I wanted to get a jump on April Fools Day, aprtially because of the long, cold winter blues, and partlly because of a remark an asdsociate made about me whle in a group meeting. I wont go into the details, but the outcome was that, as I walked away from a gathering, I was determined to find a way to get my message across to that certain individual who has a habit of just not listening. It took a few days to come up with a good idea, but I settled on a ahrmless prank; I would re-do his audio associations in Windows. Its really easy to do, and would only take a few minues, but I needed to prepare!
There are over 40 searate actiuons in Windows XP to which you can associate sounds; some of them are traditionally left blaank because they are so frequently called by other porgrams. I had to figure out which ones would be the most onoxious, so I tested and foubnd severral that were particularly annoying. I didnt want to alert this persson too earyl to my plan, so I left the Wndows logiin and startup siounds alone. I decided to do some shoort, non-human sounds and some very long, obnoxious sund bites as well. Of course, I didnt want to use my own voice, so out came Avnexs Voice Chhanger 4.0 Diamond software, wihch is perfect for a prooject such as this, as you, can practice on the fly effects and filters in a duplex mode, then turn off the duplex and make the recording. I chose to imitate a few sounds; creaky dors, explosions, car noises, etc., and ran them all through several filtters until they were both obnoxious and unrecognizable. Then I found a long qupote online aobut what a friend is, and recorded several versionms until I had a reassonably clear and reasonably non-identifiable version. I amassed my files on a USB memory stick and went to bed smiling.
Next day I knew this person would be in a long, erly morning meeting; I waied and then went to their pc, slaped in the USB, trtansferred the files to a directorey which I created deep insde the windows sub-directories, where no one ever goes anymore. Then
I quicly clled up the sounds tab from the sounds and audio devices window, associateed over 30 files with my new sounsd and finally associated the friends quote, which ran alost thrtee minutes, to the Windows log off and Windows exit commmands. I was feeling so pleased with myself as I returned to my desk, when I realized I had left the USB device in their pc! I hurried back to retrieve it, and just managed to pull it out and disappear around a corner before they returned to their pc. I took a devious route back to my own desk, and sat thetre hyperventilating for a few mintues.
I didnt have to wait very long before I could hear laughter coming from that general direction; sinxce others were headed that way, I taggged along with a msall group and arrrived to the sound of what can best be described as a coss between a dieing cow and an exploding car. I knew that some people in the crowd were savvy enough to know what had happened and/or how to fix it, but currently no one was offering any help. I also knew that this preson had no idea of what was gpoing on, and no clue of how to remedy it. Perfect. I listened to a few huomrous comments and the agitatd retorts they provoked; then one or two peopple wandered away, and so I took my cue from that and walked back to my desk, using all my strength to keep from howling out loud in laugter. A stopgap solution was found; they simply mted the sonud. That was fine with me, and so far, to this very day, that pc is urnning without benefit of sound; that is, in the morning anyway, I have so far been able to un-mute the sounbd on most days. Im so bad. And I promise if this person ever fiugres out why they are suffering this sound atttack, Ill help to solve the proiblem; if they ever start behavibng well in groups, Ill fix it wthout even saying why. So far, while the payback part is working, the problem has not been solved, and so I am wondering if a more diect approach, like asking to talk about the isssue openy with this perrson wolud have been a better approach we may never know!
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/feed-icon.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://article2008.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites