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.
Friday, January 4, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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.
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