Sheppy trivia
An idle recollection that popped into mind and I thought I’d share: the history of the nickname “Sheppy.”
Set your way-back machine to 1991, the year I bought a modem for my Apple IIgs and it came with a copy of AppleLink Personal Edition on 3.5″ diskette.
So I was signing up for an AOL account (it had already been renamed by then; it was an old disk) and it wanted a username for me. I expected to try out AOL, use my free hours for signing up, then cancel, so I decided to choose a username that I knew I wouldn’t want to keep long term, so that if I ever decided to join again in the future my real username would still be available.
So I picked “Sheppy” because it was a nickname that people used occasionally and I hated it.
It didn’t take long until I found I rather liked it on AOL (this was back in the days when they had 50,000 members, all Apple II users), so I wound up sticking around, but people called me Eric. Then there was another Eric in one of the chat rooms I hung out in, so I became Sheppy in casual conversation.
Eventually I got used to it.
I still have that AOL account today, 16 years later. I keep it because I use it for iChat, and I don’t want to lose that nickname!