From: IN%"KENNEDY@Eisner.DECUS.Org" "Terry Kennedy" 1-MAY-1997 21:49:13.48 To: IN%"TERRY@spcvxa.spc.edu" CC: Subj: Notefile SHOP_TALK Note 271.28 Return-path: Received: from Eisner.DECUS.Org (SYSTEM@Eisner.DECUS.Org) by spcvxa.spc.edu (PMDF V5.0-8 #19122) id <01IIDCGTPAKW009Z44@spcvxa.spc.edu> for TERRY@spcvxa.spc.edu; Thu, 01 May 1997 21:48:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: from Eisner.DECUS.Org by Eisner.DECUS.Org (PMDF V4.2-12 #4291) id <01IIDCGLK6E800242O@Eisner.DECUS.Org>; Thu, 01 May 1997 21:48:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 21:48:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Terry Kennedy Subject: Notefile SHOP_TALK Note 271.28 To: TERRY@spcvxa.spc.edu Message-id: <01IIDCGLKZC200242O@Eisner.DECUS.Org> Organization: Digital Equipment Computer Users Society X-VMS-To: kennedy MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT <<< EISNER::$2$DIA7:[NOTES$HIVOL]SHOP_TALK.NOTE;1 >>> -< SHOP_TALK >- ================================================================================ Note 271.28 Practical jokes (non-mean) at work 28 of 29 EISNER::OSUDAR "John Osudar" 76 lines 1-MAY-1997 18:04 -< fun things for annoying users :) >- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One day, one of our VMS users called to complain that he couldn't run his program. I used a spy program to hook up to his terminal and discovered that instead of typing RUN XXXXXX he had typed RUIN XXXXXX several times without noticing the typo. So I concocted some special SYLOGIN command definitions just for him... RUIN XXXXXX would produce one of the error messages: %SYSTEM-I-RUINED, XXXXXX has been ruined You can't ruin something that's already this bad! I've always heard that is on the road to ruin If you want to ruin XXXXXX, hire a student to fix it Spill a bottle of red wine on it; that worked on my shirt! How much will you pay me to ruin XXXXXX? I'd like to ruin XXXXXX but I can't RUN. The command is RUN. Not RUIN. Got it? %SYSTEM-F-DONTBERIDICULOUS, I don't think so! Oh #$%^, I think you misspelled THAT one! FUN ABCDEF would produce one of: FEDCBA There, wasn't that fun? Sorry, fun with ABCDEF is prohibited by DOE orders RUN. The command is RUN. Not FUN. Got it? So this is what you do for fun. You're really sick! %SYSTEM-F-NOFUNALLOWED, cannot have fun with ABCDEF ABCDEF ABCDEF ABCDEF ABCDEF ABCDEF ABCDEF ABCDEF ABCDEF ABCDEF Are we having fun yet? "ABCDEF"??? Fun is where you find it, I suppose. The first time he set off this little trap, he called me on the phone laughing his head off. Later I forgot that I had done this, and a couple of years later my fat fingers slipped and I typed FUN SOMETHING instead of RUN SOMETHING, and got one of my own error messages in reply. The code's still there to this day (too bad the VMS users aren't!) Our victim is the same fellow who decided to "learn about VMS files" by looking through *MY* directories for interesting stuff. Most of my programs and other files were world readable at the time so he had a lot to look at. I determined where he was snooping and created a file there with some innocuous but interesting name, and put a copy of the console SYSTEM CRASH message in it, followed by a control-S. A few minutes later the phone rang... it was our friend... "uh... I think I just did something bad to your VAX..." :) (This was also the fellow for whom I modified his LOGIN.COM to use F$SEARCH and F$FILE_ATTRIBUTES to find every one of his files and display a %DELETE-I-FILDEL message with the name and file size -- after doing a SET NOCONTROL=Y first so he couldn't kill it. I forget what he'd done to annoy me that prompted THAT one... :)