Hi folks, it’s story time. Many moons ago, when I was in the age of 19 and still filled with the youth to the brim, I thought of a prank wich led to a improvement for my teacher.
How come so? Even back then I was known as the Computer guy, fixing shit all over the place and holding detailed speeches about tech in general, accompanied by a nerdy fascination. People did trust me and I had in the vocational school a teacher who allowed me to use his school laptop. In general, I think he was a very good teacher and he was a good person too. He was smart, calm and his way of explaining things was amazing. In my experience there are maybe 5% of teachers of that kind, a rare rarity and He will always have a place in my memories. So much about him and now let’s sail back to the topic.
The school did provide him with a OK laptop for work and I guess he was fine with it. Around that time I stumbled over a, from my point of view genius, prank in the interweb. The prank was simple but very effective. Make a screenshot of the desktop, relocate or hide all the folders including icons from the desktop and set the screenshot as background. Badabum, badabim, you have unclickable icons… wanna go further? Set the taskbar to autohide and maybe place it to unusual edge of the screen, muscle memory of your prey will do the rest. Hockus, pockus you have a unclickable start menu and the only thing what doesn’t comply is the time shown in the taskbar, which makes only once a day sense.
So let’s do a little math.
Problem 1a:
If you combine a immature boy, understanding teacher, accessible computer and to much time, what will be the result?
Problem 1b:
And what will be result when the immature boy forgets something?
Result:
I set the prank up as described and did wait passionate for the sweet moment of joy. But the teacher never went to his desk as expected, instead he involved us in a interesting topic about flawed laws, accompanied by stories about some professors exploiting them just for fun and that was the moment I forgot the whole prank thing. The two hours of his class went by, we all left afterwards and because we had only once a week classes with him, we didn’t met meanwhile and as soon as I entert the classroom after that week I instantly recognized new sleek laptop on his desk. In that moment did remember and I realized what I’ve had done. I never intended to do any kind of harm, my intention was to have a short moment of confusion followed by a short giggle, laughing about the situation together and the reverting everything back to normal. I felt so sorry and I told him what I’ve done, with my intentions and forgetting all about it. After explaining myself, I expected him to be angry which would haven been totally legitimate. He just started to giggle and told me that he brought the device to the IT department of the school and even they were confused, so they handed him a new one out. He liked the new one more, it was a newer one and therefor faster. That was the Time before SSD’s and iCore Processors. No data got lost, because this man saved in exemplary manner all important files on USB thumb drive, which he carried around and that way disasters have been avoided. I apologized, he thanked me for my honesty, I learned a lesson and he got a new fancy laptop.
I also learned the impact of backups. This man was a role model, and that not only regarding backups.
Thank you Mr. “researching name of the teacher”
My hour is over for today aka I’ll try something new.
See ya tomorrow, wonderful human.