Pranks

Fortune Cookie Deluge

When:	1986
Occasion:	Angst in high school.
Device:	Little pieces of paper with printed message.
Plan:	Print out thousand identical messages and leave them around the school for people to find.
Execution:	Printed a quote from my favorite iconoclast. People were finding them for months and wondering aloud about the perpetrator.

It was high school and I was a rebellious nerd, bored out of my mind. I wanted to shake things up, so I turned to my favorite television show at the time for inspiration.

The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan as an imprisoned free-thinker, helped me get through the horrible angst of that place. I could identify with his personal war against authority.

So I took a quote from the first episode and printed it a few hundred times using my dad's computer, and cut the paper into strips. Everyday I would take a few dozen into school and leave them where they would be found by as many different people as possible: on the drinking fountain, in the bathroom, in the vents of lockers, on teacher's desks, inside library books, and many more.

I knew the operation was a success when an intimidating english teacher found one and said in perplexity, "who is doing this?" I felt so proud at that moment. I managed to freak out the people who did the same to me.

And what was that quote? Here:

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.

Road Signs

When:	1987
Occasion:	Angst in high school.
Device:	Cardboard signs.
Plan:	Create a score of cardboard signs with a rebellious message, go out at night and staple them to utility poles in the neighborhood around the school.
Execution:	Made the signs and hid them in a plastic bag in a culvert. Got cold feet the night we were supposed to do it.

I wanted to do something bigger than the paper strips. I wanted people to feel genuinely under siege by my messages. Recruiting a friend to help carry out the operation, we agreed on a pithy message taken from the same show mentioned earlier. It was simply, "I am not a number."

Making the signs was easy. We found an ample supply of cardboard in a supermarket dumpster. We bought magic markers, duct tape, scissors, and staple guns. We made the signs in one afternoon. Each was about 10 inches by 14 inches. I think it was about 30 signs in all. We put them in a garbage bag and hid them in a culvert in the neighborhood.

The first problem was that my co-conspirator Chris was not strong enough to operate the staple gun. We had planned to divide the labor with each of us doing a different part of the neighborhood. So we had to change the plan such that I did the stapling and he would hand me signs and look out for police.

We were very worried about the police. They always seemed to be patrolling around, looking for vandals like us. We decided the best time would be around 4:00 AM when most criminals were in bed and police would be most likely to be sitting in coffee shops. We would set our alarm clocks and immediately take a hit of NoDoz (an over the counter caffeine pill with which we were obsessed at the time). Of course, we anticipated it would be difficult to sleep because of the excitement, and we wanted to be fully alert, so we purchased some sleeping pills to help us drift off early.

The night before Operation Signage, Chris stayed over at my house. We took the sleeping pills, but it still took us a while to drift off. I remember that we were both kind of terrified about it, which certainly didn't contribute to a restful sleep. In fact, I think I had a non-stop string of nightmares.

When the alarm clock went off, I sat up in the dark. Oh God, it can't be time already, I thought with dread. I was exhausted to the core and completely lacking in the enthusiasm I had before.

"Hey Chris," I said loudly to wake him up (he was a very sound sleeper). He grunted in reply. "Do you still want to do this?"

There was a moment of silence before he replied. "Do you?"

"Um... no." And with relief I fell back to sleep.

We never did get up the nerve to put up the signs, and I suppose they just moldered away in the culvert. It is one of my biggest regrets that we didn't pull that off.

Ceiling Drop (Matt)

When:	2005
Occasion:	Matt's last week at DOE
Device:	Ceiling tile rigged like trap door
Plan:	As he is hard at work at his desk, I pull the cord and a pile of toys fall on his head.
Execution:	Tile got stuck, had to jerk the rope many times to dislodge it. He was still surprised though.

Matt is one of the coolest people I have had the pleasure to work with. He is witty, humble, and will talk about anything that pleases you. So I when I heard he was moving away, I wanted to give him a nice send-off.

