"Westy, did you manually search for your first after selecting "the begining"? "
Kind of. For the first month or so I only added to topics (I didn't author any as I was mostly watching from a "distance." I really didn't participate here much until I returned from the 1999 AW con and was no longer deluded as to what AW was and would (not) be).
This morning I went back and just started reading the early, lengthy topics to find one I contributed to and found one of my first posts. Using the search feature will only ever get me back to 2001 and not 1999.