My assistant was out yesterday, so after I was done with my work, I decided to play a little prank.
His PC is a standard XP desktop, flush against the wall on his desk, wires neatly routed behind it. He’s also a neat freak, so everything on his desk is where it needs to be.
I take an old laptop, install the latest release of Ubuntu Linux on it, configure the desktop to look like Windows XP. I then punch a hole through an adjacent filing cabinet, put the laptop in the bottom drawer under a stack of papers, and run his video, mouse, and keyboard wires to the laptop. After this in install dummy video, mouse, and keyboard wires on the back of his PC. Lastly, I run a network cable under the floor molding to the laptop. At this point, if you move the mouse – a strangely familiar desktop appears.
I then figure – ok, what will he do? First, check the PC – maybe even reboot it manually. I setup a shutdown script that reboots the laptop if the PC reboots via an ssh reboot command. I also setup the Ubuntu box to reboot the Windows PC if it gets reset. I then made sure to hide the wires, put the file cabinet up flush against the wall, and then make sure that everything on his desk was positioned exactly the way it was previously.
So he comes in today, I tell him that for some reason, a few of the desktops in the office got reset to the default theme *cough*.
He moves the mouse, desktop comes up – ‘WTF?’ Within a minute he starts to ask if I did anything to his PC, to which I reply ‘I swear on my mother I did nothing to your PC’ (technically, I didn’t!)
Pops open the CD drive looking for a boot CD, opens the computer case looking for a second hard drive…
Checks the wires in the back, they all look fine.
Reboots the Laptop, reboots the PC. keeps coming back to the Ubuntu desktop.
Then he grabs one of the dummy wires and pulls it out. Starts looking at a few extra wires he sees. Opens his desk drawers – nothing there.
Finally he sees that the extra wires are headed over to this little inconspicuous filing cabinet. Checks the top drawer – nothing. Checks the bottom drawer, finds the laptop, immediately starts cracking up.
Yep, I’m going to get punked in return at some point…. heh.
