Slashdot Mirror
Dan Looks at Office Toys
Daniel Rutter writes "In a move that's made me wonder afresh whether I'm actually living this life or just dreaming it, I've just put up a review of a bunch of office toys. Two rubber band guns, a pneumatic ping-pong ball launcher, a bubble gun, some iridescent bouncing putty, a frickin' CROSSBOW that shoots sucker darts, and a couple of high-flying ring-ins that aren't really suitable for indoor play at all."
So where do I get a job that allows me such freedoms?
Work wasn't suppose to be fun?
Wait, didn't all the .com's go out of business because of this crap?
I dislike work as is, do I really need someone shooting darts at me?
Isn't this the same group of people who whine that professional athletes, movie stars and musicians don't have real jobs yet they discuss toys for the workplace?
It's all fun and games till someone looses an eye.
(Even then you point and laugh)
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
...and in other news, the DOW is down 800 points since March.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
What about the iMac?
While some of these toys look like great fun, particuarly the crossbow ( anyone remember Secretary with a Crossbow from Dilbert? ), I'll stick to playing UT and such at work. More safe violence, less effort.
a pneumatic ping-pong ball launcher
Hmm, I didn't know sex toy's were getting advanced enough to do THAT!!!! ;-P
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
A "Give-the-boss-an-Enema" (tm) voodoo doll.
Now I see why IT is a dead industry. If only I would have had such insight when I was choosing my studies at the University. Then again, I probably would have been smart and started working right out of high school. (WANTED: Applications Programmer. 3+ years experience required.)
At least I have my vast knowledge of liberal arts to keep me warm at night and my degree in case I run out of toilet paper.
Uh.. slow newsweek is it, lads?
Ya know, Daniel, after 10 seconds of watching your computer virus scanner banner and a blank page, I kinda lost interest and wandered on over to Think Geek and induldged in their cube goodies. I tell ya though, you almost got me with the fitness pop-up It was close... Think Geek or Scrub site... Think Geek or Scrub site... Choices, choices.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The BURP gun just looks like a glorified penis pump.
?-|||-----x<*))))><
like this?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
While the things on the site were all well and good, I doubt any of them compair to the line of nerf products. These things will start wars to end all wars in many cubicle farms, and only end when all ammo has been destroyed.
Full disclosure
If you follow any of the Backyard Artillery or Puttyworld links in this review and then buy stuff, I'll get a cut of the profit.
This fact has not influenced the content of this review at all.
The booze and prostitutes these nice people sent me, now they influenced the heck out of me.
But the percentage of the sales? Not at all.
Not sure that I believe him.
But I would love to nail that engineer next to me who uses his speaker phone for voice mail with one of those burp guns.
Wait, they got recess after lunch at these companies now? Damn... I'm working at the wrong place, we actually have to work here.
me and my friend use to set up pillow bunkers in his room about 20 feet apart and use his 2 rubber band guns in wars. those things HURT. Especially when the main tactic was to make a fully enclosed bunker except for an eye hole...which in retrospect was not a good tactic. Ever been hit with super stretched rubber bands from 20 feet away in the eye at 5hits/sec? not fun...oh the blindness, the pain. all in all though it was good fun until one person decided "screw this" and rushed the other, ripping down his bunker and holding the gun up to whatever bare skin he could find and unloading.
does anybody know where one could find a set of mini remote control submarines? 50-galon fish tank size ones, so we can duel it out the office? i've seen pictures and some stuff about ones in japan, but cant find buying info.
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
First, you could get more power out of each shot by looping the string around the ends of the bow. This slight modification meant that the suction cup darts would go way to fast to stick to anything, but would hurt like a muthafucka. The next step, naturally, was to replace the safe and cushy ammunition with sharpened pencils, which worked great. They would stick in the wall if aimed properly. (Of course, eye protection was important here, because occasionally shots would get flipped straight up instead of horizontally.)
Steel ball bearings didn't work as well, but that's what the slingshot was for. :)
God that thing was fun.
Cheers,
Mziliazki
Random Musings at Rum Smuggler
I fucking hated office toys at ricochet support. Some of you might have read my former comments about the company and it's culture, well here's a bad tale of office toys from the evergrowing adventures of toqer...
I got my job at ricochet right after quitting my job as a grey market motherboard salesman. Somehow I manged to convince Mike Newton that I was phone support material and subsequently landed the job. I excelled at my post to the point where some of the lackies started to ph34r m3.
One of the first things I noticed was all the "old school" staff had these nerf guns. I asked Jaqueline Schuman if I could get one of these.
"No only LEVEL 2 techs may have them"
Fucking bitch. Fuck you.
The senior techs used to love waste hours of the day just having nerf wars back and forth, unfortunately it was us level 1 techs that got caught in the crossfire. Here those jackasses would screw off all day, and on top of it make our jobs harder by pelting us with nerf balls.
On this paticular day, I had been on the phone trying to help a customer when a nerf ball hit me right in my plantronics. I knew where it came from, I looked over at Jaquelines cube to see her pretending to be innocent.
