Practical Jokes on Co-Workers? 430
leprasmurf asks: "Here I sit with Administrative rights to a public computer at work, and I'm trying to think of how I can have fun with my co-worker's profiles. I'm running low on ideas. I've done the 'copy 50 million folder shortcuts to their desktop' one and if he forgets to lock his terminal one of these times I'm going to do the print screen and hide all his icons one, but what else is there? Surely there are some harmless pranks an administrator can do without resorting to downloading programs for assistance. Any suggestions?"
You could ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You could ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You could ... (Score:2)
Re:You could ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Recipe for a Directrix Desktop:
1) Ensure Active Desktop is enabled
2) Ensure you have Administrative rights and he doesn't (not required but helps)
3) Download a nice pornographic background (or other equally funny image at your discretion)
4) Download a nice fun transparent gif
5) Open the "c:\Documents and Settings\%his_profile_name%\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer" Folder
6) Edit the Desktop.htt (system,hidden) file, its basically an
Re:You could ... (Score:2)
Or, if he plays games when he should be working, you could always install Linux.
Yeah, that would fix it... (Score:2)
If you want a real hoot, take a screenshot of his machine, pull the disk, install any modern Linux distro (Mandrake is easiest, SuSE a close second) and then set it up with XPDE [xpde.com] and put all of his icons back from the screenshot. If he's running Win2k now, leave a note saying you've upgraded (hah!) his workstation to XP. Then run a sweepsta
I find... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I find... (Score:2)
Most people wouldn't have thought it up themselves. Slashdot is the market place of ideas!
Re:I find... (Score:2)
Re:I find... (Score:4, Insightful)
VNC (Score:5, Funny)
The one I really like doing is run a Perl script that send an email every minute, or sends an ICQ, telling them what time it is. To make it REALLY exciting, send some random text with it.
Re:VNC (Score:5, Funny)
One of the engineers where I worked pulled a stunt like that on a naieve PR lady. He had a computer set up on a table on the opposite end of his office. He was tinkering with it via VNC. She asked him what he was up to and he told her that he had written some voice recognition software.
"Go ahead, say something."
"What should I say?"
And when she said that he fired up Notepad and wrote "What should I say?" on it. We all thought it was pretty funny until we found ourselves stopping an announcement that we had a new product in development.
What I did to the guy in the cubicle next to mine (Score:5, Funny)
Schedules (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Schedules (Score:3, Informative)
We once disabled a coworker's virtual memory. Later we swapped her mouse and keyboard plugs. Try also changing the monitor and display settings. If you get it right, they will have a headache. You could probably mess with the host file and redirect their browser to some nefarious page like windows update.
Actually, the person we did this stuff to was one of those employees. We di
Re:Schedules (Score:3, Funny)
Another fun one there is to use the autocorrect feature in Word to change the odd word to something similar looking with a completely different meaning.
Re:Schedules (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Schedules (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, yes, you're very clever.
Now perhaps you should pack your things and follow him out the door, since either
and in both cases, you're the kind of idiot who shouldn't be employed by a serious business.
There are appropriate ways to deal with people who don't do their job pr
Screen Savers (Score:3, Interesting)
The annoyance of having to do this and the fact that they have to admit to you that they messed up every time might make them to remember to lock the machine from now on.
I remember an admin at one place I worked would send e-mails from that person's account. Bizzare things, like "I'd like to meet you for lunch so we can discu
Here's what you can do (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, haven't you ever played a joke? (Score:2)
Playing a practical joke once in a while isn't a sign of not enough work -- it's a sign of a good group of workers who like each other, and have a good sense of each other. The team that plays together stays together, you know?
Re:Honestly, haven't you ever played a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just looking through some of the comments...
Using VNC to take over someone's computer seems popular. From a user's perspective, this says, my IT staffer can and will take over my computer at any time. He can spy on what I am doing without me even knowing it... and he will for his personal amusement. Ha Ha very funny.
Someone suggests recording a cellphone ring as the new mail sound and letting the prank go on for 3 days during which the victim would frantically search through the cell phones in his desk. Any prank that occurs witht he frequency of email and goes on for 3 days is just abusive.
Same guy as above pulled a prank on a girl who was afraid of her boss. He recorded the boss saying her name and added a reverb and made it her shutdown sound. When she was working late the last thing she heard was his voice quietly calling her name and this (according to the guy) sent her running. That is just not even remotely funny.
