Geeky April Fools' Day Prank Roundup

An anonymous reader writes "April 1st is the ultimate holiday for a geek — a little hands-on DIY, a little hacking and a lot of sub-par humor. Popular Mechanics and Instructables have teamed up for five pranks you can build in the office (including a stripped-down version of Gizmodo's CES TV blackout), while Wired has its top 10 practical jokes for nerds, Lifehacker is toning it down with 10 harmless geek pranks, and Slate gets you ready for the receiving end with an April Fools' defense kit. What's your best prank?" Be safe, head for the bunker on 4/1 and just assume everything you hear is a lie. Everything.

Everything?

[wanderingknight]

Be safe, head for the bunker on 4/1 and just assume everything you hear is a lie. Everything.

Even the cake?

No cake?

[RobertB-DC]

Be safe, head for the bunker on 4/1 and just assume everything you hear is a lie. Everything.

Does that mean there *won't* be cake?

Dammit.

Journal, April 1, 2008, 6:30AM

[Anonymous Coward]

*Significant other rolls over and looks deeply into your eyes*

"I love you."

*Thinks for a moment* "just assume everything you hear is a lie. Everything."

"I KNEW IT! LIAR!".

Re:Everything?

[RobertB-DC]

I can't believe we both hit the "submit" button at nearly the same time, on the same meme.

And that you beat me, you bastard.

I got Rick Rolled

[GillBates0]

I got Rick Rolled. You can too [smouch.net].

(speakers on, detach mouse for best effect).

10 harmless geek pranks

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Feh.

I'm looking for "10 spectacularly fatal geek pranks".

Printers and Stats

[Bazman]

I once announced to our department that because black toner was so expensive, we were switching our printers to black paper and white toner. I put a sign next to the printer saying to only put black paper in the printer. Someone actually bit, and asked me in all seriousness where in the store cupboard the black paper was.

On another occasion I sent an email to a stats software mailing list saying I'd written a package to implement not the Normal distribution, but the Paranormal distribution. Its mean value was the number you were just thinking of.

Re:Journal, April 1, 2008, 6:30AM

[Anonymous Coward]

Significant other

Now that's an evil, evil prank.

Best prank

[Sciros]

This was way back in high school, but I'm fairly certain it will work well in any large, densely-populated building.

1) choose the victim building
2) get 3 pigs
3) paint very prominent digits -- '1', '2', and '4' -- on the pigs
4) release pigs in building selected in step 1

Watching folks round up the 3 pigs is fun enough. But it's hilarious to watch the long, futile search for pig #3.

Ponies

[TimeForGuinness]

I sneak in at night and paint my neighbor's cubicle pink, decorate with construction paper hearts, and tie a real pony to his desk. He always comes in the next morning and say "OMG PONIES!"

Never gets old.

Re:Everything?

[Dmala]

Even the cake?

Especially the cake.

Re:Printers and Stats

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I once sent round a (VAX) e-mail, as a "mail test" with a closing line "Please let me know if you don't get this". Sure enough, a few people asked me: "Wouldn't it make more sense for you to ask us to let you know if we got it...". So I could proudly reply: "See, you DIDN'T get it".

my best prank...

[SuperBanana]

What's your best prank?

Tricking the editors into posting really crappy april-fools stories each year on the 1st. I've been doing it for almost 10 years straight and they still haven't caught on.

What's your best prank?

[fahrbot-bot]

Showed up for work on time, clean-shaven and in nice clothes.

ssh

[trb]

I heard that April Fools Day was cancelled this year.

Re:I got Rick Rolled

[rrohbeck]

How about Ring Rolled?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IlhZCDlEmh0 [youtube.com]

Re:Everything?

[StarvingSE]

Speaking of cake, a favorite joke of mine is to put a delicious looking cake in the office break room with "Happy April Fools Day" written in large letters in the frosting. Of course, the cake is perfectly fine and 100% edible, but no one will trust it. Its amusing seing people staring it down, debating, and daring each other to take a bite all day long.

For you EE people

[EvanED]

For people who have more electronics knowledge than I have:

Make a circuit that beeps every 30 seconds or so. Add a photoresistor that turns on and off the beeping, so it beeps when it's dark. Put in victim's bedroom.

Laugh at the though that when they go to bed, it will start beeping, frequently and quietly enough to be annoying, but infrequently enough that it's hard to find. But when they turn the lights back on... the beeping stops!

