Harmless Geek Pranks For A Little April Fooling

Reminds me of when someone (actually wasnt me) flipped the screens of a coworkers duel monitors right before she had a presentation she was stressing about...
at least she had a laugh before she had to present.

Crash-Burn-Reboot

Sometimes small jokes are the best. I was traveling last April Fool's, and when picking up my luggage I saw a small note on conveyor belt. "Pick me UP!" it said. I did, and on the other side it said "You're an idiot!!!"

I grimaced, then smirked and put the note back on the belt. Further down, I saw someone else pick it up, laugh, then put it down again.

Andrew von Fightmaster

i have norton internet security 09, and scanned on 3/29

should i be worried about conflicker, and do things like disconnecting from my network and stuff, or am i ok

nwo28

Change people's keyboards to Dvorak! That'll really confuse them!

@thisisasignin: Wait, is that Google's for this year?

Way to ruin it, jerk. ;-)

I've always loved remapping a few less used keys on the keyboard. Makes for a frustrating experience both diagnosing and then fixing the problem.

Low tech application to high tech stuff: Sticky note on the bottom of the mouse, or scotch tape on the touchpad.

JamesXuthus

@revmatty:

Google did a good job with its ISP prank and thinkgeek usually has fun April fools pages so, at least for me, there are some good left out there.

@revmatty: hahaha! (because I don't believe in LOL)

hobartimus

I cannot wait for April 2nd. The internet has ruined April Fool's day entirely.

@kimmp12: Try www.Abbyme.com

@EllaMagpie: Darn link.. The website is www.Abbyme.com

@Abbyme.

so--this is a repost from last year?? nothing new?

lwdallas

@Urgo: I posted the "Microsoft buys Apple" link to twitter and FB, and they gobbled it up. Great link!

Dustin is right. Anyone educated in the Conficker Worm knows that it's been around since October 2008 already. There have been patches, and fixes applied since. April 1st will be no different.

So you're going to shut down or remove yourself from networking tomorrow... what happens when you log back on? That's just idiotic paranoia.

tinpot

@Dustin Charest: +1

@Phoshi:

Conficker's not that big of a problem. If you guys haven't been paying attention all the security firms are saying that the hype about how terrible the virus is is, for the most part, completely overrated. Microsoft has already patched the security hole that Conficker uses so if you're keeping up with all the security updates and keep your anti-virus up to date then there's, for all intents and purposes, no way to get the virus.

All the people that are saying "stay off the internet" are just adding to the senseless paranoia. The whole April Fools attack of Conficker has nothing to do with the virus suddenly becoming a super-virus and infecting millions of new machines. From what the people at Symantec have said all the virus will do tomorrow is phone home to a new, randomly generated, domain on the internet for further instructions. So unless you already have the virus, you'll be fine.

In summary, disconnecting your internet tomorrow over worries of catching Conficker is pointless paranoia and if you exercise proper caution in your day to day browsing you'll be fine. Don't buy into the hype or else it'll just be like Y2K all over again.

Dustin Charest

What the hell, I was just talking about last April fools how I pulled the blue screen of death screensaver on my mom's office computer. Strange.

BrianB

@Khaavren: But McAfee is like "Conflicker 1.5.2009 PREVIEW EDITITION" :(

Best one I did was take the small post-it notes and stick them under every one of my user's mouse. Worked on a roller mouse and optical mouse. Not noticeable, and when they all picked up the mouse, there was a little note that said "April Fools".

kirnkorner2001

Wakerupper.com has disabled calls until after tomorrow. :( Too bad, I was going to wish my friend a happy birthday since tomorrow is her birthday.

kimmp12

@jslizzle:
I do know that opendns.com is trying to help by blocking thousands of sites daily.

@jslizzle: Get rid of conflicker today, tomorrow disconnect from any full access networks your PCs are on. This is especially important with an office network, those are going to be hit -hard-. Got a laptop? Use that, and for the love of god don't connect to an open network (Again, especially an office network)

It'll be inconvenient, but you'll laugh when everyone else has conflicker.

@jslizzle: Update your virus protection program. I know McAfee for example has already released an update that "should" stop the infection.

@kamron_1: Conflicker's going to be funny for the first few hours, then... yeah.

@FrisbeeNaked: nevermind. got it. hphack.exe.

I'm partial to fake keyboard ketchup. Looks very realistic. Also helps to leaves some fast food bags and greasy wrappers nearby. A rollicking farce.

Capone

Also check out [AprilFoolsDayOnTheWeb.com] for a list of websites that have pulled jokes from 2004 up to and including this year.

