Saphrym | About

About

You found me. Well, you’ve found the personal side of me. This page is all about me, Mike White, the guy behind the 3 haired cartoon face. The tech behind the face, however, is now provided by Host Gator.

My experience as a webmaster began back in 1998 with a site called “The Phantom Voice Network.” I ended up killing it off until recently when it became a safe haven for some refugees of another site. But it’s gone again. The RIAA shut it down ’cause we had a radio station (with only about 10 listeners at peak times). It happens.

Saphrym.com was born a while back as a place for me to keep my fictional writing. I’ve used the name Saphrym on many sites, so figured owning the “dot com” of it was a good thing. Things change often though.

The thing is I love to write. I’m one of the geeky kids in school who LIKED writing essays. But sometimes I get writer’s block when I’m trying to write fiction. However, if I have a topic to write about, it flows. So I wanted to write more. So I added more categories, and started writing.

So… where did the name “Saphrym” come from? I’ve been asked this a few times and have answered it a few times. I’d love to tell you that it is a huge and cool mysterious story. I’d love to tell you that it took me years to find this name and that the process was a huge undertaking that ended up with a glorious selection of letters.

However, I can’t tell you that, because it’s just not true. See, my alias used to be Sarcastic Sim. This was back when I ran my own WWIV BBS. That was a dial in BBS that used the one phone line I asked my parents for. So, think of it as a web site where only one person can visit at a time. I was the “SysOp,” also known as system operator. It’s kind of like being a webmaster nowadays. The problem with that name was that “The Sims” became popular and people completely missed the meaning of it from that point on. The other problem was that anything else I came up with was already taken.

So, where did “Saphrym” come from? Sure you want to know? Ok, here’s the big secret:

Scrabble tiles.

Yep. Scrabble tiles. I picked 7 out of a bag while playing the game and those letters sat in front of me in that order. I liked the word they spelled. Sounded kind of like a “wise wizard” to me as I played Dungeons and Dragons at the time. So I did a search for it in case it already existed and it didn’t. That name hasn’t been already taken anywhere I go unless I took it and forgot my password.

So there you have it. Saphrym was born of random Scrabble tiles.

Michael White | Create Your Badge