Shark Tank: Virus calling

Hmm, me thinks anonymous is

Hmm, me thinks anonymous is suffering from the humor.lak virus.

I was developing a mainframe

I was developing a mainframe application start up sequence for an insurance company and thought it was funny to put up an intermediate green screen showing 'BOO' which disappeared when any key was pressed and the real app showed up. Unfortunately I forgot to remove it when it went into production that night and in the morning my boss had me on the carpet. He forgave me and said he had 'debooed' it, after some users complained. No harm done thank goodness.

Most of you sound like

Most of you sound like college sophomores. Nothing else to do but trash someone. VERY professional, you are. Get a life.

"... Oh, sorry, this isn't

"... Oh, sorry, this isn't some kiddie forum? My apologies. Did not realize that there were any adults here."

So Anonymous, when did you assume adults work IT?

We had a customer come in

We had a customer come in with a problem PC. We checked it in, but when we actually opened it up several actual cockroches ran out! We bug bomb the hell out of the shop!

The earliest of the

The earliest of the venerable VAX computers (yes, I'm dating myself) had a reboot switch on the front on the unit, and the console was a free-standing teletype device.
I needed to perform a reboot one day, and so decided to include it in the grand tour for a new hire. I explained to her that the VAXen were voice-operated, and that she could do the reboot for me by leaning over to a grill on the side of the console and shouting "Reboot". As you've probably guessed, I was standing casually by the processor cabinet with my thumb over the reboot switch. She didn't really believe me, but after a couple of timid attempts she finally yelled "REBOOT" loud enough--for me to press the button.
I later confessed, she became an excellent programmer, and we remained friends.

A gag I played on a customer

A gag I played on a customer long ago comes to mind:

Into the code itself I put a little routine. If activated a small pulsing circle would appear on the screen and wander around. Whenever it reached it's minimum size it erased the pixel under it. (The program was a CAD program, this would erase bits of the drawing. Of course the actual drawing was unharmed, it just affected the screen.) The circle moved in a modified drunkard's walk--the random direction function was skewed to favor angles closer to the direction of the cursor, the farther away it was the more the skewing. The result was that it would flit around randomly but generally near the cursor.

It also had a feature that if you moved the cursor onto the circle it would be turned off until the next time you ran the program. It had to be exact and you had to lead the circle as it would be moved at the same time as your command executed. Of course this could also happen by accident if it wandered across the cursor.

The control was an external file that said what the odds of activation should be at what time of day. I set the trigger so it would only activate after 8pm and with a low probability even then. I also hit only one machine (I knew enough about their setup to be able to target a specific user), one used by a guy who I knew would appreciate the joke rather than be mad.

After he finally figured out I had placed something in there I told him how to control it--they had a lot of fun pulling it on some of the other people up there. One salesman was determined that if you managed to kill it (his idea was that you had to put the cursor on it and hit space like you were shooting it.) that you chased it into another file. It took a lot of convincing to explain what was really up.

After this one had worn out I tried another--just a dot that slowly homed in on the cursor and if it caught it blew up. It worked off the same control system but with separate probabilities. Nowhere near the fun.

Way-back-when ('92-'96)I was

Way-back-when ('92-'96)I was working at BBN in Cambridge. Almost all desktop PCs were Macintosh SEs. We had a standard little communication program you could use to send messages to other users and they would just pop up when sent.

I changed the "from" ID to *SYSTEM ERROR* and then send off the following message to my manager's admin almost daily: "Moisture detected in floppy drive. Please blow gently into floppy drive."

Without fail Kathy C would be there bent over her desk blowing into her floppy drive. ;-)

It got funnier when she finally called support to have her FDD replaced. I wish I could have seen the look on the face of the person that took the call.

you folks need to donate

you folks need to donate your time to anything just a tad bit more righteous. St. Pete sure appreciates the no-shows you're guaranteeing.