Robbz: This is the Business Tech Playbook, your source for it help for your business. BJ, we take this podcast far too seriously.
BJ: It's true, it's true. Which is why today we're going to do something a little different.
Robbz: We're a Business Tech Playbook podcast to help you, your business and technology needs. So instead going to give you a break from our regular scheduled programming and tell you a little bit about how BJ and I have done pranks in the business. Generally it related pranks and hopefully you can get a nice break out of this in between the helpful podcasts that we do well.
BJ: Some of it might be pranks and some of it we'll be talking about some really funny tickets we've gotten over the last twelve years of being in business and having done some really funny It bits. At the end of the day, we're going to talk a little bit about business, talk a little bit about technology, and talk a lot about some of the funny things that kind of happened as a result of it.
Robbz: So I'll start the party. Beautiful.
BJ: Let's do it.
Robbz: Let's do it. Let's just jump right in. The first thing that I did in a business setting and yes, I did this I shouldn't have in retrospect. And I see clearly why I was brought into the manager's office for the conversation. But I purchased a device and I was using it for company purposes. This is not me just using the company dollar for a company's sake. I purchased a device that is called a USB Rubber Ducky. Now, for those of you that don't know what a USB Rubber Ducky is, you know what a flash drive is? That lovely little stick you plug into the USB port on your computer to save files, of course, and data. So I had a USB Rubber Ducky because I was using it for automation. Rubber Ducky is a device that looks just like that flash drive. You plug it into the computer and instead of having something stored on it, it pretends it's a keyboard and then sends a command to the computer and can do something to the computer when it's plugged in. People use this for penetration testing, sometimes for bad things. We were using it for a test of automation deployment on a piece of equipment. I, however, used it to see if the employees at the company I was at are silly enough to pick up a flash drive from the parking lot, bring it inside the building, plug it into their computer, because that is a security risk. Some people use those Rubber Duckies as these vulnerable points. Well, I knew the person that worked at the front desk of the business I was at and I knew she was very nice, but didn't listen to any of the conversations we had and I was going to have a little fun and prank her. So I left the USB River ducky and I put a shell, a plastic shell on it to make it look legitimate of the business name that we worked at.
BJ: It looked literally excellent.
Robbz: Same company covers, company logo. It was sitting right in front of the building. She picks it up and plugs it into her computer. Now, what she didn't know is what the device was. I had it set so it immediately would change her wallpaper to a glorious picture of long haired Nicholas Cage. You can picture the movie hair flowing in the background, the whole thing, and that's all it would be.
BJ: Tell me it was animated. Was it?
Robbz: At least it was. It did the wallpaper and then it did the log on screen, the company log on screen. It replaced the company log on screen. So all she would see is Nicholas Cage in the background with the hair flowing in the wind. It was so good.
BJ: I'm picturing that. It sounds really beautiful. So I'm sitting there, Nicholas Cage as their background.
Robbz: Yeah, I'm sitting there giggling, and of course, she calls in it. Hey, I think my computer is infected with something. And like, what makes you think that, of course, is the conversation I'm listening in. Well, I don't know, but there's a really handsome movie actor on the background of my computer and of course I have to stop the It person from taking this seriously. And I, of course, confessed what I was doing and had a bit of fun. But that was already proceeded into a ticket. They listened to the call and then I was talking, brought into the office, hey, why were you using Rubber Ducky like this? It was just a wholesome bit of fun. No one was hurt in the in the making of this prank and they just blew the whole thing off, thank goodness.
BJ: To get to the serious part of it for just a second, I think this is part of where security awareness training comes in really heavily, because the second you have somebody plugging in an anonymous thumb drive or something that they don't know where it came from, there's a strong potential business risk. And I'm grateful. It was a joke.
Robbz: Yeah, imagine it wasn't a cheeky guy trying to have a prank. Instead it was somebody malicious. That could have been a real thing. But regardless, if that was beyond a prank that should have went through the security department, more people would have known. Managers would have been let on in. I know why I shouldn't have done it. However, I did enjoy the prank greatly.
BJ: I'm not necessarily saying you shouldn't have even done it. I'm just saying the person shouldn't have picked up the thumb drive and plugged it in big time.
Robbz: And that's a real thing that people do. Like if you hire a security company, some people, they literally pay them to try to penetrate the business. And that's one of their tactics they use when these paid companies they'll leave thumb drives with the business logo in the park. And that's what I did and it was fun.