We were at that time in the basement of the building, our project being somewhat underappreciated in the grand scheme. But the good thing about that is there were only a half dozen of us in our space, giving me plenty of privacy to implement the prank.

I came in on a weekend with a saw, rope, and sewing materials. The ceiling was your typical hanging tile structure. You can easily pop out tiles and turn them in such a way that they can be removed from the framework. I selected what I thought was the best position over Matt's head and removed that tile.

The figure below shows how I modified the tile to become a trap door. Step one is to trim off about 2 inches along two sides. This will make the tile small enough to fall through the framework easily. (NOTE: these tiles are made of some kind of nasty stuff that will create a lot of powdery mess when you cut them, so be prepared for cleaning up later, and try not the breathe it in.) Step two is to drill a hole on one end, which will be where you tie the trigger-rope. Step three is to sew the other end to the framework, making a hinge for the trap door.

Step four is to insert the rope through the drilled hole and tie a knot. Snake the rope through the plenum above adjacent tiles to a point across the room where you can pull it through a gap and tie it to something. Place the "payload" on the tile and pull the rope tight such that it keeps the tile from falling open. Make sure that the end of the trigger-rope is easily untied so the payload falls out smoothly. See diagram below for side-view of the plenum arrangement.

The primary difficulty with this arrangement is keeping the rope from sticking. The ideal situation would have near-zero friction for the rope, perhaps using pulleys. But I was doing this for the first time and did not think about the friction until it was too late. The rope stuck and I had to shake it quite a bit to jar it loose. My sloppy cutting and sewing did not help matters either.

I was quite afraid that Matt would see the changes to the ceiling. Even using white thread for the "hinge", it was still quite visible. And the knot from the trigger rope (I was using white laundry-hanging cord) was very conspicuous. The good news, however, is that people usually don't casually notice things on the ceiling. The trigger rope tied off on the other side of the room was also not detected. I bet you could hide a lemur in plain view and, as long as it remained very still, no one would notice it.

When time came to pull the stunt, I had my camera ready in one hand, and the just-untied trigger rope in the other. Matt stared at his computer screen, oblivious to my mad grin and the camera trained on him. I let go of the rope and... nothing. I tugged on it gently, then harder and harder, until it was making quite a racket overhead. Matt still didn't look up, but he later said that the noise was bothering him. He attributed it to somebody working up there and "fully expected an ass-crack to pop through". As if somebody could fit up in the plenum—ha! Eventually, the tile did pop open and a payload of stuffed animals cascaded onto him. After a brief moment of anger, he suddenly got the joke and smiled.

Pictures:

Mysterious Sound #1 (John)

When:	March 2007
Occasion:	John's impending departure from DOE
Device:	Dismantled talking toy.
Plan:	Hide speaker in his work area, press button repeatedly.
Execution:	Worked beautifully. It was just quiet enough that he asked people if they heard it too. After a few hours, he found the wire and cut it.

I was very sorry to see John go. He has the nicest personality and is a diligent professional. To show my appreciation, I had give him a decent prank.

My other co-worker Andy brought in these little plastic figurines of cartoon characters that he bought at Walgreen's. Each has a button in the base that causes the circuit inside to emit a quote. Some are short, like Homer Simpson's "D'oh!" while others can be kind of long-winded. The Homer toy would be perfect for what I wanted to do.

Taking out a bunch of screws, got inside the toy and located the speaker. I cut the wires to this and inserted a pair of long wires from an old ethernet cable. Now the speaker extended about 12 feet, still working fine. I strung this wire behind our wall-facing workstations so that the speaker was situated behind John's over-desk cabinet.

The problem was that the speaker was much too loud. Even inside the plastic figurine it was noisy, but liberated from this shell it was trumpeting. At such a volume, John would discover it too quickly to be an effective joke. I needed it to be just at the edge of his hearing, so he would be forced to question his own sanity. I took care of the noise by wrapping the speaker in paper towel, plastic bags, and duct tape.