I think practical jokes do have a place in the office, but most IT jokes aren't funny for the victims even in retrospect. They are just abuses of the power granted to the IT staff. If you are going to play an IT joke on someone, you should make sure it is possible for the victim to play the same joke on you. That is the main difference between joking with someone and picking on them.
Re:Honestly, haven't you ever played a joke? (Score:2)
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eyeball - and then it's just a game (find the eyeball.)
Re:Honestly, haven't you ever played a joke? (Score:5, Funny)
Care to punctuate that? Or should we read it as is?
Re:Honestly, haven't you ever played a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Basic rules of humor.
Street urchin lobs a snowball at silk hat. Funny.
Silk hat lobs a snowball at street urchin. Not funny.
Users hoax the IT guy. Funny.
IT guy hoaxes the users. Not funny.
Re:Mod parent way up (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry you think I need to get over having a sensible attitude at work.
I'm all for having a laugh -- my team-mates and I frequently do -- but the things described just weren't funny. Abusing privilege and/or ripping someone for a cheap laugh that they won't share isn't being friendly or having a bit of fun, it's just nasty and unprofessional.
Re:Here's what you can do (Score:2)
Generally speaking; places of employ in which employees work from 9 until 5 without taking any time away from the tedium are known as "salt mines" or "sweat shops".
Even in today's economy, a pay cheque isn't worth giving up your soul.
Re:Here's what you can do (Score:2, Funny)
Use peer pressure to enforce policy (Score:5, Funny)
- I am bringing in donuts to the office tomorrow, please email me your favorite kind (turn on read rcpt and delivery rcpt)
- Looking for a roomate (lotsa possibilities here)
- I am proud to anounce the birth of my son... (include an ugly baby pic, or a dog jpg)
and so on.
Over time, people rarely left their pc's unlocked because they didn't want the ridicule of the office. It was great fun, actually improved morale, and kept the pcs locked tight.
We did the same thing (Score:2)
Remember to send \r\n instead of just \n, you don't want outlook to get bitchy about the format.
On Call (Score:2)
I heard one where engineers would ask the new guy to get a flux capacitor from the electronic store. Or the new guy on a construction crew if he wanted to have Honey Pot duty.
Re:On Call (Score:2)
Re:On Call (Score:2)
Switcheroo (Score:5, Funny)
Make a new shortcut for everything they use, either on the desktop or in the Start menu, or Quicklaunch too. Change the name to be the name of a different program, and set the icon to use for the one for the original shortcut. The idea here is to have Excel open up when they click on Word, Internet Explorer when they try to run Excel, an MS-DOS prompt when they want to run Access. If they don't have admin rights, they'll have to learn by experiment where each program is located.
Guaranteed to stun the clueless. Since desktop icons will show the little shortcut arrow, go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cu
Explorer\Shell Icons] and set the "29" key to equal the path and filename of a blank icon. Or get TweakUI to do it.
Re:Switcheroo (Score:2)
Just send lots of pop-ups when they are working. Lots of uses for net send.
Another if you log into a windows domain, before they get in the morning, try to log with thier username and wrong password. Few times and the account is locked. Good on pesky managers and you want to have a few more minutes before the morning me
Re:Switcheroo (Score:2)
pranks (Score:4, Funny)
(BTW, tends to work better on Macs...)
1. Take screen shot of desktop
2. Open the shot in Photoshop or similar gfx app.
3. Rotate 180 degrees so image of desktop is upside down.
4. Enlarge image to 100% and hide menu bar (this is where it works best with Photoshop), palettes and toolbars.
5. Act confused when brought over to see "whacked icons." 5a. mention virus or "sign that hard drive is in process of erasing itself."
All the machines in our office run Photoshop as do the laptops, so it's a trick to pull when things get slow on off-site gigs.
Re:pranks (Score:2)
Re:pranks (Score:3, Funny)
Start Menu Fun (Score:3, Funny)
For example, say their Start>Programs menu listed Dos Prompt, Word, Excel, Windows Explorer. Change each link so that they launch Word, Excel, Windows Explorer, and Dos Prompt respectively.
At first, they'll think they're clicking wrong somehow. Then maybe they'll replace their mouse. Good for some cheap laughs.
