Posted: 4/11/2007 5:40:11 PM EDT
This guy at work is the designated computer guy. He has the attorney's buffaloed and a couple of the other employees because he "fixes" stuff. In all actuality he knows less than most of us and just employs a trial and error technique. He's a complete PITA too. So, today I decide to have some fun.  I downloaded DrTCP from Dslreports and set his TCP Window to 100 and MTU to 28 (just low random numbers, no math).  www.dslreports.com/drtcpThis computer is his new build (POS conglomeration of mixed parts) and he keeps opening the browser and shaking his head! It's funny because his job requires no Internet, but all of the sudden his DSL connection is slower than dial-up and ours is fine. |
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Take a screenshot of his computer (ETA: just hit printscreen while nothing is running! it helps also if you move your mouse cursor over to the right top most edge of the desktop so it doesn't show up) Open up a microsoft paint window, control-v to paste it Save the resulting bmp somewhere, give it a name you'll be able to find (c:\desktop.bmp works) Make a folder on his programs menu in his start menu; name it something useful like "desktop stuff" or something...drag and drop the entire contents of his desktop, all icons, everything, into that folder, clearing his desktop completly of all icons Go to the Control Panel, go to the display properties, and set his background/desktop to be that screenshot you took earlier, c:\desktop.bmp Go to the start menu, settings, taskbar and start menu, and check auto-hide. Wait for the task bar to go away. Stand back and watch the resulting hilarity as he tries to do anything To fix - change his desktop background to something else, move all the icons from the start menu folder back to desktop, unhide his task bar, have a nice day ETA I've edited this thing like 8 times, its been so long since I've done it.. |
That is so cool! And just mean! I have to save that one for future reference. Left and right arrow are pretty good too. PS - It works on Vista too..... 
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The TCP Receive window determines, in part, the amount of packets you can download, and won't continue without acknowledging the sender. If you increase the size, you get faster speeds for broadband connections. It worked great on 98 and older OS's. The MTU is desribed here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_transmission_unit By lowering both of these to an extremely low number, the connection is slow as hell. It's funny as hell to watch this guy wait and wait for his homepage to open. LOL The TCP window is usually set to 263,536 (XP) and the MTU should be at or close to 1500. |
Down arrow made my screen upside down. Left arrow put the task bar on the right, and right arrow put the task bar on the left. Up arrow put it back to regular. |
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Once upon a time I installed the Blue Screen of Death screen saver that sysinternals.com had on their website on a database server in the NOC. Naturally I hung around in there waiting for the right guy to wander by, as I didn't want anything bad to happen when he saw it. As luck would have it, the 2 minute time period when I left to take a leak is when the DBA came in, shit his pants, and power cycled it. A production database server. An important one. This thing had 4 redundant power supplies on 2 separate power sources to prevent that kind of crap. Yeah, things were tense for a while, but I rationalized it as his own fault for not configuring the machine to be more tolerant of a failure like that. He should have run a cluster... 
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Yeah, but it's been a long time since I've done anything with that setting, so I didn't remember where to find it. I'm in the registry a lot in my own machine though. I've been thinking of all kinds of stuff. I could prevent him from changing his screen saver settings, wallpaper, and much much more. Good ole Group Policy editor is a fun tool. 
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I did the BSOD to this guy too, it was great! LOL |
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I'll bite. I do network security for a living and often diagnose network connectivity issues. MTU and TCP windows aren't high on the list of things I check. Normally its just a slow connection or transmission errors. I would eventually do a network capture and see it, but geez. On a windows box especially it would be one of the last places I'd look. -Foxxz |
That's what is so funny about this. The thing is, this guy is a real asshole and not a computer tech. He's tinkered and built a few machines, but if he fixes a problem, it's only because he screwed around so much and got lucky. He said today that a wireless mouse another employee mentioned wanting wouldn't work because his machine is still running Windows 98.  He also told one of the attorneys his computer was going bad and doing what is called "clocking". I said "Are you talking about over-clocking?" He replied "No, clocking. The system bus is getting too many errors and won't route data because the motherboard is crapping out". I thought he was high. He has no equipment, no training, and he's selling BS everyday.This is the same guy who told all of us he was able to get to PA from here (AZ) faster because the pilot went to 60,000 feet and pushed the engines harder. He makes up the most ridiculous shit and isn't joking. |
PURE EVIL!!! 
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I was going to suggest that same thing.
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One of my co-workers, already a very paranoid type, used to wait until the rest of us left and check out porn or whatever on the company computer. We knew this but didn't care as long as he didn't get the rest into trouble. One day when he was away from the computer, I switched the screensaver to the Scrolling Marquee and wrote the words "I Know What You Did" and set the time for 20 minutes. Later when he was alone for a while, he stopped to rest, smoke a cigarette and then the Marquee came accross the screen. He freaked out, yanked the plug out of the wall, thought better of it and rebooted. Then he cleaned out all the temp files, cookies, history, etc. and was in panic the rest of the day, pacing back and forth. When it happened again the next day, again he was in a panic until someone else saw it and told him what it was. He was pissed at me for a long time.
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See now thats a good gotcha joke. No time spent debugging something that wasn't broken. |
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Server admin (HPUX) once jumped my shit for using the docs on a similar machine to run a routine procedure on a different machine. I had little choice, there were no docs for the computer involved, the procedure had to run, and on third shift, the admins seemd to have a lot of battery problems with their pagers. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was to call him the next time, and every time this situation came up. Two weeks later, procedure set to be run again, still no docs for the procedure, so per orders, I called him. He had me postpone the procedure, no apparant problems. Next night I have a nasty e-mail from department management, telling me not to bother lofty admins for simple shit like this, questioning my judgement in the process. I replied calmly, quoting the admin's orders to call him word for word, and that was the end of it....well almost. One night the admin in question was running a middle of the night upgrade, ran into problems, was there very late, and forgot to turn off or lock his desktop machine. A friend and I used his machine to visit a website concerning "H-codes", essentially configuration for fusion weapons. The site had a wicked DOD warning, "We are monitoring you every second you are on this sensitive website, your IP is logged, violators will be shot and then tortured", pretty much the whole scary bit. We left it there, the blankscreen screen saver kicked in, and since he'd been up late, he used comp time to show up around noon, all exactly as expected. He pretty much flipped out when he saw where "his" computer had spent the night. He involved the same management as before, but since his machine had sat untended for half the first shift, no-one could prove who might have been involved. (The network admin certainly could have proven what time the packets flew, from the firewall/DMZ/proxy logs, but he and I were buddies, no risk there.) Since nobody who cared could prove anything, generic memos warning the whole department to surf carefully flew and that was the end of it. Except for the wise ass grin I layed on him next time we crossed paths. He knew. He couldn't prove it, but he knew. Moral of the story, don't fuck with people who are paid to be awake while you sleep. 
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