"stressboy"

I still occasionally get asked where the name "stressboy" comes from. In this post, I will answer that very question.

A long, long, long time ago(1997), I got a job working for a company called Stream International. They are a company that provides outsourced tech support. They had 2 sites in Beaverton, OR. I will not get into any more detail about that company.

The team I started on was a brand new team. Personalities were quickly identified. It didn't take long for mine to come out. I get stressed out a lot over very little things, and it often shows.

I was not the only one to get a nickname. We also had:

caffeineboy - This guy was a friend of mine. He drank A LOT of Mt. Dew and Jolt, so they called him caffeineboy.

spamboy - This one was funny. He was this 16 year old who got his job because his sister was the best friend of the team managers daughter. After he got trained and was given his own computer to work from, he spammed the whole site, which was over 1000 people, about his shared drive. That is right. His shared drive. He told everyone there was cool shit there, which was mainly Quicktime versions of anime movies and Final Fantasy VII cutscenes. I liked the cutscenes cause I loved Final Fantasy VII, but I ignored anime faggotry. Anyways, the best part of this story, aside from him doing something dumb like spam the site? He got the address to his computer wrong. We never let him forget it either, until the day he finally got fired. I actually kinda liked the kid too, once you got passed the bullshit he used to talk about.

wonderboy - I don't really remember why he got this name, other then he seemed a little cocky and sure of himself. I do remember that he was a huge kiss ass, which the mentor's took advantage of. They used to make him get them soda's and shit.

neckboy - This fucking tard came to work one day with his neck covered in hickies. He seemed to think we would get a kick out of it based on that huge shit-eating grin he had when he walked up to us. Management told him to never come to work again in that condition. Later, he shaved his head. A guy I worked with(and still do actually) said he looked like a dildo with ears. Lots of us laughed at that.

I think there were a few more *boy's, but I can't remember them.

I suppose I should get more indepth on why I got named.

My name came about cause of a hard drive in my old computer. At the time, the computer was brand new. I bought it for about $1100 off a company in Beaverton that made computers(duh). After about a month having it, I was playing a game and got a BSOD(blue screen of death). The error was on my hard drive, and it would not read afterwards. I spent the next day at work stressing really hard and very loudly about it. I was able to fix it that night using fdisk. It worked fine for a few more weeks, and then it happened again. I was at work the next day with a really pissed off look on my face. A coworker named Robb asked me what was wrong, and I told him. He thought it was hilarious, which I would also if I was in his place. It happened again and again, and I finally got the company that made the pc to replace it. It never happened again. Hard drive was fucked.

The public stress from something so stupid earned me the nickname stressboy. I decided to go with it and adopted it as my icq screenname and put it in my e-mail address. I even had the domain stressboy.com for awhile.

It will probably remain with me always, even though I sometimes get called "squid" now.