BJ: A lot of companies like ours say, hey, we do Pin testing, and then they run a simple vulnerability ability scan against the building. I'm taking this as a chance to use jokes to teach actual things here. So well done. I really appreciate the segues.
Robbz: You're welcome.
BJ: But you're welcome. I was literally having this conversation with somebody the other day who was people say Pin testing and they think it means running a simple vulnerability scan, like on the firewall and internally on the network. A reality is a Pin test is an extremely expensive thing to do and it requires some very skilled people and it could be physical security. Like can the person get in the building and gain physical access to your machine? I've walked into a ton of different office or buildings and businesses before just acting confidently, and people are letting me into their server rooms because I'm here as It. People just let you in when you act confidently. That's a real big potential business risk.
Robbz: Big time.
BJ: Same with those thumb drives. It's a joke and I'm glad it was a funny it is funny, but at the end of the day, somebody picking something up in the driveway or just plugging something in that was mailed to them is a really big thing to be aware of.
Robbz: Now, on the same line as this, we'll call it the same category of prank. My manager is very OCD, especially when it comes to the performance of his computer. We worked at an Internet service provider and he had a very high end computer. He liked to do a bunch of multitasking and he definitely used the power of his machine. But he's very OCD about his office, his computer running the way he wants it, the whole thing. So I decided that I purchased a device called a phantom Keystroker. It's another device that looks just like a USB drive, but it's black. This is supposed to be hidden. You don't want to see this one.
BJ: Is it like one of those little nubby USB ones?
Robbz: It's a little longer because back in the day they didn't have those nice little nubby ones. So this is a little bigger, but again, it's not supposed to get attention, is the point on it. It had a couple of different switches. And what you do is you plug it into a computer, and based upon the switches on the setting on the side of the flash drive, the stick, it would randomly just throw the mouse around, randomly type in a bunch of characters, randomly lock your screen for no reason, and it would do it on a very random interval. It wouldn't do it consistently because then you get so peeled with it, you'd give up. Like it do it like every 20 minutes and then it would switch to a couple of hours, and it start doing it again. It was a wonderful device. Plugged it in and it took him, like, half a week. And you could hear him because he was down the hall. You could hear him smack his mouse and swear. It was a lot of fun. It's a great prank. It's really hard to find this device nowadays sometimes.
BJ: I'm really glad that you work in Minnesota and we're in Southern California.
Robbz: I promise you, if I was in office, your life would be much more frustrating, I promise.
BJ: Well, it'd be a lot more interesting. It really would. Well, I do lock my computer when I go to the restroom.
Robbz: I don't need that. As long as I got a USB port, I'm in, baby.
BJ: Well, now that I know that you've got that personality, you're like, can I come to the office for a week? No, you should go to Starbucks.
Robbz: I'm the kind of guy that if I'm at your house and I see that you're like soaking linens in a sink of green liquid, I will dump the liquid and put Jello mix in there. Like, I am that guy all day long just to have fun with you.
BJ: Oh, man. I think it might be good that you're a remote work from home person.
Robbz: Right. Your turn. What do you got up your sleeve? Or are you a much wholesome gentleman?
BJ: Oh, goodness. So we had a few times where we were having some security training around the office, and people weren't locking their machines when they walked away. Really close to a good point, Jamie. I'm really close to blocking unknown USB devices for a couple of different both for a client and for a couple of users around the office. Somebody left their computer unlocked, and so we went and found it. He happened to drive a Jeep, and so we joked that his Jeep was always broken. We found some really hilarious Jeep, broken down images and put them as his background. We did that pretty regularly because he would leave his computer unlocked and we would just go throw a new broken Jeep image on his background and lock screen. And we did a few, like, my pink ponies, that kind of thing. Absolutely resetting people's backgrounds to something that's hopefully not too offensive, but kind of the Nicholas Cage flowy hair level of hilariousness.
Robbz: You got to have fun, so you.
BJ: Got to have fun.
Robbz: All right, next one down my list. So, for those that don't know of VoIP phones that's voice over IP, these phones are fantastic. They make it so you can work from home and just unplug your phone, take it home with you. They're a lot more flexible than the old school phones, just as long as it has Internet connection. You got your full desktop phone there with you. And of course, I've deployed all kinds of these. I used to sell different VoIP systems, install VoIP systems, and doing that. And being the It guy, of course there's certain people I pick on and you can log into these remotely and support them from a different location. Even for Etop. I work in Minnesota, they work in California. If they had more VoIP phones, they haven't given him the keys yet and they won't after this conversation. It's very easy to support those from remote locations. So when I'm working with friends, one particular guy, they did this because he didn't know how to change his wallpaper in his computer. So they put everything to cats. Boom. I'm going to put wallpaper.
