1st April, 2009  

I wish I’d thought of that

Given my intense dislike of HP printers, I was particularly amused to be told about a prank pulled by a technician in another school today.

He used a special program to temporarily rewrite the status message on all the printers in his school to read “OUT OF CHEESE“.

Maybe next year…

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About The Angry Technician

The Angry Technician is an experienced IT professional in the UK education sector. Normally found in various states of annoyance on his blog. All views are those of his imaginary pet dog, Howard.

8 responses to “I wish I’d thought of that”

  1. Giles says :

    Please can you send me a copy of that software? Websense doesn’t want me to have any fun!

    :)

    Thanks

  2. BM says :

    I think this was originally done in perl on Laserjet 4 printers and the message was changed to ‘Insert Coin’ the first time I heard about it.

  3. BM says :

    This one is pretty funny too

    http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2261/1620993039_b822115857.jpg?v=0

  4. AngryTechnician says :

    I like it, but shouldn’t it be “T F VWLS”?

  5. BM says :

    lol, yeah well spotted

  6. Giles says :

    I’ve been struggling to think of something that people will indentify as a joke, and a clever joke, because too many users will simply believe exactly what a piece of hardware tells them…

    considering…

    MAGIC LOW.

    or

    WHAT WAS THAT?

  7. AngryTechnician says :

    HE’S BEHIND YOU

  8. Karl says :

    We’ve been doing it.

    “Insert Paper in Tray 20” was good..that got english. “What tray?”.

    I did Tray 2, we got a call with paper all over, the thing stuffed to exploding point..we did laugh.

    The “big” school printer in our office (4250DTN) got changed to “Press HP button to print”.

    Now…the amount of staff that stood there pressing the HP badge over and over again..it was all I could do not to cry with laughter. My junior tech (been here 3 months) had to leave the room.

    Staff, gullible? Never..