Sweet Revenge Turns Sour Today at work, I saw an opportunity to get my revenge on Howie for the prank email he sent to me last week.

I was walking by the area where he works, and I saw that he was away. None of his coworkers were around either, so I figured that they were in a meeting, or had all gone to lunch at the same time. Whatever the case was, I knew that I had to act fast.

Since I am a help desk technician for my company, it's not unusual to see me sitting at another person's desk working on their computer. Nevertheless, it was a good thing that none of his coworkers were in sight, because any one of them could tell Howie that they saw me at his desk, and the jig would be up.

My plan was to pull the ole fake desktop trick. The way it works is that you replace the wallpaper of the victim's computer with a screenshot of their desktop, then you hide all of their desktop shortcuts and their start menu. When the victim comes back to their computer and tries to click on anything, nothing happens! It's a classic prank that frustrates the hell out of its victims.

First, I pressed the print screen button to capture an image of Howie's desktop in the clipboard. Then I fired up MS Paint and pasted the image into it. Then I saved the image into his Windows directory with the name, "gotcha.bmp." Then I right-clicked on the desktop and chose "properties." I clicked the Desktop tab, then the browse button, and chose the image of the desktop that I just saved. So far, so good.

Then I dragged his start menu to the top of the screen, right clicked on it, chose "properties," then ckecked "auto-hide the taskbar." The only thing left to do was to hide the desktop icons.

I moved the cursor to the top of the screen and the hidden taskbar appeared. Then I clicked start and "My Computer." I had to drag all the desktop icons to a folder to hide them. I clicked on "Documets and Settings," then "Howie," and I noticed that he already had a folder called "desktop" there, so I thought that would be a good place to hide the icons. As I was selecting all of his desktop icons, preparing to drag them into the folder, I saw, from a distance, that Howie had just come back on the floor. He hadn't noticed me at his desk, but I knew I only had a couple of seconds.

I quickly dragged the icons into the folder and a dialogue box popped up. I quickly closed it and got up from his desk.

As I was walking away from his desk, Howie notices me, and says, "Hey, Bernie. What's up?"

I said, "Hi." I work on the complete opposite side of the building from Howie, so I had to come up with a quick excuse to explain why I was in his department. I said, "I was just passing by to ask you a question."

Howie said, "You need another ride?"

I laughed and said, "No, not this time. I was thinking of buying a dual-layer DVD burner, and I was wondering if you had any recommendations."

Howie said, "You can't go wrong with Plextor. Lite-on is another good brand, and they're really cheap. Sony drives are pretty reliable too. Is this for home or work?"

I said, "It's for home."

Howie says, "I know Newegg had a really good sale on NEC DVD burners recently. I've heard that they're pretty good. Let's see if they're still on sale," and he sits down at his computer.

This was better than I had hoped. I was actually going to witness him as he clicked his desktop to no avail. I bit my lip, tried my best not to grin, and said, "Sure, let's check it out."

Howie double-clicked on the Firefox icon on his desktop. I nearly gagged trying to fight back the laughter, and then, wouldn't you know it? Firefox opened! I was flabbergasted. What the hell happened?

Howie typed in "newegg.com," navigated to their drive section, and showed me a sale on a Lite-On DVD burner, as well as some good prices on the NEC drives he had mentioned.

Feeling dejected, I managed to say, "Thanks for the recommendations. I'll see you around," and then I walked away.

I didn't get too far before I heard Howie say, "Hey, Bernie!"

I turned and said, "What?"

He said, "Come here for a second."

I went back to his desk, then Howie says, "You notice something odd about this desktop?"

Thinking that he had discovered that his start menu was no longer working, I played dumb, looked and his desktop, and said, "No, why?"

Howie said, "Allow me to give you a hint," and he started moving his cursor all over the desktop.

I said, "I still don't see anything wrong." Then Howie settled his roving cursor so that it pointed to one small tell-tale object: an image of his cusor!

Howie says, "You see, Bernie, when you pull the fake desktop prank, you're supposed to hide the cursor before you take a screenshot of the desktop. Sure, not everyone will notice, but you can't prank a prankster. Having two cursors on the desktop is a dead givaway. Also, you're supposed to hide the desktop icons."

Before I knew what I was saying, I blurted out, "I thought I had!"

Howie says, "Well, you didn't. Now, let's see, where did you put my taskbar?" Howie moves his cursor along the edges of the screen, and when he moves it to the top, the hidden taskbar appears. He goes into it's properies, turns off the auto-hide, then drags the taskbar back down to the bottom of the screen.

Then, just to add insult to injury, he drags one of his desktop icons to the right, revealing the image of the same icon underneath it. Howie says, "Cute." He then goes into his display properties and sees the name of the image that I had saved. "'Gotcha,' huh?" he said, "Wishful thinking on your part. Haha." Then he set the wallpaper back to the original image.

Then Howie said, "I'd say 'nice try' but it really wasn't. Sorry, man, but like I said, you can't prank a prankster."

I said, "Damn!," and I walked away as Howie burst out laughing.

Later on, I realized why the desktop icons didn't go away. I was trying to copy them from the desktop to the desktop. I'm such an idiot! That dialogue box that I closed too quickly to read, said, "Cannot move file. The source and destination file names are the same."

I said it before and I'll say it again:

Damn!
- Bernie  ¶ 6:15 PM