BJ: I'm assuming he was a dog guy.
Robbz: Maybe he's like a real macho dude and they want to put everything as fuzzy kittens, I think is the big thing. So wallpaper and the VoIP phone, every week they changes a different wallpaper on his phone to different fuzzy cute kittens. His ringtone gets changed to meow, meow, meow, meow, the whole thing. I've won a step further. That was one separate case. What I used to do is pick my favorite people and beside this cat person, and I would change their hot buttons. So they'd have these key buttons that would automatically dial their people. They dial most common. So I'd log into the phone and change the hot buttons to have all the hot buttons read the same thing. Like if it was going to another business or another extension, it would read the same on the phone. But when they press it, it would dial a gynecologic office in another state. That was a lot of fun. Your face. And he just couldn't get it because every time he hit a hot button, it just gynecology. How can I help you?
BJ: So first off, this is why we don't have phones on our desks, because you would find a way to screw them.
Robbz: Absolutely.
BJ: And also why techs don't have access to our own internal systems, because that sounds like a bad idea, especially after this conversation.
Robbz: Sometimes we take the handset, you know, the actual piece that you pick up and put to your face. Not just a headset, a handset. And we replace that handset because you could order like, Victorian era phones off of the Internet. So then we just replace his phone one day with an old school looks like a rotary phone with like this ornate handle and just make him look like he's completely out of his mind. And for the day he'd have to use it because he wouldn't know where the phone is and he'd have to make phone calls or answer the phone.
BJ: So it was just picturing this guy with like this gigantic phone handset and going.
Robbz: Yeah, imagine like an ivory handle with gold accents. It looks like a chandelier in his hand. It was beautiful.
BJ: Oh, man, I'm picturing the poor elephants from the ivory handle 100%.
Robbz: It looked like that. It was a knockoff. No elephants were hurt in the making. Of these pranks.
BJ: That's amazing. Well, I suppose if it's a VoIP Victorian era phone, that's pretty epic.
Robbz: It was pretty great.
BJ: Well, probably one of my other favorite things to do to really cause some frustration. So it's not quite the mouse wiggler, but you can plug in, get yourself a wireless mouse and keyboard and you can plug it into somebody's device and you can just have it on your desk and just randomly move the mouse.
Robbz: Yeah, just keep slapping around, moving.
BJ: If you feel like irritating somebody, you just totally plug the little dongle into their computer and then you walk away and you can screw with them for the next couple of weeks because it happens whenever you think about it. Whenever you want to mess with somebody, you can just kind of press the move the mouse and cause them some anxiety and frustration.
Robbz: It's cheaper than trying to find that phantom Keystroker I told you about earlier. That's for sure. And it's wireless. They're not going to see a smaller dongle, right?
BJ: I mean, those little logitech dongles are they stick out a quarter inch from the computer, right?
Robbz: Winning all the way around.
BJ: Yeah. Seriously. One of the suggestions was brought up was a sticky tape under the mouse, like over the optical sensor. Oh, that's a classic. That's a beautiful one. Yeah.
Robbz: And that's not going to ruin the mouse either, right.
BJ: It just becomes irritating. And if you get like the really clear stuff or like the more clear stuff, it'll still sort of work, but it becomes very sluggish.
Robbz: So my favorite is going a step further and I found this online. This is not me. This is another evil genius. So credit does not go to my idea here, but I knew a guy that bought talked to the guy online. He bought a roll of stickers with his boss's face on it, some meme that they found in the company that they made, and then they use that to stick underneath. So they flip over the mouse to fix it. And then of course, there's their boss with a weird face on it. So it just added a little bit more flavor to that prank.
BJ: That's actually pretty brilliant. I feel like you already have the picture of my face that you're going to turn into stickers.
Robbz: I shouldn't have had this podcast in retrospect with you. I should have waited until the next time I went to California. You totally should have waited until you weren't prepared. Now you are.
BJ: I'm not letting you near my office.
Robbz: Clearly. Where's the keys? We're locking up, right? One of the more classic this is.
BJ: Why I use a roller ball, so now you can't oh, I just thought.
Robbz: That was from your arthritic cells.
BJ: No, my hands are it's okay. I'm getting some light carpal tunnel.
Robbz: And here I thought you had some sponsorship with a nursing home or something.
BJ: No, I'm saving up for yeah.
Robbz: Parents.
