Help desk boss fell for ‘Internet Cleaning Day’ prank - then swore he got the joke

Welcome to another instalment of On Call, The Register’s Friday reader-contributed column that celebrates the fine art of tech support. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Mason” who told us that in the mid-1990s he worked as a Unix administrator for a daily newspaper which decided to start a new business as a dialup …

[wolfetone]

Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

Yeah.

We told them Windows was a reliable operating system.

[MatthewSt]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

We sent a project manager out to Dixons to get us some more virtual memory once

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

"We sent a project manager out to Dixons to get us some more virtual memory once"

That could have backfired if he returned a large 10K rpm SCSI (swap) disk complemented by an equally large invoice.

[goodjudge]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

""We sent a project manager out to Dixons to get us some more virtual memory once"

That could have backfired if he returned a large 10K rpm SCSI (swap) disk complemented by an equally large invoice."

Don't forget the 2 year warranty!

[ABugNamedJune]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

And a couple pints for yourself and the PFY

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

And a two year warranty

[mhoulden]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

I heard about someone who was asked to get a long weight. He nipped down to the local hardware store, got a sash weight on the company's account, and went to a café for a cup of tea.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

There was one a few years ago where a apprentice was sent to to buy a rubber hammer.

His Dad was a body shop guy & he came back with the most expensive rubber hammer he could find.

Icon - Where's the fucking receipt!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

"There was one a few years ago where a apprentice was sent to to buy a rubber hammer."

That's a prank which was set up to fail from the start. Almost any hardware shop sells rubber hammers here in North, it's a very handy tool.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

In other news, the local use of aneasthetics dropped.

:)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

Friend of mine got accepted into the US Naval Aviator training pipeline.

One of the senior crew chiefs sent him for some prop wash.

Unbeknownst to him, Cessna actually started a line of aircraft cleaning products named that, and I'd sent a bottle to my friend.

My friend made certain there was over a dozen other maintainers around when he presented his find to the chief, who actually took it pretty well and proclaimed he was the first in 32 years to come back with some.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

In SATCOM we'd send the privates out for rolls of orderwire. Now I think about it, we should have been getting orderwire spikes to tie the orderwire to. Could also have been sending them out for boxes of spectrum to top up the spectrum analyzers as well.

[Dave314159ggggdffsdds]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

I was once sent to 'ask the carpenter to give you a long weight'. Carpenter was repairing sash windows at the time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

We had an intern years ago who had been through the pranks at a previous employer, Asked to go and buy some tartan paint and if they didn’t have that some non penetrating nails. Once he had worked out he was the victim he headed to a local cafe for a tea and fry up. Then returned saying he was exhausted as he walked to various hardware stores before finding no one stocked them locally.

I once had the pleasure of winding two people up using the phone for the first and email for the second. The phone system we used back in the day stored the name of the employee on it. So if you knew what you were doing you could alter it to say what you wanted. I changed mine to have the name of the CEO and then dialled my colleague on the adjoining desk. The poor bloke went a pale white colour and started shaking….until he saw my grin and called me a barsteward.

The second was where I discovered that if you sent an email from an account you didn’t have permission to do so, it sat in your outbox. An automated message told you your message couldn’t be sent as you didn’t have the right to do so. However if you copied or moved the message you’d sent from your outbox to your inbox it looked like it had just arrived. I got one girl i had known for years to “ask me out” that way, which confused her thoroughly. She couldn’t understand how the messages kept coming suggesting she’d pay for a local expensive restaurant, and some decent wine. She laughed when she found out how I’d done it.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

The other favourite was a left handed spanner, although that might be a thing these days !

[ChrisElvidge]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

I bet Ned (Stupid) Flanders sold them.

[Giles C]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

There are a lot of those around

Sparks for the grinder

Left handed spanners

Tartan paint - as an aside watch on Netflix Kiko and the wonderbeasts the lumbercats wear check shirts where the check stays the same pattern as they move - took me a minute to work out what was wrong…

Sky hooks )they always float away when you need one)

Long weights - and short ones

But a friend works for Caterpillar and if you try to send a trainee for any of those you would be seen by HR for abuse (or similar)

[Potty Professor]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

When I was an apprentice, one of our instructors ("Knocker" White) would regularly send one of the newbies to the stores to get a long weight and a packet of sparks for the grinding machine. The storeman cottoned on to this and prepared a few polythene packets of grinds from a bench grinder to give to said newbies, after letting them stand for a few minutes at the serving hatch. Knocker was highly amused the first time, but the joke rapidly went sour and such hazing soon stopped. (Goggles because, you know, grinding?)

[The other JJ]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

Don't be silly. Everyone knows that you don't go out and buy virtual memory but you download it.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

Like getting someone to fax you blank paper when your machine ran out ?

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

No, no, that paper you're faxing over has ink on it! Clean the rollers first!

[The Dogs Meevonks]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

When I originally left school, I did a mix of college and an engineering apprenticeship. In the 2nd year of training, we were sent out into the workshops on a massive site that ran from one end of town to the other... The better part of 3/4 of a mile long and about 1/5 of a mile deep... I have no idea what the square foot/meter/acres/miles of that site it... but it was huge.

We as apprentices got pranked a lot with each dept we transferred to every 8 weeks trying their own brand of pranks. Most obvious, some successful.

There was the time I was sent to the stores to get some 'Shell No12'... and then he quickly added 'pneumatic oil'... for the uninitiated, we did actually use a 'Shell No13' oil and so off I trotted and asked for it... took me a minute to realise... ah yes, got me.

A week later, I was asked to go for a 'Long Weight'... this one was so obvious that I decided to have some fun at my supervisors expense... walked into the stores, explained they were trying it on again and wanted a 'long weight'... and then sat down with them and had a cup of tea for 10 mins... Went back to work, said they didn't have any at the moment.

I then disappeared an hour later for 20 mins, supervisor came looking for me, found me having more cups of tea in the stores... 'WTF are you doing?' he bellowed at me... "Oh, they didn't have a long weight, so I thought two short ones would do'

The guys in the stores cracked up, the supervisor thankfully had a sense of humour and realised he'd been pranked back... and they never tried again.

But the best one... was when I worked at one end of the site and was sent to collect some parts from the other end of the site... I was told it was 2 postoles for a 201 compressor... given a pull trolley and sent on my way. It wasn't a light trolley and it took me a good 20 mins to drag it 3/4 of a mile up there, load up the very heavy crate and bring it back.

