Yeah.

We told them Windows was a reliable operating system.

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

" 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.

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.

We told them Windows was a reliable operating system.

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

One born every minute though!

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

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

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

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

The right and Micro$oft can't meme.

"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.

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.

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

Magical days.

And today's star fish is:- the starfish

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

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

This should be good.

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.

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.

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....

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!

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.

... 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

" 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.