Nothing new to report

Unfortunately, the last week has been uneventful. The beeping continues, but Big J seems resigned to it. He has indicated to others that he'd love to discover where it's coming from, but even though I've placed it in a very obvious spot on his bookshelf he hasn't found it. So I think the weeks have really worn him down.

Phase 2 approaches.

The saddest sound

As the device went off during the morning meeting today, I have it on reliable authority that Big J rolled his eyes and let off a long, mournful sigh. For some, that is the saddest sound. Not me, baby. Not me.

Didn't you get the memo?

Coworker Greg reports (paraphrased):

"I was walking by Big J's office, and I didn't know that you'd turned it back on. Just when I was walking by, Big J was greeting someone new (an interviewee?) and just as the other person was saying 'Hi, my name is...' I heard 'bweeeeee!' I almost died laughing."

Always happy to bring mirth to others and boundless suffering to Big J.

Of nice guys and finishing last

In a fit of niceness, I left the -tron turned off all day today, after having it on most of Thursday in Big J's office. He rewarded me by giving me PlayStation 3 fanboy crap at lunch today. So now it is once more "on"... Monday will be a double dipping of annoying noises, and a TSR installed on his computer that randomly makes typos (per Greg's excellent suggestion).

Oh, and Sony sucks. Pass it on.

How could this be?

He didn't find it!

Gone daddy gone

I watched the humble Annoy-a-tron sail away from our studio tonight, safely nestled in Big J's backpack (technically, his laptop bag). In his office this afternoon, the beep was muffled because the pack was face-down on the floor, but I'm optimistic it'll be loud and clear on the drive home.

Sweet dreams, my friend.

Take a little trip with me

Big J is going to have a weird night, because the Annoy-a-tron is now tucked away safely in his backpack. Guaranteed fun that goes where you go. This will be interesting... I'm emailing his wife to let her know about it, and to clue her in where it is in case it starts to annoy her.

Terror Below

Big J spent the afternoon hard at work. Tucked in the lower cushion of his office chair, the infernal device beeped on. If only he knew that a few inches below his nether regions lay the source of his misery.

The Lost Weekend

After a busy Friday moving the Annoy-a-tron around Big J's office (behind his monitor, on his bookshelf, underneath his chair) while it continued to chirp its happy electronic song, I decided to give it a rest yesterday. His recurring status reports detailing the "hunt for the beep" confirm that the noise is never far from his mind. My goal now is to prevent him from giving up in disgust and simply filtering it out. I need to keep him on the cusp of discovery, always feeling just a step behind tracking down the source of his dismay.

So Monday, I took to carrying it around the office and turning it on and off intermittently, spreading the annoying wealth to the entire company. I also had hoped that Big J would start to think the noise was pandemic to our office at large. However, wrapped up as he was in a milestone, he didn't seem to notice.

This morning, I shall replace and reactivate the 2-tone device, and may God have mercy on his soul.

???

"Discovered source of beeping: x360 devkit!"

Oh really?

Pimpin' ain't easy...

But moving the Annoy-a-tron around is. Big J doesn't seem interested in trying to locate it any more, so I amuse myself by sneaking in and moving it around his office, cycling between the different bloops, turning it off for an hour or two at a time. I get a warm feeling every time I'm near his end of the building and I hear a chirp or beep.

The return of the status report

Lawls:

"Continuing to determine source of beep in my office."

Quiet desperation

Day 2 begins. I forgot to turn the 'Tron off last night before I left, so it's still going today. Like clockwork, it went off during the morning programmer's meeting. Big J sighs and looks at the wall, where he now thinks the beep is coming from. "Yes, the beep is still with us," he says resignedly. "I'm going to turn everything off today and wait to hear it again. Maybe I can figure out where it's coming from." Briefly, I feel pity for him, then I start laughing and struggle to stay silent. By the time he looks my direction, I'm under control again. I screw my face up to look like a guy who's curious and amused (but not too amused) by his plight.

I'm considering switching it to the other beep today (the 2kHz one without 'static') just to mix things up. I also had fun imagining the chaos that would ensue if I could somehow get the device into his car, or even better, his backpack. "The noise-- it follows me!"

