Pranks I've Pulled
"It's A Very Weird Al Birthday" - There is a Weird Al song called appropriately and simply enough "Happy Birthday" in which the chorus screams "Happy birthday!... Happy birthday to you!" This part is annoying enough in the context of the song. I knew enough about computers at this point in time to cut out the part where they scream "Happy birthday!" and make Geoff's computer play that clip anytime he opened a program, closed a program, minimized a window, maximized a window, or hit an inappropriate keystroke. And this wasn't enough for me. I restructured his three icons for internet explorer, e-mail and word to play the entire song in a somewhat hidden program. I knew Geoff would not only be unable to fix it, but he'd know exactly who did it too. So he came to work, walked in his office, tried some stuff that lasted about 30 seconds and left, saying "Fix it. I'll be back in 15 minutes." Honestly, I don't know why I expected any other reaction. B+
"Geoff Turns 30" - This was year two of the fuck-with-Geoff era. I was not discouraged by his reaction the first time. Although, I did kind of check with Gary before I actually approached him that day. Anyway, I closed the RAC Tuesday night and he opened it on Wednesday (his 30th birthday), so I didn't just confine myself to his office this time. I hung up Happy Birthday and Over the Hill banners at the front desk and taped balloons to the wall leading up to his office. When he entered the main office, I had Tim McGraw's "My Next Thirty Years" blaring at different points in the song from five different computers to make sure he'd hear the chorus at least once before he could get to all of them to turn them off (it was a bonus that he hates country music). Then when he got into his office, there were 100 "over the hill" helium balloons on his ceiling. A day or two later, he opened a drawer of his filing cabinet and two helium balloons came out and hit him in the face. The gift that keeps on giving. He seemed less upset about this one. I think he was really just plotting the revenge he'd get two and a half years later. A-
"The Third South Ultimate Prank" - This was from back in the old dorm days and it was thought out and executed with military precision. The day before we were scheduled to compete in these dorm wars that I had made up, six of us stayed up all night to pull this one off. Brigid and Courtney designed and cut out over 100 footprints in the shape of 3s and Ss. And they actually looked like footprints. Meanwhile, Suzanne, Billy, Kristen and I were cutting out premeasured pieces of fishing wire and filling up pink helium balloons (remember I wore a pink hat back in these days) and writing stuff like "Third South Rules" and "Your Floor Sucks" on them. After tying the fishing wire to the balloons, Suzanne dropped the end to Kristen and Billy, who were waiting outside now, and they'd walk over to me, who was climbing up each of the columns of windows, and I'd tape the wire to the wall just above the first floor window so that eventually all the balloons sat just outside everyone's windows (which didn't open far enough to remove them that way). This took until daylight to finish. And then the six of us, with a floor plan and three exits and feet taped all over our body, synchronized our watches and snuck onto third north's floor to tape the footprints in a fashion as if they had walked all over the floor, up the wall, on the ceiling, and out the far entrance. We accomplished this in 3 minutes at 7am. And then they woke up and we kicked their ass in dorm wars. Man I miss college. Well, you know. A+
"The Icon Trick" - I can only take credit for maybe a tenth of this one because I have friends that are smarter than me. Mike had a computer with very literally 80 plus shortcuts on his desktop. What the hell were all these things? I don't think I even have more than 4 programs I use. Anyway, when he was away, I made a whole lot of shortcuts named "Mike, you have too many shortcuts on your computer" and filled up the other half of his screen with them. This was all I was going to do. Then I got several other ideas from a few computer savvy guys. So I took a screenshot of his computer as it was with the icons on it. Then I set that as his background. So his new background was a picture of his background, but with all the icons on there. So when he deleted the actual shortcuts, the picture of the icons were still there. This is where the gag kinda fell apart. I knew he wouldn't realize what was going on and how long did I want to pretend that I really fucked up his computer? Regardless, it's a pretty easy and funny prank that I'm going to try on the very few people I know who aren't on this list. B
Quote Of the Day 11/30/04
Sev: "We'll be going on mostly class 3 rapids, but there are a couple class 4 rapids on the river."
Me: "How do they determine the classes of rapids?"
Tony: "Number of fatalities."
The lyrical prankster,
D Rec.
Still Standing Right Here...
