FAQ: GFK's, what about that nickname?

My father got a modem in the beginning of the 90's. We connected it to our Macintosh II and logged on to Synapse, the BBS of the Club Macintosh de Québec (Quebec Macintosh User Club).

I had to choose a nickname for the BBS, the Oliver Stone's movie JFK was really popular in those years. I was 12 years old at the time, and my english was pretty thin. When pronounced in english, JFK sounds like GFK pronounced in french, so GFK was an interesting souding nickname. I added the 's because I kept seeing it in english texts and I didn't know what it was used for! ;-)

The complete nickname is GFK's, even if it is not syntactically correct, i.e.: "GFK's said that it's nice". However, you can use GFK (without the 's) whenever you feel like it, i.e.: "GFK's a nice guy" and "GFK said that it's nice".

Later in the 90's, the term "GFK's Palace" was coined by Gabriel Michaud. He was the SysOp (System Operator) of MacMania BBS, a local BBS running on Hermes. I was one of the CoSysOps. MacMania was part of the FidoNet (node 1:240/318), sending a message from MacMania to the Internet would take one week! When Gabriel (and his BBS) moved to the other side of the city, I had to pay a toll charge to call the BBS. Gabriel proposed that I became a FidoNet point, so that I only had to connect for a few minutes per day. He called my node GFK's Palace. I also own the domain gfk-palace.org since 2001.

My nickname should not be confused with these entities:

• GfK Group, a European market research institute.


• Government Fury Kills, a punk music group from Québec City.


• Grand Forks International Airport (GFK), North Dakota’s busiest commercial airport.