In one of my favorite blogs, a challenge was recently posed to the readers: What would be the best Disgruntled Bomb you could leave for your former cohorts? this isn't the most obfuscated code necessarily, more the most innocuous and annoying code you can think of.

DISCLAIMER

Admittedly, I am asking for your submissions of less than benign code or ideas for code, this is an exercise in FUN. I _implore_ you PLEASE DO NOT POST MALICIOUS CODE. i.e.:
overriding the print function to randomly print obscenities: very funny,
writing code that exposes one's self to minors, criminal...,
you get my point.

please note:

while this thread is designed merely for amusement, believe it or not, there are less scrupulous individuals than myself, please do not post or run any code in this thread without fully understanding what it does. Conversely please do not post any code with out fully explaining what it does. Thank you and let's have fun.

Easy Reader Version: How to be an amusing pain in the ass not how to get locked up.

my thoughts:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Bring You Own Code The Disgruntled Bomb
by anonymized user 468275 (Curate) on Apr 14, 2011 at 08:53 UTC
    Faultless pieces of clearly readable ordinary work. Because there is no better revenge than success.

    One world, one people

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Re: Bring You Own Code The Disgruntled Bomb
by Fox (Pilgrim) on Apr 14, 2011 at 14:13 UTC
    Some that comes to my mind:

    Setting the array start to 1 instead of 0:
    $[ = 1;

    and, making rand always print the same sequence:
    srand 0;
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      Evil :)

      The first has been deprecated and issues warnings in 5.12:

      $ perl -wE'say$[;$[=3;say$['
Use of assignment to $[ is deprecated at -e line 1.
0
3

      [download]

      The srand one is funny.


      Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn
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        The first has been deprecated and issues warnings in 5.12
         oh that's good to know, I'm still using 5.10 so I didn't knew that.
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Re: Bring You Own Code The Disgruntled Bomb
by davido (Cardinal) on Apr 14, 2011 at 16:12 UTC

    A non-Perl solution: Do a screen capture, then full-screen it in your image viewer, and walk away. Simple, and the user figures it out in a few seconds but gets a chuckle out of it.


    Dave

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Re: Bring You Own Code The Disgruntled Bomb
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 14, 2011 at 18:17 UTC

    Set the screensaver to be an image of a blue screen of death. Bonus points if it says "Flagrant System Error"

    Add a background script toggle the caps lock key to a random state every hour +/- 30 minutes.

    Change the sound scheme to include the faint noise of electrical arcing, and capacitors popping during critical fault messages.

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Re: Bring You Own Code The Disgruntled Bomb
by wazoox (Prior) on Apr 16, 2011 at 09:38 UTC
    Not programming and not perl : tape a piece of paper under your co-worker mouse, masking the laser (or steal the ball if the mouse is really old).
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      Not programming and not perl :

      Take revenge on your two-man office mate who frustrates your concentration all day, every day by printing out every trivial damn email, memo and circular he receives, as they arrive, for filing in triplicate, on an ancient and extremely noisy dot-matrix printer.

      Method:

      1. Take 3 of those long, thin party balloons and inflate them one inside the other.(Quite hard to do!)
      2. Force the result into the carriage space of said printer.
      3. Tape a thumb tack to the print head.
      4. Wait patiently for his first email of the afternoon to arrive.
      5. Watch with long and deeply anticipated glee as the printer head starts to traverse, slows, and briefly groans, before quite literally exploding. With a noise so loud that you even you start.
      6. Laugh uncontrollably as your office mate half stands, does a mid-air double-take, combined shudder and dive for cover worthy of Ang Lee. (And later attribute it to a nervous side effect.)
      7. Suffer several interminable seconds of remorse and regret before it becomes clear his heart hasn't stopped.
      8. Spend the rest of your life in wonderment at the utterly amazing destructive effect a balloon and a pin could have upon the not insubstantially built Epsom MX-80. An effect so destructive that no trace of either balloon or pin were ever discovered.
      Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
      "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
      In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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        I applaud this public confession, commiserate with you, admire you for the act, and apprehend the impact this officemate had on your personality.

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      I'm told that those who can't touch type have an unpleasant time if someone switches the key tops of the I and O keys.

      Regards,

      John Davies

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      Those are all actions to be taken when you still work there, bot ok, that might be fun too.

      Swap the keyboards of two opposite sitting colleagues.


      Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn
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Re: Bring You Own Code The Disgruntled Bomb
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 14, 2011 at 18:24 UTC
    The Disgruntled Bomb

    What a stupid stupid horrible name .... I would leave a note

    Left you a disgruntled bomb, hope you find it

    :)
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Re: Bring You Own Code The Disgruntled Bomb
by scorpio17 (Canon) on May 06, 2011 at 13:35 UTC

    I played the following prank on a co-worker once: I logged in to his workstation remotely, then used the audio tool to play a "phone ringing" sound. He thought it was his real phone! I could hear him through the cube wall saying, "Hello? Hello?!"

    When that got old, I started playing a "flushing toilet" sound, and he finally figured out what was going on.

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      20+ years ago, my then employer used Sun workstations, running SunView. Its /dev/console was world writable, making that anyone logged on the machine could write to terminal windows. Including special escape sequences that moved or resized the windows.

      I've had lots of fun with that. Took people weeks to figure out why their windows were slowly moving or shrinking, and who was behind it.

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