Re:Best prank

[nwf]

And here I thought it was some really clever use of pigs to generate random binary numbers. Alas.

Re:my best prank...

[Technopaladin]

I never noticed any difference between 4/1 and any other day...

Wallpaper fun

[ah.clem]

Replacing a co-worker's desktop wallpaper with a screenshot of the red and white "Windows has shut down your Active Desktop... did you recently add a new program?" error message is always good for some juvenile yucks - especially if it's the computer of a real "power user".

No matter how old we get, guys are always suckers for sophomoric humor - I think it's genetic.

Re:Best prank

[gstoddart]

This was way back in high school, but I'm fairly certain it will work well in any large, densely-populated building.

Was cow-tipping popular at your school? I'm sure most of us couldn't lay hands on several pigs. Gotta be a rural thing.

Watching folks round up the 3 pigs is fun enough. But it's hilarious to watch the long, futile search for pig #3.

But, surely the math geeks figured out they were base-2 pigs, right? :-P

Cheers

Re:For you EE people

[ShiNoKaze]

If you have the knowledge you might as well wire it into the light switch so that it's not visible...

Re:ssh

[Some guy named Chris]

What does ssh have to do with April Fools Day?

Re:What's your best prank?

[gstoddart]

Showed up for work on time, clean-shaven and in nice clothes.

Dude, that could so backfire on you as established precedent. :-P

Cheers

Re:Everything?

[ksd1337]

Be safe, head for the bunker on 4/1 and just assume everything you hear is a lie. Everything.

I can rest assure you that Duke Nukem Forever will be coming out tomorrow, though.

still get mocked years after .....

[Brigadier]

Once when I was still a newbie to slashdot, back in 1998 if I'm not mistaken. I read a story of bill gates adopting gifted kids, and wiring probes directly to there brain in the hopes of finding a successor. I believed it hook line and sinker and forwarded it to every co-worker. Suffice it to say I still get mocked to this day about 'Cris's Cranial Clicker' I think they even made me one out of a bowl and some silly string. So thank you slashdot, I will nto be here tomorrow

Another fun keyboard prank...

[Lendrick]

This one is especially good if you have a roommate:

Pop the M and N keys off of their keyboard and switch them around. Then, download a keyboard remapper and remap the M and N keys so that they correspond with the new arrangement (ie, the M key gives you an M, and the N key gives you an N, but their positions are switched). Pop the M and N keys off of your keyboard and switch them as well, but don't remap them.

After repeatedly mistyping (nistypimg?) things, they'll take a good long look at their own keyboard and then have a look at yours, just to compare (and of course, you've anticipated this and switched your own keys around too). With any luck, they'll be convinced they're going crazy.

Re:10 harmless geek pranks

[Lord Apathy]

I just replaced the offices easy listening CD's with 12 hours of polka. I also stole the key that goes to the closet where the cd player is. Tomorrow is going to be interesting. Good thing I have my own mp3 player.

Re:Everything?

[BoogeyOfTheMan]

Hahaha, thats great. Perfect for a practical joke, none gets hurt, nothing gets damaged, no one feels bad. But I bet at the end of the day you get a lot of chuckles when you start to eat it.

My "best" prank (Read: Only prank I've really done) was taking a roll of shrink wrap from work and wrapping a coworkers car. Someone told him I was doing it, he comes out and says we should do another and leave the plastic on his so hes not blamed, lol.

Re:and if past experience tells me anything

[Cro Magnon]

Slashdot wont be worth coming to tomorrow...

That implies that it's worth coming to the other 364 days.

My best aprils fools

[ookabooka]

What's your best prank?

I've done a lot but I think my favorite one was when I was in 6th grade or so. My father usually got up at around 7:00 to take me to school at 8. I went into his room (very sneakily) and set his clock an hour forward wearing my backpack, spring jacket, etc. I then turned on the lights, woke him up and said, "Dad, you have to take me to school, I have a presentation!" and then quickly went downstairs as if I too was in a hurry. He looked at the clock (displaying 7:55) and promptly jumped out of bed frantically trying to get ready. I could have easily let it continue till we were actually at school by switching his car clock too and everything (it was a cloudy day so the sun wouldn't have been able to clue him), but I decided to let him know after he got dressed and was about to jump in the car:)

Moral of the story:
1) Get it in as early as possible: chances are by the end of the day they probably are more suspicious.
2) Know your victim: my father knew how much I hate getting up early in the morning, he would find it really hard to believe I would wake up before I had to.
3) Make it plausable: We all have at some point screwed up in setting our alarms, the scenario I created could have very well actually happened. Be mindful of details.
4) Don't be cruel: Let them in on it after it is apparent they fell for it before they start really acting on what you fooled them with. Don't make them afraid for their life or anything crazy like that.

