April fools is coming! Need help for practical joke!

[arcadepcnut]

This is a sad sad joke but my friend got me good last year. I want to get him good. Here is my plans. I have many many computer powercords lying around. I want to rig on up to blow his arcade machine power supply fuse. I dont even care if it blows his power supply. I just dont want it to flip off the house breaker if that can be avoided since that would give it away. I have plenty of fuses and even a powersupply to replace the blown one. I just want to go down to his arcade room and at midnight replace his power supply cord with my modified one. The next day I'll suggest we play a game. He turns it on and nothing happens (ora sizzle or boom or whatever happens when the supply fuse gets blown). He the will try another cord and nothing will work. I'll let him stress and tell him I think the monitor is blown and then tell him april fools and fix it for him.
<rubbing hands together> this is going to be evil!

thanks in advance for your help.

[hyiu]

it seems like he got you bad last time....
would you mind telling us what he did last time ??...
(hee hee.... sorry... I'm a nosy guy....)

instead of rigging a powercord to blow a fuse....
how about replacing the good fuse with a bad one ??...
would that have a similar effect ??... (or replacing the fuse with a very little amp one that wouldn't hold normally ?? so the fuse will blow when he turns it on ??....)

if you rig a power supply to give like 240 instead of 120... it would blow the fuse... but I donno if it would actually cause any damage (electric shock to human turning the switch and/or to the equipments.......)

well.... I'm no electrician... so, I maybe saying things that don't make much sense...... but I think april fool joke is cool as long as you're sure there's no damage done.....

good luck to you ... and good luck to your friend... haaa haa...
 

[_Iz-]

Why not rig the powercord so there is no contact on one of the wires (permanent open circuit). That way everything looks normal including the fuses and breakers but it won't powerup at all. No chance to fry anything either. Get a cord that looks EXACTLY like the existing one and he won't suspect a thing!

[Wienerdog]

Does his cab run all the time or does he boot it up?

If he boots it up every time, you might want to look around the internet for "prank" programs.  Something you can drop on his machine to simulate a catastrophic failure.

Oh, and don't forget to wire a smoke bomb to his power supply, that would be a good one...

[Brad Lee]

Oh, and don't forget to wire a smoke bomb to his power supply, that would be a good one...

Or fill the entire inside of the cabinet with foam packing peanuts
(although those get pretty staticky so that might not be the best idea... ZAAP!)

[shmokes]

Here's what you can do.  Get a can of regular old Colgate shaving cream (the old fashioned cream, not the gel).  Put it in the freezer over night.  It will expand enough to split the metal cylinder it comes in and you can pry that off with pliers and you now have a block of frozen shaving cream.  Open his cab and tos it in.  The next morning the entire thing will be filled with shaving cream and it will be flowing out of every crack and hole in the cabinet.  Also everything in there will be forever ruined.

Um...wait.  This is a terrible idea.

[arcadepcnut]

Well the reason to blow the fuse is I could never get enought time away from him to do something as time consuming as opening his cab and taking his power supply apart. I thought about the power cord with an open neutral. I tried that on another friend last year. I did it to his brand new flat panel monitor. I didnt want to actually hurt it. Its not funny cause he tried turning his monitor on and it did come on. I was snickering to myself and he just said let me try another cord..I bet this is bad. So he got another cord and he was like yep..i knew it. And then I said april fools and he was unimpressed. This guy I want to get good cause he replaced my xbox with one bad one he bought on ebay that just flashes the green light on the front orange and it boots to a screen that says your xbox needs servicing. I was badly upset and even more so the next day when I was told it was a "joke".

I just HAVE to blow the power supply or fuse with a power cord...just have to. HE would not suspect a thing and I have my mind set on it!
Crossing the neutral and ground or neutral and hot inside the cord results in a thrown breaker not a bad powersupply....I tried it just now
Its funny but not Aprils fools type of funny as it is easily fixed and shrugged off.

[Silverwind]

Here's what you can do.  Get a can of regular old Colgate shaving cream (the old fashioned cream, not the gel).  Put it in the freezer over night.  It will expand enough to split the metal cylinder it comes in and you can pry that off with pliers and you now have a block of frozen shaving cream.  Open his cab and tos it in.  The next morning the entire thing will be filled with shaving cream and it will be flowing out of every crack and hole in the cabinet.  Also everything in there will be forever ruined.

Um...wait.  This is a terrible idea.

haha..

sounds sort of like this one i heard... I guess a woman found out her spouse was cheating on her.. so she got some of that self-expanding packaging foam.. and he had a sunroof.. well she busted the sunroof and filled his whole car up with self expanding foam.. saw a picture of it too.. funny stuff..  

