[EM] Reply was interrupted.

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

G.A.--

My first reply was interrupted by having to leave the computer.

I didn't insult you. I didn't insult you intentionally or unintentionally.

In your first posting about the name abbreviation, you didn't say that it 
offended you or that you considered it an insult. Or, if you did say that 
you considered it an insult, I missed that part of your initial posting.

What you said was that my abbreviation was incorrect. Abbreviations aren't 
incorrect. They aren't intended to be the same as what they abbreviate. 
They're shorter. They're often no longer than necessary for identification. 
So I was merely expressing disagreement with your claim that my abbreviation 
was incorrect.

Now you're making it sound as if I intentionally kept using an abbreviation 
that you'd said insulted you. Not at all. You hadn't said that it insulted 
you. Only that it was incorrect.

My brief initial reply could appear as if I intentionally wanted to offend 
you. That isn't true either. My initial reply merely had to be brief, and 
the brief wording couldn't include the kind of complete explanations that I 
wanted to include.

So I want it to be clear to all that at no time did I intentionally insult 
you or intentionallly offend you. Not in my reply to your first posting 
about the abbreviation, and not in my unavoidably brief initial reply to 
your 2nd posting about it. I don't intentiionally insult someone without 
good justification. If I unintentionally anger someone, and they say so, I 
would not then try to anger them more.

I didn't insult you be using the abbreviation when you said it was 
incorrect. But of course now that you've said that it offends you, that you 
consider it insulting, then of course I won't use an abbreviation that 
you've said insults of offends you.

There are several abbreviations that would do, other than the one that you 
don't like, and which I'd be glad to not use. My objection to James G.A. 
isn't so much the extra letter as its unnecessarily close resemblence to 
James G. Here are some alternatives. Let me know which you prefer:

G.A.
JGA
Jim

Just saying James wouldn't distinguish you from James Gilmour.

If there's any other abbreviation that you prefer to the 3 that I listed 
above, then tell it, and I'll use it if it meets other reasonable criteria.

By the way, usually hyphenated names are used by rich families. I suggest 
that the hyphenated rich have more to apologize for than to complain about.

You said that you could call me Mike S., and that that would be stupid. Yes 
it would. It would be stupid because my last name doesn't have a capital "S" 
in it, and because my name isn't a 2-part name that includes a name 
beginning with "S".

Here's a better analogy. We call Alabama AL. That's why we can't call Alaska 
AL. So do we call Alaska ALAS? No, we call it AK. We want to keep it brief, 
and use just enough letters to distinguish the states' names.

Mike Ossipoff

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