This brings back memories

I've been around computers for a long time - longer than some of you have been born.  And a lot of that time has been spent dealing with (helping?) users.

Today I was reminded that even though computers and technology change, people stay pretty much the same.

I rang a school book company regarding an e-code that wasn't working and which we needed a replacement for.

Here's the conversation:

Lady:  "Can I have your email address so I can send you the code"
Me: "Sure, my email address is Julie underscore "
and I hear her say quietly "J U L I E U N D E R S C O R E "
Me: "no Julie and the little black line in email addresses, the underscore "
Her: "ah the little black line"
and then I finished off my email address.

She then said, "Let me read that back to you to make sure I've got it correctly, Julie the little black line underscore ..."
Me:  "Um, no.  The little black line in email addresses is called an underscore."
Her: "Oh, is it?"
Me: "Yes, it's not part of my name"
She laughed.

Now the reason I found this rather odd is that by now, I would have thought that pretty much anyone who works with customer orders via emails would know what an underscore is.

But it does remind me of a similar experience I had in the dim dark past of DOS.

I was talking a user through doing something in DOS, and as part of the conversation I said type "Star dot Star" (meaning *.*, I had given up calling them asterisks by that stage of helpdesk work).  And again I hear in the back ground "S T A R D O T S T A R").

Ah, memories ...