Thanks to jdporter for the extra info! The timestamps indicate the (now reaped) anonymous reply was made two minutes before KABA joined Perl Monks ... so it wasn't that KABA wasn't logged in, it was that KABA didn't exist yet.

Yet why on earth was KABA looking at such an inconspicuous 18-year-old node in the first place? I can only think of two plausible theories:

• The node was found by a web search of some sort. But what search engine would bring up an obscure eighteen-year-old node with a rep of only 78 (not high by 2003 standards, e.g. Ovid's Often Overlooked OO Programming Guidelines has 197 rep - see also Re: Selected best nodes - nothing recent, why? (Node Reputation Ranges Over the Years)).
• Our new visitor started his/her PM journey by clicking the Random Node feature in Leftovers on the bottom right of the PM screen - aka Bod's conjecture.

There must be a more plausible explanation but I can't think of one. If KABA is listening we might get lucky. Based on past necroposting experiences though, I fear we will never hear from KABA again. :(