BJ: There's no way to come back from that.
Robbz: And roasted. Another great prank that I used to do, and this was early on in my career, is we were in a much less professional environment that I did this in. Just to let you know, it wasn't necessarily a business office. It was more of in a back room. No customers heard this. And whatnot I would write a script that would change the volume to whatever speaker they're using to max. When this happened, it would replace the windows shutdown sound and the windows start up sound. Now, if you've heard it, the classic window sound, and that would replace it with explosive diarrhea. It was so much fun. But you cannot do this in a professional business environment. It's got to be like in a backroom shop or something else. And it's so much fun because most of these backroom shops, they're connected to, like, little speaker systems because that's where they'll play their Spotify or Pandora. So while they're working through the day, and it's only at the end of the day when they shut down their computer or turn it on that they get this, it's so much fun.
BJ: Oh, that's funny.
Robbz: Just a repulsive echoing across the shop is so much fun.
BJ: Yeah, I feel like this is something that would happen at, like, one of those PC repair shops, back room kind of thing.
Robbz: You hit the nail on the head. My guy.
BJ: A bunch of teenagers all pranking each other. Goodness, for sure.
Robbz: You got another one, my friend.
BJ: So this isn't so much a prank as a funny ticket that we've gotten recently. Awesome. I had a client call me. Their building had no power. And he's like, I need you to get Spectrum stinks. So Spectrum is the only provider at that office for Internet. He's like, I really need you to get me some better Internet that stays on when the power goes off. I was like, Dude, if we can find that, this is gold. But I don't think this works the way you think it works. Started trying to talk back through it or back through the process with him. He's like, I need wireless Internet so that way it stays on when the Internet's down or the power is down. I'm like, Dude, if the power is off, nothing's going to work. He's like, I'll have a generator. I'm like, well, then plug it into the Internet. It'll come back on. I'm just sitting here going, let's walk through this process. The reason the Internet's down is not because there's a problem with the Internet. It's because you have no power if you have generators. Oh, I hadn't thought about that. So it's not as hilariously funny, but no, but more the kind of logic of your way through. Give me some of that Elon Musk Internet so that way it never goes down.
Robbz: I love the moment where they're panicking and they're just so focused on what they're trying to do. They're not even taking a second to understand what's going on. So they're just like, I just need to get this done, please. And no, the city's power is out. No one gets this. And then if you could pedal real fast, we might be able to get it going, and then you can prank the customers in their moment of misjudgment, and that's it.
BJ: They literally had, like, ten power trucks out in front of their building because they were replacing lines, and apparently they sent a thing saying, hey, we're going to shut your office down. And nobody told the owner. And he's just freaking out, like, we have to stay up and keep running, and I need to reopen. And I'm like, Dude, there are ten power trucks in front of your building replacing power lines for, like, 3 miles on that street.
Robbz: Good luck. On the same note, it's not necessarily customers there. They're not oblivious, but sometimes they just don't understand.
BJ: Sure, absolutely.
Robbz: As a technician, you should not prey in that weakness, but sometimes they're just such low hanging fruit, just like that power outlet moment. I was running my own business years ago, and I had a customer that came in and said, I forget if something wasn't working right. And the update installed, but they didn't restart their computer. That's all they had to do was turn off the computer, turn it back on, and it would be fixed. They didn't get it. They said, I have to come see you. The whole thing. It was, of course, forgive me, but an elderly gal, she came in, and at the time, I had my location sitting at a local coffee shop. No one was there. I was good friends with the coffee shop owner. That's where I had my business location, is in the coffee shop. This customer brought the computer to me, and she literally says, I don't know, we need, like, an exorcism or something. The light bulb went in my head. I had to have a giggle. I know there were candles lit next to me in the coffee shop up. No one was in there. I took the moment like, okay, Seance, it is. She's like, what? We're doing an exorcism on your computer? And she's just like, yeah, whatever. Just make it make it happen. I'm like, okay, if we're going to do this, we're going to do this together. Otherwise we can't get it fixed. And she's kind of serious with me. She doesn't know what I'm doing. I said, Set down your computer and shut it down. So she shuts it on the counter and shuts it down. I grabbed the candles, put it like there was three candles, I think put two candles next to it. And then I had one in my hand, and I kind of waved it above, and it a circle fashion.
BJ: I'm like, okay, tell me. It would spilled wax all over it. No, just a legit. I wanted to, okay, that's amazing.
