Got back in touch with a co-worker when I was working at UC Berkeley’s tech support help desk and while going through past emails, I noticed that my email signatures was the same as the one I’m using today. That got me wondering when I started using it.
I still remember when I first joined Microsoft that apparently there was a thread on dsnuts asking what my signature meant. I never saw the thread myself, since I joined the alias much later.
Going through my email archive, I’ve found:
- 10/2001: ~Toland
- 08/2002: //Toland
- 02/2003: //Toland ^_^x
- 02/2003: //Toland (^_^x)
There’s been variations within the variations, but mostly the name being either krunk, my full name, or all in lower-case. I’m baffled that I’ve stuck with the current one for so long. I still remember why I went with //. I had seen an email from the dean of Berkeley or the college of engineering and he had signed his emails with /Robert. I thought, I want a / in my signature too. Somehow I ended up with //.
As for the smiley face, I’ve been using ^_^x for as long as I can remember. They’ve shown up in emails dating back to 2001 and I’m pretty sure I’ve used them in IM chats before then. But Feb 2003 was when I added the () parenthesis around it.