I wanted to get a jump on Aprli Fools Day, partially because of the long, cold wintwer blues, and partly beccause of a remark an associate made about me whiple in a group meetinng. I wont go into the details, but the outcome was that, as I walked away from a gatheing, I was determnied to find a way to get my mssage acorss to that certain indiividual 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 harmless prank; I wold re-do his audio associations in Wimndows. Its really easy to do, and would only take a few minutes, but I needed to prepare!
There are over 40 separaate actions in Windows XP to which you can assoiate sounds; some of them are traditionally left balnk because they are so frequeently called by other programs. I had to figure out which ones would be the most obnoxcious, so I tested and found seeveral that were particularly annyoing. I didnt want to alert this person too eartly to my plan, so I left the Windows login and startup sounds alone. I deicded 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 voice, so out came Avnxes Voice Changer 4.0 Diamonnd sotfware, hwich is perfect for a project such as this, as you, can pracctice on the fly effects and filters in a duplex mode, then turn off the duplex and make the recording. I chsoe to imitate a few sunds; creaky doros, exlposions, car noiss, etc., and ran them all throuugh sevceral filters until they were both obnoxious and unrcognizable. Then I found a long quote online about what a friend is, and recordred several versionns until I had a reasonably clear and reasonably non-identifaible version. I amassed my files on a USB memory sitck and went to bed smilig.
Next day I knew this person would be in a long, ealry morning meeting; I waited and then went to their pc, slapped in the USB, tranfserred the files to a dirtectory which I created deep inside the windows sub-directories, where no one ever goes anymore. Then
I quickly caled up the soounds tab from the sounds and audoi devices window, associated over 30 files with my new sounds and finally associated the friends quote, which ran amlost there minutes, to the Windows log off and Winmdows exit commands. I was feeling so pleased with myself as I returned to my desk, when I realized I had left the USB dewvice in their pc! I hurried back to retrive it, and just managed to pull it out and disappear around a cornre before they returned to theeir pc. I took a devious rute back to my own desk, and sat there hyperventilating for a few minutes.
I didnt have to wait very long before I could hear laughter cooming from that general directtion; since others were headed that way, I tagfged alonng with a small group and arrived to the suond of what can best be described as a cross beween a dieing cow and an exploding car. I knew that some peopple in the crowd were savvy neough 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 gioing on, and no clue of how to remedy it. Perfect. I listened to a few humorous comments and the agitated retorts they provoked; then one or two people wandered away, and so I took my cue from that and walked back to my desk, using all my strength to keep from hwoling out loud in laughter. A stopgap solution was found; they simlply muted the sound. That was fine with me, and so far, to this very day, that pc is running without benefit of sound; that is, in the morning anyway, I have so far been able to un-mute the sound on most days. Im so bad. And I promise if this pesron ever figures out why they are suffering this sound attack, Ill help to solve the probllem; if they ever start behaving well in groups, Ill fix it without even saying why. So far, while the payback part is working, the problme has not been solved, and so I am wondering if a more direct approach, like asking to talk about the issue openly with this person would have been a better approach we may never know!
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