Robbz: I wanted to, but I just waved the candle around it. I'm like, okay, now turn it on. She's like, what? That didn't fix it. She turns it on. Sure enough, it's fixed. And that's all she could do is tell all her friends for the week. I would have people calling me up like, can you exercise my computer? Can you exercise my computer, please?
BJ: I told you as we talked, I would come up with some things. So this is really OG computer time here. So my dad owned a computer shop back in, like, the early 90s, right? And so he was super into it. My mom high technology is a sewing machine. Like, very low tech person, doesn't like computers. I mean, everyone's like, you must know a lot about computers because your husband owns a computer shop. And she's like, don't talk to me about computers. So we were at church, and the video monitor was just going, was wiggling back and forth. And they were like, Laura, do you know anything about this monitor? Because it's broken, it's waving back and forth. And she's like, well, sometimes I know my husband will bang it like that on the side of the monitor and it'll work. It's sure as not she bang the side of the monitor, and it's one of those old gigantic CRT monitors back in the day. And so it just realigned whatever, the photon guns in those things. And sure enough, just one good solid percussive maintenance. And the thing was back up and running perfectly. And she was now the computer genius. And she's like, great. Now you're going to ask me questions that I don't know the answer to.
Robbz: Just all over one fell, swapped to the side and you're set exactly same thing, right? I worked for an ISP for years, and I would be sent to a tier three, tier four deal. I would get only the craziest calls. So sure enough, I had the supervisor of one of the install tech teams give me a call and says, hey, I don't understand what's going on at this house. I need your help. I'd be that guy. So I was dealing with an issue at their house, and I identified that it was a cable modem connection. And I knew what was going on already, but I was there, so I had some fun with it because I knew the guy's house that I was being sent out.
BJ: Okay.
Robbz: I wanted to mess with the technician. It was a new technician in the field. The Internet's just not working, and they can't get the cable modem levels provisioning quite right. I already knew it was bad grounding. I knew that they're already fixing it. They're literally digging up lines. I know exactly what's going on, but I'm not telling them that. I'm pretending to be wizard here. So I get into the place, the customer's watching the noob technician that's like his first or second week at the company is behind me. And I'm like, oh, I know exactly what to do. So I untwist the coaxial cable from the modem, just like the old fashioned cable television. It's that same coaxial for sure. I already know it's a grounding issue and I know I can temporarily fix it. So I just take it and I kid you not, I'm like, oh, let's just do this. And I take the tip of the coaxial cable and I lick it. I lick it and I said, well, it's not quite moist enough and I lick it again. And the customers just sitting there, they're like shitting their pants. They're like, what in the hell are you doing right now? And the technician, he's got like both hands on his face. Like, oh, you're one of those not knowing what's going on. I plug it in perfect levels. They get internet for the next 15 minutes. The whole thing connects and works. But of course it's going to go bad because of bad grounding. But it's just enough to they thought I was some sort of wizard MacGyver that could blow a gum wrapper into a phone to get free minutes. Oh, you should have seen it. Like his head exploded. He was just ready. Like, I'm not ready. I'm quitting. And the customers like, you are the best. I don't want you to lick anything else in my house. But that worked great for me. That worked great for me a lot.
BJ: Excuse me, sir. The only thing you're allowed to lick is that now you can leave, please.
Robbz: Right. So for those that don't know the signal ratio on cable modems, if you have bad grounding, you can clear it up by literally grounding, just like you do on power A to B. But then it'll just go bad again if you don't fix the issue. So, yeah, I'm not telling you to lick your coaxial cables. This is a one time deal. Let the professional on.
BJ: This podcast should be cleared with your doctor or your lawyer or electrician first. So please don't take us seriously and actually lick your cables.
Robbz: Right, don't do that.
BJ: But okay, it was a good one. Now that we got that out of the way. So it's a kind of common tickets that are kind of funny, but when people swear, people make fun of us. Make fun of it, folks, for saying restart your computer. But then we go and actually restart it and it fixes the problem a lot of the time. Or people say, I did restart the computer. And then you go look and it's been on for 40 days.
Robbz: I just restarted it. We have a lot.
BJ: And then you realize that they turn their monitor off and on. How often does that happen?
Robbz: All the time.
BJ: More times than I can count. The monitor has only been on for 2 hours, but the computer has been. On for, you know, 40. So it's a lot of it stuff like that. Most of our day to day stuff is pretty simple, thankfully, unless you're dealing with QuickBooks. In that case, yeah, all bets are off, because if you need a hug.
Robbz: I'm here for you. Get it out. It's QuickBooks. Intuit. Why?