When I got back... a little knackered pulling this heavy trolley and crate. The supervisor asked if I'd checked it... I said no, I had no idea what I was checking for... I didn't know what a 201 compressor was.

It was then I was handed a crowbar and a sinking feeling grew in my stomach... I just grinned at them, and said... you've got me a good one here haven't you.

Sure enough... opened the crate and there were some breeze blocks with 2 holes in them... and a sign that said 2 Post Holes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

I did some holiday work at a local plant while still studying, and one of the jobs was with an insulation company. After the first morning of introduction it was lunchtime and a colleague was talking to me while the rest went into the break room - I realised later the delay was deliberate.

Just as I was about to enter as well, the boss arrived so being polite and a newbie I let him go first.

.. and so he got doused by half a bucket of water that was carefully balanced on the top of the door instead of me.

There was about 3..4 seconds of absolute silence, and then everyone in the room was howling with laughter, which left the boss (who turned out to be a really nice guy) with no option then to laugh along and then find something to dry himself with.

They were a bit of a mad gang so it turned into a rather enjoyable summer :).

[Dwarf]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

A friend of mine managed to convince a project manager that they needed some high temperature / asbestos patch cables to go into the back of the firewall, due to the heat that was generated when it was incinnerating the bad packets.

Took him a day or so talking to procurement, to figure out it was a hoax.

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

We told them Windows was a reliable operating system.

Come on, pranks have to be at least semi-believable...

[wolfetone]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

One born every minute though!

[jake]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

That's not a prank. It's just a rather laughable lie.

[dan_linder]

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

Dang you, Bill! You and Larry have a lot of apologizing to do!

[Ochib]

Yeah, I told them that this year was the year of the Linux Desktop

[b0llchit]

Sorry, you're joke is 25 years late because I permanently switched to Linux Desktop in 2000.

[jake]

I have been running Slackware as my primary desktop for almost a third of a century.

[Bran Muffin]

Sorry, but

I have never switched to a Linux desktop, so I guess we cancel each other out, b0llchit.

[Dwarf]

Re: Sorry, but

@bran muffin

There is still time to learn and find the light side.

[Bran Muffin]

Re: Sorry, but

@Dwarf

Thank you, but I am perfectly happy as things stand. Absolutely no reason to change.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Sorry, but

Hence the newd for bran muffins.

[wolfetone]

The right and Micro$oft can't meme.

[Anonymous Coward]

That video of MS execs dancing at the Win95 launch is meme-worthy in my eyes.

[Anonymous Coward]

"That video of MS execs dancing at the Win95 launch is meme-worthy in my eyes."

I remember seeing in almost live and it was *really*weird even then. It was like bunch of village idiots had gathered to do cult ceremonies, totally disconnected from the rest of the world or even reality.

Probably had a lot of coke still in '95 in them.

[Antron Argaiv]

Mint MATE here.

[J.G.Harston]

I thouht this year was the Year of the Anchovy.

[Dwarf]

I thouht this year was the Year of the Anchovy.

Every year is the year of the Anchovy. They are a fantastic fish, and welcome in many of my meals, since I like to taste what I'm eating.

[Eric 9001]

It will never be that year, as that kernel doesn't operate on its own.

The year of the GNU/Linux desktop was around 1995, as finally you could use a recent computer in freedom again.

Too bad that was destroyed with the first proprietary program (of many) added to Linux in 1996.

[Oh Matron!]

On a lighter note....

"gopher" was a blast from the past. Learnt about Archie, Gopher, Finger(oo-er) and the rest whilst at uni, which happened to coincide with the advent of Netscape. Great timing.

[Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward]

Re: On a lighter note....

Also learning the ins and outs of file transfer with FTP...

...those were good days when you absolutely need to have all the pertinent information in your head as there was no google or ai to help you out of a tight spot.

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: On a lighter note....

Even back in the dinosaur-days of the ARPAnet, there were both electronic and printed man pages, FAQs, and how-to documents.

"RTFM".

[BJC]

Re: On a lighter note....

Back in circa '95, I ordered the Yggdrasil distribution on CD. There was a manual, so I ordered that too. IIRC, they contacted me to check that I relly wanted it, pointing out that all the information was already in man pages. I suspect they didn't get many requests - perhaps I was the first? Being inexperienced, I figured it'd be helpful to have the info on paper. I recall that it was about 3" thick, of A4-ish size. Embarrased to say that I didn't persist with my attempts with GNU/Linux, at that time. However, times change - at home, I've been on GNU/Linux for getting on for 15 years.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: On a lighter note....

Longer ago that I like to remember I downloaded the ZCPR3 distribution. In the documents it mentioned a printed manual, with its ISBN. I naturally decided to order it from my local bookshop. I think everything in the book was in the download. But then I prefer to have a manual that I can flick through.

[An_Old_Dog]

Hard-Copy Docs

Hard-copy docs are indispensible when you are sitting in front of a computer terminal because you can use the terminal to look at soft-copy documentation, XOR, you can use the teminal to look at your command line, but not both at the same time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hard-Copy Docs

Even if you’re limited to a text mode only display, GNU Screen was released 38 years ago and tmux has been around for 18 years…

[that one in the corner]

Re: Hard-Copy Docs

Ah, if only GNU Screen had been ported to, say, Sintran and Pr1mos, it might've helped avoid leafing through the hardcopy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: On a lighter note....

"man pages, FAQs, and how-to documents."

Yes. And if you have actually read any of them you know the content of them, too.

Man-pages basically had (and still have) a command, some options possibly explained and syntax, not much else.

How-to typically has context included and actually useful, if one exists for your need.

FAQ:s are basically what ever developer believes people might ask, not what actually is asked most frequently.

And of course none of these are updated when program changes.

[MonkeyJuice]

Re: On a lighter note....

ed is the standard text editor.

[Starfish]

Re: On a lighter note....

You must've been there the same time as me, around 1995.

Magical days.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: On a lighter note....

And today's star fish is:- the starfish

[Trygve Henriksen]

Re: On a lighter note....

Actually, gopher is still alive.

I have the Diggiedog client on my smartphone.

[Michael Strorm]

Re: On a lighter note....

I remember briefly trying Gopher circa 1994, but it was already being eclipsed by the WWW by then.

