Max posted:
God knows what else is buried in the giant dung heap of Microsoft code . . .
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In Excel 97, open a new blank work sheet. Press F5 (go
to function)and type X97:L97 in the "Reference"
box, then click OK.
Now hit your tab key once (you should end up in
cell M97). Here's the tricky part:
press "Ctrl" and "Shift" while clicking
once on the "chart wizard" icon (the one at the top with the
blue-yellow-red bar chart). After a few moments
you should be flying. Steer with the
mouse, accel and decel with the left and right mouse buttons
respectively, and look for the monolith
with the programmer credits. You can
exit the screen by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc.
Steer with the mouse. Moving it sideways moves you sideways.
Acceleration depends on mouse acceleration. Left
click to zoom in, right click to zoom
out. You can hit escape to quit, but then you must
restart excel and do it all over again to get back.
>
Yes. These are called Easter Eggs. There are a bunch of them in Microsoft Office, including Word.
There is a Usenet newsgroup, comp.risks or something like that, that documents Easter Eggs as they are discovered.
I look on them as adolescent humor on the part of the individual programmers. I was once a technical writer before I became a programmer, and my contribution to juvenile humor at work was to write a whole paragraph in a General Information Manual in iambic pentameters. It was tough. Computer lingo doesn't scan easily. And when the editor found out too late, he was furious.