Add origin story

_posts/2014-08-08-agentdero-origin-story.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Agent Dero: Origin Story"
+tags:
+- miscellaneous
+---
+
+My first excursion into the internet or as it was then known by newscasters,
+the information super highway, was courtesy of the University of Georgia. My
+mom had gone back to school and as part of her program, there were a number of
+new-fangled "online classes." We bought a 28.8 baud modem to go with our
+Macintosh LC III, in this year it was already 3-4 years old, and used the
+instructions distributed by the university to set up the Chooser to AppleTalk
+or some bullshit like that. Mac OS System 7.6 was not very internet friendly.
+
+Unlike many of my peers, I did not start hacking early on. Therefore I also did
+not have a "handle" for a number of years after "joining" the internet. After
+my mom finished her schooling, we were sufficiently hooked on the internet that
+we loaded AOL onto our recently acquired Macintosh PowerPC 6100, another 3-4
+year old second-hand computer. With AOL I finally got my *first* email address,
+and had to choose a handle: "tiger" followed by 5 random numbers. That handle
+carried me along for a number of years, closing out the 90's and into the early
+2000's.
+
+In 2002 I traveled to Germany as an exchange student bringing my handle of
+"tiger" over to old world. At this point I had purchased my very own computer,
+a fancy iBook G3. I had learned ASP and PHP a couple years earlier and hacking
+together awful web applications for unsuspecting relatives and their businesses
+I was able to earn enough money for the *new* Macintosh. I was a mind-numbingly
+elite hacker.
+
+
+In my group of exchange students were 60 students overall and of the 60 only
+4 of us were placed with families in the eastern part of Germany, the former
+DDR (GDR in English). After a few months of immersion and isolation from the
+other exchange students I managed to meet **two** other students in Dresden.
+They had already become friends despite coming from separate exchange programs
+and the three of us started to hang out and find stuff to do in Dresden on the
+weekends.
+
+During this period in my life I had made the decision that personal comfort was
+of the utmost importance over style. Accordingly I wore old jeans, leather
+sandals and t-shirts nearly every day of the year, including the occasional
+above-freezing winter's day. The three of us would meet in Dresden, them
+dressed appropriately for the weather, me dressed in my shoddy looking jeans,
+hoodie and sandals.
+
+Prior to us meeting the two of them they had concocted a game of sorts. They would
+come up with "missions" for each other in order to push through their comfort
+zone and try new things. A more introverted exchange student may have some
+challenges digging into all that their host-country has to offer. Placing a
+young, shy, person somewhere with a language barrier, cultural differences with
+little social structure/friend groups around them can make it quite difficult to
+overcome social anxiety. This secret agent game of theirs was invented to help
+solve that problem.
+
+In order for me to join their game however, they had to come up with a good agent name
+for me. An agent name is similar to the call-signs that fighter pilots use.
+It is not meant to be a cool name you give yourself. Instead your name is given to you by your
+colleagues as a form of hazing, endearing hazing. The australian girl, whose name I've
+since forgotten, looked me up and down and said "**Agent Dero**."
+
+"Dero?" I ask. "Dero" (pronounced like "deerr-o") "in Australia a deerr-o is a
+hobo or a bum." For the rest of the night I answered to "Ay-gent Deerr-o" and
+performed important missions such as socializing with germans at the
+neighboring table in a pub, talking to the street-car driver and attempting to
+steal a kiss from a German girl.
+
+For the month or two I knew the two of them, we would meet up periodically and
+hang out in Dresden, doing the silly things that foreign exchange students do.
+As students in different programs, they were on wholly different schedules than
+I. Both departed in February while I remained until the summer with my host
+family. Along with them departed my use of the name "Agent Dero" as well; the game
+only involved the three of us and I wasn't about to start sending myself on
+missions.
+
+In the summer, I returned to the US and found myself in Texas, a dramatic departure from
+eastern Germany, and threw myself into "hacking." As shocking as it may sound,
+I found computers far more compelling than the locals. During my time in
+Germany I had managed to discover FreeBSD and Red Hat Linux courtesy of CDs
+shipped from a friend in the US. This keen interest in unix-based operating
+systems and my newfound worldliness meant I had to find a new handle ot use,
+the old "tiger" alias would no longer fit the bill.
+
+**Agent Dero** came to mind and fit the two most important requirements of a
+17-year old nerd: unique and cool sounding.
+
+Since then I've self-identified (mostly) as either:
+[rtyler](https://github.com/rtyler) or
+[agentdero](https://twitter.com/agentdero). The handle has been accepted
+without question by many of my friends and colleagues over the years.  Only
+once has anybody even really questioned it. The australian wife of a friend,
+after discovering my online handle, asked me over drinks: "Ay-gent Deerr-o?"
+she said with a concerned look "you know what that means right?"
+
+
+Yep. And now you do too.