I find those cutesy error messages just make a bad situation worse.

Error descriptions are probably too much to ask these days - I would bet they'd be perceived as intimidating by the UX group, given that the same group seems to prefer a level of discourse appropriate for grade-school classrooms.

A error code would be wonderful, though, since it would be a nice unique search term. It could be put in small greyed-out text in a bottom corner, too, to make everyone happy.