I mostly forget about it, but when my vague recollection was triggered by the occasional mention (like yours), I assumed- in hindsight- that it was one of those "older" 80s Internet technologies that was already being rendered obsolete by the web by the time I first went online in 1993-94.

However, it wasn't- I found out that the WWW and Gopher both came out publicly at almost the same time in 1991. Less a predecessor than a failed rival, then.

[Korev]

He should have told them to "Turn if off and mason again"

[Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward]

Came here for the comments, will stay for more comments.

This should be good.

[An_Old_Dog]

Prankers

Where I once worked ...

• Techie A pranked Techie B by setting B's Novell Netware non-admin account password minimum length to 256 characters, then expired the old password.

• Techie B retaliated about a month later by modifying the container login script for Techie A's non-admin account to check for A's userid, and, upon finding it, executing a program on that PC allowing B to open A's CDROM drive tray. B would open A's tray randomly, two or three times in a day, then do nothing for 3 or 4 days. When A logged off the PC, the tray-control program terminated.

The wicked part about this is that it would "follow" techie A around, executing on whatever PC he logged into, leaving little evidence as it had an innocuous filename, executed from a network drive, and made no Registry changes, other than a momentary, temporary change in \\blah-blah-blah\LastRun.

• Techies C and D pranked me by (1) replacing the home row of keycaps on my keyboard to read, "ALLYOURBASE" (as from the meme, "All your base are belong to us!"), and (2) setting my office phone on auto-answer + speakerphone, then calling me while I was put of the office and muting their phone.

When I returned to my office, I sat down in my chair, placed my fingers on my keyboard (not looking at it, as I touch-type), felt the odd shape of the keys beneath my fingers, and said, "This doesn't feel right." I then heard their laughter through the closed office door across the hall, lifted my hands from my keyboard and looked at it.

[Red Sceptic]

Re: Prankers

I have a t-shirt with "All your base are belong to us" printed on it. Always amusing to see who reacts to it when walking around - no one under about 50 in my experience.

[KarMann]

Re: Prankers

It just came up again for me a day or two ago, and I was referencing the All Your Base XKCD, and I realised that the retro-return-date predicted in the hovertext was 4 years ago, going on 5. Which in turn led me to think of yet another classic, see icon.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Prankers

Almost a prank, where software devs, all necessarily having Linux (or FreeBSD) desktop and laptop boxen and inevitably most ran the BSOD screensaver. One day CEO goes past the cubes (these were the idiotic low wall height variety, practically an open bay office with mini-walls) and sees BSOD panic screens and immediately thinks something is wrong, and gets ahold of the (one) I.T. guy who really did not know Linux that well [but he was a good net an hardware guy, and Windows server admin].

something "less than comedy" ensued that I would have laughed about until th department head got angry at us... "never run that screen saver again!" etc.

[PB90210]

Re: Prankers

"What's the password?"

'Yes"

"Nono, what's the password?"

"It is"

Another hand reaches over and types... W A T T S

[Richard Gray 1]

cold wire

A user once contacted the wrong helpdesk, they emailed the UK helpdesk instead of the US helpdesk regarding a login problem.

It was a slow day so I amused myself.

Seeing he was in the Houston Office (I assumed it would be warm) I let him know that the issue was with the AC being turned up too high and that the cold restricted the copper wire reducing the ability of the packets to flow.

In order to resolve the problem he should go under the desk and "warm" the network cables. Or Alternatively contact the correct helpdesk who would be able to help him.

I got a nice email back saying that he enjoyed the joke and it cheered him up ..

I also had another user (one of mine this time) that was based in Angola. whenever he had a problem he would be "Oh great IT Wizard I beseech thee to help me...."

I would respond with things like ..

" to resolve the issue the SYSGODS must be appeased... !!!.. Thou MUST purchase 3 slabs of beer to be sacrificed in the name of the SYSGODS. Only once the beer has been consumed in their name will the deign to attempt to resolve your pitiful requests..."

After visiting there a few times I know how dull it could be so anything to make it more fun.

It went on for pages I really wish I'd kept a copy....

[K555]

Re: cold wire

We have to deal with many small 'web development' companies who churn out the standard Turdpress affairs. Every site comes stuffed with as many out of date untested plug-ins as possible that call APIs that are long since deprecated or make DNS lookups for non existent records. Then, when the front page takes 27 seconds to load (complete with a 3 minute full motion video they've uploaded with a codec suitable for distribution to HD IMAX cinemas) they come back with "something wrong with the server".

One of these companies had an e-mail signature with the logo of about 10 vendors they used across the bottom and the staff all had titles like 'Level 4 tech solutions expert'

So every time I responded to them, I'd make my own e-mail signature more preposterous, adding another company logo (I've got a western digital hard disk in this PC... add Western digital. I fancy a Sausage Roll... add Ginsters) and changing my job role to things like "Level 27 Support Mage"

[James Wilson]

Re: cold wire

Many moons ago I worked at a small company where we could make up our own job title as long as it wasn't too ridiculous. A colleague was assigned to water the office plants so became 'plant manager'. I don't know if he actually got business cards printed.

[Mast1]

Re: cold wire

A possibly apocryphal story about a certain broadcast institution that had a recognised job title of "Engineering Information Officer", otherwise abbreviated to "EIO":

One person managed to get his title extended to EIEIO". His surname was .......MacDonald.

[jake]

Re: cold wire

My job title at Bigger Blue was "Boffin at Large"; it was even on my business cards (only because they wouldn't let me use my preferred "Chief Cook & Bottle Washer"). My actual position? Floating Senior Member of the Technical Staff. I wandered from department to department, world-wide, putting out fires. Outside of running my own businesses, it was the least boring, most stressful and most satisfying job I have ever had.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: cold wire

A mate was very pleased he got away with his request for “head of S&M” on his business cards.

[PB90210]

Re: cold wire

Outside the tea room was a pot with what looked like a cheese plant, consisting of a tall stalk and a couple of mangy leaves

One day I noticed a secretary watering it and asked her why she was watering an obviously dead plant...

"It's the boss's favourite"

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: cold wire

Second Ginsters comment in a week.

Icon - They always gave me a gut ache.

