And now we begin. Everything before this was more on the order of learning the fundamentals of the medium than actually adding something of value. Actually, I'm not all that sure that many would call this post valuable since it is mainly going to be about me. In fact, the next few posts will probably be about me as I attempt to give any readers who stumble on this Blog an idea of who I am.

So, let's start.

To begin with, I am not really a fox. My given name is Jim and I live in Central New Jersey. Actually, I live within 20 miles of where I grew up, but it took 20 years of living in places as disparate as Maine and Florida to get back to this corner of the world. I have a love-hate relationship with New Jersey: on the one hand, it feels "right" in climate, vegetation and the place names I deal with daily. On the other hand, it has gotten too damn crowded! The population has more than doubled since I was a teenager while the infrastructure (major and secondary roads, to be exact) has not kept pace. Further, many of the rural--or at least ex-urban--places I knew and loved as a kid are now housing developments of either MacMansions or townhouse/condo communities. I used to love to drive; now I avoid it whenever possible because it is no longer a fun thing to do in this state.

So, how did I end up with all this zorro crap? Well, it goes back to Eight grade. That was the first year I started taking Spanish. Our teacher assigned us all the Spanish equivalent of our English names for use in his class: Jim (James)=Diego. Well, at that time, Guy Williams was dashing across our black and white TV screens as the first Disney incarnation of Zorro. Like many of my peers, especially those of the male variety, I thought Zorro was pretty cool. Zorro's public identity (a la Clark Kent/Superman) was Diego DeLaVega. Diego...sounds familiar. I began to use Zorro as my Spanish class moniker that year, and continued to use it in Spanish classes all through highschool. Then, upon graduation from that hallowed place *snicker*, I promptly forgot about Zorro as my alter ego for some 25+ years.

We fast forward to the early 90s when I got my first taste of cyberspace. Compuserve was my first contact with this world. It was intoxicating. One of the services Compuserve offered was one of the first virtual communities: a place called The Point. Well, here I was introduced to "handles" or "nicknames" for the first time. (No, I was never really a CBer, so I never had a CB "handle".) I had to choose a handle, and the thought of being anonymous was strangely enticing. So, I pondered; I thought; I had five or six of those cartoon "aha" moments in which the light bulb goes on...then goes back off. Finally, I was getting desperate when I noticed that one of the admin people went by the handle "The Fox". All of a sudden, bells went off and I remembered my high school Spanish class. I could be "El Zorro". I liked it. I went with it.

For the next couple of years, whenever I was in a situation where I wanted to preserve my anonymity, I went back to the Zorro nickname. Then, came a day when I was told that "Zorro" was already taken. This was about the time that the Zorro movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas came out, and Zorro had become, again, an icon for the many. Well, I was distraught. However, I began to give it some thought, and I came to the understanding that I was no longer the Antonio Banderas character, I was the Anthony Hopkins type of Zorro...namely an old one. And that realization brought me to El Zorro Viejo, or The Old Fox.

When I opened this Blog, I decided that I didn't want to give out any of my POP3 email addresses, so I cranked up my Netscape browser and logged on to Netscape.net. I thought that I would sign up for my El Zorro Viejo address and be done with it. But nooooooo.....someother identity napper stole my handle, so there I am, bereft of a good alias for the "public" email account. But I am not El Zorro for nothing. Grabbing my handy-dandy Spanish-English dictionary, I find a couple possibilities for "sly" or "crafty". I settle on socarron (the "o" should have an accent to show it is stressed, but Netscape wouldn't take that character so, alas, you just have to know that the last syllable is stressed) because it doesn't have as many unfortunate "Americanisms" attached to it as some of the other possibilities.) And that is how a "Jim" becomes El Zorro Viejo with the email addy of "zorrosocarron@netscape.net". Wasn't that interesting? *NOt*

As an aside to all of this, I ran across something interesting. First, when I went directly to Babelfish to check on a translation, I came up with what is essentially an "restructuring" notice. I'm afraid that Babelfish is going commercial and that what was once free will be no more. However, when I went to my bookmark, I was directed to Alta Vista which has a translation site powered by Babelfish. I'm thinking that it is old technology, though. Finally, when I did a web search on "socarrón", I turned up the fact that Google's automatic translator can't handle it either. There are plenty of references to it on the web, just Google (and Alta Vista) can't translate.These first bumbling steps of AI are interesting, but they probably best spotlight how much still needs to be done. (Google's Spanish to English translations are virtually unreadable...)

And that's enough for this afternoon. I'll try to get the next (and probably last) piece autobiographical prose out the door tonight. So, for now, Hasta la vista and Vayan con dios, amigos mios.