My father is a smart man that isn't easily deceived, I have spent many years refining my technique.

My Favorite Prank

[loafula]

April, 2003. I was living in a large tent, on the Persian Gulf coast, in northern Kuwait. I returned to my cot after a hard days work, where I was greeted by a fake plastic snake. I was not surprised, due to the fact I noticed Spc Harris fighting laughter while keeping a watchful eye on me as I entered the tent.

I am one for vengence, so my mind immediately began cooking up a scheme. The roof of the tent was made of a double layer of thick canvas material. It was sloped, at about a 45 degree angle. Harris slept with his head pointed towards the side wall, and feet pointing towards the center of the tent.

I took my trusty knife one afternoon, and cut a slit in the bottom layer of canvas, above Harris' head, on the roof of the tent. I left the slit there, in plain sight, for two weeks thinking he would be suspicious of it at first. After the two weeks were up, I constructed a fairly large fake spider out of electrical tape, pipe cleaners and black paint. I used fishing line for it's silk. I put the spider in the roof of the tent, slightly past the slit I had cut. I then ran the fishing line over the slit, out and down the side of the tent, and finally back into the tent near my cot.>/p>

That night after lights out, as Harris layed on his cot, watching a movie on his portable DVD player, I put my plan into action. I pulled slightly on the fishing line, causing the spider to move over and fall through the slit. I then slowly let out slack, causing my home-made monster to descend on it's web. The alignment couldn't have been more perfect, because the spider descended into the space between the portable movie screen, and Harris' face. Harris' reaction was priceless, too. Too scared to scream, he jumped from his cot, flung the DVD player across the room, knocked over a bunch of his crap, and wound up sprawled across the floor babbling "holy shit holy shit". The lights in the tent then went back on, and there was much laughter.

Re:For you EE people

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Laugh at the though that when they go to bed, it will start beeping, frequently and quietly enough to be annoying, but infrequently enough that it's hard to find. But when they turn the lights back on... the beeping stops!

As a victim of a prank similar to this, I feel compelled to warn you that you're risking your life.

Re:Best prank

[Hatta]

How do you paint numbers on the pigs without getting maced or tazered?

Re:For you EE people

[glarvat]

I planted one Annoy-a-tron in the boss's car at lunch. On the way back, it made the 12 kHz buzz just as he was braking, followed by "What was that?" It was great!

Another will be planted in his cube this evening.

Tomorrow should be pretty entertaining because he'll hear the sounds during the commute and again throughout the day.

I think the only way it could be better is if I were able to somehow sew one into the lining of his coat...

Re:Everything?

[ArcherB]

Speaking of cake, a favorite joke of mine is to put a delicious looking cake in the office break room with "Happy April Fools Day" written in large letters in the frosting. Of course, the cake is perfectly fine and 100% edible, but no one will trust it. Its amusing seing people staring it down, debating, and daring each other to take a bite all day long.

Next time, promise to bring pie and bring a cake with either the symbol or 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944... written on it.

Re:For you EE people

[maxume]

The organic implementation of this is known as a "cricket".

If it's the last thing I do, I'll get the bastard who designed them.

Re:Best prank

[Sciros]

It's tough, and here you also have to watch out for their guns. Your best bet is to use "special" powdered doughnuts as a lure.

5200 and ELIZA

[steveha]

I once worked at a manufacturing company, and one of the products they made was called the 5100. They needed to replace it, and there was a big debate over whether to make a software package that could run on a standard laptop, or to make another standalone device (the 5200). In the end they decided to make the standalone 5200. One of my coworkers, we'll just call him B, was strongly in favor of doing the standalone 5200; he was guy who would do the software development for the 5200, it was his baby.

Well, I brought my laptop to work (it was a TRS-80 Model 102 [wikipedia.org] if you care). In the text editor, I made a banner that spelled out "5200" in asterisks or something. I went into the lab, and pushed B's 5200 prototype to the back of his work area, and set up my laptop in its spot, turned on and showing the "5200" banner. Then I went and found B and innocently asked if he would show me the 5200 prototype. Actually, I think he was amused by the gag as well.