BJ: I think it's pretty much any of the intuit products. It is what it is. We're not getting away from it anytime in this century. But, yeah, if you could choose an accounting program that wasn't intuit, please do that.
Robbz: So you were getting at something. You said if we reset computers and then you're going to tell us a cool story.
BJ: It actually fixed a website for somebody. So we got a really hilarious ticket the other day that said I can't order from Panera. And I'm sitting here going, our brains are just short circuiting. Okay, so you ordering lunch is now a technical It problem, like, what's going on? Well, we call because that's our job. We do a check in and right. Well, I restarted my computer and it finally loaded. And it's like, you needed Panera.
Robbz: I just like to know the thought press on that one. I'm so hungry. I need panera bread.
BJ: I need panera right now. It's like Del Taco or I refuse.
Robbz: To do this on my phone. I need to do this on the company computer. Maybe we're having one of those business meetings and they want to cater. I need this now. Please call Etop. We need sandwiches.
BJ: It was a remote worker. She's never going to the office. Oh, man. I need panera delivered stat. No, it's just funny stuff. Most of the funniest stuff comes from people just not stopping for 2 seconds and thinking about it. And I'm grateful that they're willing to tell us that they can't load Panera and order lunch because it means we're going to hear about the problems before they become bad.
Robbz: Yeah, they're going to be the squeaky wheel in the system at least.
BJ: And it's a funny ticket out of it.
Robbz: I got two more.
BJ: Two more.
Robbz: I got two more.
BJ: You're loaded with so you're definitely the pranker.
Robbz: You're so clean cut. You're just too nice.
BJ: I'm too nice.
Robbz: I got to haze you more often. Here's one I was going to save just for you, but bring it up. I'll put it on the table. There's these little things, and you can look them up if you just Google the term cricut noisemaker. Now these you can get on wish you can get them on ebay. Whatever you're looking for, they're about the size of a 50 cent piece. They're very small on the backside. They have a magnet on the front side of a little computer chip with a watch battery. All right, you take this device and you turn it on. They have a switch, and then you have, like, two settings, and you hide that somewhere in the office. It doesn't have to be somewhere super obvious. You can hide it behind a bookcase. You can put it wherever you want to hide them. In the Chat, they said 50 cent piece might mean something different time and day. I don't know. Bigger than a quarter. It's like the size of the watch batteries. Not the watch battery, the device itself. It's like the size of a whole watch in your wrist. So it's nice and small to hide anyways. You can hide this ominously anywhere in the office. They have the magnet on there so you can get real crafty with it. I used to put them inside the paneled ceilings and whatnot. Somewhere where it's open to the air and not covered is the only thing you need. It can be underneath a desk in a drawer.
BJ: Okay.
Robbz: Somewhere, right? You put that in there and it's programmed that randomly. It could be once every 15 minutes, and then the next one will be in 2 hours, the next one's in 20 minutes. It's very random, depending on the one you purchased, and it just gives an ominous cricket noise. But that little audio chip in there, I don't know how they do the magic in it, but the pitch, no matter where you put it at, the audio will bounce around the room. It's very hard to precisely guess where the cricut is in the office, but continually, it'll have the cricket noise go off in their office, and it will drive them mad. I had a manager for 45 plus days with that in their office, and they were going crazy. They couldn't understand what one day I come to work, and he's completely rearranging all the furniture in his office. And this is like sea level deal, right? Rearranging all the furniture in his office and then literally calling to see if he can't get the exterminator to see if they put some traps or spray in his room to call maintenance. It was so much fun. And it drove him up the wall. It would just crick. I remember having, like, a one on one in his office, and we'll be sitting there, and sure enough, during the half an hour one on one, it go off, and he just freeze and like, did you hear that? And then we have a conversation asking, did you know where that came from? Did you hear that? Listen. Stop. And of course, I'd paint it up, thinking that he's crazy, the whole thing. After that long, he tore apart his office and found that I put it in a panel in the ceiling. And of course, who else would do it in the office? There's 350 people in the company. I'm the only one he immediately assumes. And that right there, that is bias. That is some BS. It could have been anyone. All right, that is unfair. But these are very inexpensive. You can get them for a couple of bucks. Best prank in the world.
BJ: A three pack is $20 now.
Robbz: Three pack, $20. That's the economy we're living in, right?
BJ: Oh, man.
Robbz: Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
BJ: If there's ever a cricket noise, I know to just tear my office apart and then mail it back to you.
Robbz: He did it multiple times.
