On the lighter side...

Word needs Viagra? Peter Koplan was the first of a number of readers to point out the following:

1. Open a new document in Word 98 or Word 6
2. Type: "Unable to follow directions" (without the quotes)
3. Highlight the entire phrase
4. Click Tools/Language/Thesaurus (or hit Shift-F7) to open the Thesaurus
5. Observe what is suggested as the closest replacement

Haiku error messages As long as I am on a humor break, Mike Parker sent me a document that began: "Imagine if, instead of cryptic, geeky text strings, your computer produced error messages in haiku." A dozen or so examples followed; here are my three favorites:

The Web site you seek
cannot be located but
endless others exist. (Joy Rothke)

Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred. (David Dixon)

Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped. (Judy Birmingham)

You can see other examples at this web site (Thanks, Richard Kunert). Dan Wright alerted me to a Salon web page that discusses the origin of all of this.