SSH Computer Possession Prank – Part II
Last time, I started telling the [long] story of the month-long epic computer prank we pulled on one of our house-mates. This is part two of the series.
Disclaimer: This prank involves some steps taken which may be ethically unacceptable if abused. I assure you that we did not do anything to harm anyone, and we certainly wouldn’t encourage that kind-of behavior. It was all in kind-hearted fun, and though we had absolute power over Jordan’s computer, we only ever utilized it for comedy.
March 16, 2010
We decided to begin slowly, making the computer say things it had said before like “Opening iTunes” or “Today’s date is Tuesday, March 16, 2010.” We used the default voice, and only did it a few times. We heard no real response from Jordan, and it was generally boring.
March 17, 2010
Today we really started to get into it. I was in the kitchen cooking pancakes when I decided to grab my laptop and play around a bit. Still using the default voice, I started making recommendations, “Would you like to open iTunes?” or “Opening Google…” followed by the very act of opening Google:
open "http://www.google.com"
I even muted his computer while he was watching a video for kicks. Then I threw in a “Good afternoon Jordan” for good measure.
Later, I was joined by Ariyan, also in on the joke. We decided to take it for a spin together.
Be aware that at this time, Jordan was on the phone with someone, and I was blasting Pink Floyd from my room.
We started with the usual “Would you like to open Google?” in the default voice, but then decided to go further and ask “Would you like to video chat with friend contact Abby via iChat?” in the Bruce voice. Hilarious.
And so, in a stroke of genius, we decided to give him some hope for the future, and in the Agnes voice, we asked “I noticed you were not utilizing the voice command feature…would you like to disable mac voice?” To which we heard from the kitchen a loud, “YES!”
So naturally we followed it with a “Voice command continued.”
For kicks, we then decided to creep him out a bit. Recall that Pink Floyd was playing… “iTunes genius recognizes Pink Floyd, would you like to download album echoes?”
…and to finish it all off, we start playing an AC-DC song in his iTunes at full volume.
So minutes later, we’re done having fun and he comes out to tell us what’s been going on. He tells us that his computer keeps talking to him, and we just suggest uninstalling that voice feature he installed last week. He explains that he already did that, but now it just keeps talking and talking.
We act like we don’t believe him–like he’s pulling some kind of prank on us!
He tells us that he was just on the phone with… MAC TECH SUPPORT! Wow, these guys must have thought they were being pranked. I know if someone had called me about this while I was at Geek Squad, I would have assumed it to be some punks making a prank phone call at tech-support’s expense! This has become such a meta-prank.
He detailed us in on everything we just did to his computer, and we kept our cool pretty well. We just kept telling him we didn’t believe him and that we weren’t going to fall for his joke.
An hour later, I threw in a time notification and he ran in my room to ask if I heard it. My music was too loud, so naturally I didn’t.