[that one in the corner]

Re: cold wire

Hmmm, Greggs, uuuurrrghhh <drool>

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cold wire

At $previous_job I was part of the group tasked with getting out website updated. Small shop <50 people, with no in-house design experience, so we farmed it out.

First company we interviewed (ended up being the one we used) had a decent team. Their pitch talked about making sure the site performed well in addition to looking good. They talked about being hired to revamp a site that looked neat, but loaded incredibly slowly due to WP plugin bloat.

The next candidate company was a one woman shop. Her portfolio looked decent, she seemed kike she had solid technical chops. Then she mentioned that she recently completed a fairly significant website that looked great, but she had to remove it from her list of examples "because another company came in and ripped out all the nice stuff I did".

Wasn't hard to do make the connection.

[Dwarf]

Re: cold wire

The best job title I ever saw was a network engineeer who had his job title in his email responses set as "Director of packets"

[What? Me worry?]

Re: cold wire

Many moons ago I started employment at company where they ask what I wanted a my title for external use. We had arcane job titles that only made sense internally, so the idea was to have something a little more 'generic', like Project Manager or Systems Analyst, etc that made sense (ha!) when we met with other companies. I chose 'Grand-Poobah, Of All He Surveys' riffing on Mikado and Flintstones. It was submitted to HR, and approved! Lasted about nine months, when I moved departments and role. Sadly no business cards left :/

[Anonymous Custard]

Swap Shop

I think I've told this one before, but it's either type this here or actually do some work on a Friday morning...

Way back when I was in college (not really 35 years ago, honest guv'nor) we had a computer lab with BBC and Archimedes computers and an Acorn network server (I said it was a long time ago!).

As I was in the final year of A-levels, I had admin privs on that network. A couple of the guys from the year below me, who "disliked" each other found this out, and both separately asked me for the password of the other so they could have some fun.

Of course, being a proto-BOFH, I duly obliged by swapping their passwords over. So they could log into each others account, but not their own any more.

Cue a Mexican stand-off in the classroom where they tried to get their own password back without divulging that of the other.

I let it go on for a while, at which point the teacher came in and asked what was going on.

I explained, and then swapped their passwords back. He then came up to me, and in a mock stern way waggled his finger at me with "don't do it again...", only slightly undermined by the sly grin on his face.

He then went off into the "server area" (aka a former store-cupboard), from which stifled laughter was heard.

Ah, the good old days!

[ComicalEngineer]

Re: Swap Shop

As I have mentioned previously I once shared an office with an obnoxious PFY who suffered from a hugely inflated opinion of his own computing abilities. Those of you able to remember the good old days of DOS will remember that the keyboard mapping was set in the autoexec.bat file. For the UK the setting was KEYBUK iirc.

When pfy annoyed me more than usual I used to change the keyboard mapping and reboot the machine. If I was feeling generous then I’d change it to KEYBUS but if particularly annoyed then I’d swap it to a very different language, one of my favourites being maps with QWERTZ.

After rebooting the machine I would then change the autoexec back to KEYBUK. When PFY got frustrated I’d suggest rebooting the machine after a suitable period of him getting more and more wound up.

Took him ages to cotton on to what I had been doing.

[MrBanana]

Re: Swap Shop

I took this an extra mile. It was Xenix, not DOS, but equally amenable to key swap shenanigans. Especially as you could remap keys in individual applications so the pesky A and S keys become logically swapped. But then, you actually physically swap the key caps on some poor bastard's keyboard. So some stuff works and some stuff doesn't - depending on when I cared to swap the key maps, which could be done remotely. This became even more hilarious as the "obvious hardware issue" causing his switched key issues got no better when the modified keyboard was swapped out with a regular one. I laughed for a couple of days until beer O'clock Friday lunch time, before we told him.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much pranking but this has reminded me of happy times, working hard at a company making bespoke process control solutions. I had a library of datashetts, circuit diagrams, setup and calibration notes for a range of boards and modukesy.

The files were split between three folders that were carefully and distinctively labelled:

Natural Phenomena and How To Control Them

Beginners Magic

Spells and Incantations from Ancient Times

I'm pretty sure that's correct. If not, my defence is: it was maybe 40 years ago.

It was great working at a place that could actually be fun.

[jake]

About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

... I filed a bug report on a batch of bad EEPROMs that were throwing spurious errors. In the bug report, on a lark (and to see if anyone actually read the bugr), I suggested that it was probably Alpha particles off the heavy metals concentrated from sea water evaporation in the salt pile in Redwood City, which was just off our shipping & receiving dock.

PhD Engineers scurried about for a week or so, until I confessed to the joke. I nearly got fired. It's amazing how little highly trained people know about stuff outside their field. Me, I generalize ... seems to keep me saner than most.

Note that back then there WERE some EEPROMS that were contaminated by Alpha particles[0], but that was caused by a manufacturing error before they were sealed up. If you know anything about such things, you'd know why my hoax was obviously bullshit.

Why bring this up here? In the 40ish years since then, I've heard the story of the salt pile in Redwood City ruining electronics "due to Alpha Particles" half a dozen times, at half a dozen companies, in three states, Canada, the UK and Australia. Usually in relation to spurious errors in comms gear. I suspect the hoax will out-live me by many decades. If you run across it in your meanderings and it causes you any trouble, I apologize ... have a cold one on me :-)

_{[0] Ours turned out to be part of the contaminated in manufacturing batch. Something about helium inadvertently getting introduced into the ceramic.}

[that one in the corner]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

> Something about helium inadvertently getting introduced into the ceramic.

Helium cruelly trapped within the thorium and/or uranium (depending upon the source of the mud used) within the ceramics.

[bartsmit]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

Much like write-only memory https://web.archive.org/web/20111107100120/http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/W/write-only-memory.html

[J.G.Harston]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

Lovingly recreated here.

[Dwarf]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

The datasheet was the Signetics 25120, which was apparently written by a disgruntled (*) engineer who realised that management would sign off any old crap as long as it sounded right.

It was the 9046 x 9 write only memory (WOM), its a write once, read never storage device. There are many copies on-line, just read the data sheet carefully to spot all the deliberate mistakes. My favorite is that the pin count is an inverse function of device insertions, since pins always break when DIL devices are removed and re-inserted, or the need to cool it with a 2 foot fan.

* Disgruntled is the negative of being gruntled, which is a word that does't get enough use in the English language. If one is gruntled, then they are happy.

