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Hey all, long time lurker, I registered just to post this. This isn't a story about a sucky user, just an amusing tale from my days doing graveyard shift tech support for a hospital company.
One night I'm walking this lady through something, I don't remember what her issue was, and we're waiting for her workstation to reboot. There was silence on the line. I'd noticed her last name was "Lovelace".
"Your name's 'Lovelace', huh? Any relation to the famous--"
"No," she says abruptly, cutting me off. "No relation."
She sounded uncomfortable and a little pissed. I thought that was odd, but sometimes the users just don't want to chat. That's fine, I don't really want to chat either. But there was something odd about her tone. It really seemed like my question embarrassed her.
"Yeah... Everybody always asks me that," she adds after a few moments of silence.
Now, I don't like to sound like a know-it-all or a pedant, but in my experience not too many people outside the tech world are familiar with Ada Lovelace, Victorian-era mathematician and grandmother of computer science. Everybody always asks her if she's related to Ada Lovelace, really?
"Really?", I ask.
"Yeah..." She chuckles a little uncomfortably. "Everybody's a comedian, you know?"
I assume a few of you get the joke at this point, but at the time I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. And so, I press on.
"Oh, well I... I'm sorry, I just asked because I'm a fan of hers." Not satisfied at only half-humiliating myself, I continue, "She was ahead of her time." No, I'm not done yet. "She was a great woman."
"I..." she sounded very uncomfortable, "never thought about her that way."
"Oh, absolutely," I gush on, "very few people at the time understood the significance of what she and Charles Babbage were doing."
"Charles... Baggage... Is that some other porn star?"
I have no answer to this question.
Naturally, it turned out she was talking about Linda Lovelace, famous 1970's porn star.
The remainder of the call was all business.
One night I'm walking this lady through something, I don't remember what her issue was, and we're waiting for her workstation to reboot. There was silence on the line. I'd noticed her last name was "Lovelace".
"Your name's 'Lovelace', huh? Any relation to the famous--"
"No," she says abruptly, cutting me off. "No relation."
She sounded uncomfortable and a little pissed. I thought that was odd, but sometimes the users just don't want to chat. That's fine, I don't really want to chat either. But there was something odd about her tone. It really seemed like my question embarrassed her.
"Yeah... Everybody always asks me that," she adds after a few moments of silence.
Now, I don't like to sound like a know-it-all or a pedant, but in my experience not too many people outside the tech world are familiar with Ada Lovelace, Victorian-era mathematician and grandmother of computer science. Everybody always asks her if she's related to Ada Lovelace, really?
"Really?", I ask.
"Yeah..." She chuckles a little uncomfortably. "Everybody's a comedian, you know?"
I assume a few of you get the joke at this point, but at the time I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. And so, I press on.
"Oh, well I... I'm sorry, I just asked because I'm a fan of hers." Not satisfied at only half-humiliating myself, I continue, "She was ahead of her time." No, I'm not done yet. "She was a great woman."
"I..." she sounded very uncomfortable, "never thought about her that way."
"Oh, absolutely," I gush on, "very few people at the time understood the significance of what she and Charles Babbage were doing."
"Charles... Baggage... Is that some other porn star?"
I have no answer to this question.
Naturally, it turned out she was talking about Linda Lovelace, famous 1970's porn star.
The remainder of the call was all business.
I AM the evil bastard!
That's too funny!
).
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