Back in the old days of Windows 3.1 and 3.11, I worked for a mom & pop computer store.  We built custom computers, sold them with our own name, etc.  I worked in the Quality Control area where we would test out the computers before they were to be boxed up and picked up by the customer.  As it is with many jobs, there were some times when there was a slow period; as such, a few of us would engage in some friendly pranks with each other to make things a bit more fun to pass the time.

Gary and I liked to mess with another co-worker, Jeff, who worked at the parts and service area.  He was a good sport about it, and always laughed at our antics, so this time we figured it’d be the same thing.  While some of Gary’s pranks involved things like gluing various items to my desk while I wasn’t looking, I liked to do something that was more fitting with our field.

Jeff’s computer up front in the customer area had the old marquee style screen saver – - it scrolled something like “Derptech computers,” etc.  As you can imagine, marquee screensavers were ripe pickins for pranking.

The file that the marquee data was stored in was a simple .ini (Win.ini, if I remember right), so I accessed his workstation through the network, changed the text to something like “Jeff is a dumbass” (or more likely something way more crass), and waited for the screensaver to activate, and then Jeff to come back and laugh at us.

A few minutes passed, and then a frantic call came back from the big boss saying “Can you guys get into AccPac?” (our accounting system).

Hmm…no…

Turns out, AccPac was so friggin’ unstable, that even a simple manipulation of an INI file on a client workstation caused the entire company’s accounting system to crash.  HARD.  FOR HOURS.

I never admitted to my deed, and Derptech has long since gone out of business…related?   Maybe…