Hey, can you do something for me real quick? Could you enlist in the Army? I’m only asking because I was just wondering about it, because it would be great, I think. If you joined the Army. And it would definitely help me out.

You would really get something out of it, too, I think. You could travel to whole other countries. All around the world. It would be an adventure. You would get to use equipment and stuff like that. It could be amazing. Just think about it. Plus you would be doing me such a huge favor that I cannot even tell you.

Seriously, why not sign up? I’ll get you the form. It will only take a second. You just sign on the line and you’re in. I can be there with you and show you where to sign and everything, if you want. I’m happy to do it. Especially since you’d be doing such a nice thing for me by signing up. So you should really do it.

Man, thanks so much in advance.

As far as going to other countries goes, which I mentioned earlier? Yeah. You totally could. You might get stationed anywhere—there’s tons of other countries. And you’ll get sent to one of them. You’ll go somewhere for boot camp, too. Maybe in Kentucky or California. Not bad, huh? And then they will ship you off to just about anywhere you can think of. Unfortunately, I can’t say for sure where you might eventually go. That’s not up to me. It depends on your deployment orders, and what might be going on at the time, as far as where your help would be needed in the world, and I don’t have any control over that. Wish I did. I’d send you to Hawaii or some other fun place just as a way of saying, “Hey, thanks for signing up, buddy.”

You got the DVD I sent you, right? Pretty cool. And the razor? Did you get that? There’s a video game, too. It’s fun. Would you like to play it with me sometime? Come over whenever. We’ll play it.

Let’s see, what else? I already mentioned it would be an adventure, because it really would. You get to learn about weapons and other skills. There’s ropes to climb on. And Jeeps. I’m not even kidding you. You will get to shoot a gun. It’s going to be amazing. Serious. And there will be other people there.

Once again, I can’t tell you how much it would mean to me if you signed up. You would really be doing me such a solid if you could just commit to like 18 months in the Army.

And did I say the thing about pay? Yeah, I don’t know how I could have forgotten that part. You could get thousands of dollars. For school or whatever. What could be better than that? It’s just our way of saying we appreciate your joining up. Plus, you could get your life on track. Not that your life is screwed up or anything. I don’t mean to imply that.

You’d really have a lot of respect, I think, too, if you went in the Army at this particular point in time. It wouldn’t just be about helping me out of a really tough spot and everything. It would be about the uniform, which is one of respect. When you wear it, you would hold your head up high.

I think it’s great and all, your coming to my aid and signing up, if you do.

Oh, another thing I mentioned before that I almost forgot about was all the amazing equipment that they would let you use if you signed up for the Army. Guns and cannons and tanks. Some really cool stuff. And that’s not even to mention the advanced satellite and electronics machines. All of that! Those things are unbelievable. If you sign up, you could be learning how to use those things. That’s what I did: I learned all of that stuff and it wasn’t even that hard. That’s what’s so amazing about it.

Now that you know my story, and see that I joined and went and I turned out great, why don’t you just hop on over and join, too? You like me, right? So then just do me this favor and sign up and go into the Army for me. And for you. Probably even more for you.

Because, yeah, there’s so many reasons why joining the Army is a great thing for you personally. The money and the respect. And training? Also, you know, because if you could sign up that would be so nice of you. I don’t want to say I need you to join up, but I would like you to. I’ll seriously owe you a big one.

That’s all you have to do. If I got you one of those enlistment forms, could you just sign it? I’d really, really, really, really, really appreciate it. Really. A lot.

If you make it back, I promise I’ll totally do something for you. I’ll help you move!

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Frozen desktop
Temporarily ‘freeze’ your friend’s desktop by doing a ‘Print Screen’ of their work area and saving it as their wallpaper. The next step is to minimize the taskbar and hide their desktop icons. They’ll never know what hit them as they try desperately to click on the ‘frozen’ icons.

Play switch!
If you’re in an office with computers really close to each other, you are in luck. Pick a person whose computer is next to yours or back to back. Make sure they have really long cables. Before the person who works across from you gets to his station, unplug his keyboard, plug yours into his computer and open a word processor on his terminal. When the person gets back to work on his PC, start typing and be prepared to double in laughter. You can also do this with mice and monitors.

A mousy trip
Tape the trackball to the insides of the mouse and watch with a straight face as your friend tries to hunt the mouse.

Smooth operator
From the Control Panel, change the doubleclicking speed of the mouse to the fastest it can be. To add to this, switch the settings for the mouse buttons from right-handed user to lefthanded user or the other way around

Sound start
Record your friend saying something stupid with a whole lot of sound effects. Then sneak up to their computer and pop it in as their Windows startup. Warning: your friend will probably have a lot to say to you afterwards ‘offline’.