[DavidRa]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

It's always felt to me as if disgruntled should mean someone who has been deprived of their gruntles, and therefore that someone might instead be ungruntled, implying that they never had any gruntles with which to be gruntled in the first place.

[Dave314159ggggdffsdds]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

To gruntle is actually to complain - basically a variant of grumble. 'Dis' is an intensifier, rather than a negator, here.

[Jimjam3]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

WOM does sound like nonsense, in so much as storing data that can’t ever be read.

A little bit like writing you name in the air with you finger.

[Jimjam3]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

Gruntled was in fact used in the 1500’s to mean grumble. The dis part was worse ( as shown with disembowel).

[Ken Hagan]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

But disembark is the opposite of embark, both of which are in common use, and I'd expect disembowel to be the opposite of embowel, which sounds like a perfectly reasonable word to use for the process of putting bowels into someone. (It's not the language's fault that embowel has, historically, never been needed.)

So I'm not convinced by this dis=intensifier theory. Any other examples?

[Dave314159ggggdffsdds]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

It isn't a theory, it's one of the features of English being described. Google dis + intensifier. It's definitely less common than as a negator, but exists.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

So I've googled it and found only examples that are both archaic and poorly attested (at least in English) even back then.

(That said, gruntled meaning happy is, in the 20th century, apparently a back-formation of P. G.Wodehouse. He is unlikely to be the first joker to have had the idea, though.)

[Jimjam3]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

The English language is a hodgepodge, and it’s no surprise that any words meaning from 500 years ago has altered since. ;)

[Dave559]

Re: About a billion years ago in internet time (call it 1986) ...

Ach, to fix your EEPROMs, you should have known that all you really needed to do was reverse the polarity of the neutron flow…

[Anonymous Coward]

Pranked two people at the same time.

My line manager was complaining about a slow network. So I replaced his LAN cable with one that had been cut and I tied it back together in a knot. So when he complained his network was actually a notwork, I told him the network guy had replaced his cable so to give him a call. My manager called the network guy and complained. When the network guy turned up, he looked at the cable and started laughing. It had gone from a network to a notwork to a knotwork.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

https://media.tenor.com/7Leun0EXoBIAAAAe/power-puff-girls-meme.png

[Fonant]

Vague memory: 1986, working with a network (I think coaxial ethernet) of HP workstations running X windows. Where windows would gain focus just by moving the cursor over them. Used to write little scripts to send X commands to the next-door terminal to move a colleague's mouse cursor down by a pixel a second, and see how long it took them to notice.

[Sam not the Viking]

What's work if it's not fun.

We were sent to Head Office in France to learn about new software that was being introduced with enhanced security. A group from all the satellite companies in Europe were assembled for a full day of training: a two night stop in Paris was just one of the sacrifices we had to make.

After the initial introductions, explanations, coffee & croissants etc. we sat at terminals to try out the software. Within minutes, one of our group had taken over the local network and without letting on, was randomly logging out the trainers, thwarting their endeavours. We learnt a lot of new French vocabulary that morning.

For some reason, they were always a bit wary of us afterwards.

[Flightmode]

Re: What's work if it's not fun.

Back when I was young and (more) foolish, I went to the Windows 95 MCP course. We had one of those guys in the class, let's call him Marcus, who already knew everything and needed to show that off to the rest of us. He finished all the exercises first (easy when you're just copying commands from the book without thinking) and then spent the next 27 minutes goofing off - sending messages to the rest of us across the network, deleting files we'd just created and other such "fun" pranks. The teacher caught on to what he was doing the first afternoon and decided to stop it - he called out to him, "Hey Marcus?", then snapped his fingers and the guy's screen went completely blank. He restored it when the rest of us had finished, then immediately re-broke it again when he saw that Marcus had finished the next batch. He eventually promised to show Marcus how he did it - AFTER the last day of the course.

[Ikoth]

No Sense of Humour

A former colleague used to occasionally handle support tickets from users of our bank's Tandem mini system. Upon receiving yet another spurious ticket from THAT user (all organisations have one). He closed it with the comment "unblocked the Jefferies tube and recalibrated the dilithium crystals" (he was a big Trek fan). Unfortunately for him, the ticket was picked up in a service review and he got a proper bollocking. Banks aren't renowned for their sense of humour.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: No Sense of Humour

"Banks aren't renowned for their sense of humour."

But certainly notorious for their proprietorial interest in your their money. :)

Back in the early '90s one of AU's big four ran a TV compaign with the slogan "We never forget it's your money" which was almost immediately spoofed in by a comedy outfit as "Eastpac – We never forget it's our money" which was far more credible.

[the Jim bloke]

Re: No Sense of Humour

There was a spin-off / follow on of that -.. I had a t-shirt with a black and white image of a dejected looking teenager and large headline style text..

" Left School?,

No Job?

No Money?

then FUCK OFF.. (bank name), the frank bank.."

I was actually wearing it in a cafe in central Canberra (just visiting) and this fat old guy in a suit comes up to me and asks " Is it really like that? ". My response was " I dunno, I work on a gold mine.." and that I wore the shirt because I agreed with the sentiment.

I later realised the guy was a reasonably prominent politician with some social justice platform, but it was probably 3 decades ago, so the details are vague.

[Jimjam3]

Re: No Sense of Humour

First saw that ‘pun’ in the newly launched VIZ comic in the mid 1980s.

Closed my NAT-WEST account shortly after….

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: No Sense of Humour

There was a spoof advert in an adjacent copy of viz, back when banks were giving a £25 bribe to students to open an account:

"Students! Free sex with the manager's wife when you open an account with us!

Gnat West, the frank bank."

[K555]

Re: No Sense of Humour

I knew someone that had a sense of humour that dropped no hints and he didn't need to actually know someone to inflict it upon them. He briefly worked in a bank, which he hated every second of.

One of his colleagues asked if he could pass them a letter opener and, absolutely dead pan he told them "Sorry, after the last incident I'm no longer allowed to handle sharp objects near co workers".

I did say he worked there briefly.

[Rivalroger]

Banks and sense of humour

No IT in this but once when driving through Bristol (western England for the non blightians) and there was a billboard from some financial services company that had the tag "Make your money work harder for you" Some enterprising Bristolian had spraypainted on it "What fucking money!"

