Monday, March 14, 2005

Microsoft Bob Strikes Again ...

I was minding my own business, looking for the 1.1.0.0 patch for my copy of Half-Life on Sierra's official Half-Life website, when I decided to look at the staff page, just for the fun of it. I scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the page and read the two-column listing of previous games / programs members of the Valve team had worked on in the past. I read down the column ... Microsoft Excel ... Microsoft Word ... and, at the bottom of the first column ... Microsoft Bob ...

Being late-at-night, I rubbed my eyes and scanned the column again: still Microsoft Bob. I dunno if I'm the only guy in the world who didn't know what a "Microsoft Bob" was, but I was determined to find out. So, I went to my godly resource of everything all-knowing ... known merely as Google ... and I Googled the words "Microsoft" and "Bob". I didn't need to click on any links, because merely looking at the site description told me what Bob was.

Microsoft Bob was the codename for a canned project Bill Gates had proposed for the Windows operating system [OS] that had later been ... well ... canned ... in favor of other, highly-anticipated programs. Bob was supposed to continue the series of Microsoft programs alive, but, unfortunately, failed in the process, thus Bob was kept locked up in the confines of Microsoft's CEO's office until late hours of the day ...

Just imagine for a minute how you Start Menu would look if Bob hadn't fallen through:

> Microsoft Excel
> Microsoft Word
> Microsoft Bob

*shiver* Freaky ... not that any of you care or anything ...

- "Grim Reaper"