When the time came, I started pressing the button. At first John didn't react at all. I thought, "uh oh, I made it too quiet." There was no way I could adjust the volume with the package esconced deep behind his desk. It turns out he heard it and was trying to tune it out; maybe he figured it was coming from the room on the other side of our wall, which was a computer lab where people frequently met for presentations. After a half hour of near-continuous stream of Homer-isms, John finally said, "do you guys hear that?"

Everyone in the room was in on it except John, and of course we all did our best to bluff. "Yeah, I think hear something. Is it coming from your headphones? Is it from the other room? Maybe your computer speakers?" John looked around a little, but it wasn't until I had left the room that he found the speaker wire and severed it. When I got back, the button no longer caused sound to come out. John was calmly working as before as if nothing had happened. That's the kind of guy he is: never fazed by anything.

Mysterious Sound #2 (Andy)

When:	May 2007
Occasion:	Andy's last week at DOE
Device:	Key locator embedded inside foam stress relief toy.
Plan:	Hide device around his workstation, press button at random intervals.
Execution:	It worked perfectly. He was going mad trying to locate the device around his desk. I moved it a couple times while he was away, further confounding him.

Now it was Andy's turn. I'd known him just a year, but this hard-working code monkey impressed me with his fast learning and eagerness to please. Sadly for us, he got a ticket out of the dungeon, to a fancy job in sunny California. He was leaving before me. I had to get him good.

I had been browsing in one of those mall gadget stores like Brookstone or Sharper Image when I came across one of those key finder things. In comes in two parts: the noise making receiver and the wireless remote control. You are supposed to attach your keys to the receiver and when you lose your keys in the sofa or laundry hamper, you go get the remote and press the button until you hear a plaintive beeping. (If you lose the remote too, then you're out of luck.) It was just $20 so I figured I'd get it for the sake of prankification.

At first, I tried hiding the reciever inside his computer by shoving it through a hole in the back. This was a mistake because the transmitter puts out a very weak signal, and the metal from the computer chasse was an effective shield. I had to pry open his computer while it was still on (so as not to log him out) and fetch the device.

Next I tried to put it inside his desk. Again, the metal of the desk blocked the signal. Damn, this thing is pretty useless for people who lose their keys under anything more substantial than a paper napkin. You need a clear line of sight to the receiver for it to work, so I hit on the idea to keep it in plain view... but disguised.

I put the receiver inside a foam stress-relief toy in the form of a frothy glass of Guinness stout. This was simply a matter of hollowing out the center from the bottom and then taping over the hole and coloring the tape black with sharpie to hide the shininess. Now I could place it right next to his desk (where it was anyway, as it happened to be a gift to him from me several months ago).

Now I could stand almost anywhere in the room and transmit the commands for maddening beepage. The sound was a stuttering chirp, kind of generic, so it could be coming from anything, such as a computer or a thermostat complaining of low batteries. I kept the transmitter in my shirt pocket so it had a clear line with no obstructions.

To our delight, it started annoying Andy immediately. Unlike smooth and suave John, Andy was clearly very agitated. He could not get any work done until he found and killed the source of this sound. I kept the interval between attacks as long as possible. He would start searching madly around his desk, in nearby boxes, in cabinets, and eventually give up because he couldn't remember the exact direction of origin. As he tried to relax and forget it to resume his work, that is when I would press the button again.

"I'm being punked!" he said over and over. We tried our best to dissuade him from this conclusion, but there was ample precedent for it. But even if he was certain about it, he played along very well, trying his darnedest to locate the device. I even moved it around, when his back was turned, to make it easier to spot. At the end of the day, he still had not found it, so we showed it to him. And again, we prove that you can hide just about anything in plain sight.

Beat Box Accompanyment (Tom)

When:	August 2007
Occasion:	Tom's last week at CAST
Device:	Electronic hunting call gadget
Plan:	When he starts drumming, press buttons on the device in time with it. When he stops to listen, don't press buttons.
Execution:	Tried it for a few minutes, wimped out and just gave him the device as a present.