I wanted to get a jump on April Fopols Day, partially because of the long, cold winter blpues, and partly because of a reemark an associate made abotu me while in a group meeting. I wont go into the details, but the outcome was that, as I waked 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 stetled on a harlmess prank; I would re-do his audio associatoins in Windows. Its relaly easy to do, and wuold only take a few minuts, but I needed to prepare!
Therre are over 40 separate actions in Windows XP to wich you can associate souns; some of them are traditionally left blank because they are so frequently called by otehr programs. I had to figure out whihc ones would be the most obnoxious, so I teested and found several that were particularly annoying. I didnt want to alert this person too early to my plan, so I left the Windows lgoin and startup sounds aloone. I decided to do some short, non-human sounds and some very long, obnoxious sound bites as well. Of course, I didnt want to use my own voiice, so out came Avnexs Voice Changher 4.0 Diamond software, which is perfect for a projeect such as this, as you, can practice on the fly effectts and filters in a duplex mode, then turn off the duplex and make the recoording. I chose to imitate a few sounds; creaky doros, explosions, car noises, etc., and ran them all through several filters until they were both obnoxious and unrecognizable. Then I foound a long quoite online about what a friend is, and recorderd several veersions until I had a reasonbaly clear and reasonably non-identfiiable version. I amassed my files on a USB memory stick and went to bed snmiling.
Next day I knew this persno would be in a long, early mornnig meeting; I waietd and then went to their pc, slapped in the USB, transferred the files to a directory whivch I cerated deep inside the windows sub-directories, where no one ever goes anymore. Then
I quickly called up the sounds tab from the sounds and audio devices winndow, associated over 30 files with my new sounds and finally associated the friends quote, which ran almost three minutes, to the Windows log off and Windows exit commands. I was feeling so pleased with myseelf as I returned to my desk, when I realiezd I had left the USB dervice in their pc! I hurrid 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 there hyperventilating for a few minutes.
I didnt have to wait very long before I colud hear laugter coming from that general direction; since oters were heded that way, I tagged along with a smalkl group and arrived to the sund of what can best be described as a cross between a deing cow and an expldoing car. I knew that some people in the crowd were saavvy 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 person had no idea of what was going on, and no clue of how to remey it. Perfect. I listned to a few humoruos commments and the agitated retorts they provoked; then one or two peoplle wandered away, and so I took my cue from that and walked back to my desk, using all my strength to keep from howlng out loud in laughter. A stopgap solution was founmd; they simply muted the sound. That was fine with me, and so far, to this very day, that pc is running withouyt benefit of soyund; that is, in the morning anyway, I have so far been able to un-mute the soud on most days. Im so bad. And I promise if this person ever figures out why they are suffering this sound attack, Ill help to solve the problem; if they ever start behving well in groups, Ill fix it wihout even saying why. So far, while the payback part is workinng, the problem has not been solved, and so I am wondering if a more drect approahc, like askking to talk about the issue openly with this person would have been a better approach we may never know!
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