Anyhow.. a good prank? Hmm... how about this..

Does he use an i-pac?  great!
go to where he has the grounds.. and clip the end of the wire so there is no metal exposed.. then put it back in the terminal.. LOL.. so it looks like it's plugged in fine.. but no ground so his controls won't work anymore.. hehehehhe

then just strip off another 1/4 inch and stick it back in to get it working..

[Analog-X]

Dont be destructive.  You can get him back without resorting to causing damage.
 
What did he do to you?

Maybe it can give us an idea for a similar prank to get him back.

[Silverwind]

Dont be destructive.  You can get him back without resorting to causing damage.
 
What did he do to you?

Maybe it can give us an idea for a similar prank to get him back.

ok let me modify my idea..
maybe you can put some type of electrical tape or etc on the end of the wire so that it will not conduct.. just take off the tape/etc and he is good to go..  

if he has a lot of slack wire.. 1/4 inch won't matter much.. but if it's a tight fit.. hehehe.. looks like you'll have to buy more wire

[saint]

Not to be a party pooper, but a practical joke involving rigging electrical sounds like a hideously bad idea.  Getting someone hurt or killed if something went wrong would be one bummer of an April Fool's. . .

[brandon]

I got an idea.. why don't you run 110 AC to the joystick shafts and ask him to play some robotron... that sounds like fun.. then after he's unconscious drag him to the side out of sight and ask another member of his family to come play.. Later, once they all wake up (if they wake up..) yell April Fools and be prepared for big laughs out of everybody...

oh wait... maybe Saint had the best idea

[Sasquatch!]

Not to be a party pooper, but a practical joke involving rigging electrical sounds like a hideously bad idea.  Getting someone hurt or killed if something went wrong would be one bummer of an April Fool's. . .

DON'T LISTEN TO THIS MAN.  DROP AN ANVIL ON YOUR FRIEND'S HEAD AND REGALE IN LAUGHTER.

[Brad Lee]

THis thread reminds me of the SImpsons where Bart shakes up Homie's last beer in a paint mixer


APRIL FOO<BAM!>...

[Wienerdog]

Not to be a party pooper, but a practical joke involving rigging electrical sounds like a hideously bad idea.  Getting someone hurt or killed if something went wrong would be one bummer of an April Fool's. . .

I agree, forget the electrical stuff.  Besides, that won't be funny.  That is too close to what he did to you last year.  Besides, if he built a cab, doesn't he read this forum?  LOL.

Send him "Official" court papers informing him of his $5,000 fine for ROM copywrite infringement.  "www.MameRoms.com was a government sting, and your IP address 207.13.34.219 has been monitored for three months. blah blah blah".   Drop it off at the post office a day ahead of time so that it gets delivered on April 1st.  

I like the iPac idea.  Nothing annoys someone as much as the controllers not working.  Although, that means he has to try playing on April 1st, and try fixing it too.

[seaner]

Does his cab run all the time or does he boot it up?

If he boots it up every time, you might want to look around the internet for "prank" programs.  Something you can drop on his machine to simulate a catastrophic failure.

Too bad I don't have any of the "prank" code I did back in university.. I could probably reproduce it within a day or two...
I Replaced mouse.com on my friend's PC with a TSR that would twiddle the CRT registers at random intervals*.  He wound up swapping video cards, monitor cords, monitors, and then took it into the shop before I let him in on the secret  After that, he put a bios password on his machine.. of course this just led us to wire the password reset jumper directly to his 5-1/4" floppy drive door -- just reset the machine with the drive closed and voila, no more password.  Man I miss the good old days

*Of course, if your friend has a nice arcade monitor set up, this might not be the best medicine for it.

[seaner]

This is a sad sad joke but my friend got me good last year. I want to get him good. Here is my plans. I have many many computer powercords lying around. I want to rig on up to blow his arcade machine power supply fuse. I dont even care if it blows his power supply. I just dont want it to flip off the house breaker if that can be avoided since that would give it away. I have plenty of fuses and even a powersupply to replace the blown one. I just want to go down to his arcade room and at midnight replace his power supply cord with my modified one. The next day I'll suggest we play a game. He turns it on and nothing happens (ora sizzle or boom or whatever happens when the supply fuse gets blown). He the will try another cord and nothing will work. I'll let him stress and tell him I think the monitor is blown and then tell him april fools and fix it for him.
<rubbing hands together> this is going to be evil!

thanks in advance for your help.

