People have asked me "Why 'Dredd'? Were you that big a fan of that crappy Stallone movie!?" I'm tired of answering it over and over again, so I'll answer it once and for all, and then just point people at this entry when they ask. ;-)
Come sit on Grandpa's knee, and let me tell you a story about the old days.
Years ago, before the net became popular, before cable modems or DSL, there were BBS's. I was first exposed to BBS's when I was in high school, and (being a big comic book fan, specifically of the British fave 'Judge Dredd' series), I started using the moniker "Judge Dredd" on the local BBS's. Nobody used their real names, everyone had a handle, and that was mine.
A couple years later, I started my own BBS, and it only made sense, given that to the BBS community in the area I was "Judge Dredd", that the BBS was named Megacity One, after the city where Dredd enforced the laws.
Then, the internet started gaining in popularity. I started doing some Internet<->BBS gatewaying, and had hostnames like "megacity.fwi.com" and "megacity.mixi.net". "Judge Dredd" didn't really work in the unix naming scheme popular for e-mail addresses, so I was "dredd@megacity.fwi.com" and "dredd@megacity.mixi.net".. eventually, I decided to stop having to change my e-mail address every time I changed ISP's and grabbed "megacity.org". This was back in the day when you actually grabbed the TLD that was relevant to your use (in my case "org", since I wasn't commercial). megacity.com was available, but I didn't register it, because "bah, I'm not a commercial entity".
And that's the way it's been ever since. At work I'm "dballing", because that's their naming convention, but everywhere else, the login is "Dredd" wherever possible (although sometimes I have to AOLize that because someone else already got "Dredd", so I end up with "Dredd13" or something similar).
Hope that clears up any confusion.
PS - I really wasn't that big a fan of the movie. Dredd NEVER takes off his helmet, not even in the comfort of his own home on his own couch, let alone taking it off in the presence of the Chief Justice.