Re:Start Menu Fun (Score:2)
Re:Start Menu Fun (Score:2)
Fun Pranks (Score:2)
Remap the keyboard to dvorak and then log them out (Try typing your password in in dvorak...)
change the hosts
Re:Fun Pranks (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Fun Pranks (Score:2)
where to begin... (Score:5, Funny)
- record someone's cellphone ring on your PC, then install it as their new-mail-received sound. (when I did this, I didn't realize the guy had had 3-4 cellphones over the past year, all of which were stowed in his desk; I presumed he'd catch on after a couple hours, but apparently it was a 3-day ordeal for him and his neighbors...)
- there was a young girl who was (un-justifyably) a little scared of her boss: I had him record his voice saying her name, then added a trace of an echo, and waited until a day when he was out of town and I knew she'd be working late... I set her Windows shutdown sound to that sample, so she'd hear him calling her after everyone else had gone home. From what others on that floor told me, she ran screaming down the hallway...
- put up a phony form someplace, like a "Microwave Usage Tracking Form" in the break room... have lines for what's been heated, how long it took, etc... (when I did this, the only person who fell for the prank and actually filled out a line was the office manager - the very person who'd have been in charge of putting up such a form, if it were real!)
- others I forget
The easiest office pranks are those which involve people who leave their terminals unattended in a situation where security is assumed to be tight; I have dozens of stories about those cases, but they're not as funny to me 'cos, well, the more tight-assed the environment, the easier it is to spoof (and you have an unfair advantage if you're the IT guy)... I prefer to pull stuff in a relaxed, casual environment, where people aren't expecting anything.
Re:where to begin... (Score:2)
Change the "click" wav (Score:2)
Well, replace that with something obscene.
Run the jokes on YOUR computer (Score:5, Funny)
There is plenty that you can do to demonstrate your 1337 hax0r skillz and sense of humour on your own machine.
Try squashing your head and hands into in a colour scanner, use the resulting picture as a screensaver, with a piece of audio of you saying "help I'm trapped in the monitor!" set to that play every 5 minutes and go to lunch.
Re:Run the jokes on YOUR computer (Score:3, Interesting)
That can get you fired too. My employer has an IT staff that is grossly incompetent to say the least. Many of them are nice guys, but they know shit about securing or maintaining computers.
Well to cut to the chase, I got sick of my computer freezing and crashing when I was working so I decided to poke around and see what unnecessary services they were running on the machines. I shut down most of
Funniest prank ever (Score:4, Funny)
I guess a similar thing could be done with a co-worker's computer and an audio cable, just run it to line-in and turn the volume way up. It'll take a few seconds before they find the volume control. Play something vile like Backstreet Boys or Britney.
Re:Funniest prank ever (Score:2)
Re:Funniest prank ever (Score:3, Funny)
And some of the guys in the next building over put their tools to good use. See, there was a grad student working there who had to live in an apartment that was converted from the last few rooms of a freshman hall. Totally irrelevant to the story, but she was really hot. Anyway, she left for a weekend, and the guys got some two-by-fours, drywall, paint, and miscellaneous hardware. When she came back, her room was gone without a trace. They even matched the baseboard.
Of cours
Re:Funniest prank ever (Score:3, Funny)
My neighbor in the dorm (let's call him "Nik") was constantly pulling pranks on his fairly humorless roommate (let's call him "Hans"), and since I was the only one
A simple one... (Score:2)
Simple and most people have no clue how to fix it.
Re:A simple one... (Score:2)
I've learned to adapt to left or right handed mouse settings, so I just don't bother changing them back to right handed anymore... So the person after me gets pissed off, and I feel l33t
Re:A simple one... (Score:2)
I did not do this on purpose.
A few modest ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of these are Windows-specific. Call it a hunch.
Take a screenshot and make it their desktop, then close all windows, hide the taskbar, and move some (only some) of the desktop contents to somewhere other than the desktop.
If you use VNC, then set up a full-screen vncviewer to a secondary victim's desktop. Watch them fight it out. (Be very careful; privacy issues crop up in this one.)
Download the original hampster dance [hampsterdance2.com]. (Note: website makes sound.) Use the ActiveDesktop feature to make a copy of that as the victim's desktop. Turn the volume to max, and immediately shut down or suspend. For maximum effect, do this on a laptop just before the victim leaves for a flight.
