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How to make your day go by.

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by lordinfidel

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So it's a boring a day and you are not in the mood to do anything.

Your eye's hurt from playing Quake and UT all day.
So what is a sysadmin to do?

There is always the random resetting of users passowrds. Or th indiscriminate moving of files to locations that no longer exist.

But those always generate annoying phones calls requiring you to fix something, eventually.

That's why I like to play a game called
"Fun with PSKill"

All you need is SysInternals PSlist and PSKill, and a list of machine names. Let the good times roll. (it also helps to have admin access to the machines, but as a sysadmin you should already have that)

First, pull up your handy dandy command line.
cd to your tools directory that contains pslist.
then pslist \\victimMachineName

Then pick yourself a PID. I personally like to stay with web browsers, no sense in crashing real programs and getting a phone call.

Once you have yourself a PID, it's time for the fun.

pskill \\VictimMachineName PID

And let the games begin. They will usually relaunch their browser immediately. So make sure that you re-run pslist for new entries appearing.

At this point it would be way to easy to kill it as soon as it starts up. But that wouldgenerate an instant phone call saying that there is something wrong with their browser.

Instead, wait a minute (you could use this time to scope out another victim, there is nothing like a ghost browser closer running thru the network). Then hitthem again.

The little hampsters love this game and will thank you for making their day so enjoyable.

Well maybe not, but at least you will be amused.
And in the end, isn't that what really matters anyways.

15 replies

by oz_media

I find it amusing to setup a multiplayer game of Ghost Recon on a chosen customers LAN and invite the manager and a few reps to join in.
Kinda like inviting neighbors to your party to keep them from ratting you out for making too much noise.

or
Surf TR, you can blow SHT-LOADS of time here, looks like LordInfidel's post falls into this category.

by guruofdos

How about grabbing a copy of VB (or other weapon of choice) and knocking up a few amusing programmes. A Random number generator for example that brings up a standard looking Windows Error dialog box with a few choice (rude, obscene, stupid as appropriate for the target) messages...then simply search for *.lnk files on a users desktop and subtly edit them to point to your spoof program...keeping copies of the original or course. Now when someone clicks on their Desktop shortcut for, say, Excel and gets a message box stating

'This user has performed an illegal operation and will be shat on' (OK, GET REAL, F*** OFF!)...

or

'Click me again Buster and I'll punch your lights out!!!' (PARDON, REPEAT, WHAT?!!)

or even

'Your system has become unstable and as a result the contents of your hard disk will be slowly grilled and served up with a selection of seasonal vegetables' (CONFIRM,YES,AGREED)

the real fun can begin.

Just wait for the phone to start ringing!! Ask them to repeat the operation that generated the fault a few times....RNG remember, so different messages will appear...then tell them to leave the machine alone and TOUCH NOTHING!!! Replace the doctored shortcut from the comfort of your cubby-hole, pop roundto their office, double click the Excel icon nochalantly and watch with amusement as Excel launches perfectly...

Repeat as desired depending on how slow a 'news day' it is.

by guruofdos

The Boss's wife is a teacher in a local primary school and scheduled to retire this summer. As a parting gift to the school, she wanted to donate several garden planters so each class could plant bulbs, flowers etc and have a class 'floral display' in the school grounds.

We had three of us at work twiddling our thumbs with not much on, and our boss doesn't like idle hands! He went to the garden centre to look for the planters she wanted, and found they were ?23 each. She wanted 10 so that worked out at ?230. Not wanting to fork out that much dosh, he measured the planters, calculated how much wood was required to make 10, bought one as a pattern and loaded the works van with the requisite amount of treated timber, 500 four inch woodscrews and a 5 litre tub of TimberCare. Total outlay for materials was about ?70 including the sample planter.

Ross manned the circular mitre saw, I had the battery screwdriver and electric drill, and Graham took the sander and paintbrush, and my wife turned up to keep us supplied with coffee. By close of play we had made the 10 planters...bigger and better than the original template, painted them, loaded them in the truck, and delivered them to the school. The day just flew by and we had greatfun...a bit of a change from manufacturing military and police training simulators!

The three of us will probably be spending the next week or so cleaning sawdust out of the company's computer PSU's!

by lordinfidel

bring me their personal systems to work on.

They totally bypass the support staff. Like I don't have anything better to do.

My personal favorite is going/*flying* (yes flying as in long ass road trip) to a major stock holders house to get rid of a virus for them.

Or going to the CEO's house to set up his new wireless network. (which doesn't seem so bad excpet for my natural disdain for anything wireless when it comes to computing, it's the security nut in me)

by lordinfidel

......

Along those lines. One time, me and my buddy took a screen shot of our friends desktop.

One of those people that keep everything on their desktop.

Then we removed all of their icons and files from their desktop profile.

Then set their background as the screen shot we took.

It was loads of fun watching them click on things
and nothing was happening.

I will definetly have to keep the VB app in mind.
But it also makes people call and I really hate talking to them.

by jardinier

When I got bored at work, I started writing my autobiography ... not for publication, but just to pass the time. I found it a great time-killer, and also it helped me to see my life in perspective. It is an exercise I would recommend to anyone.

by lordinfidel

Mine is along the lines of Dark Erotica. Which is kind of like an autobiography, in a really sick and twisted sort of way.

And I am sick and twisted.

At least they were written on company time. Although personal time for me, like most othershere is blurred. With the whole standard IT work week of 60+hours. So was it really company time?

Anyways, i can't post the direct links here. But if someone wanted to find them and went to my personal site, www.directionweb.com. There _may_ be a link somewhere on the bottom.

Be warned, i am a truly sick goth. Just remember that the game I described here, I really do play.
It was not fiction.

by jardinier

if you get my drift. Whilst not bizarre, you might enjoy the erotic science fiction novel which I wrote, which is largely about the sexual adventures of a man who possesses the power to become invisible. There are also aliens and stuff.
If you are interested, just email me and I will send it to you. As I have never been particularly interesting in trying to get it published, I just lend it or email it to anyone who is interested.

by guruofdos

Q) How do you keep a programmer in the shower all day?

A) Give him a bottle of shampoo that reads 'Lather, rinse,repeat.'

Q) How do you keep a French(Polish/Italian/Irish...delete according to cultural bias!) engineer occupied for hours?

A1) Give him three shovels and ask him to take his pick.
A2) Put him in a round room and ask him to stand in the corner.

Ask a member of the IT department to replenish the toilet paper in the lavatory and watch them debate for hours on end as to whether it is a software or a hardware problem.

by maecuff

What if you are bored and sick? I think I have West Nile Monkey SARS. I just want to get through the rest of the day without drooling on my keyboard. I also want my employees to actually think I'm doing something (I love to set a good example).

by joseph moore

Back on April 1st, I ran a little joke program on a few users (friends who wouldn't freak out too much).
I found a little program that flipped your monitor display upside down. There were no buttons to click to run it or anything. Just launch it and FLIP! Taskbar was at the top of the screen, all icons were upside down.
If you moved the mouse, then the program ended, and all was as it should be.

So, I did a CALL command in the users Windows logon scripts, running the program!

Funny.

by guruofdos

Fire it down the pipe at me.

I like a good read (real words printed on real paper!) and Sci-Fi/Fantasy is my preferred genre!

by jardinier

Hi Mike. Send me an email address so that I can send the novel to you as an attachment. Julian.

by guruofdos

Little things like this really make me smile.

It's the simple things in life that make it bearable. I have seen so many 'malicious' jokes but plain, simple 'funnies' like your example are worth their weight in gold. Long may simple, innocent fun continue!

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