Below are a few suggestions for some computer practical jokes. If you have any suggestions, please post them in the comments:
Note: Perform these practical jokes at your own risk, I am not responsible for the results.
Keyboards and Mice:
- Remove the ball from the computer's mouse on the older mechanical mice. If its the newer optical mice, stick a small piece of tape over the optical sensor.
- Unplug the mouse and/or keyboard from the back of the computer. If its a wireless keyboard or mouse remove the batteries from the device.
- Almost every computer is a rat's nest of cables, removing the right cable (power, network, keyboard, etc.) can cause frustration for the computer user.
- Any good computer user will have a surge suppressor power strip where their computer is plugged into. Some of these power strip have a breaker, sometimes they manually allow you to blow the breaker. This will basically make the power strip a useless piece of junk until the breaker is reset.
- This trick will drive the end-user mad, they will try to click on the desktop and believe the computer is frozen when nothing works. I have seen people reboot their computer several times before they figured out what is wrong. Use with caution, save all the user's work before using this trick.
- Take a screen shot of the computer's desktop (press PrtSc screen button). You might want to try taking the screen shot with open application windows, it might add to the realism.
- Then open a graphics program like MS Paint (under Start menu | All Programs | Accessories) and Paste the image into the application. Save the file into the C:\WINDOWS\ directory as a bitmap file (.BMP) and set it as the desktop background. (Note: if you're using MS Paint there is a command under the File menu to do this.)
- Then remove the icons from the users desktop, put them in a folder under the user 's'My Document' folder. You can right-click an empty space on the user's desktop, and uncheck 'Arrange Icons By > Show Desktop Icons' (Note: you may have to cycle through [press Alt-Tab] an application that fills the screen to force the desktop to refresh it self)
- For extra realism, you can hide the taskbar at bottom of the screen. (Hover the mouse over the top edge of the bar until you see the up/down arrow, then click and drag the taskbar to the bottom of the screen)
- Turn the speaker volume up real loud on their computer and walk away.
- Try playing with the computer settings, such as the monitor, cursor, mouse and keyboard configuration in the Control Panels.
- Change the startup or other event sounds (such as changing the new mail sound, to something like the sound of someone passing gas [you know what I mean])
- Embed the following link into an email, and send it to your friends (http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/891/3dtetris8yi.swf). I promise they will hate you after you send it.
15 comments:
Once, I witnessed a particularly gruesome trick on another at our office.
A coworker hooked up his PC audio OUT to the line IN on this other guys PC. That way, he could pipe audio to his PC. First, the guy thought it was some rogue program doing funky stuff and just dug into his machine looking for it. Then, he deleted all audio files from his hard drive. finaly, the guy went so far as to reboot to stop the noises and when the machine was sitting in POST (or so) and he was hearing the audio, he knew something was afoot.
Gosh did we giggle.
Last year I used an options setting available through the graphics card we have in all the office computers to rotate the display 180 degrees, making everyones displays upside down.
Lots of of calls to the tech guy (me) ensued. The funny part was the woman we all sort of consider "the dumb one" didn't ask for help... she just turned the monitor upside down, used a couple stacks of folders to ballance it steady, and went to work.
Pretty smart in it's own way, actually.
Send ing this "game" to a friend works as well. It's even better if you can somehow hook up a webcam or other camera to capture their reaction to the "surprise."
http://www.winterrowd.com/maze.swf
Warning...it's freaky deaky.
I've had lots of fun with that at the office.
Story I heard was about a student in a computer class switching monitor cables from his computer and the computer of the student sitting across from him. When they attempted to work, they saw nothing happening. When the called the teacher, the prankster had typed "Ouch! you are hitting my keyboard too hard. That hurts!" or some such. Such a simple silly trick, but easily done in a classroom where the computers are back to back on the tables.
And good troubleshooting practice for the victim(s)
A good joke is to put the sysinternals BSOD screen saver (http://www.sysinternals.com/Files/BlueScreen.zip)
which can be stopped only by hitting ESC (no mouse mouvement will do it)
Enjoy
I'm a programmer (for 22 years now) so I work with people who have computers all day long. I've done this many times over the years: remove all of the lettered keys and put them back on the keyboard in alphabetical order. Drives them nuts. One person didn't notice for a couple of days since they truly touch-typed! I've also bought one of those fart machines and put it behind people's CPUs. Off and on I'd click the remote to have it make noise. They were so certain that either they had a virus or someone put a joke piece of software in their computer, it takes a while for them to look for the obvious.
One of my tech's bought a new Alienware laptop and had it sitting on the bench running graphics tests. another tech came in, but a small bowl of water and dry ice behind the corner of the laptop, when the first tech came in and saw smoke comming from his laptop, well, I wish I had a picture!
Here's a trick I did :
Compose a short email message saying thst you have a strange computer problem in that everything displays upside down. Then screen capture that message and save as a jpg graphic. Use a graphic editor to rotate the graphic 180 degrees. Then send only that inverted graphic inserted in a rich text, (html), email to a few friends.
I did that and got many suggestions to check the registry, replace graphics board, etc., to solve problem. Only 2 guys 'cottoned on' to my little trick, 7 others were baffled until I explained what I did. A couple were not amused.
Have fun !
On some video cards, a keypress of
CTRL-ALT-DOWNARROW
or UPARROW
will flip the display upside down.
Not obvious how to reset.
ivi gues you must be the dork most certainly not nerd
in my office after one joke like this you would get the rise of my boot up your arse
and onto the bread line.
ivi gues you must be the dork most certainly not nerd
in my office after one joke like this you would get the rise of my boot up your arse
and onto the bread line.
------------------------------
Spelling isn't your a priority in your office i see. LOL
I wish I worked for you
We have a few Strong Bad fans in our office. One evening I took a few minutes to change the logon script so that a half dozen of these fans browser start pages pointed to the following URL...
http://www.homestarrunner.com/systemisdown.html
My favorite 404 error. =)
Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!
You can also change the Autocorrect on someone's Word. I did this to one of my old bosses. I added his name to the Autocorrect and made it say "I like to drink beer way too much". The beauty of this one is that one does not frequently type their own name in a document. It was probably a few days before he was trying to do a .doc web form for the H.R. office. He put in his name and it changed to the above. He kept trying and finally called the HR office to come down and fix it. They couldn't figure it out and called IT. Everyone had a really really good laugh at the person.
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