Depending on the OS version, add about eighty folders at the top and bottom of the "Programs" menu. Doesn't matter what you name them; some versions of Windows make it a pain to open a folder in the middle.
Set their Internet connection to, instead of using the LAN, auto-dial their phone.
If you can get an X server running on their box, then run greasymouse against their display. (You mentioned not downloading anything, but since it's on the X contrib tape, you may already have it on a local Unix box.) I find a factor of 1.8 or so works well. The good news is, this works on some rootless X servers for Windows. Of course, if your victim runs Unix, no such need.
Fun with fonts. Set the fonts and colors to something terribly garish, and just barely useable. Then export the relevant parts of the registry, and set things up to merge that in every boot.
Setting sounds is a good one, and there's a lot of ideas already posted to get you started.
All this is assuming your friend isn't a coder. There's much better ways to get at coders, such as #define struct union or other ideas from here [vancouver-webpages.com] for more ideas.
And the number one way to ensure to drive them mad at the office computer:
Force the victim to use Windows.
Borrowed from Scott Adams' 'The Joy of Work' (Score:5, Funny)
"The radiation shielding on your monitor has failed, please do not sit directly in front of your monitor."
I uploaded the page to our websever, sent out a company-wide email to try out the new demo, and went home. I got a frantic call at 7am in the morning. The first victim of my joke was the type to wash her hands in anti-bacterial soap if somebody dirty just looked at her. I had to keep from laughing, it wasn't easy. She eventually figured out it was a joke, but found it amusing, so she didn't tell anybody else.
I fired off a note to the sysadmin to let him in on the joke, but I wasn't sure if he got it in time. Unfortunately, he was the guy who everybody ran to first. When I got to his office, the dead-weight woman who was always calling in sick all the time was there explaining what she had seen. I intercepted the conversation and asked her what happened. She told me that her computer had radiated her. So I asked if she felt okay, and she put her hand on her stomach and with worried eyes she non-commitally said "I think so..." I glanced over at the sys-admin whose head suddenly disappeared behind his monitor. I found out later that he had read my email and was trying to keep from laughing.
I decided to carry this joke a little further. You all know Front Page, right? That WYSIWYG HTML editor that everybody here hates? Well it has a kick ass feature. It'll download a web page and you can just type right into it. Then, it'll maintain all the links for you. So I downloaded one of CNN's health pages and wrote up a 3 paragraph news alert about the "Microwave Virus". The basic gist of the article was that a virus took control of your monitor and amplified the ultra violet gun to burn out the shielding. Symptoms included fatigue, irritability, and a couple of other things you normally feel at the office. In about 15 minutes, I had a fake web page and I had set up Microsoft's 'Personal Web Server' to serve it up from my computer. I had then renamed my computer to www.cnn-news.com, and hosted the page. A new 'FYI' email was sent out, and I went to lunch.
When I came back, the woman that was in on the joke told me "all hell had broken loose, you better get to the dead-weight girl's office." When I got there, two of my coworkers were having a discussion about whether they should go home or go see their doc. From there, I lost, I couldn't keep a straight face anymore. I told them of the joke. They took it in stride, but they didn't think it was so funny. You see, they didn't realize I had faked the web-page. They thought I read it on CNN's site and I had faked the message. They were more amused when they found out I had faked the site too, but I think they were paranoid for weeks any time I sent out an FYI email. Heh.
On a side note, the sysadmin there didn't really like me until that day. He was impressed at how I had set that up. We were actually friends after that. Heh.
Re:Borrowed from Scott Adams' 'The Joy of Work' (Score:3, Interesting)
Hell today most hackers are just happy nobody walks in and says 'pack your shit and leave, you have just been RIF'ed' for no good reason - I honestly don't envision many of the bright ones making these kinds of waves in the here and now.
Man a few years ago there was a book but I forgot the name. The Road to $Something. Talked about the good old days, now those guys had some fun pranks. Disasse
I remember when... (Score:2)
Then came in the team this idiot, a moron who only had the pc from a year past, and the intarweb from six month past... he became using someone's account (including mine) to sell his fscking moped or to send or ask for evening job's resumes. He was asked to leave afte
If the target runs SETI@home (Score:2)
Re:If the target runs SETI@home (Score:3, Funny)
If you happen... (Score:2)
They'll be there for hours removing each, one-by-one.
