My old online screenname LonerVamp has a history of itself, which encompasses a lot of my early years in computers, computer gaming, and my entire obsession with vampires. With that in mind, bear with the lengthy history below that explains all of those topics.

Overall though, I have used this nickname since 1995 I believe. I continue to use it in most online games as well as any chats and most messaging systems. In all my years of using the nick, I have never seen another person use the same name unintentionally (I have had a few impersonators). I guess that is one main reason I continue to use it. So many names can be so often used, that you never really have something only your own. LonerVamp is my own. Also, people who knew me 5 years ago may (like me) get these urges to wonder about people from the past. To facilitate those searches is the main impetus in the creation of this page, and the continued use of the screenname.

Describing the stories behind the nick LonerVamp encompass two major parts of my life: my introduction to computers and my introuction to vampires. I think I will start with the latter and then finish up with the former. Back in high school, I believe in the summer between my junior and senior years (1995) I tagged along with my high school (North High School) jazz band on a small tour of Europe for some festival celebrating the 40th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy. I was in band and I played in the second jazz band, but I did not play in the first jazz band, and instead just went along to experience Europe a little bit. Anyway, that is a whole long story in and of itself. My story will take place on about day #10 of the trip while in Switzerland, I believe in Lausanne. The band was playing in this purely awesome little pub where they sat not 2 feet away from the nearest table, and the farther back table was not 30 feet away. The director barely had a place to stand, which made this pub just fill to the brim with sound. It was truly beautiful. I sat in a corner and was holding onto a book for a girl in the band (a girl I had a crush on). I decided that, since I had heard most of the songs before, I would just have a drink and flip the book open. I flipped it open to some random page near the middle, read a paragraph...read another paragraph...and another. I was hooked with the writing, the feel, the ideas in just those little words. The book was The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, possibly my favorite book and first book about vampires that I have ever read to date.

Anyway, after getting back home I bought the book and the first one in the series, Interview with the Vampire, and read them quickly. I have read The Vampire Lestat about 4 times since, and I still love it, the story, the writing, and the intellectual musings therein. I was already a fan of fantasy and science fiction including AD&D, but this opened up a more maturish and darker side of my fantasy passions.

Now my story will have to turn to computers. Around the fall of 1994 I received my first computer, mainly because my close friend Ryan Mcginnis had a computer and I loved the games he played on there. I think we played Doom or Doom 2 or Descent or some game 4 out of 5 days after school on our modems. During this time I had a plethora of gaming names that I used online with him that are long lost. One of the ones that sticks in my mind most was "NoExist," a name that I used if I was feeling rather down and unloved by my crush in high school. Those were the feared times to play me, and I think he knew it because I was relentless in my attacks and nearly unstoppable. Anyway, I went through a lot of names in those days.

Also in those days, I used America Online as my ISP of choice. Back then, ISPs were still daunting as heck to use, and I felt a lot more comfortable with AOL. However, I hated the hourly charges they had back then. I got into the chat rooms and played around, and found out about online chat roleplaying by just noticing a vampire-type channel on there. Around this time, I stopped paying my AOL bills, simply because they were a lot and I didn't want to pay them (I was young). AOL didn't really do much except ban my screenname from their servers. I went through my original name of TheThinkr, along with all the variations of it. Eventually, my online chat roleplaying took over with vampire-type names as AOL kept kicking me off, but then letting me sign right back up again on the phone. I had a nice name of VampireCol for a while, and then got kicked again and resigned up as LonerVamp. I didn't want those silly numbers behind my name, and I wanted something that wouldn't be taken. Loner reflected my personality and Vamp reflected my interest in vampires. I liked the name enough that I also started using it in my gaming ventures against Ryan and another friend, Chad.

Well, I got kicked off AOL again and this time the phone rep said I would not be allowed on another time. I decided enough is enough and had my friend set me up with a local ISP. I got online, found the IRC chat equivalents of the rooms I used on AOL, and used the nick LonerVamp so that people would recognize me. By doing that, I pretty much had stuck myself with LonerVamp and it has been a part of my online experience ever since. I would never ditch it now either, simply because it is so unique and because I've met and unmet so many people that I will never know who may be looking me up for nostalgic purposes.

To date, I have used LonerVamp for about 6 years online and offline. I have used the nick through online games like Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, and others. I use it in online chat services and messaging programs, and even use it as my login name for many services (although the simple name of michael is catching up when I can use it). And in all those years, I have never heard of someone with even a similar sounding nick, making it truly my own.