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Hi spiceheads,

So last year I found this post by Nic (Webroot) about a voice activated printer prank but I was a day late and couldn’t do it myself:

So instead I decided to set myself a reminder for in a years time, but this time 2 days before April fools so that I could do it this year, and that reminder popped up about 20 minutes ago! I am now very pleased with myself for setting the reminder and about to create my own ‘voice activated printer’ notification and instructions to stick on our printers here on Friday!

Just wondering if anyone else has done or is planning on doing any other IT related April fools jokes? Would be great to get some more inspiration, either for this year or for when I set next years reminder…

@nic-webroot

28 Spice ups
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I might actually do this prank this year… I’ll set it up the night before as i’m off work Friday… Should get my colleagues some interesting phone calls Friday morning! :slight_smile:

1 Spice up
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I’m curious too. I have been scratching my head at this all week, but cannot come up with anything.

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I did the voice command printer sign last year. It was amusing. It fooled a surprising number of people.

This year, I want to post a sign that says there is a new way to contact support, and include a link and QR code.

The link & QR code would essentially be a rickroll and redirect to a funny 30 second video with benny hill / yakety sax theme playing. I just haven’t found the right video for that yet. Any suggestions?

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I plan on replacing one of my users computers with an IBM selectric typewriter!!

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I’m actually considering disconnecting my phone for April Fools this year… Last year, I spent most of my day running around fixing pranks that the users were doing to each other. I made a MASSIVE ball just out of tape that was stuck to the bottom of computer mice.

In a nutshell, I’ve learned that my users don’t need my help to prank themselves.

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I wrote a little script that opened this website in a hidden firefox window on a couple of my coworkers that are cool with April Fools’ jokes:

http://www.zombo.com/

It re-opened the window every 15 minutes and played over their speakers… it was awesome.

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issue etch a sketch to all road warriors say it the new ‘tablet’ they have always wanted

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I found a great new prank for this year:

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4cf37d/til_that_consuming_even_15_milligrams_of/t1_d1hzp7j

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The problem is, all the pranks I came up with required me to feign ignorance and then fix it after the fact. That can get time consuming!

I used to have a screensaver that looked like the old Commodore 64 window with a blinking cursor.

I’ve printed TPS reports and left them on the printers and in people’s inboxes.

I’ve synched my wireless mouse to someone’s computer, then used VNC to watch their screen. Whenever they would try to click on something, I’d move the mouse ever so slightly so they couldn’t click. Or I would quadruple click for every one of their clicks.

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Take a screenshot of their desktop, set it as their desktop wallpaper, move all their normal shortcuts into a folder.

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I’ll skip that one. I don’t want to be kicked out of the house.

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No, you dose someone else, silly!

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Done this one, it’s PRICELESS with a non-techy user. Just make sure you’ve got some way to restore the desktop folder afterward, not that this prank has ever backfired on me…

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Threads like this remind me to never mess with ya’ll…

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For those who want the “Voice activated printer” sheets,

I found them on Reddit here

Here are all of them, two links per brand; first is A4, second is Letter.

If you want a .png of them just change the end of the URL from .jpg

Brother http://i.imgur.com/EUzpc.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ongGc.jpg

Cannon http://i.imgur.com/Snn2b.jpg http://i.imgur.com/BNkLv.jpg

DELL http://i.imgur.com/RoiHM.jpg http://i.imgur.com/8FhYk.jpg

Epson http://i.imgur.com/AOwU0.jpg http://i.imgur.com/PPgcn.jpg

HP http://i.imgur.com/nm216.jpg http://i.imgur.com/6x0N5.jpg

Konica http://i.imgur.com/Ev9WK.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Sl07x.jpg

Kyocera Imgur: The magic of the Internet http://i.imgur.com/pfDbT.jpg

Lanier http://i.imgur.com/Iab5Y.jpg http://i.imgur.com/AsIXe.jpg

Ricoh http://i.imgur.com/Wy9jV.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VDiPJ.jpg

SAVIN http://i.imgur.com/wK2FY.jpg http://i.imgur.com/zjvpa.jpg

Sharp http://i.imgur.com/5dLS2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hbgYf.jpg

Toshiba http://i.imgur.com/mrTzF.jpg http://i.imgur.com/znvwK.jpg

Xerox http://i.imgur.com/wdbtl.jpg Imgur: The magic of the Internet

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I always loved mucking round with the idle display on customers HP printers. If you don’t know your way round HPPJL (and I don’t!) a quick search on the internet for “Insert coin HP printer” will bring the goodness home.

The other one I like is cranking up the double click speed for a users mouse.

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That is pure genius. Do you still have a copy of it you would be willing to share, i don’t have the spare time before tomorrow to work out how to and write one up myself. (scripting is not my strongest suit)If you do you would be my Santa fools.

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@Proctamusprime - I just created a little bat called af.bat that had one line in it:

start chrome zombo.com (yes I realize i said Firefox earlier, but I’ve reviewed the bat file and I was wrong)

Then i made a scheduled task that ran that bat file every 15 minutes.

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