I grabbed that ball and hurled it. I wanted to hit above her head to scare her a bit, but I misjudged, held the ball too long, and it struck her right in the face. Hard.. Really hard..
Mark something a rather just saw my volley, he didn't see hers. BLAM fucking asshole picked up the ball, and I got nailed in the plantronics a second time.
Well after I got fired from there (after numerous underhanded attempts to get me to quit) I vowed never to work in an office that allowed this kind of horseplay again, and I never did.
--toq
My vote goes to the Levitron, a magnetic top that actually levitates. Awesome for parties. Just don't get it too near your CRT... (for the 3% of you who still have CRT's, that is...)
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
way to go, man!
But anyway, play your games, but don't be surprised when suddenly your revenue per employee number is just not cutting it for the quarter and that's the reason they give when they 'right-size', even though your department has been trying to hire 10 people for 3 months.
I still own the crossbow, the rubber band pistol, and a burp gun.For the record, the crossbow -does- sting like hell when shot with it. Not that some friends of mine and I used to go around in the woods with them or anything...
it is not funny at all.
i will buy all of these.
and use them on you.
if you do not give me back my stapler.
are you trying to take my stapler?
I wouldn't advise it.
If you do.
There will only be one thing left.
I'd like to work in an office that has a fish tank of red-bellied piranhas in them, with frikkin' crossbows on their heads.
There's something about responding to pages from a cranky datacenter while reading an article like this... it just takes me back. :-)
Methinks it's time someone shot Dan from a trebuchet.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
All these pitiful guns could easily be topped by one simple device, a 3 to 4 foot peice of PVC pipe that fits nicely around a nerf dart. It is incredibly intuitive to aim and disturbingly powerful.You can easily hit anything from as much as 30ft away. In a nerf war simply peeking around a corner could get you a dart suckered to your face.
I think I will mount one of these in my office.. you know.. just in case I want to beat the crap out of someone. Now that is a rubber band gun. ;)
slashdot!=valid HTML
- Can be operated as a stand-alone unit (chair goes up! chair goes down! chair goes up!) or in a networked environment (a vigorous game of CHAIRBALL).
- Easily disguised as an "innocent" piece of furniture.
- Unlike a rubber band machine gun, your company will probably pay for you to have one.
- Marginally more comfortable to sit on than a crossbow.
Cheers,IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Aftering see all these office toys on that web page, you wonder if some office cubicle workers need to be paid combat pay with those rubber band guns, "burp" shooters, and crossbow dart shooters. :-/
It might be needed in places like Google and Microsoft, where hijinks using these devices are quite common. (shrug)
I just keep repeating that over and over again in my head. $800+S/H.
I could finally discover how big a silly puddy ball can get and still bounce...
I could glue a cat to the wall by it's paws!
I could transfer an entire newspaper to puddy!
'nuff said.
- THIS
to work...Awww, did the big kids pick on you? Go cry to your mom.
Where was all this stuff when I was playing Killer? =)
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
- PS2
- Wireless DSL connection
- Cable TV
- Full-sized refrigerator
- My couch
- My backyard
- My bed
Oh, wait. Do you have to be employed to answer this survey? I can't remember what toys I used to play with... they all seem so insignificant by comparison.Millions out of work, and we're making lists of office toys.
No wonder business fails to produce anything.
when were kids (no wife, I promise I don't do this anymore! :)) we used to extract the spring from a spring piston airgun (you know, every family has...erm... had one :) . Then attach it to an innocent looking thick marker pen, and Voila, you can shoot your schoolmates so accurate and with such power that you are bound to become the Borg and rest of them will be just... assimilated.... well this lasted only as long as that kid with red pimples on his face made up a good design on machine gun, based on otherwise same design, but used compressed air instead... and now you can get those guns in every little shop.
This isn't a troll, all I ask is that we try to include the last names of people-who-didn't-come-up-with-something-like-GNU- or-emacs in headlines when we use their first names. Or leave the name out of the headline altogether and just focus on the subject of the article?
Employees running the halls with rubber-band guns while the executives stuff their pockets with options, expense accounts and investors' money, and HR refuses to hire anyone?
Or are they just thumbing their nose at everyone?
1) twist the rubber band before let go it will fly further and straighter.
2) the ultima weapon is a telephone, it's a reloadable weapon as long as you still hold the handset
I personally like these things..they're kind of clever.
http://www.tangletoys.com/
do html links work?
That was a +5 insightful/funny comment if I ever read one!
For you folks that haven't looked lately, the job market for computer professionals is in the toilet. Restored arcade video games, all the free soda you want, bringing your pets to work, dressing like a you're at a Grateful Dead concert, and running around the office like a kid with ADD who forgot their Ritalin is out. Companies can hire professionals that look, dress, and behave the part. If you refuse to work somewhere unless they have a shiatsu massage chair, then apply at Brookstone because you're not going to find a tech job that does anymore.
Dan is da man!! He's the geek's geek. A veritable god of the technophile.