I chuckled a good bit over that.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: No Sense of Humour

Everyone knows that you're supposed to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow if you start messing with the dilithium crystals!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No Sense of Humour

A quote from the Star Wreck books, as best as I can recall offhand:

"We have the matter tank here, the antimatter tank there, and the uncle-matter tank in the corner. That, plus some dilithium crystals to start it on a cold morning, is how we keep this ship running."

[Bebu sa Ware]

A good idea though ...

"at midnight, the entire Internet would be shut down and scrubbed clean for six hours."

Since those innocent times the Internet has accumulated more filth than the Augean Stables that, even with a Heraclean effort, would require weeks if not months of scrubbing and disinfection before it became merely grubby.

[breakfast]

Re: A good idea though ...

It would be nice to go back to those innocent times but due to a Heraclitean effort you can't step in the same river twice.

[Albert Coates]

Re: A good idea though ...

But did Hercules re-route the Alpheus before or after it carried off Arethusa from her couch of snows in the Acroceraunian mountains?

[I Am Spartacus]

On the subject of 1990's ISPs

I worked for a telco that installed bits of kit to allow dialup phone calls to be connected to routers. The incoming calls came on a single fibre optic cable, and the output was a single internet cable. This meant that we could replace a rack of dial up modems that the ISP currently had with a 1U bit of kit. Or replace 8 racks witrh 1 rack.

Whilst examining their comms room for where we would locare the new rack as we cut over, one of the network techies came in, went to a rack containing 64 modems and powe cycled the whole rack. We asked what he was doing and he explained that one of the modems was locked up and needed a reset. Power cycling the whole rack was the easiet way to do this.

The obvious question was "and what of the 63 other users who were dialled into the internet?"

His response was classic that has sytayed with me: "For a tenner a month, what do they expect?"

We launched the ISP service to replace all the modem racks later that month.

We launched FreeServe the next month, a totally free for users internet service.

[Tanaka]

Once our entire department at BT Cellnet started adding 'Li' to megabytes and gigabytes, calling them giggliabytes and meggliabytes, until all the management followed suit. We were easily amused back then.

[Dwarf]

Oodlebytes

I once managed to convince a bunch of managers that oodlebytes was a thing. This was back in the mid 90's. An Oodlebyte was the next order of magnitude up from a Terrabyte, which a couple of people had started hearing about, as we were all living in the Gigabytes realm back then.

My explanation was that people say they have oodles of memory, its an expression to indicate nearly unlimited storage.

[Anonymous Coward]

OS/2 Program manager

There was a replacement windows shell made to look and as much as possible act as the OS/2 Program manager shell.

Yeah, I installed it on a colleagues PC.

Effing numptie spent a whole day trying to remove it. Yeh, he was that bad at the job, so he deserved to be pranked that way.

[Outski]

Dutch lottery

A former colleague* announced with glee one morning that he'd received an email informing him he'd won some millions on the Dutch lottery, which he could claim by calling a number and giving some personal details.

Once the laughter had subsided, we finally convinced him that it was a hoax.

The beauty of this? Our team ran client email systems including anti-spam/anti-phish...

*Quote from the same bloke: "But cider's not alcohol, that's why kids drink it in the park..." Oh deary deary me

-------------> Not cider

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dutch lottery

A couple of years ago my parents got roped in by a friend who had received the well-known email from the hard-up Nigerian major-general who needed a few thousand pounds in order to release several million from a frozen bank account, which they could all then share in. They left the letter lying around, and I tried my best to persuade them that this was the oldest scam in the book and they would most certainly lose all that money.

Well, they didn't believe me, and I now have two considerably poorer and wiser parents.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dutch lottery

A few years back we hired a painter. He got to talking about his girlfriend... who lived in England (we're in the US), was the heir to a fortune, but was needing some help with hiring a lawyer to actually get the money, at which point she'd come to the US and meet him for the first time. He had already sent her an absolute packet and was planning on sending more. No matter what I said, I couldn't convince him this was a scam.

[BartyFartsLast]

Sodding salesmen

We got stitched up with a contract that meant we had to repair whatever a partner company sent us.

This meant I got to play with all sorts of really unusual stuff like prototype video conferencimg equipment from BT Martlesham Heath, Amigas kitted out for video editing from TV stations, IBM metronet cards and more mundane garbage like fax machines.

So, on one memorable occasion we called up to reception (because us hardware techs were kept in the dungeon/cellar) and asked the lovely new receptionist if she could fax down some blank paper as we'd run out.

Bless her, she tried too then came down the stairs to apologise that it wouldn't send.

[The other JJ]

Re: Sodding salesmen

Years ago I worked at an engineering firm where there receptionist wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. It was the advent of fax and head office had one installed in reception (probably next to the telex machine) so the various divisions could exchange documents. After a week or so said receptionist asked me if all the machines were the same, and anyone could see documents as they arrived. I confirmed that they were and told here that if she needed to send anything confidential she should put it in an envelope and put that through.

A few days later I was summoned to a meeting without coffee in HR, where they attempted to give me a serious bollocking for taking advantage, but failed because they couldn't help laughing throughout it.

[KittenHuffer]

Re: Sodding salesmen

Decades ago when I still did 2nd line support we had one secretary (there is always one) who consumed 90% of the training budget for their department, yet still seemed to need 90% of the help provided by IT Support. Repeated visits would be made to sort out problems that could not be replicated whilst the techie was stood there.

I'm there one time, and the issue could not be replicated. So I started to spin a yarn about the small RFID device that techies carried that would be picked up by the machine, and cause it to start working again. How I managed to keep a straight face I'll never know, as I could see the other secretaries all smirking and some of them going to great lengths to avoid laughing.

I returned to the IT department, only to be dragged in front of the Boss, to help him understand why he'd just has a request for one of the RFID devices that the techies carried!

[GlenP]

Re: Sodding salesmen

I just tell them it's a magic aura, worryingly some of them probably believe me!

[Dwarf]

Re: Sodding salesmen

Its not a magic RFID, its a small screwdriver. Machines worry about being taken apart

[Anonymous Coward]

Training practice

When I was studying for my MCSE back around 2002 I needed things to practice my group policy skills on. I discovered I could replace users desktop wallpapers through group policy and then lock them out of changing back. Cue a number of my users logging in one morning to discover their new desktop wallpaper was whatever their biggest phobia was, spiders, birds, dogs, etc. Luckily they mostly saw the funny side of it.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: Training practice

Connecting remotely to user's machines with the computer management applet and ejecting their CDROM drive trays was a favourite at one time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Training practice

We had some early Sun workstations, and that version of SunOS didn't protect the audio device by default, anyone could 'rcp' an audio file to a remote system. One of the guys in my office decided to prank a female developer on the floor below by sending the rousing bit of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus to her system.

