| Welcome to Three Dead Flies |
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| This site is an outgrowth from a long history of my use of the phrase, "three dead flies," including the names of my Hotmail, GMail and YahooMail accounts. |
| Several people have asked me, "What's the significance of the phrase, 'three dead flies'?" |
| It all started after I had, yet again, changed ISP's (internet service providers) and, once again, I had lost my email address and my entire addressbook. This was back in the mid 1990's when internet-based email services were fairly new. Hotmail was gaining popularity amongst my peers (this is long before Microsoft acquired it). I had a lot of friends who had tried it and liked the mobility of it and the fact that it made no difference who their ISP was, they could still get to their email, no matter where in the world they happened to be. So I decided to try Hotmail. [By the way, the name "Hotmail" was originally written like this: HoTMaiL with the capitol letters indicating its basis in HTML -- just a bit of trivia for you there...] |
| I went to Hotmail's signup page. I filled out all of the information. Then it came time to select a user name. I was working at Microsoft at the time and they had assigned me my first email address: dbishop@microsoft.com. So I decided to try for dbishop@hotmail.com. |
| I entered "dbishop" and waited for the response. |
| "Sorry, that name is taken. Perhaps you would like to use dbishop7349." No. I did not. |
| Next I tried davidbishop. |
| "Sorry, that name is taken. Perhaps you would like to use davidbishop2304." No. I did not. |
| Next I tried dwbishop. |
| "Sorry, that name is taken. Perhaps you would like to use dwbishop1499." No. I did not. |
| Next I tried davidwbishop. |
| "Sorry, that name is taken. Perhaps you would like to use davidwbishop8812." No. I did not. |
| Next I tried bishopdavid. |
| "Sorry, that name is taken. Perhaps you would like to use bishopdavid7440." No. I did not. |
| Next I tried dbish. |
| "Sorry, that name is taken. Perhaps you would like to use dbish1003." No. I did not. |
| Next I tried dwbish. |
| "Sorry, that name is taken. Perhaps you would like to use dwbish0558." No. I did not. |
| Next I tried bishopdw. |
| "Sorry, that name is taken. Perhaps you would like to use bishopdw3872." No. I did not. |
| Next I tried bishdw. |
| "Sorry, that name is taken. Perhaps you would like to use bishdw1801." No. I did not. |
| Gee - Whiz! Are you kidding me!?! Every name I tried came back "taken" and the suggestions were the kind nobody would ever remember. I wanted an email address people could remember; it had to stick out in their minds and be easy to recall. |
| I was SO frustrated! Finally, in a completely sarcastic and impatient act, I banged out, "THREEDEADFLIES" - [ENTER] while muttering under my breath, "I'll bet nobody has THAT name!" I waited for the rejection page to display one more time. I thought, "What am I going to do? What name can I use? EVERYTHING is taken!" And then, there it was! |
| "WELCOME TO HOTMAIL!" |
| So there you have it. It has turned out to be a very good thing. People can easily remember my email address, they get a chuckle out of it, and they always know whose email it is because it's so unusual. So that's the story. It's not glamourous but it's the truth. |
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| The ThreeDeadFlies web site is dedicated to the display of my projects some of which I'm very proud. Hence my desire to share. If you see something amongst the menu topics in the left margin of this page that interests you, I hope you check it out. |
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