Right after I was hired there, another of my co-workers tried to convince me that they had this really cool super-ELIZA [wikipedia.org] program that was actually intelligent. He sat me down in front of a dumb terminal to try it out. I figured right away, correctly, that they had just set up two terminals and that somewhere else in the building, some human was impersonating ELIZA, so I tried to ask questions that would be easy for a computer to answer but hard for a human ("What's the square root of 12345?"). If only he'd had the foresight to keep a scientific calculator close at hand.

Neither of these were on April 1. Why limit this sort of fun to one day per year?

steveha

The punchline didn't hurt as much as the punch

[Anonymous Coward]

I once deleted my roommate's MBR on his hard drive. It was pretty funny, until he started punching me. In hindsight, it's funny from a geek standpoint and not a College Jock standpoint.

Re:Everything?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to tell everyone that there is no April 1st this year because it's a leap year.

10 minutes of grimaced mental calculation and a visit to the calendar ensue before they get it.

phone cleaning

[dirk]

One year I sent an email to everyone telling them that because of continuing complaints about the line quality of the phones, a company was coming in to clean the phone lines. I advised everyone that they should place a tissue over the mouthpiece and earpiece of the phones, as they would be blowing compressed air through the phones lines, and dust could be ejected through the handsets. It was fun walking around at the end of the day to count up the number of people with the handsets covered with tissues.

Re:Another fun keyboard prank...

[middlemen]

But what if your roommate uses the Das Keyboard [daskeyboard.com] ? Who's the real fool ?

Re:Everything?

[Anonymous Coward]

My "best" prank (Read: Only prank I've really done) was taking a roll of shrink wrap from work and wrapping a coworkers car. Someone told him I was doing it, he comes out and says we should do another and leave the plastic on his so hes not blamed, lol.

That was YOU??!!

did this to a sales guy at work :)

[1800maxim]

We simply popped off the "m" and the "n" keys and switched them, without remapping. He was not the most tech-savvy, and typed using his two index fingers.

Turns out he has a web demo to perform, and trying to log in with credentials "techmology"... The long and the short of it, the joke never got old, and we frequently spoke in his presence as "Good day, gentlenem. Lumch plams?"

He also got mad at his keyboard, figured what's what, and used a pencil to pop the keys off. Jammed it in there real good. Broke the laptop keyboard. Blamed it on us. Then a couple of weeks later we all go out for lunch to meet another of his friends. He (the sales guy) gets so animated in describing the funny prank that he forgets we're right beside him, and says how he just jammed the pencil in there and broke the keyboard. Then with a dumb grin on his face, stops at 3/4 of the sentence and looks at us. It was priceless!

Needless to say, we were all good friends and had a good laugh about it.

Re:10 harmless geek pranks

[garett_spencley]

This [luvrgeeks.com] can be considered a fatal geek prank under certain circumstances.

It also qualifies as sub-par humour.

Only a couple really good ones...

[DigitalSorceress]

I like the fridge door and the fake "filled your cube/office with packing peanuts", but the others didn't really appeal to me much.

The two that I've done for which I am most proud:

As the webmaster of a small dotcom a few years ago, I mocked up a fake This site has been closed by the federal government on suspicion of aiding and abeding terrorism. I then changed the INTERNAL DNS entries so that although the outside customers got our normal site, our employees got the "shutdown" one. There was a good 5 minutes of confusion and near bowel movements before someone realized the date (04/01)

However, the best and most geeky prank I ever played involved one of those Staples "Easy Button"s. I had a co-worker who had one at his desk. Every now and then (couple times a week) someone would get the urge to press it. I bought an Easy Button at the local Staples, and a small "record 20 seconds of digital audio" circuit boards at Radio Shack. I then dremmeled the hell out of the inside of the Easy button till I could make the Radio Shack board fit in and replace the original, and drilled a small hole for a paperclip so I could hit the record button. I also disconnected the small crappy speaker from the Radio Shack board and wired it into the one already in the Easy Button. It was a really tight fit, and it took a bit of fiddling, but I eventually had a "Please do not press this button again" Button.

I swapped out the button for his, and just waited till someone hit it. I really got a priceless reaction, though the fact that I had used my own voice precluded any attempt to feign innocense. Still, the button became the hit of the office... I showed them how to record other stuff and they kept changing it and waiting for others to come hit it. Finally, it settled down on "Hurry UP!!!" That co-worker has since left the company, but he has the button with him to this day.

