It's Halloween, one of the stranger holidays that I celebrate. Actually it's not so much me that celebrates it as I'm drawn into the festivities for the kids' enjoyment. This year we have a zombie and two soldiers. My daughter has been subtly influenced by my middle son into going out dressed in a camouflage outfit. Hers has sequins, slightly to the dismay of my young GI Joe, but it should be a good time.

As DBAs, we tend to be conservative, careful, looking for stability in our systems. A fondness for tricks is not something that I expect to see in most DBAs, but that doesn't mean we're a dull crowd. On the contrary, I've met many of you at the PASS Summit over the years and I know you can liven up a dull situation.

With this being a holiday, I'm taking a break from the more serious side of our jobs and wanted to share with you a few tricks that I've been a part of or seen pulled over the years on various IT professionals. It's kind of like a fall April Fool's list and I encourage you to submit your own stories.

Remember, now's the time to start planning those April festivities.

I was in Cambridge recently and had the chance to work in the marketing department for the week. They're a good group, though the director is a little serious about his work. So when he stepped out for a long meeting, I couldn't resist the chance to play around. I swapped a few keys on the keyboard, moved the mouse from the left to the right, and then swapped the positions of his dual monitors.

It was a bit of a flop as he sat down when he returned and started working, not missing a beat. Apparently he's not too tied down into working in any particular setup, though I did get a note a couple weeks later asking if I'd done something to his keyboard. Apparently he finally realized those "M" and "N" keys were reversed.

These days most people lock their computers, so there isn't a lot you can do. However a few years ago we played a joke on a fellow manager at one company. He was very rigid i how things were laid out on his desk, so naturally we had to play with that. When he left for lunch one day we went into his office and turned everything upside down. Literally, we hung pictures upside down, reversed the direction of his stack of paper, balanced little statues and bobbleheads on their noggins, even turned his monitor (an old CRT) upside down. That was interesting as the color drained out of it when placed upside down.

He actually made it all the way to his chair and went to log in before he realized what had happened. We had a few weeks of laughter about that one.

One last one and then I'll yield the floor to you other pranksters. When I worked in restaurants, we were famous for sending new hires, usually those that were getting their first job in a restaurant, out for various items. Since we were located on a block of restaurants with plenty of friend working at other establishments, we could send a newbie next door in the heat of the moment for a "left-handed oyster knife". A quick phone call would continue to hunt as our young friend would be told that they'd lent it to the next restaurant down the line. I think we actually had someone go to 6 bars one time searching for something.

We used that later on with a new "paper CNE" in the Novell days. While in a crisis, we had him run down to the central tool store for a "token clamp", designed to help seal those token ring connections.

I'm not sure he ever forgave us for that one.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA

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