Lately I have been getting more questions about why I use the online name Wastedbrains online. I don’t do much with wastedbrains.com anymore (UPDATE: Now it is my personal blog), it really just serves as an archive of stuff I had done and put online in the past. For many services I still create the user Wastedbrains. It has served as my online persona longer than nearly anything, short of Captian2.
Captian2 was created with a misspelling, which amazingly one person before me had already created a misspelled Captain user name on AOL. Since I have taken more then enough crap in my life for spelling, I didn’t continue using that online name. WastedBrains came about while trying to think of a good website name when I wanted to create a hobby site. It was a site that was supposed to host all of my friends and I’s various side projects that were a ‘waste’ of time. The waste of time aspect was what the name referred to, unfortunately that isn’t normally how it is taken.
Around the same time as Wastedbrains.com was born, the term wasted seemed to become more commonly used to refer to someone who was drunk or high. The belief that my account Wastedbrains meant I was a partier or a stoner persisted. I recently was playing a game of half life online, and the moderator on the server told me I had to change my name to something that doesn’t support drug use. That seemed like the final draw that I needed somewhere on the internet to explain my reasoning and original intent behind my long lived Wastedbrains persona.
So yes, many of the projects and the things I do online are a waste of time. Wasting time with games which I have played for years like Starcraft and Half Life. Wasting time making silly videos, art, growing beards or posting things on YouTube as user Wastedbrains of course. I haven’t posted a video on YouTube for likely 2 years, but just realized the videos living there have racked up over 120,000 views. The Wastedbrains lives on in many services I have used, projects, code, and other things I have released online. I might have wasted a lot of time online, but not everything you do should really have a purpose. When in life is left to experiment and learn if everything you do has a purpose. I experiment, I explore, and I have learned a lot as my online time wasting persona. So hopefully we will see some things done and released by Wastedbrains again in the future. 
In case anyone from the past is searching for me or trying to contact me, here are a list of alaises I “WastedBrains” Dan Mayer go by:
- Daniel Mayer
- Daniel Stephen Mayer
- Wastedbrains
- Riddler
- Captian2
- Danman from (Danman and Waffleboy)
- Batman
- mayerdan
- mayer_dan
- ddmayer
- dmayer
- dan “energy” man (from my Energy Drink Reviews days.)
So I think that about covers everything I have ever used as a username online. If you were looking for me, looks like you found me. Feel free to shoot me an email at: dan <at> mayerdan (d0t) com