Re:If you happen... (Score:2)
Re:If you happen... (Score:2)
Remember than open is Cmd-O in Finder.
(Of course, if you are using a replacement to finder, excuse me)
Funny: (Score:3, Funny)
Step 2: Wait until (male?) victim leaves his computer unattended.
Step 3: Replace victim's sound alerts (yes, all of them) with aforementioned sound sample.
Step 4: Turn volume ALL the way up.
Step 5: Wear a diaper, there'll be a long line getting to the bathroom
Re:Funny: (Score:2)
Not the website he expected.... (Score:5, Funny)
one from old school days (Score:2, Funny)
I hacked up a quick test in TRS-80 BASIC to toggle the 64/32 bit, and it ran fast enough to create four scrolling bands on the display. C
add delay to people's .profile-files (Score:4, Informative)
echo 'sleep 1' >>
to their
Re:add delay to people's .profile-files (Score:2, Funny)
export PROMPT_COMMAND="sleep 1"
time scale readjust required (Score:2)
depending, of course.
Re:add delay to people's .profile-files (Score:3, Funny)
Makes a great .profile heart attack.
Type sleep 1 & at your $ to see the correct spacing.
The joys of petty revenge (Score:2)
One former colleague of mine, while he could be a nice guy sometimes, was often overly anal and aggressive about minor details. His main bugbear was people misspelling his first name, which was "Phillip"; woe betide anyone who only used one "L" (or even worse, called him "Phil"). On more than one occassion I witnessed him lodge formal complaints with managers when one of their staff denied him his L RDA.
Obviously this obsession became something of an office joke, and led to a few pranks. One colleague
Mouse (Score:2)
Makes is a real !@#$ to fix if you don't know how to use your keyboard.
trojan... (Score:2)
Fun with crontab (Score:2)
Cron is your friend. Give someone a seasonal greetings.
Set up a script to run every 5 minutes or so as root. Get a random number and use it so that each invocation has a 1% chance of running xsnow.
Other possibilities include using xv to display a full screen jack'o'lantern and play a horror movie screeching violins sound. For extra fun, set it to only run after most people have gone home, and to kill xv after the sound finishes playing.
Now a cruel bastard would... (Score:2)
Outlook signature seen by *some* co-workers (Score:4, Interesting)
Step1 - Create a folder on a webserver with ASP or PHP support that will host the script.
Set the folder permissions such that the only authorized users are the people you want to be in on the joke when it happens.
Step2 - Create an ASP script (PHP is even easier) that will host the embarrassing image and place it in the folder from Step1.
Here are some examples of ASP/PHP scripts (please note that Slashdot will add spaces in anything appearing like a URL)..
<%
embarrassing_image = "embarrassing_image.png"
fake_image = "white_one_pixel_square.png"
userfull = Request.ServerVariables("LOGON_USER")
look = inStr (1, userfull, "user_to_goof",1)
If 1 > look Then _
Response.Redirect (embarrassing_image) _
else _
Response.Redirect (fake_image) _
end if
%>
<?php
$embarrassing_image = "embarrassing_image.png";
$fake_image = "white_one_pixel_square.png";
$userfull = $_SERVER["LOGON_USER"];
if (eregi ("user_to_goof", $userfull))
{
header ("Location: " . $embarrassing_image);
}
else
{
header ("Location: " . $fake_image);
}
?>
Step3 - Set the Outlook editor to HTML
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\<Office Version (9 is 2K)>\Outlook\Options\Mail\EditorPreference
10000 = Plain Text
20000 = HTML
30001 = Microsoft Word
30002 = Microsoft Rich Text
This step may or may not work.
Also, you'll need to find the user's hive under
HKEY_USERS (there are typically only a couple) while he's logged in since you can't access HKCU remotely (unless you use a
Step4 - Edit the stationery and reference the ASP/PHP script as an image within the body.
<img src="http://webserver/directory_with_permissions_
Copy the stationery over..
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Stationery
If the last step didn't work (like in my situation) and the user has Word setup as the email editor, you'll need to edit his "document.dot" file instead of an HTML stationery file.
Step5 - Set the stationery..
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging
Subsystem\Profiles\JBrewer\0a0d020000000000c00000
Sit back and wait for the user to send out an email to the group.
