Pranks for April Fool's Day 2004?

Nighttime asks: "April the First will soon be upon us and I'm looking for some subtle pranks to play around the office. There's the usual taking a screenshot and setting as background, placing a piece of tape across the mouse ball (use opaque tape for optical mice), setting the keyboard layout to Dvorak, swapping the 'M' and 'N' keys etc. The office empties quite quickly at the end of the day which leaves plenty of time for preparation."

Comments

Let slashdot take care of it for you

[DeadSea]

Slashdot will:

1. Post stories in spanish, pig latin, and swedish chef.
2. Customize the site for optimal viewing on 35 inch monitors.
3. Start at least one running gag.
4. Post about thirty fake stories.
5. Post many of those stories multiple times.
6. Post some of those same stories as real news later in the month.

Because the evil bit is funny. Dammit.

Re:Let slashdot take care of it for you

[AKnightCowboy]

Slashdot should definitely invest in a SCO Linux license this April 1st. Perhaps get OSDN to indemnify all the Linux users.

Re:Let slashdot take care of it for you

[Tackhead]

> 4. Post about thirty fake stories.

SCO claims complete ownership over Linux, charges $699/license.

Martha Stewart goes to prison!

Darl McBride calls GPL unconstitutional, petitions Congress for redress.

California town takes steps to ban styrofoam cups due to environmental concerns about DHMO used in manufacturing process.

A soft drink flavoured with turkey and gravy, which even its creator admits is undrinkable, has become a surprise hit ahead of the US Thanksgiving holiday.

What the fuck? We're not celebrating April 1st, 2004, we're celebrating April 367th, 2003.

Peanuts.

[Mr. Darl McBride]

This year, I am going to get one of those cans that says "peanuts" and has the coiled spring snakes inside, I'm going to go around offering it to people, and instead of a snake it's going to have real peanuts inside.

The guys who always try and ruin things are going to look like asses. "HA HA! You won't fool ME! Hey, everyone! Look at Darl and his can of... oh. Peanuts."

Plus I'll go around telling the GMTBers that their blogs' CSS doesn't render right in Safari and watch the precious panic.

My joke?

[Mr. Darl McBride]

What's my April Fool's joke?

I'll give you a hint: I've been setting you all up for it since March of last year!

See you at Linux Refund Day.

~Darl

Change google

[PhuckH34D]

If the people at your work have google as startup page, change it to http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/ Or another language found here ( Klingon is nice to)

windows prank

[lortho]

Add the following line to the HOSTS file on the windows PC your favorite linux geek is forced to use at work:

slashdot.org 207.46.245.222

(nslookup the IP to get the joke...) ;)

Re:windows prank

[byolinux]

Surely that would be 207.46.245.222 slashdot.org ?

Re:windows prank

[francium de neobie]

windowsupdate.microsoft.com 204.152.189.116

Re:windows prank

[kayen_telva]

The ip goes first:

207.46.245.222 slashdot.org

I'd hate to see a lot of newbs try to use your example cut and paste and get no fun out of it !

Boss makes you work on microsoft office?

[hookedup]

AutoCorrect.

Tools > AutoCorrect

Replace commonly used words with whatever you wish. Sit back and enjoy..

One of the best I saw.

[bob_jordan]

I don't suggest trying this unless you are very good with electronics.

I shared an office with a guy who was heavily into electronics and used to fix TVs and monitors as a hobby. This was back in the time of Windows 3.1. He stayed back the night before April 1st and stripped a guys monitor down and rebuilt it so the picture was upside down. (please don't ask me how.) Then he installed some hack on the display driver so Windows also displayed upside down. Rebooted the machine and went home.

The victim used to spend a lot of time telneted into a Unix box and ran his login session full screen. Since the monitor was inverted and windows was inverted, everything looked fine. He started his telnet session, hit alt-enter to make it full screen and since it was no longer using the display driver, the display was now upside down.

Hmmm.

He spent a while trying to figure out what had happened and someone dropped a hint that maybe the display driver had been tampered with. He tracked down a clean display driver and installed it.

Ta-daaaa.

Now everything was upside down.

Bob.

Office Vending Machines

[Mr. Darl McBride]

If you've got one of those vending machines at the office which lets you put cash in to open a door and take the food from inside, don't forget that you can put food in as well.

I'll probably stick a few empty beer cans in there this year.

You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

[orthogonal]

Hire a dozen Indians. Have them show up before your colleagues get to work, and sit them in your colleagues' chairs.

Post a large message on the whiteboard/bulletin board: "Accelerated Personnel Replacement Instruction Lessons -- Followed-by Occupational Outsourcing Layoffs"

Re:grow up

[steve.m]

I don't feel the need to go comitting random acts of petty sabotage on office equipment on April 1st.

And I *hate* the way some people take it to extremes, say, for example a news site posting random garbage all day.

Far better to pull one prank really well, than 100 really badly.

Re:Here's hoping the PM doesn't have a heart attac

[R2.0]

Hint: any prank that intends to "teach a lesson" is bound to backfire.

I can tell you this much: if my team did this to me, and then even HINTED at how "valuable" they were, they'd be fired on the spot, project status be damned.

Actually, I wouldn't have to fire them - I'd just accept their resignations. Remember, once you "resign", you can't just take it back - it is in the employer's hands to decide.

Dvorak is soooo....

[JamesP]

old fashioned.

Try the french layout.

1 - Most of the keys match... I said most. Exceptions: QA , WZ, and you have to press shift to type the numbers...

2 - Symbols? Forget about it...

Sometimes the oldies are still the best

[m0smithslash]

From Top 100 April Fools pranks you may get some good ideas. For instance, #10 - Planetary Alignment Dcreases Gravity could well be worth recycling this year, due to the planet alignment of recent days. #15 might have possibilities for the more prurient among you.

you want subtle?

[mike77]

This was done by a friend of mine, so I take no credit. First off there are 14 of us in a cubicle farm in a large office room. There is one set of lights (about 6-7 in a row). the night before April Fools, he came in and switched all of the lights around. Now, when you work in a room, you get to know where your light switch is. So, for a few days we all thought we were insane. After everyone got used to their "new" light location, he switched hem back. I thought it was a great prank, because it was basically harmless, but it did make you question your sanity for a few days...

remove the cubicle doors

[ry4an]

back in 1999 I was working for a growing company and we had lots of spare cubicle materials around. I came in the night before April 1st and removed the doors from many cubicles by simply removing the smooth ends and adding a new wall segment. Most of the employees opted to climb over the walls to work just the same.

HP Printer

[mrgrey]

Change the displays on the HP printers you have all over your network. Download the source http://www.atstake.com/research/tools/network_util ities/hp.c

compile it, write a little script to run it on the entire network and laugh.

-Insert Coin
-I hate my job
-Do not call the admin
-You suck
-slashdot.org
-Out of water
-replace CEO