BJ: It was so good. The fact that he went straight to you should be a pretty good indication of the other things that happened in the office.
Robbz: I literally got it. It was sitting on my desk with a note saying, you're dead. Yeah. A lot of fun, man. A lot of fun.
BJ: So I think we are going to be making a policy that says robbie's not allowed to work in the office.
Robbz: There you go. You can go to the local Starbucks. You're not coming here.
BJ: Exactly. We can sit outside, but you're not coming inside.
Robbz: All right, I got one last one. You got anymore one last one?
BJ: I work with a cyber insurance company called fifth wall and shout out. Yeah. Shout out. Yeah. Right? Exactly. Actually, we're going to get them on this podcast here sometime in the near future, because they do really darn good work. They help make sure you get the right cyber insurance. I'm not affiliated in any way other than that. I think they just do good work. But I was having fun trading memes with one of their salespeople. I totally was like, I should do a really funny web page for him. So I did all the walls at a subdomain. So I had chat GPT write up a really funny review with a picture of myself called all the walls, and I sent it to him. He's like, I mean, it's hilarious. I mean, it's, you know, why you should have cyber insurance and really funny snarky fake review. Basically, I sent it to him, and he thought it was hilarious, and he sent it to his marketing, and they wanted to actually use it. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. But the best part was I was able to build it with chat GPT in about ten minutes, because I told it what I wanted this to say. I gave it some pictures, and I was able to publish it up to a website extremely quickly. I love using tools like that to create jokes for people.
Robbz: So next time you want to make your meme your company office meme exactly. Throw it in a chat GPT. And if you don't like it, tell it to do it. Write this as your favorite actor. That's what I have fun with.
BJ: I was doing a password, like why you should have a good password. I told it to write a story from Shakespeare's perspective, and that was pretty good. And then I told it to write a poem from the perspective of Mr. Mackey on South Park.
Robbz: I'm here to tell you about drugs and alcohol and why they're bad. Okay.
BJ: It was beautiful. It was like, good passwords. Oh, good MK. And it just was like totally as I read it, I heard Mr. Mackey from South Park in my head talking about why good passwords are important. Gather round, kids. It was great.
Robbz: You can do this to make the meme. In fact, if you find like a company memo and you just want to have some fun and you're just laughing between yourselves, be careful of HR. But throw it in chat GPT if it's not something security riddled or some proprietary piece, but as long as you feel it's safe, put in chat DBT and have it rewrite this as and then like you said, Mr. Mackey or Robin Williams or whoever you want George.
BJ: Clooney, you can have a lot of fun with it. And so you try to have fun and give people have a good time without being too crazy. Okay, but what's you said you had one more. What's the last one?
Robbz: I do, I want to leave the listeners with something that they can do in their office. We're a self help podcast with technology, so I'm going to give one to you. A lot of these we can only do maybe write a script. They're a bit complicated. The cricket one's easy, we'll have a link for that. But the last one that I did is there was a good guy that I worked with another department, and I wanted to prank him to have some fun. I know he wasn't technologically savvy, but I wanted to do something that just make him smile. So I hopped into his computer one day, because, again, I'm part of the technical support department in this particular company at the time, and he had an issue, so I took care of the issue for him while he was out taking care of customers or something else. And I decided to install a program that I don't think works today. There's a newer version. I'll have a link for you. And it essentially had penguins that would just walk across his screen all the time. He starts his computer, and suddenly penguins would just come out of every corner of his monitor. They would walk on the taskbar, walk in the windows. If he moves his mouse, he'd whack him in the head and knock him out by accident. If he moves a window, they would fall off the window and fall down with little umbrellas. And then Christmas time, I remember this.
BJ: Yeah.
Robbz: And Christmas time in December, they would immediately, December 1, start wearing Santa hats and then fall down.
BJ: Were they turkeys in Thanksgiving?
Robbz: Yes, they were turkeys. They were chasing on Thanksgiving. The penguins were chasing better. It was a lot of fun. I left it on his computer and he never said a word. Out of sight, out of mind. Over two years later, I've gone and moved up the corporate ladder. I'm at this time doing a different job entirely, and I'm still in touch with the It department and whatnot, but apparently he calls in to the It department saying, hey, I need help with this. They log into his machine, and he's trying to show him what's going on. So you go here, you go here, then I can't open this. And the It person is just losing their mind. And they're like it's like they're in the Twilight Zone because the person won't acknowledge the army of penguins across his computer, literal army of penguins on multiple monitors, just littered in penguins. And instead, he's serious and just showing the It person the issue he's having that he needs help with. And the It person's like, you see the penguins, right?