NOTE:
I still have not overcome the "Anonymous" problem.. If an unauthorized user gets the email, he will be prompted for a login.
With PHP, there's a possibility of doing this without using NT permissions at all [experts-exchange.com] (look at the "Accepted Answer"). I'm sure there's a way to use this technique with ASP, too.
group gags... (Score:2)
The office building had two long rooms of cubicles on either side of a hallway. One day, one room took a bunch of people (close to everyone who worked there, about 30-40), a hat was filled with the various extensions from across the hall, each picked one, and everyone dialed the last digit at the precise same instant. The clatter of simultaneous rings from across the hall (I'm told) was hilarious. They all hung up after one ring
tape on the mouse (Score:3, Funny)
The best joke to do in Windows (Score:2)
Just append it to the ARC path like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\winnt="Wind o ws 2000"
On Windows 2000 it says to not go below 64mb, but I usually set maxmem to 32.
This forces Windows to use no more then what the maxmem switch says, ignoring anything else. Have a cocky cow-orker that loves to tell you how leet his new workstation is? maxmem
I have to say... (Score:2, Insightful)
Non-PC related pranks are even funnier (Score:3, Funny)
The best way to do it was to squeeze a small amount of the jelly onto a spoon, and then fill the donut with Frank's. I could then cover the hole with the Jelly that I removed. A little sprinkle of white sugar (from the coffee packages) covered up any evidence of tampering.
What made the prank even funnier is that all 10 of the donuts were eaten. People would bite into them, make really funny faces but still keep on eating. I actually had to leave the office for about half an hour. I was laughing so much I was crying, and I did't want to expose myself. (even though I was probably on a short list of suspects)
A few more that I have done:
-Flat cola poured into the coffee pot.
-Water the office plants with rubbing alcohol
-10 packs of sweetener in the coffee pot.
-black pepper over top of a box of Timbits.
-break all the pencils in the office
-call co-workers from the fax machine
Mail fun (Score:5, Insightful)
At a past job, we had a trouble ticketing system that would generate email reports to each person watcching a ticket whenever there was a mail or web driven transaction on that ticket. For test purposes, we had an "acme" queue that sent mail traffic just to the developers & a couple of good-humored people in other departments. One ticket in the acme queue, which refused to die over the course of a year, was a rude demand for one of the web monkeys to bring in pastries for everyone. Whenever someone was testing something with the request tracking system, they'd more often than not attach their test to the coffee rolls ticket, and this guy would be reminded AGAIN that he hadn't brought in snacks for everyone yet.
Then fun part was when it was realized that the ticket could go not just to person@company, but person+coffeerolls@company, person+cake@company, person+cookies@company, person+coffee@company, person+cappucino@company... etc. We got it so that whenever someone replied to the ticket, this guy would get about a hundred copies of the message -- and since the system had a tendency to allow duplicate or triplicate messages under some circumstances (e.g. a person hit "reply to all" instead of just "reply to sender"), this guy would sometimes get two hundred copies of each message.
That was fun.
Other pranks involved using mpg123 on a server sitting under a someone's desk in a different room so that, out of the blue, his computer would start playing "The Muppet Show" theme song. For more fun, because mpg123 instances can run concurrently, we'd have 20 instances of the song running simultaneously, out of sync with one another.
For fun with people using OSX, you can use osascript to get the machine to use Macintalk to speak arbitrary text out loud. This worked well with a long running shell script that would speak out a random quotation from the fortune command, sleep from five to thirty minutes, then start over again.
And of course, VNC is a barrel of laughs in & of itself.
Other obvious ones include removing the ball from someone's standard mouse, removing the receiver for someone's wireless mouse, or the batteries, swapping the mouse & keyboard plugs on the back of a computer, scrambling what order wires are going into the back of a KVM switch, hooking up a wireless mouse to a computer where the person usually uses USB, and randomly move the mouse from a nearby cubicle, etc.
And of course, VNC just makes all the pranks in the last paragraph that much funnier.
---
It's easy to argue that wasting time with such stuff kills productivity, and maybe that's true. But it also did wonders for morale, as long as the target for the pranks would rotate around in a more or less fair way. Plus, the ingenuity that went into some of these pranks spilled over into coming up with novel approaches to things that people were supposed to be doing. People learn by playing from a very early age, and -- within limits -- I think that having a playful workplace can lead to a creative workplace, and ultimately can lead to more innovative work.