More to come.

Can't stand the heat...

Man, I'm glad that's not my office. We had a 45 minute long meeting in Big J's office, and that chirping about drove me mad. Kudos to the other devs for giving uniformly unhelpful suggestions on what it might be:

"Is that your cell phone charger?"
"Could be your GPU fan..."
"Dunno, it sounded like the AC or something."

Greg suggested I turn it off for a week or so, let him get comfortable with the silence again. That may be too long, but a day or so of quiet might be nice. Or maybe we try the 2kHz setting. I'll leave it to a vote: should Big J get a rest? Or should we keep the heat on?

Once more unto the breech

Annoy-a-tron: ACTIVATED.

Big J put on a brave face, but I can tell this is going to be a rough day for him. It's easy to get comfortable in the new office he's set up for himself, but that noise is back. What could it be? He's going to retrace his steps, think about everything he moved around. Maybe moving the UPS set it off again? Maybe it wasn't the UPS? What seemed so simple and sure, the obvious answer to the problem, has now become murky and unclear again. This is the apotheosis of programmer's madness: the Heisenbug.

So today we'll let our little device run its course. I'll keep posting as often as I can sneak by and chart the progress of my plan, without arousing suspicion.

Just another manic Monday

It could just be a coincidence, but I returned to work today to find that Big J has completely reorganized his office, rearranging all the furniture. No stone was left unturned. Every single thing in the office has been moved.

The annoy-a-tron, however, is still safe in its hiding spot. Hehe. I'm evil.

Premature victory

Our IT guy points me to Big J's daily status report, which makes my heart sing:

"Today:
Completed branch for Jan 10 demo work (painful!)
Found source of weird sound in my office"

The dread 12kHz UPS sound, mmm? Enjoy your weekend my friend. Savor the moment.

Prank-a-go-go

Goodness, what a day it was.

By the mere 3rd chirp of my nicely hidden Annoy-a-Tron, Big J was already irritated. "Did you guys hear that?" he said, his voice rising at the end in a crescendo of pique. Mind you, the 3RD CHIRP. The timing was beautiful, too- it fired twice in the morning programmer pow-wow, the 2nd time right after I arrived in the office. I hadn't anticipated how hard it would be to keep from biting my lower lip clean off trying to stifle the laughter.

At the morning leads meeting, it went off again. Loud enough to hear in the conference area. At least he knows he's not hearing imaginary noises, because others confirm they hear it as well. I have enough people in on the joke that we are offering only silly suggestions as to the source. They all lead him away from the true problem, and it's true resting place.

By lunch time, Big J was deep in the process of debugging the noise. He'd begun turning laptop, UPS, and main machine off, in order. Waiting. No noise. Turn on the UPS again. *chirp*! That's what you call a "false positive": a reinforcement that indicates the problem is coming from the thing you just changed, when in fact it is completely unrelated. "It must be my UPS!" he thinks.

Now comes the insidious part: Big J is out of the office a moment, and I creep in and deactivate the 'Tron. So now it silently waits, while he grows comfortable with the quiet again. Next week, our little friend shall return.

The Usual Stuff, It Bores Me

For a few months, I satisfied myself with the usual cadre of pranks: hiding Big J's wallet, sending emails to the entire company from his account when he's away from his desk and hasn't locked the keyboard (Subject: "Important", Text: "I'm a wiener."). And of course there's the perennial favorite - shooting him in the face with my Koosh Vortex Firestorm rifle as he's intently debugging code.

These things have a tendency to wear away at someone's sanity, but certainly not quickly enough for my tastes. They have also largely been preamble, the sort of gentle annoyances that have lulled Big J into believing I have no stomach for greater pranking. Time to start upping the voltage.

Today is the first turn of the knob. Sweet torture, thy name is Annoy-a-Tron.

