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Maarten Balliauw {blog}

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Maarten Balliauw is currently employed as a Technical Evangelist at JetBrains. His interests are mainly web applications developed in ASP.NET (C#) or PHP and the Windows Azure cloud platform.
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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.

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Having fun with project managers! (or: why you should lock your desktop)

Have you ever left your computer unattended? (I do hope that!) Do you lock your desktop when this occurs? (I hope so either!) Not locking your desktop can be a risk. Your data might get stolen, someone might install a trojan, ...

My project manager is one of those people who do not lock their computer when away. After having explained that this is a very simple thing he still seems to forget it everytime. Since a few weeks, we are using some more persuasive manners to teach him to press the Windows-key + L whenever he leaves his computer. Some practical jokes...

1. Are those icons?

  • Create a screenshot of the user's desktop
  • Set this screenshot as the desktop background
  • Remove all real icons from the user's desktop (copy them somewhere to cause no real harm!)
  • Wait till the user gets back and starts clicking on his desktop "icons"... NOT Cool

2. Cake for everyone!

  • Open the user's e-mail client
  • Send a message to the entire team saying "I'm treating everyone with cake!" (other option: "I'm buying a beer for everyone!")
  • Keep reminding the user of his nice e-mail Cool

3. Right-click here...

Here's a simple one: switch the user's mouse buttons (control panel - mouse properties - buttons). Also press the CTRL + ALT + Down-arrow. If you're lucky and the user has an Intl graphics card, his desktop will also be upside down.

4. www.website.com...

  • If you have administrative rights on the user's PC, find and edit his host file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts)
  • Add a new entry which map his favourite website to something completely different. For example, map www.google.com to the IP address 208.77.188.166.

5. Other funny things

We've tried the above pranks, but no luck yet... Locking his desktop remains something that's not important to him (probably because he always has to laugh with practical jokes). Here's a list of some other jokes we might try in the near future...

Any other suggestions, preferrably not harmful? Please let me know!

kick it on DotNetKicks.com


Categories: General | Personal

Comments (7) -

Troy Goode United States |

Thursday, May 08, 2008 7:15 PM

Troy Goode

Hey Maarten, funny list! Where is "66.146.2.196" supposed to point to? I just get a Plesk control panel message when I go there....

maartenba Belgium |

Thursday, May 08, 2008 7:56 PM

maartenba

Make that 208.77.188.166 Smile The original IP you mentioned should have referred to www.endoftheinternet.com

Greg Beech United Kingdom |

Thursday, May 08, 2008 10:16 PM

Greg Beech

LEFT SHIFT + LEFT ALT + PRINT SCREEN, ENTER - Puts the computer in accessibility high contrast mode. It's a nightmare to get out of unless you know what you're looking for Smile

Alternatively just set their homepage to www.goatse.cz, www.meatspin.com, or some other equally unpleasant site (note: NSFW and not pleasant to look at)

maartenba Belgium |

Friday, May 09, 2008 7:40 AM

maartenba

That high-contrast mode really IS annoying Smile Will try that in the near future Smile

Juliën Netherlands |

Tuesday, May 13, 2008 8:44 PM

Juliën

OMG, I'd hate to be your collegue! :>

The projectmanager Netherlands |

Thursday, May 15, 2008 12:52 PM

The projectmanager

Him (read owner of this blog) abused my trust...over and over again. From now on, I’m afraid to let my computer unlocked even for 20 sec. But  2 face my accuser I’m going to let him feel the pain…no more nice projects of funny things like a NEW PC.
Regards,
The project manager.  

leppie South Africa |

Wednesday, June 04, 2008 3:02 PM

leppie

Disabling JavaScript in the browser is also fun Smile

Comments are closed