I've been using "dexter" as an online name forever. People think it is from the cartoon "Dexter's Lab," which would actually fit me, but I had the nick long before the cartoon began.

I was teased a lot as a kid, a lot of different names used, but some kids called me "Poindexter" I guess because I was smart and wore glasses. As teasing went, Poindexter was a name I thought was kind of funny and sometimes even encouraged.

That popped into my head for some reason when I began working online. At the first Star Wars charity line for Episode One everyone referred to one another by the screen names they were using on the messageboard where the event was planned. So at that point it became a "real life" nickname officially as well.

When I went to register my own domain, dexter.com was an obvious choice, but taken (a textile firm) so I was thinking of "e-dexter" or other alternatives. Luckily someone suggested "idexter" which I liked because it isn't as cliche as "e-", I liked that it could stand for "information" as in knowledge as well as refer to information technology, and finally it is a sort of play on "I, Robot" one of my favorite books (Isaac Asimov) and favorite albums (Alan Parson Project).

And for the record, the image that "Poindexter" always conjured in my head was indeed from a cartoon... not the contemporary "Dexter" but a character from the old Felix the Cat cartoons. There was a villain named "The Professor" and in some episodes he was more of a friend to Felix than a villain, and in those he had a nephew named "Poindexter" who helped him in his lab.

That's the character that was in my mind when I decided to use "dexter" as a screen name.

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--http://www.idexter.com