Hal O'Brien

Bruce Tognazzini, more widely known as Tog, has a page listing "design bugs", which he defines as:

"...a design error, not a coding slip, (which) must have either persisted more than five years or persisted more than one year and also be potentially catastrophic, causing the user to lose significant time, data, or worse."

Here's the letter I just sent him:

*^*^*^*

Tog:

I've been meaning to send you this for a while, but I haven't had time. Thankfully, our United States Postal Service just rubbed my face in it once again.

My name is Hal O'Brien. Notice that last name -- it has an apostrophe in it.

Which, for all that I am proud of name, from a computer programming point of view, makes me get all Sam Kinison and go, IT'S A LIVING HELL!!!!!!

To hell with Y2K. I want to keep my apostrophe. But, apparently, an all-too-common breed of programmer is either too lazy or too contemptuous to let me.

My hope is, with a last name like Tognazzini, you know how annoying it is when people misspell your name by accident. Now imagine what happens when you have to misspell your name (or a retail clerk has to misspell your name) *BY DESIGN*! All because of legacy systems, or lazy programmers.

I was just filling out an online change of address form at http://www.usps.gov/ It told me to put in my last name. Then it told me my last name has "an illegal character"? Oh?

Later, for verification, I had to enter credit card info, so they could charge me a toekjn $1.00. I can understand this -- having high schoolers change the address of an unliked teacher online is probably only funny once. But it also said to enter my last name, "exactly as it appears on your credit card."

I did. My bank is 1st Tech Credit Union, and, surprise!, they actually have competent programmers, so my last name is spelled correctly on it.

USPS didn't like that at all. So, as usual in these situations, I had to tell a white lie, and then hope my bank's software would be forgiving enough to allow for that.

Because of legacy systems or lazy programmers, I've seen my last name filed a number of ways:

O'Brien
O"Brien
OBrien
O Brien
O_Brien
O+Brien
O-Brien
O>Brien

...and that's even before we get into the O'Brien/O'Brian misspelling that happens all too often, and then has to be multiplied by all the variants above.

MLB... Major League Baseball's web site lets you order "customized" jerseys in the colors of one's favorite team. Use your own name, use a favorite player's, no problem.

Unless your name is O'Brien. Or your favorite recent player was Paul O'Neill. Or any of the 50-mumble players in major league history who used an apostrophe. Because MLB won't let you use an apostrophe on your "customized" jersey.

You'd think even simple political correctness would've have pushed companies to fix this, as it's not just Americans of Celtic descent affected, but also some of African descent (Google N'Djamena, as an example).

Thank you for reading through my vent, and I hope you call this to the attention of developers everywhere in the sound of your voice.

Sincerely,

Hal O'Brien

(Include any information you wish.)