Re:and if past experience tells me anything

[Jason Earl]

What keeps the fiddler on the roof. TRADITION!

Personally, I look forward to April 1st.

Re:Favorite from my college days...

[apoc.famine]

Rather than ignore the user input, have the prompt after the user selects "N" say:

You chose Now.
Starting countdown: NOW!

10...

Re:Best prank

[bugnuts]

Wouldn't they be labeled 1,10,100 then?

Where the hell are you going to find 100 pigs?!

Re:What's your best prank?

[wgoodman]

I dunno, last time i cleaned my office they thought I was quitting, I wore a tie the next day and they really lost it. May go 3 piece suit tomorrow.

Re:and if past experience tells me anything

[JohnBailey]

It's not always obvious afterwards, because editors know that April is approaching and save up their hard-to-believe stories. The only reasonably reliable way of sifting the wheat from the chaff is to compare three major papers - anything which is only in one is likely to be a joke, whereas anything in more than one is either genuine or a joke originating at Reuters or AP.

Unless its an iPhone rumor...

Tomorrow

[Bertie]

My boss has just today returned from five weeks of holiday, so we've figured he's not really back into "work mode" yet. So we've decided that all 15 or so of us are going to hand in our resignations tomorrow, and see how many he has to read before he realises he's been had.

If this plan backfires, I promise I'll log on from the unemployment office and let you all know...

Re:Printers and Stats

[Technician]

Way back when printers use ribbons and lots of metal parts instead of plastic, we used to take them apart and degrease them with Tri-Ethelene. We ran out of in our shop. We handed the new guy a Styrofoam cup and sent him out to the drum to get some. We didn't bother to tell him not to use the cup. This solvent eats foam slightly faster than gasoline.

Clappers + Computer Lab = Evil Fun

[Phat_Tony]

We rewired the computer lab so that all the computers were wired through one of two clappers, which were on extension cords, hidden up inside the lowered ceiling beside a vent. We left one clapper turned on and one turned off and both of them on the most sensitive setting. So any time there was much of a noise, half the computers in the lab would suddenly shut off, and the other half would simultaneously turn on, but there was no way to have more than half of them on at a time, and which half was on kept changing based on random noises in the lab. Teachers who taught computer classes gave up early, but half the lab was for kids on study hall, etc, and no one really warned them, so a hellacious amount of work was lost that day when people's computers suddenly turned off. They'd swear for a while, try to turn it back on, give up, and move to one of the other computers that was now on... repeat process. Of course, that wouldn't work these days, because most computers don't start themselves up when the power comes back on, but these had hard power switches, so simultaneously half the computers would go dark and the others would emit a chorus of Mac startup sounds.

We also put some annoyance programs on them, like a program called "boing" that made your mouse pointer behave, in relationship to how it should behave, as if it were attached to the actual mouse location by a spring. We also installed a background program that would make computers randomly, at various times, start singing "99 bottles of beer on the wall." Except that we used "99,999 bottles of beer on the wall." In a really painful early 1990's Macintosh voice.

Re:Everything?

[the brown guy]

Perfect for a practical joke, none gets hurt, nothing gets damaged, no one feels bad.

That is not a practical joke....thats quiet time in the library with Grandma. I'm planning on setting my sisters alarm clock to go off at 4 AM, as it is on the other side of the room, and she doesn't wake up till 12 :) I also plan on going to work 2 hours late....its funny to me :)

Re:and if past experience tells me anything

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, but February 29th was great!

Re:my best prank...

[Technician]

The prank I pulled is simple but extremely effective. I share a cube. I plugged in a wireless Logitech mouse into a rear USB port on the other computer. At random, I moved the mouse a tiny bit when they were trying to click on things. It took him 3 tries to hit the send button on his IM.

Re:Everything?

[ThePengwin]

""the cake is a lie" is a lie" is a lie

Re:Printers and Stats

[Opportunist]

What was way better was replacing my boss' windows sounds with soundbites from various porn movies.

What I didn't know was that he scheduled a very important presenatation exactly for that day... But I found another job quickly.

Re:Possible Cure For Cancer Found!

[csnydermvpsoft]

Man, 366 day years, no wonder you're having problems.

I heard that he even had a February 29 this year. It must be part of some government energy savings plan.