... let's face it, Dan has a much better sense of humor.
RMS? He's got nothing on Dan
Cmdr Taco? As much as we love out beloved Commander and his anime fetish, it just doesn't stack up to Dan's love affair with LED lights, CPU coolers, and radio controlled Sherman tanks.
If you feel compelled to find out more about Dan, just visit his website: www.dansdata.com . You will not come away unenlightened.
I remember when the company that i used to work for bought us Nerf guns, they even gave us a catalog to choose from...LOL so fun. Not so fun when everyone decided to Throw one at ya cause you always hit them in the face (even the boss, that was the best cause the could not do anything about it). hi hi hi, always aim at the boss. After the merge, all the fun went away, even our department.
sorry to be replying to myself -- but anyway -- thanks for everyone who points out that yes, indeed, there is a link in the article.
but on the other hand, i know i will never have enough dough for this gun -- so gosh darnit i want to see a review of it! is that too much to ask for? an analogy would be car magazines talking about Porsches and Lambos... damn sexy and un-affordable, but still a good read and a good drool.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
If you want to really your cow-orkers with silly noises, you can't go far wrong with Bop It Extreme. However, you'll also end up irritating yourself more than a little.
... most of the toys are guns?
Pixels keep you awake!
This ain't funny - it's just pathetic. Grow the fuck up.
well I guess it doesn't come much more nerd-ish than this eh? Spending lots of money on plastic office toys... me, I am saving up for skydiving lessons :-))
I had a matte black bandit crossbow and I have an older brother.. hm.. ;)
;)
Seriously, these things did hurt like a motherfucka when altered as you said. I found the best trick was to ditch the default rope that came with it and use a tighter wire, but still wrap it around the corners of the bow. Pencils were not really the best ammo since they were so thin, they sometimes got swept over and didn't fire, or fired waaaay off kilter when did. No, the best ammo when properly tightened is a fat Crayola(tm) magic marker, of course with the cap off
The best ammo I ever made for it was a small amber medicine bottle filled with ball bearing. My gullible best friend let me shoot things off the top of his head. Even when experimenting with the bottle o' bearings. Let's just say I didn't account for the weight of the bottle slightly dropping it, and my (one time) best friend didn't appreciate his hospital visit.
God, that was fun.
It's all fun and games till someones loses an eye...
Then it's just a game... "Find the Eye"
After being laid off a half dozen times from dot-bomb losers which had offices filled with free drinks, aeron chairs, and office toys, I've now taken a critical view of workplaces that have office toys. In short, office toys == company about to vanish.
http://www.stanford.edu/~spqrsyc/crew/officerow.mp eg
Sit up, back 'em in.
...cause if you do, you can modify it to full automatic, just like any other (respectable) gun.
Take the two halves apart (one screw) and find the plastic stopper underneath the sprocket wheel. Two minutes with some sandpaper should take it off. Put it back together and load it up. You lose the click-stop so it'll load a little differently, but NOTHING beats the ability to fire 6 rubber bands with one trigger pull!
A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
www.nerfonline.com has a lot of good nerfing stuff, although it's pretty dead lately with the lack of new guns.
s ht ml
If you want to see how to make your own darts, complete with a few videos, check this out:
http://www.fperkins.com/news/archives/00000016.
Live web cams
What's the justification for that? Can you picture some guy moving down people with a crossbow, or concealing it in his pants?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
hell is this doing on /. ???
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Well, considering Dan Rutter at least writes for (not sure if he works there), I'm sure that atomic magazine would be a fairly likely candidate.
For those of you in Aus, Atomic is the best computer mag I've found in Australia - hardly any ads, and interesting articles which are actually worth reading and not trivial.
Yours for the low, low price of {cough}{cough} US$799. :)
A guy can dream, can't he?
grnbrg
First one to hit me in the eye with that rubberband gun gets a RL asskicking. Are we clear? =)
What about spud guns? Well, you do need kind of a large office...
I built one almost like it. but I didn't use a kit. Just some Bass wood stock/dowels, glue, large paper clips (trigger, release), and hemp cord.
Shoots quarters/nickels 30 ft. w/1 lbs. counter weight. Needs more weight so I can shoot heavy split shots though.
I went looking for designs for the tennis ball cannons we used to make, and I found this bullshit
http://web.textfiles.com/destruction/cannon.txt
crazy mf
My neighbor designed and built the original of these. He builds RC airplanes and helicopters, and he had the idea for an RC spaceship, and that is basically the design he came up with. He ended up selling his design to a company. He still has his original prototype, and sometimes I see him crashing it off his roof in attempts to make it slide down the shingles.
It's called a computer. You should see all the stuff it can do.
--What, you ain't know about them country fried sessions?
Amen. I've never worn a suit in a professional capacity. As a grad student, I would occasionally wear slacks and a button shirt for presentations for the funding agencies.
I just started a job as a research scientist for the NCSA. Dress code is the same. I actually showed up for the second interview in my interview suit (some NCSA big-wigs were there) and they acted all surprised, and said so.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net