Oh Happy Day...un-doing the wrong that was done to me 6/28/1999

We don't get to pick our e-mail addresses here. When a new employee joins, the e-mail alias is chosen for them (my friend Ann swears she didn't pick mine, but...). Anyway, someone (not Ann) somewhere (not Ann's office) decided that I needed to be heathham@microsoft.com. Because of that, this conversation happens all the time:

Person: Heather, can I have your e-mail adddress?

Me: sure, I need to spell it for you. It's h-e-a-t-h-another h-a-m at microsoft dot com

Person: wait a minute...h-e-a-t-h-a-m?

Me: nope, h-e-a-t-h-another h...

Person: two Hs?

Me: two in the middle, one at the beginning. Three altogether. I know, I didn't get to choose it.

Person: could you just e-mail me first?

Me: no problem.

 

Another scenario:

"Dear Heath,"

Or another:

"Dear Ms. Ham" (if only you knew how much the thought of ham makes me gag).

OK, so now all of that is officially over because I am Heather.Hamilton@microsoft.com. Woohoo! I guess there's something called Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 (MIIS) that enables it. I don't really know what it is or how it works and I don't care. My old e-mail address will still work, but the new one is added as part of my profile. I'm just hoping that people will actually stop calling me heathham here!

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2005
  At least they called your Ms Ham, since "Heath" is a boy's name :-)
  
  That is to say, I've never heard of a girl who's name was "Heath"...
• Anonymous
  September 07, 2005
  I was wondering when Microsoft was going to move away from the 8 character user names. It is like so DOS! ;)
• Anonymous
  September 07, 2005
  I liked Heathham! I changed mine years ago, my original alias as 'pbluemel@microsoft.com' -it caused me so much grief. Back when I was a group assistant, I loved giving alias names. I wouldn't have chosen Heatham for you though. Probably 'Hham'. Because I like ham.
• Anonymous
  September 07, 2005
  Yeah, I like the friendlier look of the fname.lname@microsoft.com format. I just hope the spammers don't catch wind of it. :-O
  
  By the way, you can always submit a request to change your alias. My original was "tohil" or something odd like that. :-| I changed it within my first week.
• Anonymous
  September 07, 2005
  It's interesting how much a part of our identity email names have become. The typical name/initial concatenations that most people use have become nmemonics for me, and I associate visuals with many of the more amusing ones. Where it conjures up no image but is pronounceable, it becomes a unique name that I prefer to the real one.
  
  I thought Heathham was one of the more interesting ones - had a kind of funny English-sounding feel to it, a tad eccentric, vaguely like a real name, but completely made up. I feel your pain, but I hope you won't mind if the image persists. Tohil would have been a good one too. Oh well.
• Anonymous
  September 08, 2005
  That reminds me of a friend I had who lived on Charlieville (pronounced "Charley-ville") Avenue and worked on Cahuenga (pronounce "Cah-wenga") Blvd. He spent all day spelling out either his home or work address. Man was he ever happy when he moved and got a new job.
• Anonymous
  September 08, 2005
  The comment has been removed