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.

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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.

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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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A fellow bought a new Mercedes and was out on the interstate for a nice evening drive. The top was down, the breeze was blowing through what was left of his hair, and he decided to open her up.

As the needle jumped up to 80 mph, he suddenly saw flashing red and blue lights behind him. “There’s no way they can catch a Mercedes,” he thought to himself and opened her up further.

The needle hit 90, 100… Then the reality of the situation hit him. “What am I doing?” he thought, and pulled over.

The cop came up to him, took his license without a word and examined it and the car. “It’s been a long day, this is the end of my shift and it’s Friday the 13th. I don’t feel like more paperwork, so if you can give me an excuse for your driving that I haven’t heard before, you can go.”

The guy thinks for a second and says, “Last week my wife ran off with a cop. I was afraid you were trying to give her back!”

“Have a nice weekend,” said the officer.

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When Albert Einstein was making the rounds of the speaker’s circuit, he usually found himself eagerly longing to get back to his laboratory work. One night as they were driving to yet another rubber-chicken dinner, Einstein mentioned to his chauffeur (a man who somewhat resembled Einstein in looks and manner) that he was tired of making speeches.

“I have and idea, boss,” his chauffeur said. “I’ve heard you
give this speech so many times. I’ll bet I could give it for you.”

Einstein laughed loudly and said, “Why not? Let’s do it!”

When they arrive at the dinner, Einstein donned the chauffeur’s cap and jacket and sat in the back of the room. The chauffeur gave a beautiful rendition of Einstein’s speech and even answered a few questions expertly.

Then a supremely pompous professor asked an extremely esoteric question about anti-matter formation, digressing here and there to let everyone in the audience know that he was nobody’s fool.

Without missing a beat, the chauffeur fixed the professor with a steely stare and said, “Sir, the answer to that question is so simple that I will let my chauffeur, who is sitting in the back, answer it for me.”

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A man feared his wife wasn’t hearing as well as she used to and he thought she might need a hearing aid. Not quite sure how to approach her, he called the family Doctor to discuss the problem. The Doctor told him there is a simple informal test the husband could perform to give the Doctor a better idea about her hearing loss.

Here’s what you do,” said the Doctor, “stand about 40 feet away from her, and in a normal conversational speaking tone see if she hears you. If not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet, and so on until you get a response.”

That evening, the wife is in the kitchen cooking dinner, and he was in the den. He says to himself, “I’m about 40 feet away, let’s see what happens.” Then in a normal tone he asks, ‘Honey, what’s for dinner?”

No response.

So the husband moves to closer to the kitchen, about 30 feet from his wife and repeats, “Honey, what’s for dinner?”

Still no response.

Next he moves into the dining room where he is about 20 feet from his wife and asks, Honey, what’s for dinner?”

Again he gets no response so,

He walks up to the kitchen door, about 10 feet away. “Honey, what’s for dinner?”

Again there is no response.

So he walks right up behind her. “Honey, what’s for dinner?”

“James, for the FIFTH time I’ve said, CHICKEN!”

Moral of the story: The problem may not be with the other one as we always think, could be very much within us.

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A language instructor was explaining to her class that in French, nouns unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated as masculine or feminine.

“‘House,’ in French, is feminine - ‘la maison’ and ‘Pencil,’ in French, is masculine ‘le crayon.’”

One puzzled student asked, “What gender is ‘computer’?”

The teacher did not know, and the word wasn’t in her French dictionary.

So for fun she split the class into two groups appropriately enough, by gender and asked them to decide whether ‘computer’ should be a masculine or feminine noun. Both groups were required to give four reasons for their recommendation.

The men’s group decided that computers should definitely be of the feminine gender (’la computer’), because:

• 1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
• 2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
• 3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for possible later retrieval; and
• 4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine (’le computer’), because:

• 1. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on;
• 2. They have a lot of data but they are still clueless;
• 3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
• 4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you’d waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

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1. Sharing and distributing MP3s
Extract songs from an audio CD to an MP3 or any other media format and it’s a crime. The moment you distribute the MP3s or allow other users access to those files, you are in a bigger soup. In an office environment, your actions of ripping audio CDs and sharing MP3s can even get your employer into legal trouble.

2. Ripping movies
You can rent a VCD and watch t on your office computer, but on’t think about ripping the VCD and creating a DivX movie out of it. DivX, per se, is not illegal, but creating DivX movies is.

3. Illegal downloading
So what if Napster, Audiogalaxy or similar sites provide the service to search for MP3s or movies. You cannot download them unless you have legally paid for the songs or movies to be downloaded in that specified format or unless the songs/movies are free for download. This is one of the major crimes most of us are unknowingly guilty of.

4. Pirating software
When you buy an assembled PC, you get a lot of software goodies. But unless you have specifically paid for the software and have the license for it, you are committing piracy. Using a licensed copy of software on more computers than what the license permits is also a crime. You are also not allowed to distribute games or software.

5. Using a software crack
Taking the software demos or time-limited versions available on the Internet or from CDs and using cracks or passwords to make the software fully-functional isn’t the right thing to do.

6. Copying source code
Using code from a Web site for your own program is fine as long as you give proper credits. Again, in an office environment if you destroy or conceal source code, especially when it is required to be maintained under law, the lawmakers will throw the book at you.

7. Disregarding copyright
It’s very easy to cut and paste from Web sites, but browse down in the page and you will see a copyright notice. Unless it’s specifically mentioned that the content on the site is free, you cannot copy content, images or presentations from Web sites.

8. Deleting files in Office
If a person without appropriate permission from the user or network administrator downloads, copies or extracts any data or information from the office system or deletes or damages such data, he is violating the Information Technology Act.

9. Hacking
Proud of your hacking/cracking skills? Change a user’s password and restrict his access to a network (or Internet)or a PC, use credit card numbers for purchases without the knowledge of the owner, distribute viruses— then you’re surely on the wrong side of the law.

10. Publishing/sharing porn
Even though you can watch porn over the Net, the moment you distribute and share it over a network, you are entering the dark world of crime. The law on this may make for amusing reading (“whoever publishes…. any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest…”), but the law-upholders take this matter quite seriously.

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