captkevman

captkevman has been my online nickname for nearly 15 years now. There are variations - in the beginning, it was CaptKevMan, and sometimes I abbreviate it CKM or ckm, but it’s always been a variation thereof. I’ve settled on the all-lowercase captkevman, but it’s always been pronounced “captain kev man.”

The origin of the name is pretty straightforward: when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoon characters was Hanna-Barbera’s Captain Caveman. When time came in the mid-90s to pick an AOL screen name, the cool techie-sounding variations on Kevin were all taken up: digikev, kevtron…(OK, so maybe I didn’t try very hard for a tech sounding name). So, I pulled from my childhood memories and merged my name with Captain Caveman’s. Of course, I only had ten characters to work with at the time, and it stayed abbreviated/blended throughout the years.

I’m now 40, and I’ve pretty much become captkevman online. 99.9% of any search results you see for that name will be linked to me (there is a guy who was selling some skeevy DVDs on some non-eBay bid site that uses the name, though - that guy isn’t me, but I’ve politely asked him to stop using the name).

I’ve wrestled a while with who I am vs. who captkevman is. captkevman is mostly the real me, but like everyone, there are some aspects of life that I just don’t openly talk about. So it’s the filtered me. While I speak my mind often, other times I bite my tongue, since I have many acquaintances with differing perspectives, and I don’t want to cause any waves. And even though captkevman is my personal persona online, many of my business customers also know about it. So I must necessarily filter what is attached to the name.

I’ve set up an anonymous account or two here or there for when I really need to vent. I don’t use them often, but they’re out there. And no, I won’t say what they are (that would defeat the purpose of anonymity now, wouldn’t it?). I’m not a proponent of using anonymity as a weapon to cowardly attack others, but I do find it a valuable and sometimes necessary tool for honest self-expression. I’ve had one anonymous account open for about four years, and having recently checked its stats, I’m apparently the only person who’s ever viewed any of  its content. And that’s just fine by me.

But for all you know, or need to know, I’m simply captkevman.