He was unaware that we had some visiting bigwigs from head office, and at that moment downstairs the developer was giving a demo of the latest version of some new software to one of the directors. With unintentially impeccable timing, the demo had just completed successfully when the system burst out with "Hallelujah, Hallelujah, ...".

We learned later that she just looked at the director with a stunned expression, and said "it's never done that before!".

I believe that the prankster now works for Google...

[frabbledeklatter]

This existed long before the internet

Back in my early teens, late 1950s, my friends and I would call people, pretending to be from Bell Telephone. "We will be flushing the lines in your area this afternoon. To avoid any possible inconvenience, please put a sponge under your telephone, or set it in a bucket,: Of course, we'd visit the mark du jour just to see where his/her phone was.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: This existed long before the internet

The prank I remember was to call someone and tell them you're with Bell, and that you would be working on the line for the next half hour and that no matter how many times the phone rang, they were not to answer it or the technician would be electrocuted.

About 20 minutes later, you call back. When they answer, you start screaming into the phone.

[Apocalypso - a cheery end to the world]

Not a work prank...

Not a work prank but this made me snort my coffee.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2ler3xnv8o

Thanks to Trump, UK-based right-wingers are creeping out of the woodwork. The latest incarnation of this is the practice of flying the St George's Cross on street lights etc in an area in order to show how patriotic you are, or some such.[1]

In response, someone had the inspired idea to deliver fake letters from the Council informing households that: patriotic households displaying the country's flag will temporarily house refugees because "we know you would be proud to assist your country"

That's hilarious.

[1] For the benefit of non-UKians, flag-flying to express political sentiment has never been a "thing" in the UK except for Northern Ireland during the troubles and, because of the NI link, has always been looked down upon. The modern affliction is nothing to with patriotism but simply a racist dog-whistle for whipping-up anti-immigration sentiment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not a work prank...

Apparently one Kent council is unable to put up the Xmas lights until all those patriotic flags are removed from the lampposts

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not a work prank...

>: simply a racist dog-whistle for whipping-up anti-immigration sentiment.

Or for fuelling football rivalry

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Not a work prank...

It would make sense to house them with people who display "refugees welcome here" signs. Take them at their word, they can't by lying can they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not a work prank...

> It would make sense to house them with people who display "refugees welcome here" signs. Take them at their word, they can't by lying can they?

Great idea!

In a similar vein I support the NHS and free healthcare at the point of delivery so I've decided to set up a medical tent in my front garden.

<rolls eyes>

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not a work prank...

The funniest thing is that the letter was sent to people in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, "them over the river" as we say in the Cotswold Hills, aka the 'right side' of the river Severn. It's a well-known fact that that there are even fewer surnames in the Forest than in Norfolk.

If anyone does get arrested for this prank, I can recommend the chicken curry at the GlosPol custody suite in Quedgeley.

[Excused Boots]

Re: Not a work prank...

"It's a well-known fact that that there are even fewer surnames in the Forest than in Norfolk.”

Yes, but I do wonder just how many communtards on here will get the reference?

[Yes Me]

Re: Not a work prank...

Worth noting that when I grew up in England many yonks ago (before there was Windows, before there was DOS, long before...) I never saw a St George flag. It just wasn't a thing. Its gradual rise to become a political emblem is definitely unhealthy. Funny thing is that St George actually came from... Georgia, and not the one glued onto Florida.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Not a work prank...

More likely from what eventually became Turkey. And, amongst other places, including "Georgia (the country not the US state*)", is also the patron Saint of Palestine.

* This needs re-iterating every time the country of Georgie is mentioned as so many people seem to be geographically challenged theses days.

[disgruntled yank]

Pranking

The CLI that came with the AOS/VS operating system had a LOCK command that would put the CLI in a mode such that it couldn't execute certain commands, including BYE (exit). It could not, for example, enter superuser mode. Now the ordinary CLI prompt was ")" but in superuser mode it was "*)". However, there was also a PROMPT command that let one set the prompt characters, or for that matter the command to be executed next--"PROMPT BYE" was useful if you wanted a session to run a command and then exit. One day I found that one of our network guys had left a terminal logged in. I LOCKed the CLI, then used PROMPT to set the prompt to "*)".

He was unable to figure out why he could not log out. Eventually, he asked our DBA, who was a pretty hard-core techie, and the DBA figured out that the session was locked.

[samsungfreud]

Supervisor Payback

My supervisor, back in the day, sent me that email with an added line: "Make sure you take care of this".

Around midmight I sent him an email & text saying that I'd powered down all the gear in the server room for the cleaming.

I turned off my pager, cell phone and disconnected my landline and went to sleep.

Next day some co-workers were laughing, the ones that got an emergency call were not happy with me and my

following evaluation was a bit lower due to a made up "slow response time to emergency situations" category.

He never tried to prank me again and I was never again invited to after hours activities.

[A____B]

Re: Supervisor Payback

Pagers - there's a blast from the past.

I recall a common prank was sending the message -BATTERY LOW- though looking back on the environmental impact perhaps it was't such a good idea!

[A____B]

Back in the dark ages

Well early 1980s - when DEC PDP-11s reigned supreme...

It was common for DEC to release booklets with useful information (the instruction set, specs for peripherals...) and all the peripherals were named with an 11 somewhere in them (eg DR11-W).

A colleague and I produced a Spec sheet to [almost] the same format and layout for a device called BB-11-C (in 3 varieties -0, -1 and -X). This was claimed to be a bit-bucket cache (for 0s, 1s and "extended" for both).

The idea was that it caught all the bits that were lost at the end of each byte due to shift operations and also a bulk collection when programs ended and were moved out of memory. Then when a zero or one was needed in the future it could be taken from the cache rather than created anew.

The DEC salesman was somewhat puzzled when a senior manager from our firm started asking for estimates/quotes for these devices to speed up our systems. We let the salesman in on the secret and he ended up telling the manager that they weren't available in the UK as they needed a 60hz power supply.

