December 20, 2008

Changing User Names

So I've been geocaching for a few years now (5 years and 2 months, to be exact), and I fear my geocaching.com user name is in need of an overhaul. For one thing, "Teampipperice" just has way too many characters in it. So many, that it takes up an entire nano cache log sheet.

Not only that, but the moniker is just nonsense to anyone outside of my family. See, I started geocaching about the same time we got our dog, and my children could not agree on what to name her. One wanted Pippi, and the other wanted Licoricise, thus, Pipperice was born. So be warned, this is what happens when you let your kids come up with names for pets and geocaching id's. By the way, you can see Pipperice in one of the photos in the upper right corner of this blog.

So I recently began my quest for a new user name. I started by searching the Groundspeak forums and found this post on the subject. The first thing you have to do is make sure the user name you want is not, nor has ever been, registered. You can do that with this lookup tool. Of course, my first choice for a new user name was "GeoJoe", but that name was taken long ago, as was every possible related version of it:

GeoJoeMama??? So, it looks like this is going to be trickier than I thought. Time to expand my search radius. I've always been partial to the name Moe, or anything with "Mojo" in it. But alas, every possible iteration and combination of these names are already taken as well, including MoeJoe, MoJo, Geomojo, Mojojo, and even GeoHobo. It appears, however, that "geohobojoe" might be available, but then again, that defeats the whole purpose of coming up with a shorter user name. Oh well, maybe I'll just hang on to Teampipperice for a while longer.

I hope you all are happy with your geocaching user names and won't ever have to worry about changing them.

Cache On!

6 comments:

deets said...

I've always wondered about your geocaching handle. There was a time that it could be changed. I originally registered with my first initial and last name...boooring!

When I started seeing all kinds of creative names, I decided to change it.

Happy Holidays,

cloversmom (also named after my dog)

GeoJoe said...

Cloversmom,

Thanks for reading. Nice to hear from a local cacher. Love all your hides in the Oakland/Berkeley hills!

Happy Holidays,

Teampipperice/GeoJoe

Anonymous said...

Handles are sometimes complicated things. I guess we went the more simple route BillnPegz - aka Bill and Peggy. No team nothing, no mojo, no geo just plain ol' who we are. At one time I thought we should team it up or get creative. Not so sure anymore.

P.J. said...

Who knew it would be so hard to find a new name, eh? Good luck with it! :)

A 'lil HooHaa.

Unknown said...

Hi Teampipperice,

Who says that your shortened name has to make any sense? I can't stand The Former Artist Formerly Known As Prince. But as you know, at one time he changed his name to a symbol. If you want a really really really short name, why not change it to a period, comma, or maybe even a semi-colon, dash and a close-paren?

Just John said...

Glad you pointed out this option. I've been wondering about it for a couple of months now. I was a little hasty when I chose my user name. It's based on my rank, which is going to (unexpectedly) change this year. (golfgunny)