Several years ago, I started using ‘Xopher’ as my online handle, and I had a number of reasons for doing this. It was different, it was shorter than my real name that often didn’t even fit in forms I have to fill out, and it started with a freakin’ ‘X’! How cool is that? Another advantage that ‘Xopher’ had was that nobody ever shortened it to ‘Chris’. I’ve been called ‘X’, ‘zofer’, ‘ex-sofer’, but people who knew me as Xopher never called me Chris, and I really like that. I have old friends who call me Chris, and I’m ok with that. However, one of my pet peeves is to introduce myself to someone as Christopher only to have them call me Chris minutes later. When I introduced myself, I pronounced those other syllables for a reason – please don’t tell me I wasted my breath. Sadly, a big reason […]