[JavaJester]

You Need to Find the Blue Tooth That Fell Out of Your Phone

The more modern version of the classic "You need to find the token that fell out of your network port." (Made sense when Token Ring networks were a thing).

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: You Need to Find the Blue Tooth That Fell Out of Your Phone

I often wondered if the reason the Token Ring network could not be made faster was because the centrifugal force would cause all the tokens to be flung out of the ring :-)

[vistisen]

Well two other people have said the same... so that means according to https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/ the next 97 won't!

[Anonymous Coward]

And then there was the incredible shrinking cube...

A while back I inhabited a cube farm where I had a window seat along with a few friends, all in a row. We discovered that one of the dividers separating the cube next to mine from the one on the other side wasn't actually bolted to the wall. Inevitably, the far-side occupant decided that his cube could grow, so each week we moved the divider 1/4 inch further into the middle cube. It took the middle-cube occupant quite a while to realize his workspace was shrinking, but since we had publicized the exercise to everyone else, there was considerable hilarity when the notion finally hit him. Had Facilities not been in on the prank (always love your Facilities guys!) they might have eventually fixed the missing bolts, but no...

[drand]

Re: And then there was the incredible shrinking cube...

Reminds me of further maths lessons where we would all shuffle our desks forwards an imperceptibly small amount when the old, nearly deaf teacher was writing on the blackboard. As he spent most of the lesson talking to himself and scribbling algebra we got a good twenty to thirty minutes in before he turned round and paid enough attention to notice a dozen boys intently copying down his proofs and doing their best to look angelic mere inches from the front of the classroom. He frequently went absolutely flipping nuts at us, which of course only encouraged us further.

[Dwarf]

00 Bored

Back in the day, when I was young and single there was a lovely young lady working as a PA to one of the managers, I decided to have a bit of fun. I changed the display on her networked HP Laserjet 4000 printer, replacing the standard "00 Ready" message to read "00 Bored". She then logged a ticket to say that her printer was bored, so naturally, I had to go out there and investigate and of course spend a little time there, which resulted in a couple of dates. It didn't work out, but it was still fun and management never got involved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric Windows

Way back in Windows 95 time, I was working in a big insurance company. I called up the IT support account manager who was a lovely man, but very gullible and said that I had seen an article about a new product from Lotus (who were huge at the time before being bought by IBM) called Electric Windows which perked up the Windows experience. I asked if he could find more information on it and whilst on the phone to him was silently mouthing to my colleagues - get me the number of Lotus Cars in Norwich. They did this and I gave it to him on the phone.

After getting off the call to him, I called up his company and spoke to another of his colleagues and told him the joke and he relayed what then happened; and it went like this:

Lotus Switchboard: "Hello, Lotus - how can I help you"

IT Account Manager: "I'd like to talk to someone about Electric Windows"

Lotus Switchboard: "I'll just put you through...." and then directed his call to the spares department.

The conversation went on for a little while with confusion on both sides until the penny dropped and he exited the call.....

In the meantime the whole office had stopped and were listening on and when the phone went down gave a cheer. Apparently he was nicknamed Mr Halfords thereafter. He took it in good spirit and did laugh about it afterwards. Hand on heart this is true, one of those rare pranks where everything just all worked beautifully.....

[Derezed]

At school I was supposed to do work experience at a local paper but instead I got sent to a garage.

The blokes there gave me this list to buy:

Two tins of tartan paint

Spirit level bubbles

A reach around (this was very important)

A long weight

I fell for it and then they chucked me in a river. Last time I worked somewhere like that…dirty…manual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Guilty

Using the super-security of late 90s Windows, I rigged a colleague's PC so I could remotely open and close the (motorized) CD drawer. Hours of fun.

[steviebuk]

We

did the classic of taking a screenshot of an engineers desktop then setting it as their background and hiding the icons.

The rule was you don't do jokes that stop someone from working, however, this guy was a cunt & got someone fired once so we did it more to prove a point, that he was shit and a grifter. The person that should have been given the boot was him.

It worked. Took him ages to work out what the issue was, with a lot of ranting during, then finding it out what happened, getting annoyed then switching to finding it a bit funny, mutterings of reporting it to management.

We all still found it funny, it proved he was a grifter and a cunt.

[hoofie2002]

An oldie but goodie.

From the days when people used to leave phone messages on postit notes on peoples desks.

1) Pick your victim

2) Leave a post-it message for them to call "Mr C. Lyon" urgently from Company X with a number written down

3) Person sees message, calls number and asks for Mr C.Lyon or Mr Lion

4) Bemused person at the other end of the phone politely [if you are lucky] informs the caller that they have reached the local zoo.

5) Cue much tittering from the assembled minions

[Sequin]

I was the IT manager at an aquarium in England and I sent our maintenance manager a link to Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division (www.dhmo.org) saying that I had been informed that we kept large quantities of the substance on site, and that employees were handling it without proper safety equipment and has caused some serious spills! He freaked out and it took him a good while to realise what it was. Great fun!

[JulieM]

Bit bucket becoming full

Bit-buckets implemented in CMOS almost never end up becoming full in practice, because with two-way active drive, the ones and zeros tend to annihilate each other as long as they occur in equal numbers. If the bit bucket contains only zeros, "adding a one" to it actually removes a zero; and if the bit bucket contains only ones, "adding a zero" to it removes a one.

Sometimes an auto-cleaning cycle is still necessary, if too many zeros are encountered in succession without a one, or too many ones without a zero.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Many years sinceupon, I was working as a test bench engineer. A colleague, not renowned for a subtle approach, was struggling with an oscilloscope, proving a particularly recalcitrant fault.

I could see a convenient chunk of wire on a nearby desk - someone's not-yet cleared up offcut. It was a match for the look of his scope probe lead. I snipped off a 6 inch length, folded it into me palm and wandered over, as if being helpful.

"Aha", says I. "You're picking up a lot of crud and hum on that probe aren't you?"

He looked at me blankly.

"I can sort all that pickup. Here-"

In one smooth move I picked up his side cutters with my right hand and the scope probe lead with my left, dexterously deploying a loop of the scrap cable.

"This'll sort it." I said and snipped the loop of cable, apparently to his (very expensive) probe.

The open-mouthed look of "but, but, but - you can't do that " was priceless.