsen..guess I'm dating myself. lol ;-P oh well.
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