It's the personal touch that counts

[nmg]

When I was viva'd for my PhD last December, my external examiner suggested that I put my thesis forward for a distinguished dissertation award that is run by CPHC and the British Computer Society. Given that winning the award gets your thesis published by Springer-Verlag, entering seemed like a good idea, so I went and printed off the extra six copies of my thesis that this required.

To cut a long story short, I didn't win the award, which wasn't a shock since I was pretty surprised that I was recommended for entry in the first place. Yesterday I received the official notification that I hadn't won (I'd had an email about a fortnight before that), which was addressed to "Dr Nicolas Gibbins" (sic) and which began "Dear Gibbins", before going on to offer the usual commiserations.

I've had junk mail that made a better attempt at getting my name right.