Keyboard capers
Pick one key that is used most often, for example ‘E’ or ‘I’, take the spring out from under that key. Or how about witching the ‘M’ and ‘N’ keys? You can get away with this unnoticed for sometime. Works best when the person has a password containing the letters ‘M’ or ‘N’. If that doesn’t sound daring enough, how about changing your victim’s keyboard setting to a different layout. (Mind you, keep your windows install disks handy in case anything goes wrong.)

Where have all the icons gone?
Try to take control of a computer, go to Control panel > Display and change everything to black. Have fun watching the PC user trying to find all those icons.

Virus alert!
E-mail someone you know every hour, on the hour, sending them a warning about the deadly virus that’s hit town.

Posted by MixedSoup | 1 Comment »

Hey, we all have our gripes with Windows, but it’s really not all that bad. In fact, one guy has drawn up a few points of difference (or similarities, if you please) between good of Windows and those nasty viruses, and… well, Windows does come out looking pretty good (we think)! Windows is not a virus.

Here’s what viruses do:

• 1. They replicate quickly…okay,Windows does that.
• 2. Viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so…okay,Windows does that.
• 3. Viruses will, from time to time, crash your hard disk… okay,Windows does that, too.
• 4. Viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. Sigh…Windows does that, too.
• 5. Viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow (see 2) and the user will buy new hardware. Yup, that’s with Windows, too.

Until now it seems Windows is a virus but there are fundamental differences: viruses are well supported by their authors, are running on most systems, their program code so fast, compact and efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature. So,Windows is ‘not’ a virus!

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1. Fool Your Coworkers With the Refrigerator Handle Switch
On most fridges (certainly the ones in most offices), you can flip the hinges from one side to the other, allowing you, for example, to open the door on either side for corner placement. Typically, one switches the handle as well, but if you don’t, the refrigerator becomes a nearly unsolvable puzzle as victims pull and pull on the handle. If no one’s watching, some will even dig in their foot against a nearby counter and pull in vain directly against the hinges.

Make the switch to your office fridge right before the lunch rush, and settle in with a sandwich to watch the fun. The beauty of this prank is that once someone knows the trick, they can’t wait to see someone else fall for it.

2. Lock Your Buddy’s Shopping Cart at Lunch
Shopping carts are often protected against theft by a wheel-locking mechanism that’s triggered when the vehicle leaves a store’s premises. A yellow line is painted around the perimeter of say, the local market where you and a colleague might eat lunch tomorrow, and buried underneath it is a cable that emits a changing magnetic field signaling the carts to lock.

Build your own backpack-size, battery-powered yellow line to lock and unlock carts within the store, playing “red light/green light” with unwitting shoppers. That may sound a bit cruel, but the creator of this project on our site said most locked-out victims were laughing and talking to each other when stalled—and choosing a Saturday morning instead of a Monday afternoon seems to make a big difference in morale.

This is an advanced project utilizing high-current micro-controllers and signal processing, but the payoff in geek credibility is huge—and you can’t even come close to buying this at a prank shop. What’s more, once you’ve locked a friend’s cart and decided you can’t actually bring yourself to lock a stranger’s, you’ll still have a beefy H-bridge capable of controlling around a 50-volt, 30-amp-plus motor for your next build.

3. Germinate Your Cubicle Mate’s Keyboard
Got an environmentally conscious colleague whose Spring Break coincides with April Fools’ Day? Sprout some seeds to turn their keyboard green! Seeds will start growing almost anywhere where there’s a bit of water, so build a quick greenhouse on your own: Cover the keyboard with some wet paper towels or toilet paper, then throw it all in a large plastic bag Don’t worry, people have had success dishwashing their keyboards before, so some moist paper probably won’t cause any permanent damage.

This is a great prank because it’s obvious that at least a week of planning went into it. Worse comes to worst? Plead innocent: “I thought you were trying to be more green!” Not enough time to germinate seeds? Try hot gluing on 1 sq. ft. of real grass turf.

Posted by MixedSoup | 2 Comments »

At a recent computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.”

In response to Bill’s comments/General Motors issued a press release stating the following: “If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would be driving cars with the following characteristics:

• 1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
• 2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
• 3. Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would accept this, restart, and drive on.
• 4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart; in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
• 5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought ‘Car95′ or ‘CarNT.’ Then you would have to buy more seats.
• 6. Macintosh would make a car that’s powered by the sun, more reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
• 7. The oil, water, temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single ‘general car fault’ warning light.
• 8. New seats would force everyone to have the same butt size.
• 9. The airbag system would say ‘Are you sure?’ before going off.
• 10. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
• 11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps, even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more.
• 12. Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
• 13. You’d press the ‘Start’ button to shut off the engine.

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