Once upon a long time ago, I went to school with 7 other people who share my first name (including one with the same last name). So we were all eventually picking up nick names.

Mine came about from..shall we say a combination of youthfulness and profanity. In the sixth grade, I was in a bunch of advanced classes at a local community college. The chemisty professor, was this goofy sort of guy and at some point came to the discussion of the alkaline metals and their reactivity with water. I thought the guy was yanking our chains. So during break me and two classmates decided to test this out. So we placed a chunk of sodium metal on the professor's desk and started taking turns throwing a beaker of water at it. A couple of beakers, one loud boom, and a smoking crater later, the professor rushes in to see me standing there slack jawed with an empty beaker. "What the *bleep* do you think you're doing! What the *bleep* do you think you are some kind of *bleep* *bleep* maverick! I ought to have you arrest you *bleep* *bleep* *bleep*"

It wasn't until college that it turned into a full blown replacement for my real name...I introduce myself as Maverick now. Most people don't know my real name, and I rather prefer that....I don't like it anyways.

/\/\averick
perl -l -e "eval pack('h*','072796e6470272f2c5f2c5166756279636b672');"