Oh, and by the way.. I doubt you can rig a power cord to blow a fuse.  The cord basically has 0 resistance anyways, so extremely large currents can run through it unhindered.. you'd actually need to modify the power supply to draw more current to blow the fuse.  Best idea I've seen so far is to break one of the wires in the cord.. preferrably the HOT wire... don't go busting the ground on your friend.. I remember touching an ungrounded metal refridgerator door once.. not so fun.  Not to mention the incorrectly grounded guitar amp that would zap you if you ever touched the strings and a mic at the same time.

[seaner]

This is a sad sad joke but my friend got me good last year. I want to get him good.
...

I must be in a terribly evil mood tonight... have you considered swapping the polarity on one of his yoke coils on his monitor (if he has an arcade monitor).  we considered doing this to a coworker who was on vacation.. you can quite easily reverse/flip/rotate a monitor image that way.  Swapping X/Y would be incredibly funny to watch.. especially with something like mame where monitor flipping is software controllable.. watch him troubleshoot that for a while >:-)

[Wienerdog]

I'll repeat, forget the power cord and fuse blowing ideas.  

If you are asking the question in a BYOAC forum, I can safely say that there is NO safe way for you to intentionally blow a fuse and it wouldn't be funny if you did.

[seaner]

I'll repeat, forget the power cord and fuse blowing ideas.  

If you are asking the question in a BYOAC forum, I can safely say that there is NO safe way for you to intentionally blow a fuse and it wouldn't be funny if you did.

too true.. by the time the fuse heats up and melts, it's probably too late for <insert sensitive component name here>.

[Amra]

Dood, just replace the fuse with a lower amperage/voltage fuse... it you really wanna cook his noodle, get a slow blow fuse at a close, but not enough size.

[Brax]

dynamite is always funny.



Theres no polite way to say it. Don't be a freaking child! Be a man and suck it up. If he did something to bug you then say something about it. Right then. To his face. This passive agressive, destructive practical joke shite is for adolecents. It's dangerous and stupid. Grow up.
Sorry to beat around the bush.

[arcadepcnut]

Brax needs an april fools joke played on him. Lighten up my friend. Sheez.

To everyone else. Thanks for the suggestions and couple are good and I might do one of those instead.

I'll figure out something to do. It will have to be external and a quick swap type of trick, not a take apart his machine type of trick. I cant just go over to his house and start messing with his machine. It would be to obvious when something did go wrong the next time he went to use it

He doesnt read this group. I converted a arcade cabinet for him about 3 months ago. He loves it and I would love to screw it up for him. Temporarily, Knowing I can fix it later that is

[Generic Eric]

So what did you do?

[CitznFish]

I know it's past April Fools, but you could have switched the keyboard in Control Panel for his cab from 101 US to Dvorak US. Maybe that wouldn't throw off the I-Pac..not exactly sure how that works..

If I-pac sends an 'E' wouldn't windows see the 'E' but replace it with the Dvorak key that replaces 'E'?

[SirPoonga]

dynamite is always funny.



Theres no polite way to say it. Don't be a freaking child! Be a man and suck it up. If he did something to bug you then say something about it. Right then. To his face. This passive agressive, destructive practical joke shite is for adolecents. It's dangerous and stupid. Grow up.
Sorry to beat around the bush.

Brax, you really aren't into the whole April Fools thing, huh?  Plus you know there are a bunch of adolecents here too, did you look at that age poll?

I do agree something destructive is not good.  That just makes you look mean and can make someone be mad at you for a very long time.  And you wouldn't want that person to retaliate by destroying something of yours next year.

I would have done something extremely subtile.  Remap a single key.  Like player 1 button 2 so it didn't work.  Because usually someone will think it is a hardware error, and it would drive them nuts testing the hardware and not knowing why it isn't working.
Heck, if I knew the person didn't know how to use ctrlr files, I's set it up in the ctrlr files, and edit the mame.ini file to use the ctrlr folder.  That would be the last place anyone would look.  You just have to change the cfg folder in the ini file because a cfg file will overwrite ctrlr folders unfortunately.
Then all you have to do is give suggestions like "Check the wiring?"  "The switch working?" "The encoder working?"  Stuff to lead the person into thinking it is a hardware problem, not a software.

see, the trick to a practical joke is to make someone think something is wrong when it actually isn't.  A destructive joke like your original plan something WILL be wrong and needs repairs.  So it's the little things to make the appearance of something wrong.  Kinda like the practical joke of replacing salt with sugar for someone's coffee.
Actually, if you could have done it, putting limo tint on the monitor would have been a great practical joke.  Because that is removable.

BTW, you never mentioned how he got you?  I hope it wasn't destructive.