IBM ad

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Wed, Jun 26, 2002 at 04:29:13PM -0500, Barbara Need wrote:
> I was going through my Chicago Tribune this morning when I opened up a two
> page spread for an IBM ThinkPad ad. My eyes passed over the text on the
> left and moved to the person sitting just to the right of center, amid
> shelves with lots of books. My first thought was, "Gee, he looks
> familiar!", but assumed I had seen the ad before, or at least the model.
> Then I looked back at the text on the left (since my glimpse of it
> suggested there was a pronunciation and/or a definition embedded in it).
> Imagine my surprise! The quote was from Jesse Sheidlower! This is the first
> time I have ever seen someone in an ad I actually knew!

Heh. Yeah, it was a little unexpected. And I didn't have much to do with
the choice of word, or its definition (though I did insist on IPA instead
of "HAL-see-un"). But it was very nice for OED, and nice for me both in
terms of publicity and because I got to keep the computer. Which, by the
way, was _not_ running Windows, as the ad suggested, but FreeBSD.

Thanks for the note.

Best,

Jesse