Geeky Practical Jokes

[chrisa]

Using your position as an ICT Technician. What kind of geeky practical jokes have you played on people?

 

I'll start us off:

 

We had a new guy start in the IT Department. When he went out on his first job of the day we took a screen shot of his full desktop, Set it as his wallpaper and then edited his local GP to hide all desktop icons.

 

When he came back in he was trying to open IE but was complaining that the icon didn't work. I was on dinner at the time and when I came back he was halfway through a re-install

[Guest kerrymoralee9280]

Dunno if this is classed as geeky but stuck a teachers car completely in post its.

 

Turned my old NM's number plates around once as well. He was pulling out the school drive when he got stopped by police. THat was funny.

[chrisa]

stuck a teachers car completely in post its.

 

You must have a picture of that?

[logonui]

I found a blue screen of death screensaver that made out that the machine was on a boot loop, installed in on my managers machine and unplugged the keyboard and mouse. Came back into the office about an hour later and he was still trying to work out what was wrong, you would have thought being a Network manager he would have thought of these things

[Geoff]

Turning the brightness/contrast controls all the way down on fellow techies monitors.

[mrcrazy04]

Wrote a VBScript app to remotely kill explorer using WMI on a continous loop.

:twisted:

[Firefly_Transport]

Marketing dude thought he could dictate to me the IT Manager & Lead Project Manager what he could do on his PC.

 

 

So I set it to 1) Autostart Internet to the old hampsterdance site, & 2) Set the volume up to the highest possible.

 

 

Now I not saying he was stupid - but he couldn't turn it down or change the defult site.

 

Hampsterdance was of course very annoying after only a couple of mins - 30 was beging to annoy the whole room. I of course had my own office.........

[MkII]

Wrote a VBScript app to remotely kill explorer using WMI on a continous loop.

:twisted:

 

Vista has that built in now.

[steve]

Blu-tac on optical mice

 

Pulling off all the keys on a keyboard and putting them back upside down

 

Growing cress in a keyboard while some ones on holiday

 

Fixing a gas lift chair handle so the seat goes down when sat on and back up when they get off

[NetworkGeezer]

You've learnt a trick or too from the students there steve?

[webman]

Nice list steve, like them!

[t_guest]

couple of months back i was in the IT office and in a box there was 450 red balloons which i blew up with the help of my friend and then closed the office door were Gatt's office is we filled 450 red balloons in his office then we stuck them on to the wall,celling.

then we left quickly and stood in the other room.then all of a sudden you could hear Gatt say"CALLUM" the whole library looked around at me!! :oops:

ill never forget that.

[webman]

@callum: Like this?

 

http://img.search.com/thumb/5/51/HomerStranglingBart.jpg/180px-HomerStranglingBart.jpg

[t_guest]

yep

[steve]

A few more i've thought of but not done ... yet

 

Remove all the insides from a PC and fill it with saw dust and a soft toy hamster .. or put in a hamster wheel and a note with "i've gone on holiday too" signed hamster p.s. back on xxth (day after techy is back)

 

Change contents of a pc to oldest stuff you have and just install win 3.1

 

Put a few of their favourite sites in the hosts file and redirect them to 127.0.0.1

 

Switch the mouse buttons round in control panel

[john]

@ Steve, love the hamster one, but would only really work on PCs that have windows in them so they see the poor hamster lying "dead" in the bottom of the pc

[Halfmad]

I've done the old "screenshot of desktop and hide icons" malarky on a poor chap I use to work with.

 

In addition I had his autoexec calling a batch file that was hidden well within the windows sub directories and call something rather important.

 

This batch file:

 

1. Added a shortcut to his desktop upon each bootup entitled "My porn" and with a internet explorer icon.

 

2. ran a registry key that set the screensaver to scrolling marque and the text set to "I love working here, almost as much as I love toothache."

 

3. added in porn links to his IE favourites.

 

 

He never did find out how to fix it as he was always terrified of editing the autoexec and config.sys files. What was really amusing was that he would do a file search to try and find the IE and desktop shortcuts but these were actually stored as different names and renamed after being copied.

 

Even if he'd managed it, we'd have put them back seeing as we'd shared out his C Drive as well

 

Oddly enough the symptoms came back even after reinstalling windows, just as soon as he'd connected it to the network..

[Pottsey]

The hamster one is great. Very tempted to try that at work. Stick my PC under the desk and then put a fake PC case with window and a hamster back on the desk where my PC was. Wonder how many people comment or notice. Would be great at a LAN as well. If you get to much time on your hands get a small hidden motor to turn the wheel.

[CHR1S]

The hamster one is great. Very tempted to try that at work. Stick my PC under the desk and then put a fake PC case with window and a hamster back on the desk where my PC was. Wonder how many people comment or notice. Would be great at a LAN as well. If you get to much time on your hands get a small hidden motor to turn the wheel.

 

You could just knock one up in photoshop and stick it to the side, saves alot of hassle

 

Ive used a few of these on my last day at my old place to great effect, ahh good times

[phreak]

If you have desks that are facing each other you can always swop the mouse/keyboard connections. That is always good for a laugh when people see the mouse moving on it's own. The blue screen of death boot screen and screensaver is an old favorite of mine. If you use some sort of e-mail client like Firstclass you can edit peoples profiles on there to say something like "I like gay cock" and put a rude or silly pictures on other peoples profiles.

 

Also, this one is not so much a techy practical joke as a easy laugh. If you take 2 plastic cups (not the syrofoam ones or paper ones) and sneak up behind someone while holding the cups just next to their ears. Then crush them. Watch the person jump. It used to be a common joke to do in the workshop I used to work in.

[DreddMetal]

ah the good ol' BSOD screensaver, had this set as my screensaver for a while, took it off in the end as whilst i was out at a school my colleague saw it and powered down my machine because he thought it was busted! good job i saved all me work ey?

 

advancing on the hamster case idea, doing like Pottsey said, keep your machine out of sight and then setup the sawdust case but instead of any ol' stuffed toy hamster wire up this little guy to your real machine and place him in the joke case

[gwendes]

LOVE the cress one!

 

I set the screensaver to an image of a crack LCD and got a good gasp!

 

The best was ongoing for about a week... my old supervisor was a bit 'mean' so I ran a USB extension under the pod of desks, from his computer, to a mouse within foot range of about 4 fellow disgruntled employees...

 

Best. Week. Ever.

 

Moving it round, clicking on things... yet noone ever saw it when his computer was playing up...

 

Evil

[enjay]

I do like the cress one - alphabetising the keyboard is good for a giggle too.

[limbo]

I heard a story that when the current administration moved into the Whitehouse the previous occupants had removed all the "w" keys from the keyboards in honour of the new boss!

[Guest theeldergeek]

Using your position as an ICT Technician. What kind of geeky practical jokes have you played on people?

 

One I've done, is to put a very small piece of sellotape over the 'eye' of an optical mouse, and then colour it in with a black marker pen! If you get the sellotape just right, the user doesn't see it when glancing underneath the mouse.... quite amusing watching them swop USB slots and tapping the mouse on the mouse pad to try and get it working.