The trick is to be mindful of the line between being creatively playful, and wasting time in a destructive way. If someone thinks the pranks are going too far, they have to stop. If a deadline is approaching, the work has to get done. Know your [collective] limits, but that said, have fun too :-)
go low-tech (Score:3, Funny)
Practical jokes? (Score:5, Insightful)
1st - do no real harm. No screwing up ppl's email, files etc. No wasting more than a few minutes of time - must be undone easily.
2nd - even if it's targeted at your colleague, your boss must be able to laugh at it. Coz if the joke doesn't go as well as planned your boss may get to know about it.
3rd - the target has got to be able to laugh at it soon after.
Otherwise it's not joking/horseplay, it's just being an arsehole.
So pick your targets well, pick what you are going to do carefully, and pick the RIGHT time to do it (messing about with autocorrect when someone is trying to do a tender submission is NOT funny, other times they may laugh).
It does reflect on your judgement and competence. Get it all right and people will remember with a grin on their face. Get it badly wrong and maybe you should start looking for a job elsewhere, or go for counselling/advice on social skills.
You don't go around trying to tickle a stranger on the bus, or even an acquaintance, and then say you're just trying to make them laugh.
If you're the administrator, you are in a position of greater power. Unbalanced power between joker and target = harder to maintain funniness. Target has to feel a degree of safeness in order to properly laugh afterwards (not nervous laugh). You need to be even more careful. If you muck around the wrong way it's just like having The Boss saying "You're all fired"... "Just joking". Haha. NOT. Or the CFO making your salary slip show funny numbers. Haha NOT. Or the security guard pretending to shoot you with a shotgun. Haha, NOT.
Remember the tickle concept- the ticklee only laughs if they feel safe, comfortable with you tickling them. Otherwise it's _harassment_.
Last but not least it's safer (and usually funnier) to not use the power you are granted by your job/position in order to play a joke on someone. Otherwise people may feel you shouldn't be entrusted with that power. Your superiors may not want to give you more power either. So you want to get promoted? Higher pay? Haha. Not.
Music fun (Score:4, Funny)
There's nothing funnier than a week or two later, after we had pretty much forgotten about it, hearing that song blaring out in the middle of his Bob Marley playlist.
We also do the standard send-email-to-the-office-mailing-list prank, but we expand that to typing in their IRC and AIM windows as well. Telling peoples' friends "Tell me you love me" is always good for a laugh.
Music - Y'know like Indiana Jones (Score:3, Funny)
Add it to your screensaver, make it loud enough for your neighbors to hear and see how many people are humming/whistling it by home time.
Indiana Jones is pretty effective, as is Mission Impossible.
Re:Jokes on Coworkers (Score:2)
Lighten up, man. Has it occured to you that targets of jokes like these quite often deserve it?
Not so sure about this... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not so sure that baiting someone who has an underdeveloped humour gland is particularly attractive. In some countries it's regarded as harassment, and consequently frowned upon.
It's much more fun to play the trick on someone who can see the joke...
Re:Jokes on Coworkers (Score:2)
Re:Jokes on Coworkers (Score:2)
If you can't cover your tracks, you're no good as a sysadmin..
Re:Jokes on Coworkers (Score:3, Informative)
http://home.onemain.com/~edsoffice/
Re:Jokes on Coworkers (Score:2)
Re:Jokes on Coworkers (Score:2)
And sorry, "Don't get caught" doesn't cut it. Develop a taste for practical jokes, and sooner or later you will get caught -- and you'll deserve anything that happens to you.
OTOH, if it were my computer that got fucked with, I wouldn't go to the
Re:Colour schemes (Score:2)
Don't you think they're already going through enough suffering?
Re:The best joke I ever played (Score:3, Funny)
In the old days if you have access to the emperor's seal you don't fool around with it if you want to keep parts of your body attached to each other, and very bad things happening to your household and property.
Fortunately in these enlightened times you'd only get sacked. They leave out the pillaged, rape, burnt part.
Re:Fax (Score:3, Funny)
It was great, I would call the 1800 number up and press the keys to get the manual for some mouse then type in the phone number. Best part was that if the line was not a fax it would continue to redial and retry.