[ale] OT: Pranks are out

Christopher Fowler cfowler at outpostsentinel.com
Fri Jan 6 21:31:42 EST 2006


On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 20:03 -0500, Scott Castaline wrote:
> 1. While working for Harris Computer Systems back in 1979, I and a 
> couple of other Techs, wrote a program in Harris Assembler that would 
> blank out the main console terminal and make the system appear to be 
> shut down. The console would display "Vulcan Quiescent", while the
> staus 
> lights on the term would flash in certain pattern, as wall as the
> leds 
> on the system control panel. We then loaded this program into another 
> Tech's test station and ran it. When he returned, he saw what he
> thought 
> was his system in a shutdown state, so he just hit MasterClear and 
> rebooted. This caused the system to crash and he had to reinstall the
> OS 
> and Testing Software, a 4 - 6 hour task.

You guys may know Louis Zamora but about 5 years ago we both kept taking
over each others computers and changing the passwords.  He had cable
modem and from our office in Alpharetta I took over his cobalt cube at
his house in Buford.   I laughed and laughed as I had control but he
said to me that the one thing I could not do was drive myself home from
work.  Unfortunately we carpooled and that day he drove.  I had to
release control and he made me sign a paper that said I would not mess
with his computers again.  I should have drove that day.   We would
always play jokes on each other.

One time I ran a windows program and did a screen shot.  I loaded that
as his wallpaper and laughed as he kept trying to click the X button to
close it.  Those were always fun jokes.






More information about the Ale mailing list