For the past several years I have used the online moniker of “iMachias”. The reasons for the choice of this name are twofold; first of all, since I was always using my Macs and talking about how great all things Apple were, the name ‘iMachias’ was like a formal way of saying that I was a Mac user. After all, when there’s a small ‘i’ at the beginning, one thinks of the iPod, iPad or iPhone first. So iMachias fit.
In addition, the word “Machias” resonates with my soul in a way that I can’t really put into words. It’s a nifty sounding word to me and it is a very natural fit to how I feel on the inside. The word Machias makes me feel connected to a greater experience in this life. There’s a story on how this came about, and I suppose that someday I’ll find the motivation to write the details down. For now, suffice it to say that the word Machias is kind of like a spiritual name, much like “Balding Eagle On The LakeFront” or “Kyan”, if you’re the hairdresser on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”.
I have been drifting in and out of my allegiance to all things Apple again (don’t sweat it, sweetheart, I have no major purchases planned anywhere in the near future) and it seems kind of strange to me to be participating in the online Linux discussions with the name iMachias, so last night I decided to make a change to my online presence name. This decision came about as I was riding my bike last night.
Quick side note – last night I went on my first official bike ride of the season and I was moderately surprised that I was able to ride 15 miles with only the usual amount of effort. 15 miles isn’t bad for the first run; in the past I’ve kept the first ride to 10 miles or so, but I was happy at 15 miles and I was cruising along at an average of 18 miles per hour, so I was quite pleased with the ride last night. Since I haven’t done a lot of riding over the past two years, I was ELATED when I got home from the ride. One of the reasons for this is because riding my bike, especially along the canal trails through the woods where there isn’t vehicle traffic, is my zen. Riding my bike in solitude takes me where I need to regroup my thoughts and relieve a lot of stress. I was positively giddy when I got back to the house and the effects from the ride are lingering into today. This is a beautiful thing.
Back to the online name; while I was on the ride last night I decided that I needed to have an online name that spoke to what made me happy, centered and focused. That’s cycling. I don’t know why I haven’t thought of this before, but I decided on the name of “CycliBear”. The word fits what I love in many ways and in a way it’s a sly tip of the hat to the fact that I oscillate between various computing platforms. My computer usage goes through cycles, just as sure as the fact that when I move the pedals on my bicycle, I’m going to go somewhere.
So CycliBear it is. I debuted the new name on Twitter last night.
Speaking of online presence – I try to keep the geekdom giddiness down to a dull roar here on this blog or else it would be twice as boring as it currently is, but I am excited to share with you that I found an email spam filtering service from mailroute.net that has completely solved my spam issue I had with the mail accounts here on jpnearl.com. I mentioned the other day that I’m trying to get away from the ad supported email accounts, and hosting my own email on jpnearl.com definitely does that. Since my email account has been around for over 10 years (as has Earl’s), we get a LOT of spam. Filtering it through the services offered by mailroute.net fixes that problem and it’s relatively inexpensive at $33/year per account. If you host your own mail and have this issue, I highly recommend their service.
