This message was self-deleted by its author

[MineralMan]

58. Yeah, I met Bill Gates a couple of times, too.

He didn't like me very much. I did a fully functional parody of Microsoft Bob. It was a Windows Shell, just like Bob, but was called "Bubba." I published it as freeware in 1995, not long after Bob appeared. It was a joke, but ended up going viral. I learned soon after I released it that it was running as a Windows shell on many PCs at the Microsoft campus.

That parody almost cost me my job at PC World. I kept my job, though. My best and most successful prank ever! All done in Visual Basic, of course.

The funniest thing about Bubba was that it took me less than 24 hours to code the software. My brother in law designed the artwork for the interface in about 12 hours. I launched it at COMDEX the year Bob came out and distributed about 400 3.5" floppies containing Bubba to computer media people at COMDEX. On my office wall hangs the feature story about Bubba, complete with a color screen shot, that ran in the San Jose Mercury News. The article title is, "Bubba meets Microsoft. Bob, you ain't gonna like this."

Fun times!