When people get depressed, it sometimes helps to remind them of certain situations that are worse than the one they are currently in. If I'm saddened by the fact that I got sick and had to miss the Dave Matthews concert, its easy for me to come to grips with reality when I'm reminded of the fact that some people are sick all of the time, not just for a few days.
The same concept is certainly valid in the jungle of software maintenance. If your buddy is given the task of adding some functionality to a piece of obfuscated code, it might help to remind him of some code that has much more serious problems. This easy to do, given the large collection of nauseating code samples available at The Daily WTF. A simple click of this link, and I assure you that your buddy will be feeling better in no time.
I will leave you with the sole inspiration of this post. An error message that I hope to never see again during the rest of my career:
