Who or what is "Tokar Rai"?

So, yesterday, I went and bought a couple more domain names, one of which I’d been thinking about buying for years, but never got around to it. I am now the proud owner of tokarrai.com. Now, why would I buy that, and not tonytroxell.com or anthonytroxell.com or troxellpack.com, something a little more… realistic? Professional? Not nonsense?

One night at Manchester College, back in fall of 1995, I was talking with some friends who were telling me about using Telnet to access BBS’s, or Bulletin Board Systems. Online chatrooms and forums where you can talk with people across the country. They helped me get connected to ISCA, a large one ran by the Iowa State Computer Association, and left me to my devices. When I got to the section where you had to put in your screen name, most of the stuff I tried had already been taken, especially since I was younger and stupid and didn’t have much imagination, nor was very tech savvy.

As a last ditch effort, I used the name of my AD&D character, which was borrowed from the Green Lantern character Tomar Re. Of course, Tokar Rai was available, so I rolled with it. And when people asked me what it meant, they got a *shrug* and that explanation, and life was good.

I was pretty active on that BBS, plus others, in college, which is part of why I didn’t last that long. When I was asked to leave at Thanksgiving of 1996, I was back to being without the internet at all, so Tokar Rai started fading away.

A few years later, a Star Trek fan club group that I had grown active with was full of Techies, not just Trekkies, and they did a LOT via e-mail. They helped me set up a Hotmail account, and when it came time for the e-mail addy, I went with, what else? tokar_rai (at) hotmail (dot)com, which is surprisingly still an active e-mail account 14 years later. Not long after this, I got another computer, and started joining message boards and forums again, and almost to a one I used that well worn alias, tokarrai or tokar_rai or Tokar Rai. The only place I didn’t was the Replica Prop Forum, where I used my old Track nickname, Double T. Yahoo! had a tokarrai, Google had a tokarrai, everyplace I could find ended up with a tokarrai.

Then came the Social sites, that required you to use your real name. Since I have no sense of privacy, that part didn’t bug me, it was just foreign at this point to use my real name instead of an alias. Yes, in retrospect, I could have used an alias that included my real name, but back then, why? So, I was back to Tony Troxell, at least until Facebook started offering custom URL’s to get to your profile. Then BAM! Tokarrai. When I decided to make a Twitter account, what else would I use? Tokarrai.

Now, these days, I have my fingers in many more pies, so I have multiple online accounts for different projects, so that’s why I’m going to set up tokarrai.com as an online calling card. You can go there, and I’ll have a little bio, list of places to find me, and essentially make it a “If you like me here, check me out here as well…” sort of place. I believe they call it a vanity page? If they don’t, they should, because that is essentially what it is. “I believe that you like me so much, that here is EVERYWHERE you can find me! Love me! Worship me! Follow me! Validate my parking and my existence!”

Because isn’t that what we all really want on the internet?

I’ll let you know when it’s up, because I know you all love me and want to validate my parking.

Stay cool and hydrated out there, folks.
Tony