Light relief: favorite bug reports

I thought it might be fun to start a thread going on favorite bug reports. I imagine many companies have classic examples that periodically do the rounds internally, but never see the outside world. Maybe channel 9 can turn this around...

So here's my contribution to start things going. This is the actual text of a bug against office9, opened way back in 1998.

Office9 153758 - one of the office cat's idle animations makes it look dead, or floating in space

===== Opened by xxxx on 08/14/98; AssignedTo = Active =====
boot office app
have assistant on and set to the office cat
leave the app for a few minutes so that it goes into idle
In my case, I had switched away to another monitor and then switched back, so I didn't see the cat go through any transition animation.

notice: I was very briefly horrified to see what looked like a dead cat.
Thanks to a trick of perspective, the cat looked like it was floating upside down in space, with its head at an awkward angle and its legs splayed out.

expect: The characters' motions to feel/look mostly natural.

Moshe let me look at the animation in question in the character editor; it's deep idle e, frames 71-81 or so.
===== Assigned by xxxx on 08/14/98 11:43:27 to xxxx =====
===== Assigned by xxxx on 08/14/98 11:43:48 to xxxx =====
Actually, dead cats look mostly natural.
===== Assigned by xxxx on 08/14/98 14:51:53 to xxxx =====
By design: during the switch Rocky must have gotten at him.
===== Resolved Postponed by xxxx in 09.00.00.2006 on 08/14/98 15:39:57; AssignedTo = xxxx =====
This is pretty much a dead(!)-wringer for a show-stopper. I've talked to the designers and they've agreed to use the attached picture of my cat, who's very much alive (and prone to pee-ing on newsprint), as the model for the office 9 cat. We should have this licked (!) by 0800 Monday.

nice one!

MORE

Ok, needing little encouragement, i'll try another

I will branch out from the office assistants, but they do seem to provide a wealth of material, so here's another one that i thought was kind of amusing...

Office9 10113 - Excessive Yawn animations may distract users. Makes you sleepy.

12/07/02 4:48 AM: Upgraded from Office9 - Bug 10113 by xxxx(PS Administrators) (Bug 10113)

hahah, these are good. You guys got any with clippy in?

Double Post...

lol these are good.  more more

Why aren't these tracking comments made public via the bug reporting interface today? Such feedback, whether funny or not, would motivate me to report more bugs more often. Right now it feels as if no one reads the reports.

Ok...there are a couple of mildy amusing clippit ones - and clippy is certainly a legitimate target. It's someone elses turn then though - i was hoping it wouldn't be just ms bugs that get posted

so - it looks like there has been an anti-clippit faction around in office dev for a while now. Here's an attempt of theirs to sway marketing with a somewhat novel argument...


Office9 192615 - Make another assistant the default assistant for PR reasons - people who hated Clippit before will still hate him =)

===== Opened by xxxx on 10/21/98; AssignedTo = Active =====
Many users associate everything to do with Office characters with '97's Clippit.

notice: Our default character for Office 9 is the paper clip.
scenario: People who are ambiguous about the assistant may see the paper clip may think "ah, it's just the same old assistant, only with better colors", and just ignore it.
They would then be turning away from all our character animators' and assistant developers' hard work without even giving it a fair shot. =)
expect: I would think it'd be better marketing to use a different assistant as the default, say Rocky or Links.
Their animations really show off how much more out of the box the assistants are, and I'd think the characters themselves would be easier to anthromorphisize.
(Translation: I can convince myself to talk to a dog or a cat. Lock me away if I talk to paper clips and bouncing dots.)

I realize the paper clip was chosen partially for performance reasons, but we only get one shot at a first impression and it'd be nice to go with a more "cuddly" character. Yes, it's an arbitrary cosmetic change, but hell, all that really changes with cereals and candy is the packaging and people try them anyway...
===== Assigned by xxxx on 10/22/98 08:34:24 to xxxx =====
===== Resolved By Design by xxx in 09.00.00.0000 on 10/22/98 11:37:08; AssignedTo = xxxx =====
thanks for the suggestion
===== Assigned by xxxx on 10/22/98 to xxxx =====
Bounced about as hard as I expected.
===== Closed by xxxx on 10/29/98; AssignedTo = Closed =====




...and here's an attempt to brighten up clippits appearance, by "wont fix"ing a novel colour scheme bug...

Office9 179640 - assistant turns pink and stays pink. 

==== Opened by xxxxon 09/29/98; AssignedTo = Active =====
steps:
1. install assistants to run from source
2. boot word
3. turn on assistant
4. disconnect from network(unplug the yellow thingy)
5. rt click and go into gallery
6. Click no on the message that comes up: "The assistant previews are incomplete or corrupt. Would u like to try reinstalling them?"
7. wait a while until the progress metter starts moving on the darwin dialog and hit cancel

results:
Clippit is hot pink. I can move him. click animate, hide him and reshow him and he's still pink.

notes:
is this a dupe. seems like i remember seeing this somewhere b4 but couldn't find it.
===== Assigned by xxxxon 09/29/98 to Active =====
related to bug 179630.
===== Assigned by xxxx on 09/29/98 to Active =====
note in step 4. this couldn't happen just by the network server going down.
===== Assigned by xxxx on 09/30/98 to xxxx =====
This looks like an Agent problem. It's trying really hard to read character data from the network that's down, and it can't display the character properly. This really just looks stupid, but we can live with it. If you want me to take it up with the Agent folks, I will, but otherwise, just resolve "Won't Fix."

(It's a very nice looking pink )
===== Resolved Postponed by xxxx in 09.00.00.0000 on 10/01/98; AssignedTo = xxxx =====
agreed
===== Closed by xxxxxon 10/05/98; AssignedTo = Closed =====
most definitely. hot pink is very becoming on the characters...
===== Assigned by xxxx on 02/04/99 17:20:17 to Closed =====
It's a "Won't Fix."
===== Assigned by xxxx on 05/26/99 20:27:14 to Closed =====
agreed

Ok, a little off-topic but...

very funny. lol. That would save a person alot of time for the stuff in stuff in life. ^{if hes still alive}

Very Funny. This would saving alot of time for the other stuff in life. ^{If that person who is writing this is still alive}

Great stuff thanks for sharing.  Good to see the light hearted side of people at Microsoft.  Many get the idea that programmers are just serious all the time, which is evidentily not true.

Keep them coming!