On my tombstone it will say, "He dealt with Clippy." Ten years ago, during an (enjoyable!) six-month stint at Microsoft, I was supposed to be providing a "writer's perspective" on editing features being added to what became Word XP. These mainly involved the track-changes functions, plus embryonic hopes for what is now OneNote. In my spare time, I was inveighing against the maddening feature generally called Clippy -- or TFC* to insiders -- that would pop up and say "You seem to be writing a letter!" whenever you typed out "Dear Mr. ..."

Soon Clippy was turned Off by default (rather than On), and then it was completely deep-sixed. We all leave a mark on the world.

I am therefore particular delighted to see the homage to the original Clippy provided by this mildly subversive new program. You install it on a "friend's" computer -- and until he or she figures out how to turn it off, it pops up every 60 seconds with Clippy-worthy tips like these:

Download site here; info, including how to turn it off, here. I loaded this onto a backup computer and was able (I think!) to stop and completely remove it when the hilarity was done. But why take a chance? Put it on someone else's computer, not your own. Thanks to R. Manzetti.

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* TFC = The F... Clown