BJ: Oh, yeah.
Robbz: They've been there for years. Had no idea I did it, had no idea that I was the one responsible.
BJ: At this point, it sounds like they should have known.
Robbz: Well, he didn't care because he could use his computer, and he just giggled and went on with his day. He ignored them. And it's so, you know, imagine two and a half years of living with an army of penguins across your computer screen. It just becomes second nature. He doesn't even acknowledge they exist at this point, right? So he's showing, and he's, like, killing penguins, throwing them off Windows, and he's showing what's going on his computer, and she's just in a Twilight zone. She doesn't know whether to see documentation or call to see let people know that the machine has been poned in some situation or hacked.
BJ: That's amazing.
Robbz: And she's freaking out. So she literally brings it up and takes screenshots. She freezes and shuts down. The computer goes in full ransomware protocol in the company. It hits the manager. That particular manager was the same guy who had the crickets and put it all together. So I'm sitting there traveling at a business meeting, right? And I get, like, four or five phone calls from the company, and I step out of the meeting. I'm like, what's going on? And it's him on the other end. All right, Jackass, you need to fix this immediately. I'm like, what's going on there's? I don't know. A million penguins on this person's screen. And I start bending over and laughing. I'm like, that was two and a half years ago. He still has the same computer. Yeah. You need to take these off immediately. And I've just lost it and losing.
BJ: It all the program, guys, it's not that hard.
Robbz: So I have to de escalate the whole situation. They start the thing over. I show them where the Auto start is, and it's a simple deal, but oh, it was great. So I found that that program, it was originally written in Windows 98, has been updated for your use. It is now called Esheep, and they have sheep penguins, all different types of settings. And you can put, like, little happy penguins across. They'll graze in your taskbar. It's a lot of fun. It's a benign program that doesn't take any system resources, really. But more importantly, they have an upgraded version. And I've been using this more recently. It's called desktop goose. This takes a step further and I find this is much more invasive. The Esheep or the penguins don't do anything. They're just there to make you giggle and point at the desktop goose, however, that actually will run across the screen, bite and grab your cursor and drag it across the monitor. And it'll just continually doing random acts of hijacking across your computer. It's so much fun. It is not a virus. It's just free clean software. It's a good healthy prank. I'll have a link to it as well. Desktop Goose, it's a whole lot of fun.
BJ: There's a really funny so I found it on Esheep 64 bit. It was funny. Somebody left a one out of five star review. I can't uninstall it. Every time I try to click on the app. It makes more sheep. Then the developer then the developer replied with maybe you activated the auto destroy mode. At this point, you get always more sheep until your PC will explode. Shut down your computer before it is too late. And I'm just dying.
Robbz: Yeah. The application allows you to control how many sheep you can put dozens of sheep, you can make it go on multiple monitors. You can allow sound so you'll hear it randomly. It's a lot of fun. But the goose one, you got to try it. It literally is just that, plus more.
BJ: I am going to go out on a legend and say, please don't install these things on your computer, especially not your work computer. Oh, man. That's just giving me like security nightmares here.
Robbz: I'll still have a link out there for you, but don't do it. Here's a bridge. Don't jump off of it, but jump off. You know what I'm saying?
BJ: Here's Starbucks. Don't get a drink.
Robbz: Yeah, you don't need caffeine. Here Starbucks.
BJ: This was a fun kind of semi technology related podcast, but it was a little bit more hijinks related.
Robbz: If you see goose, sheep or penguin, know that it's not a virus. Calm down.
BJ: Well, it might be, but it's at least a fun virus.
Robbz: Oh, man.
BJ: Oh goodness. So next time I think we might talk about automation or maybe cybersecurity or something a little more like accurately business tech related. But at the same time, remember, have some fun. Your It people like to have fun.
Robbz: Don't do this to your It guy.
BJ: Yeah, please don't install the goose on your computer.
Robbz: Prank him with physical things like a whoopee cushion. Keep it classic for your It guy. Thanks for the break, for the regular scheduled programming. Anything else you got to add? BJ?
BJ: No. We appreciate you. If you like what you're hearing, like and subscribe, leave a five star review on any of the platforms. We'd really appreciate that. And if you have any questions, please email podcast@etoptechnology.com. And if you have ideas or suggestions for a podcast, please let us know. We'd love to have you on businesstechplaybook.com.
Robbz: Thanks so much.
BJ: Beautiful.
Robbz: All bye.
BJ: Thank you.