Tim's watch is broken

September 10, 2010 12:25 PM

Issue 54028: Tim's watch is broken

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Find Tim (he's usually in the Seattle office)
2. Engage him in conversation
3. Surreptitiously try to check the time on his watch

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

Expected watch to tell correct time. It tells the wrong time.

posted by swift (23 comments total)

From the thread: I kind of want a Nano now.
posted by griphus at 12:29 PM on September 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is hilarious. And topical. Now I can call this webpage work related, and justify continued browsing.

Do people that don't work with bug reporting also find it hilarious? (I'm guessing I know the answer to that.)
posted by Stagger Lee at 12:38 PM on September 10, 2010

I believe this convo is happening across the street from my apt. building - heading over there now to kick some geek ass.
posted by victors at 12:39 PM on September 10, 2010

"Have you tried taking off the watch and putting it back on again?"

Awesome.
posted by fatbird at 12:54 PM on September 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I recognize it as funny but, sadly, do not laugh.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:59 PM on September 10, 2010 [5 favorites]

The helpfulness gives it away. It would need more "Can't repro, closing as discussed with Suresh", "This is working as designed", "No activity since last month, probably a rare race condition. I'm closing this" to be realistic.
posted by dhoe at 1:02 PM on September 10, 2010

Funniest parts are the steps to reproduce, plus:

My name is also Tim and I can confirm that my watch is functioning correctly, so we can rule out naming issues.

posted by Edgewise at 1:04 PM on September 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I liked:

I'd like to help troubleshoot this bug but I don't have a watch. Is there any way I can run Tim's Watch in a VM to try to recreate?

posted by eriko at 1:08 PM on September 10, 2010

This reminds me of a classic hardware bug in Apple's RADAR system, worded something like, "Monitor's image fidelity appears fuzzy after 12 beers."
posted by mosk at 1:30 PM on September 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

Comment 9 by project member [e-mail], Sep 01, 2010
+1. This is the only thing keeping me from switching to Tim's watch.

Ha, the bitterness. The number of Chromium bugs with something like this in them is the only thing stopping me from switching to Google Code.
posted by bonaldi at 1:31 PM on September 10, 2010 [4 favorites]

PEBKAW
posted by Babblesort at 1:38 PM on September 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

I just want to go on record as saying I didn't think the watch belonged on the road map for the current version. Precisely because fixing this problem is outside the scope.
posted by Eideteker at 1:38 PM on September 10, 2010

If you want to see a more realistic thread, try the one on proxy support in Drupal. Started in 2004(!) and still open.
posted by tommasz at 1:46 PM on September 10, 2010

I chuckled. Also reminded me to redact a certain email chain about the IR auto-promotion process we added to a build ecosystem which ended with a send up titled: So You Want to Get Promoted at COMPANYNAME.

Open source IR systems are so much more fun than the boring corporate one I deal with all day.
posted by Fezboy! at 2:37 PM on September 10, 2010

Good stuff. Thanks for the laugh on the day after "Here you have" fun.
posted by Argyle at 2:59 PM on September 10, 2010

Forwarded this to my PM and we had a good Friday afternoon laugh over it.
posted by localhuman at 5:14 PM on September 10, 2010

PEBKAW

So, like, somewhere on Tim's knuckles?
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:15 PM on September 10, 2010

This is the most awesome Metafilter thread in the last month. ♥♥♥
posted by JHarris at 6:15 PM on September 10, 2010

I am decidedly not a tech support person and I found this hilarious from start to finish. My favorite bit was probably shortly after Tim's admission of dropping the watch in watch, someone tagged the post "TimeSink".
posted by maryr at 7:41 PM on September 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

I still can't decide if the number of people coming in the thread to -- again -- say "lol the watch is right twice a day" are just numbnuts or an ironic commentary on the number of people in average bug threads who don't read any of the earlier comments.
posted by bonaldi at 9:47 AM on September 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Hey I wonder if Tim's watch is right twice a day.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 7:03 AM on September 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

It strikes me as the same sort of pile-on humor as the Amazon milk reviews, and with the same diminishing returns.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:34 PM on September 12, 2010

Hey I wonder if Tim's watch is right twice a week.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 6:19 PM on September 15, 2010