Now that I have a blog, I suppose I have to start talking about myself. So here goes…
What’s in a name? Everything.
I was blessed growing up with the name of Ace. It makes people smile when they hear it for the first time. And when they hear it, more often that not they ask if it’s my real name. I can’t remember an age where I wasn’t asked that question. Elementary school, middle school, high school, even now as an adult. And it would usually be followed up with whether or not it was on my driver’s license. Why yes, yes it is.
My dad named me Ace and one day I finally got around to asking him why he chose that name. He said when they were at the hospital waiting for me to be born, he was in the waiting room, flipping through a deck of cards and he thought Ace sounded like a good name. He didn’t speak English very well at the time, or at all, so I’m glad he went with that and not something like King or Queen or a numerical name like Four. Jack would have been okay since it’s, you know, a normal name. But picking a name from a deck of cards can really run the gamut from the unfortunate to the auspicious and I just happened to be graced with luck that day.
Fast forward decades later and a little thing called The Internet would come along and with it, a chance to establish some usernames and login ids. My first attempt at using my name as a login was trying to get an email address while a freshman at UCLA: ace@ucla.edu. Except, the thing is, with a common dictionary name like Ace every jerkoff who thinks it’s cool to go by their high school nickname decides to try and use Ace as their id. Yeah, a nickname? Not the same thing, you poser. I’m sorry you have identity issues and hate your name, Robert, but you’re just making it hard for us legitimately named folks in getting the id we should be entitled to. But whatever, two can play at that game and so I used the same tactic to get my nickname as my UCLA email: aceman@ucla.edu. But can it really be called a nickname if no one calls you by it?
I’m not big into facebook, but at some point they started allowing vanity urls. Apparently, I was too slow in claiming facebook.com/acekim cause some dude named Andrew got it instead because I can only assume it was his nickname in high school. Thanks a lot, Andrew. Do you know a guy named Robert? And forget about facebook.com/ace since it seems to be taken by a Tide knockoff long before I even got onto facebook. Oh well. I knew it was a long shot anyway because I accepted the reality long before facebook vanity urls were a thing that, because Ace is a popular name, nickname or real, I’d be up against anyone or anything that identified with it enough to want to adopt it for their online presence. Ace.com? Fuggedaboudit. I was far too naive about the internet to realize I should have registered that the day registrations opened.
But you know what, I got the last laugh. I am still incredulous that .kim is a tld and that I have ace.kim as my domain name. I never thought it was going to happen because other common names like david.kim or andrew.kim for example are reserved and unavailable for registration. I got the same error message when trying to reserve ace.kim but would keep trying every once in a while for shits and giggles. Then one day, poof! It finally went through. And who’s got the last laugh now huh, Robert? Andrew? Not many people can register their full name as a domain name. I just happened to be graced with luck that day.