Back in high school we had access to the remote monitoring software's admin mode. We set every computer to load badgerbadgerbadger.com on login and to set the volume to max. We lawled all day while walking the halls listening to the computers.

tok3ninja

@slater: It was originally created by SysInternals, but then they were bought by Microsoft. Some of their other utilities are quite nifty.

This is pretty funny: Fake Vista Upgrade: [www.rjlsoftware.com]

Teehee

message from #8 on the top 10 list: Sorry folks (and would-be pranksters), free calls will be disabled until after April Fool's day. from http://wakerupper.com/

CosmoIshan

Wakerupper: Sorry folks (and would-be pranksters), free calls will be disabled until after April Fool's day. Guess there goes that option.

EllaMagpie

@kamron_1: APRIL FOOLS I GAVE YOU CONFICKER LOL!

..........

i used to have an executable file for the laserjet control panel thing, but can't seem to come across it now. where might i find that?

@AsWater: Actually, not a half bad idea... The "avoid the internet" part.
If you can stand to only use a cell phone or whatnot for the day, unplugging you computer from it's internet connection might just be stupid enough to work... Unless conflicker decides to just check the next time it finds internet.... In which case, still screwed.

My favorite fun one is to turn the contrast to 0 on the old CRT monitors.

brodiemac

@jslizzle: Avoid the internet tomorrow.

Just kidding, I wouldn't come to just leave a shitty, unhelpful comment.

But I did come here to second the question: AV,Firewall and the such, will it be enough?

@jslizzle: There's nothing much you can do because with either of the two options you're totally screwed.

wormfarming

what is the best way(s) to avoid this conficker if it does happen

jslizzle

the worst April Fool's Joke is going to be finding out you've caught conficker.

of course at that point it's not even a joke anymore.

I love that the BSOD screen saver is hosted by Microsoft. At least they have a sense of humor.

Put that as a screen saver for a mac/linux machine. That would be funny.

bradL

Awesome...but most of the same ones from last year.

I'm hitting one of my co-workers with the Mac "grey screen of death"! He's our systems manager so we'll see how long it takes him to figure it out. (I'm going to set up my cell to film it...HEHE)

xXxRHINOxXx

April Fools' Pranks for OpenOffice.org Writer

AndrewZ

wakerupper is blocked on april fools..
lol

Rohan Pandula

@kimmp12: try: ACTUALLY CALLING HER.

@FrisbeeNaked: they didn't really appreciate me changing the printer displays in our office to "Insert Coin," and "Feed Me a Cat."

i was sick the day after i changed them, and apparently while i was resting at home, the distributor for the printers was called, and after seeing my handiwork, concluded that both printers were broken.

obviously, no one tried that hard to fix it. all you have to do is power cycle the machines :P

have fun

@jslizzle: Visit Windows Update. Download all the latest updates they offer. Restart your computer before April 1st rolls in (it's here where I am but not April 1st on the other coast yet).

Yes, the hole was discovered in Oct. 2008 so it's not new and yes, MS has issued patches for it - but that does NOT mean you know for sure that you've downloaded those patches! Play it safe: check Windows Update to download any patches you may still need. Conficker is not funny.

emnem

I'm trying to set up a Squid proxy server on my spare craptop that I can plug in between the network outpipe and the wifi router. I am going to Upside-down-ternet, Blur-ternet, Cat-ternet, and Rick-Roll-ternet my school's wifi for the whole day.

Reyn Yonashiro

@StanislausBabalistic:

I think that was for 2007.

..question, how are you going to install the fake BSOD screensaver in the first place.

log the person off, save it as default?

not really a prank? lot of work IMHO.

Has anyone mentioned setting the screen saver timeout to 1 second using gpedit.msc?

@StanislausBabalistic: go to google.com, it shouldn't be hard to miss :-)

@Epoch's apple copyright violation: "have you tried turning it off and on again?"

also, you should have made them say "PC Load Letter"

@Oranges w/ Cheese: it's only funny if they're geeky enough to get it. otherwise, you might as well just alphabetize.

arachnophilia

@tok3ninja: that's actually kind of funny! in retrospect, all of my school-year pranks were just kind of... mean.

in middle school (ms-dos), we used to write epilepsy-inducing loop programs, and throw them into the computer's autoexec.bat file.

in high school (win 98), we used to screen-shot peoples' desktops, set it as the wallpaper, turn off all the icons, and hide the taskbar.

although the most epic mean computer prank i've heard of involves punch cards. we're talking my parents' generation here. you'd spend weeks writing your program on punch cards, and take it down to the big computer, and wait in line to run it. apparently, some people thought it would be funny to write one-card commands to drop whatever the computer was doing at the time, and then surreptitiously insert these into other peoples' card stacks when they weren't looking.

also: the story of little bobby tables.

arachnophilia