There are few things that drive a technie to murderous rage faster than Mystery Noises. I speak on great authority here: I'm Type A, I'm a programmer, and I need to be The Master of My Tech Domain. As I kid, I would program everyone's VCR to have the correct time. It wasn't that I had nothing better to do (well, OK, I was a nerd and didn't have anything better to do, but I swear that's beside the point) - it was an affront to my sensibilities to see that flashing "12:00".
And I can't abide mystery noises. You know the type. The UPS low power alert. The grind and whinny of a CPU fan that's going on its last legs. The chirp of an office-mate's voicemail notifier.

These things aren't bad when taken in the overall din of noise we're usually surrounded in. But in isolation they are maddening, the more so to a true techie. You are irritated my the intrusion of sound. Then you are doubly irritated at not knowing what the fuck is making the sound. Somewhere, something is trying to tell you something. What does it mean?

Programmers need quiet to focus and to delve deeply into their work. Distractions (meetings, a "quick question" from a coworker, and even annoying noises) pull you out of the zen meditation of man contemplating the hex dump of a wayward piece of software.

Hence Thinkgeek.com's Annoy-a-Tron. A more barbaric torture device for a programmer has never been developed. From the product description:

"The Annoy-a-tron generates a short (but very annoying, hence the name) beep every few minutes. Your unsuspecting target will have a hard time 'timing' the location of the sound because the beeps will vary in intervals ranging from 2 to 8 minutes. The 2kHz sound is generically annoying enough, but if you really really want to aggravate somebody, select the 12 kHz sound. Trust us. The higher frequency and slight 'electronic noise' built into that soundbyte will make a full-grown Admin wonder where his packets are."

Good enough in theory, but how is it in practice? In a word: staggeringly, utterly irritating. I bypassed wussy mode, and dove directly into the 12kHz mode. The noise lasts about 3/4 of a second, and is every bit the distorted, irritating thing you can't quite put your finger on. The proverbial cut on the roof of your mouth that you can't quit tonguing. And sure enough, it fires just infrequently enough that you have completely forgotten about it by the next time it goes off. Certainly not frequently enough to triangulate its location.

So here we go: Day 1. The device is in place. Revenge will be mine.

So it begins

In my experience, the urge to prank someone starts with a good story. The pranking of my boss is no exception, so here's my story:

First thing's first. I'm a programmer for a games studio in the Pacific Northwest. It's a great place, full of creative, fun-loving folks. And the topper is that I have a great boss: he's the type of dude who knows how to get stuff done, but still have fun doing it.

In my year working at this place, though, I've discovered that he fancies himself a bit of a prankster.

To back up a bit, I should state that my career hasn't always been like this. I've worked for some unsavory folks at some very unhappy companies. It's a byproduct of our business, which seems to breed a special type of asshole: and I don't mean the cute type of asshole, like Steve Carrell in The Office.


In fact, my previous life was working for just that type of person, at a company that I loathed. So, as is usual in the business, I jumped ship and moved to this company, along with a couple of other dudes who were in the same boat.

Flash forward about a month at this new, wonderful job, and my Boss (who we'll just call Big J) calls the 3 of us who've joined the company into his office. We find the rest of the programming team there, everyone wearing solemn faces. Big J proceeds to in very dire tone inform us that we've received legal correspondence from my old company, stating that the terms of our being hired violate some contract that applies to our new company. Essentially, Big J tells us, it's my old boss being a master prick as usual.

The problem is that our new company is a startup, and we don't have the resources to weather an extensive legal battle with the old place. I can see the writing on the wall before he even says it: we can't work for Big J or this cool company anymore.

The 3 of us are gloomy, immediately contemplating what this means, when Big J delivers the clincher: we need to go back to our old jobs immediately, or that company and it's extensive legal resources will be suing Big J.

My mind reels: what does this mean? They want me back? They're going to pull me out of this ideal job and force me to do... what exactly? It makes no sense. But the look of utter gloom on Big J's face cements the deal.

I begin contemplating moving out of the games business for good. Maybe there's a SQL programmer job somewhere that will be easier on my heart. Maybe I should take this chance to suffer the mental breakdown I've been promising myself since my mid-20's. Maybe there's space in a Buddhist retreat in Minnesota for me.

Just as the enormity of the thing sinks in, Big J delivers the final crushing word:

"April Fool's."

So, now it's on.