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I'm Surrounded by Idiots

By JrSysAdmin (Thu May 11, 2006 at 04:21:22 AM EST) (all tags)

The Prankster

Nobody gets my sense of humor. I think it's too cerebral for the people I work with.

I spent weeks preparing for April Fools this year. I even bought a special book on configuring Internet Explorer so I would get all the details right. This was back in January, to leave me plenty of time to try the prank out and debug any issues. I was ready right at the end of March and I sprang into action.

Anyone not as technically minded as me might not enjoy the details of how this worked so you can skip this part if you want:

[skippablesection]
Go to View...Options. Click the "General" tab. In the box that says "Set Homepage To:", you can type just about anything.
[/skippablesection]

I set everyone's Internet Explorer homepage to netscape.com! I was giggling like a schoolgirl, let me tell you.

Here's the thing, though: I never heard anybody else even laughing. Why are so many people so uptight and unable to get a joke like this? (To be fair, I later saw receptionist's homepage set back to google.com, so maybe my change didn't take.)

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I'm Surrounded by Idiots | 11 comments (11 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback

The Problem Is One Of Basic Joke Mechanics, IMO by CheeseburgerBrown

(4.00 / 2) #1 Thu May 11, 2006 at 04:28:00 AM EST

I'm afraid the joke simply wasn't very funny.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I am from a small, unknown country in the north called Ca-na-da. We are a simple, grease-loving people who enjoy le weekend de ski.

: I know, now setting the homepage to by georgeha (4.00 / 6) #3 Thu May 11, 2006 at 04:50:04 AM EST

c:pagefile.sys, that's funny.

[ Parent ]

Sir, by Merekat (4.00 / 3) #2 Thu May 11, 2006 at 04:29:11 AM EST

Please try harder with the ad absurdum. I've actually met people who would match the above.

Netscape.com by ambrosen (2.00 / 0) #4 Thu May 11, 2006 at 05:13:21 AM EST

What is that, some kind of kinky stockings and garters site?

though i almost hate to respond to this by 256 (4.00 / 5) #5 Thu May 11, 2006 at 05:23:28 AM EST

reminds me of an april fool's joke i played on a room-mate a few years back where I set the home page on her computer to a locally saved version of the Google and used javascript to make the location bar still say "http://www.google.com" (back when IE and the DOM would let you do that).

of course any search she did would bring up a fake search results page in perfect Google style with every result being a sordid detail of her personal sex life, including her full name.

admittedly pretty lame, but i thought it was funny.
---
_{I don't think anyone's ever really died from smoking. --ni}

Great minds think alike by Dr Thrustgood (4.00 / 3) #6 Thu May 11, 2006 at 06:14:23 AM EST

Only difference is we did this to the arsey salesman in the office over a period of... err, seven-odd months.

We edited his hosts file to point to one of our servers, and set up a virtualhost with an exact copy of Google's homepage. Click and it'd send you to the "proper" google results page.

Anyways, it all started off very tamely, just enough pettiness to wind him up: changing logos to, say, the 2000 olympics instead of the then-current 2004 olympics. "World Lesbian Day" and the like.

Then, more pettiness: redirecting to groups, scholar, linux searches etc instead of website searches.

Then, yet more pettiness: every 10th search or so, random letters of the search term would be reversed, giving him the impression of having typed like a spacker.

Then, even more pettiness: we altered the search results to include hot goat pr0n and the like.

After seven months of this escalating in intensity (by this time it was near-impossible for him to use google at all), we finally revealed all at the office Christmas party. We were amused, he was... traumatised.

Did he come in the next day and run amok by georgeha (2.00 / 0) #7 Thu May 11, 2006 at 06:29:33 AM EST

with an umbrella, bruising several co-workers before the Bobbies led him away?

[ Parent ]

Is that the UK version of going postal? [n/t] by Eveley (2.00 / 0) #8 Thu May 11, 2006 at 07:06:32 AM EST

[ Parent ]

: They're not allowed guns, swords, sharp pointy by georgeha (2.00 / 0) #9 Thu May 11, 2006 at 07:13:32 AM EST

things and other objects that might harm, I reckon an umbrella is about as lethal as they can get.

[ Parent ]

keys by ucblockhead

(2.00 / 0) #10 Thu May 11, 2006 at 07:24:29 AM EST

This is really old-skool: back in the DOS days, I wrote a TSR program that inserted itself in the keyboard handler. It would randomly eat 'c' keypresses.
---
[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman
[ Parent ]

: You fucker by BadDoggie (2.00 / 0) #11 Thu May 11, 2006 at 10:51:22 AM EST

That was YOU who nailed me? I am SO hurting you after we drink together at the next HuSiStock. I think I'll hide all the aspirin.
woof.
OMG WE'RE FUCKED! -- duxup ?
[ Parent ]

I'm Surrounded by Idiots | 11 comments (11 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback