Dave says:

I have to admit I’m a little curious about how they put everything together from a packaging perspective…is it actually useful, or is it primarily a novelty gift?

Hmm…

I’m guessing, “novelty.” But maybe that’s just me.

On the other hand, you do get this date tracker form:

Yeah.

I’d like to take a moment to thank Knock Knock for guaranteeing, with this kit, that some people will never, ever breed.

You see, every time I attempt to open MS Excel, MS Word, or MS Powerpoint, I get to play a game.

It’s a game called “The font foo is corrupt and should be removed.”

The only way to play the game is to click “OK” (there isn’t any other option).

What fun!

There’s about a ten second delay between each of these dialog boxes, so you get to learn patience.

And everyone knows that patience is a virtue.

I feel rather grateful to the MS Office for Mac team, for giving me such an opportunity to practice my patience, as well as my mouse dexterity.

Sometimes, I take a break from clicking, and I hit “Enter” instead.

It’s nice that they allow that.

Because, you know, some choice is good.

The option to, oh, I don’t know, opt out of this game might be nice, though.

Because I really do have some work to do.

And while this game is a lot of fun…

…it’s getting kind of old.

What’s more, my fonts aren’t corrupt.

There’s just something that Office doesn’t like about them.

And it doesn’t provide a list of the “corrupt” fonts, anyway.

Nope. I just have to write the names down in a textfile.

Because I wasn’t doing anything more important, anyway.

And in situations like this, the appropriate thing to do is always to use the human as a memory aid.

Because we’re so good at that sort of thing.

And computers are terrible at remembering huge lists of information.

And, of course, it’s so nice that I get the chance to tell the computer to go ahead after every single font variant on my system.

I only have a bit over 500 fonts, after all.

So it’s nice to be reintroduced to some of them.

Now, Microsoft Office’s knowledge base knows about this game.

They think you should delete a cache file.

So I did that.

It reset the list of fonts.

So now I get to play this game in MS Word again.

Because I’d already beaten it once, you see.

It was an exercise in grim bloody-mindedness.

It took me four hours.

And I’m just about at the end of my patience.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to open this excel file.

And that’s a pity, because I need it to get some work done.

Now, user interface is a very high priority with Microsoft.

This is very obvious.

For example, I really liked the “Product ID” field in the support form with the Enter keystroke that defaults to “Back” instead of “Continue” when you’ve finished typing in your three hundred and twelve product ID number.

That was a nice touch.

But it seems to me that the mac office team has really dropped the ball, here.

Not that this isn’t a fun game…

But it’s beginning to get a bit old.

And while I don’t normally like to cheat,

I’d really like to get past this.

So, MS: could you fix this please?

Take your time.

I’ll be here, all week.

Clicking “OK.”

Thanks.

Note: Obviously, I’ve repeated 10 screenshots here, instead of having individual pictures of the dialog boxes, As they appear.

That’s because I’m lazy.

Sue me.

FWIW, I’m still clicking OK, and I’m not through “E” yet, even after renaming the screenshots and uploading them.