Rx_
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Tip April Fools Day Jokes for Database Professionals (2 Viewers)
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ghudson
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How about listing any programming April Fools jokes you have done to your user's?
Years ago I embedded some code in one of my multi user apps to run an exe joke program ever hour, on the hour that would take a snapsot of your screen and flip it upside down on April 1. Most of my users quickly knew it was me that was messing with them but a few users did not get wind of what was going on and continued to call their PC support hot line every hour on the hour when their screen would flip and report their problem. All the user's had to do was touch any key or mouse click and their screen would resume normal activity. Luckily it never escalated into anything. Needless to say, I never did anything like that again but it very funny to hear about their mysterious screen problems. ;-)
Years ago I embedded some code in one of my multi user apps to run an exe joke program ever hour, on the hour that would take a snapsot of your screen and flip it upside down on April 1. Most of my users quickly knew it was me that was messing with them but a few users did not get wind of what was going on and continued to call their PC support hot line every hour on the hour when their screen would flip and report their problem. All the user's had to do was touch any key or mouse click and their screen would resume normal activity. Luckily it never escalated into anything. Needless to say, I never did anything like that again but it very funny to hear about their mysterious screen problems. ;-)
Kryst51
Singin' in the Hou. Rain
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Not on April Fools or anything, but I did flip a co-workers screen 180 degrees, and she got really MAD (even though I was right there to change it back, ASAP), needless to say, I will never again play a practical joke on a co-worker....
Rx_
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I had a great tech that shared my office. So, on April Fools Day I used tape to hide one of those key finders you put on your key chain to the bottom of his elevated key board. With a thumbtack on the sole of my shoe, I had perfected a quick "tap" that would start the sound activated key chain finders to beep. This way nobody noticed the quick "tap".
So when he came in the office I smiled and told him that he had something making his computer beep and "tapped" see there it is again!
He looked at me and asked how coould I possibly think of fooling him. So, he opened up the registry. Looked at all the bat files. Every so often I am pretending to work, but adding a "tap" that sets the beeping off. He is franically looking. The keyboard if franically beeping. People are gathering in the office.
Finally fustrated, he hits the power switch on the computer, reaches behind and unplugs the power and tells me "so there, its not beeping anymore"
I keep working not looking up and tap my shoe and watched the expression on his face as his keyboard started beeping.
The onlooking crowd cheered.
I didn not see John for several hours.
Once you have exhausted all the possible logical causes, it only leaves one conclusion, its magic.
So when he came in the office I smiled and told him that he had something making his computer beep and "tapped" see there it is again!
He looked at me and asked how coould I possibly think of fooling him. So, he opened up the registry. Looked at all the bat files. Every so often I am pretending to work, but adding a "tap" that sets the beeping off. He is franically looking. The keyboard if franically beeping. People are gathering in the office.
Finally fustrated, he hits the power switch on the computer, reaches behind and unplugs the power and tells me "so there, its not beeping anymore"
I keep working not looking up and tap my shoe and watched the expression on his face as his keyboard started beeping.
The onlooking crowd cheered.
I didn not see John for several hours.
Once you have exhausted all the possible logical causes, it only leaves one conclusion, its magic.
I did that to a co-worker last week. Took them 3 hours to figure out
I later admitted doing it and we laughed about it
It was on a not-so-busy day for the co-worker though
Rx_
Nothing In Moderation
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When I sat down at my computer this morning, I glanced at the keyboard and realized something was amiss, but I couldn’t quite tell what. I placed my fingers on home-row of the keyboard and my left index finger felt a smooth key. I’m used to feeling a little bump on that key. “Are my hands in the right place?” I thought to myself, glancing down to confirm that indeed they were. Then it dawned on me. Today is April Fools’ Day and one of my colleagues has rearranged the keys on my keyboard.
After fixing the keys, I began to wonder what the origins of April Fools’ Day were. Turns out from what I could glean, no one really knows for sure. The most plausible explanation I could find was that in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar (the Gregorian calendar) to replace the old Julian calendar. The new calendar called for New Year’s Day to be celebrated January 1. That year, France adopted the reformed calendar and shifted New Year’s Day to January 1. According to a popular explanation, many people either refused to accept the new date, or did not learn about it, and continued to celebrate New Year’s Day on April 1. Others began to make fun of these traditionalists, sending them on “fool’s errands” or trying to trick them into believing something false. Eventually, the practice spread throughout Europe.
According to an article I found on www.infoplease.com, however, there are at least two difficulties with this explanation. The first is that it doesn’t fully account for the spread of April Fools’ Day to other European countries. The Gregorian calendar was not adopted by England until 1752, for example, but April Fools’ Day was already well established there by that point. The second is that we have no direct historical evidence for this explanation, only conjecture, and that conjecture appears to have been made more recently.
So, maybe we’ll never know the day’s true origins. I’d still like to share a few famous April Fools’ pranks from around the world before we move on. (Note: These pranks were pulled from The Museum of Hoaxes website.)
The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest, 1957: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."
Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity, 1976: The British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.
Sidd Finch, 1985: Sports Illustrated published a story about a new rookie pitcher who planned to play for the Mets. His name was Sidd Finch, and he could reportedly throw a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy. This was 65 mph faster than the previous record. Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the "art of the pitch" in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the "great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa." Mets fans celebrated their teams' amazing luck at having found such a gifted player, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more information. In reality this legendary player only existed in the imagination of the author of the article, George Plimpton.
Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers, 1995: Discover Magazine reported that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had found a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them. After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have looked like a penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any other article in their history
After fixing the keys, I began to wonder what the origins of April Fools’ Day were. Turns out from what I could glean, no one really knows for sure. The most plausible explanation I could find was that in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar (the Gregorian calendar) to replace the old Julian calendar. The new calendar called for New Year’s Day to be celebrated January 1. That year, France adopted the reformed calendar and shifted New Year’s Day to January 1. According to a popular explanation, many people either refused to accept the new date, or did not learn about it, and continued to celebrate New Year’s Day on April 1. Others began to make fun of these traditionalists, sending them on “fool’s errands” or trying to trick them into believing something false. Eventually, the practice spread throughout Europe.
According to an article I found on www.infoplease.com, however, there are at least two difficulties with this explanation. The first is that it doesn’t fully account for the spread of April Fools’ Day to other European countries. The Gregorian calendar was not adopted by England until 1752, for example, but April Fools’ Day was already well established there by that point. The second is that we have no direct historical evidence for this explanation, only conjecture, and that conjecture appears to have been made more recently.
So, maybe we’ll never know the day’s true origins. I’d still like to share a few famous April Fools’ pranks from around the world before we move on. (Note: These pranks were pulled from The Museum of Hoaxes website.)
The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest, 1957: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."
Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity, 1976: The British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.
Sidd Finch, 1985: Sports Illustrated published a story about a new rookie pitcher who planned to play for the Mets. His name was Sidd Finch, and he could reportedly throw a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy. This was 65 mph faster than the previous record. Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the "art of the pitch" in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the "great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa." Mets fans celebrated their teams' amazing luck at having found such a gifted player, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more information. In reality this legendary player only existed in the imagination of the author of the article, George Plimpton.
Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers, 1995: Discover Magazine reported that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had found a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them. After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have looked like a penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any other article in their history
