Had an old birthday card from my wife. It featured one of the original Saturday Night Live cast. When you opened the card the actress went into her diatribe about "Endangered Feces". (Was supposed to be "Endangered Species") Pretty funny card. Well, it was well past my birthday and 4/1 was coming up. So into my bosses office I went when I knew he was out on the floor. I took that part of the card that contained the chip, battery and speaker and stuck it under his desk drawer. The little paper tab that makes and breaks the contact to turn the card on and off - I taped that to the back of his desk so that when he opened the drawer the paper tab would pull out and the card would light off.

I watched for when he came back in and I went in on the pretense to talk about a problem with one of the products. Asked him to look to see who was qualified for a particular task, knowing he'd pull out his little black book. The shop was kind of noisy and the card wasn't all that well heard. But you could hear the diatribe about feces and he began to look puzzled, stopped and pausingly, he said "Do you hear that?" He put his ear to the wall, to the window, looked even more puzzled, sat back down, put his ear to his desk and said "WHAT THE HELL???" He opened the drawer and it was a little louder and he started going through his entire drawer. Finally he pulled his chair out and got on his knees and discovered the card and said "Very funny Tony!" Then we laughed and he said "I know EXACTLY who I want to do this to - the bosses son!"

Almost forgot about that one.

 

Sure! After the weekend.

Might be fun to put a vibrating motor in the box along with a chip loaded with something like a munchkin screaming "LET ME OUT OF HERE!" Have it do that for a few seconds then reset for the next time it's picked up. Or use a spring loaded switch that bounces when moved. Maybe metallize the sides most likely to be picked up by. Every time that switch clicks closed and open again it can discharge a battery through a coil and send a mild shock to the sides where the person is likely holding the box by.

 

Got zapped by a moderator over my shiny box with a coil and dropping nail post for being too "stimulating" a post! One of my young age stunts, along with nitrogen triiodide sprinkled in front of the teacher's blackboard in chemistry class. At work, you NEVER put your hardhat on without looking inside it as the confetti from the 3 hole paper punch was popular.

 

Might be fun to put a vibrating motor in the box along with a chip loaded with something like a munchkin screaming "LET ME OUT OF HERE!" Have it do that for a few seconds then reset for the next time it's picked up. Or use a spring loaded switch that bounces when moved. Maybe metallize the sides most likely to be picked up by. Every time that switch clicks closed and open again it can discharge a battery through a coil and send a mild shock to the sides where the person is likely holding the box by.

Here is the schematic. Your ideas are great! The original was very simple.

 

Just wrapping up a successful day of pranks. #1 this year:

The wife has an old TV (CRT) that has a built in VCR. Yes, an OLD TV/VCR. She has several workout tapes she just loves. Yesterday while she was at work I opened the TV and swapped the wires on the convergence coils (I think that's what they're called; they control the beam of the CRT). Everything on the left would appear on the right. In other words, backwards. Didn't take long before she was complaining there was something wrong with her TV. All the words were backwards. She still did her video, but when the instructor would say "Stretch out your right hand" it would be the wrong hand.

She wasn't impressed.

But I sure had a good laugh. Too bad she didn't have a friend to share the experience with. That would have made it priceless.

 

She wasn't impressed.

Now you can make it up to her by getting those tapes transferred to digital media in anticipation of the failure of the deck, the tapes, or both!

 

Hello,

@Tonyr1084 , The coils that move the trace are the deflection coils.
You likely changed the horizontal coils.
When you would change the vertical coils, the picture would be up-side down.

Bertus

 

Hello,

@Tonyr1084 , The coils that move the trace are the deflection coils.
You likely changed the horizontal coils.
When you would change the vertical coils, the picture would be up-side down.

Bertus

Yes, those are the coils I'm talking about. And yeah, I knew about swapping top to bottom as well. The harness was not clear which set went to which coils so I had to guess. Luckily I got it right the first time.

I remember back in the 70's a friend had an old console TV and you could simply move a couple spade lug plug-in connectors and swap the video left to right and top to bottom. It was that from which I drew my inspiration. Today, some computers, you can hold the control key and press one of the arrows and swap the video side to side or top to bottom. I've done that as well. But you have to rearrange the icons so it appears nothing has been tampered with. Then the mouse moves right when you sweep it left.

 

We took the bosses phone apart and moved the numbers around so the sequence was vertical instead of horizontal...

 

We took the bosses phone apart and moved the numbers around so the sequence was vertical instead of horizontal...

Will definitely need to remember that one. But where did you put the zero?

 

Will definitely need to remember that one. But where did you put the zero?

Probably where it started out. We could make calls but he couldn't.