Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for April 15, 2011

Gasp!!

Figuring out the single password he uses for everything under the sun and then changing them all to something else is even better…

No day is more fun in IT than April 1… two of my faves that I pulled off:

sent messages to every 3rd computer in the call center that said “If you have received this message, you have been terminated” - by sending it to every 3rd screen, the person would look to the right and left of themselves and not see the message put a rather ominous “error” message on the mainframe that stated “system failure detected - all files deleted” - this worked because I was the last to leave at night, and the first person in was always a project manager who liked to start early in the morning. She was not alone that morning, and a death scream was heard from her desk when she logged in.

They must have a good sense of humor where you work, RoadTrip3500, because I’d be fired if I tried those. There’s a difference between lighthearted humor and serious humor.

There was a practical joker at a former workplace. One of his worst was putting hot sauce in the coffee pot - made everyone sick; I don’t drink coffee, but still didn’t find it funny. I love the idea of just changing file names especially as that guy is just a shirker so there is likely nothing much there but personal stuff…

Dickerson deserves it. That is all.

When I was working on my senior project in college, we used to pull pranks on anyone who forgot to log off the computers… we usually stuck to changing all of the Windows colors (text, background, highlight, etc.) – either something ridiculously pink and girly for a guy student, or if we were feeling mean, set everything that we could to black so you couldn’t read any text :)

I agree if I change and how does one do that. I would be fired. Don’t most people now have to log in. One time Admin Assist left her computer on and forgotten to log off. Stupidity on my part I went to log off I should have waited until the boss left but then I would have been caught by someone else and still got in trouble for people turn others in. I emailed the admin assist what they did. I didn’t get in trouble that same one makes sure of logging out. Now computers on a 10min timer not sure logs off. How can one change file names? I thought now need to hack in.

Dickerson definately deserves it, but someday he will be CEO - he plays the politics well… So I’m wondering why she couldn’t re-dump all that work back to him? Glad I’m a retired old dog (who ran my own small business), ‘cause you guys play rough! Must make your work days a lot more fun though, just keep it ligh!t (see lightenup’s comment) no fair terrifying people, or impeding the work flow… Once met a man who actually liked to put Tabasco in his coffee, guess he had been victim of that prank once too often…

To quote the immortal Bugs Bunny - “Of course you realize, this means WAR”.

I’m with rayannina!!

There was a co-worker once with whom I had an ongoing battle of pranks. Once, I once came in early and set all of his files to “hidden”. When he came in, his first thought was that all of his work for the past six months had been erased (he did, however, figure it out - he was a clever guy).

Take snapshot of the desktop Use snapshot as desktop background Hide all icons and taskbar on the desktop Watch the victim reboot frantically and pull his/her hair out while slowly but surely succumbing to madness

@Amin. I’ve seen that done. Step 4 is exactly right.

Amin Rainmaker - that is the most deliciously diabolical stunt ever! Thank goodness for aircraft-engineer’s sound advice!

Lately one of our favorite pranks is to rotate the display 90 degrees on anyone’s desk who fails to log out. Most can’t figure out how to make the mouse move the way they want to change it back if they even know how.

or set their login profile so it immediately logs them back out

Change the keyboard layout to left handed Devorak

For me the questions are pretty standard:

How badly did the customer er client er victim deserve to be treated this way?

How much trouble could I get into for trashing the system?

How much do I care, anyway?

How hard was it to figure out how to do it?

In other words, the usual self-doubt / examination of my morality.

Nothing much new, really.

Oh, and what did my (almost) namesake change the filenames to?

Hey! I had several boxes of cds that i put on my desk to the right of the monitor (ominous music roll) - where are they now?

How do you program one piece of hardware to eat another one?? HELP!!

ok, now, whoever it is, put that back*!!

Great payback!

When I’d find a terminal still logged on the mainframe I’d put a message on the screen…

Access Granted To Delete ALL Files, Press Any Key

Nowadays you can always go to google language tools, scroll down and change it, it’s not mean there will be a button to change it back, but google has some that are just jokes such as Bork, bork bork!, Elmer Fudd, and Pirate… I almost decided to change mine and leave it just because I found reading some of the accents amusing.