The only part that didn't change was my name. Good to know.
It's a bummer that I haven't had the same main email address forever. I don't have access to that anymore but it'd be fun to try to recover some ancient accounts. Also I had a domain name; why didn't I set up email?
Jabber/XMPP was such a dead-on-arrival idea. The spec was too big, the reference implementations too complex, the social requirements too unsteady, the adoption strategy missing. It played catch-up to AIM instead of re-defining the space that was originally open. And again, I had a domain name; why did I use jabber.org?
AOL Instant Messenger had its time. American OnLine itself had its time. A walled garden protecting us newbs from the scary Internet. But that made sense at the time; the Web was new, so why couldn't AOL and its competitors also make similar, competing, proprietary alternatives? AIM breaking out was so clearly a defeat for AOL, the beginning of the end, but we didn't recognize it as such at the time. At least, the teens didn't; unsure whether the adults did.
Why did I have a Yahoo! nick?
Whose phone number was that? I didn't have a phone…