In software engineering, things that you think are a joke sometimes take on a life of their own.  To wit: the humble origins of the blink tag.  A bunch of Netscape engineers got together for beers in Mountain View one night, where one lamented that none of the HTML extensions would work with Lynx.

There were two unintended consequences to this beer-fueled conversation:

1. The blink tag was coded up that very night
2. The engineer who made the lamentation met the woman who ultimately became his wife.

You never know what will come out of happy hour conversations.  They often have unintended consequences.