I'd been aware of PM for quite some time before I actually visited here (a cow-orker had mentioned the site). However, I had a perception that it was some sort of exclusive club for "l33t" Perl hackers - and as such I had no business being here :)

Then one evening I was working late at the office and found myself stuck with one particular problem. Normally I would ask one of my cow-orkers for advice, but on this occassion there was nobody around. And then I remembered that my cow-orker had mentioned that PerlMonks would help out with Perl-related problems (well, duh!).

And so came my first post. That was only a few months ago, but I have no doubt that since then I have learned much much more about Perl (and the Perl community in general) than I had in the previous 3 years :)

Update: heh, I just noticed that domm posted his 100th node in this thread. And by co-incidence, this is also my 100th node :)