Favorite old threads - Page 2

On October 02 2008 22:20 Smurg wrote:
You walk along and the sound is getting louder, the irregular beat of hundreds of footsteps surrounds you. All you hear is the busy chatter of over two hundred university students as you enter the hall.
The air is full of the pre-lecture social buzz and as you walk slowly and casually through the lower double doors of the lecture space and look around for a place to sit. Your neck cranes upwards and around slowly; drinking in the social vibe of the place and you eventually settle down awaiting the professor.

The scene is set.

Flash back an hour:

I'm in the library with a friend, we have a lecture soon, but for now we're killing time and doing some work for an assignment due in later that day. My friend, a male of 21 is a fairly diligent student, he generally starts his assessments early and always has a fair bit to say in class. We're sitting at the computers; I'm busy checking Facebook and he's getting ready to print some storyboard templates for a film project.

I'm idly sitting around and clicking through drunken photos of the last weekend past, with no malicious or humourous intent on my mind currently; the simple amusement of the various funny photos is all that is occupying my mind at present.

As most students tend to, my friend had a USB flash drive to store and carry work around easily during semester time. A few moments prior he had been showing me his editing assignment and the various cuts he'd made, and how he'd arranged the sequence (an assignment we all had to do). He had made his fairly dramatic, as suited the scene and he'd used music really well. All of this is a side-issue however. As he'd been showing me the saved film clips from his flash drive, I'd been able to see that he had all of the subject outlines’ saved in PDF format and each unit had its own folder on the drive. Now at the time, this was no more of a thought than 'Wow, he's organised, I should try some of that.' I had no idea that this flash drive was about to become besmirched; and by my own hand.

Now, there was a long queue for printing at this stage, as there must've been a lot of projects due this day, there was a queue for binding and a fair demand for computers (and I was on Facebook, go figure). He needed to draw a few shots on his storyboard before our class that came directly after the lecture, so he lined up 5 copies of the template into the overall printing queue for the whole library. He walked off saying "Mind my spot man; I'll be back in a bit." This of course when I looked at his screen and saw the flash drive was open -- he'd been using it to open the template file that he'd saved.

This also, is of course where I decide to 'have a little fun', innocent fun in a joking manner, much like most young adult males will prank their friends, I chose to prank him a little -- maybe in the hope that his mum or girlfriend would see, or he would just see it and laugh. So, being the true friend that I am -- I started making a bunch of notepad documents, and saving them as .avi and .mpeg and so forth, this was fairly standard, what, however, was not standard were the names that I chose to give these files.

We were a little late, and as we walked along, the sound was getting louder; the irregular beat of hundreds of footsteps surrounded us. All we heard was the busy chatter of over two hundred university students as we entered the hall; it was lecture time.
The air was full of the pre-lecture social buzz and as we walked slowly and casually through the lower double doors of the lecture space we looked around for a place to sit. We craned our necks upwards and around slowly; drinking in the social vibe of the place and saw that most seats were taken -- we'd need to sit at the bottom, near the front.
We talked for a few minutes, realising it was 10 past we thought about leaving and doing more work for the next class -- but just as soon as that thought had cropped up in our minds, the professor entered the hall, walking briskly.

He hurriedly got out his notes and his USB drive to open up his presentation that would occupy us for the next hour or so. He called us to attention, and the chat died down very slowly, as it always does, yet snippets of chat continued to a small degree from various points around the large, open space.

(Our lecture hall has a static computer there that professor’s plug their USB's into. It is linked to the projector and the audio outputs, and the professor also has dimming switches for the lights/volume etc.)

He had most of the ears in the room listening by now, and the sound of silence, with intermittent coughing and laughter was all that could be heard. He begun the lecture, the presentation that followed was going off without a hitch; he was talking excitedly about new media technology and showing us picture examples. As per normal, the speech digressed into apparent tedium and a level of technicality that only a select few people are interested in listening to.

The attention however became more focused when he brought up the issue of the major project that would be due at the end of semester. He was to go over the outline now and discuss the major points of the essay and what level of quality is expected. In essence, he was going to give us the general parameters of what to write, and what not to write. There is nothing more attention grabbing than the promise of better marks if you listen to what someone has to say. He made a firm point of this and started to open up the browser, to go through the uni website and look at the outline.

(We have a system that allows you to get all of the resources for your subject, it generally contains past lecture notes and so forth, discussion board and also the unit outline.)

But, alas, the static computer was unable to connect to the network and subsequently, the internet. We all saw his futile attempts to connect via the giant, 15m x 20m projection in front of us. He had always relied on this network to open up the unit outline, but it had failed him now! He had no unit outline available on his USB, since the network was always so steadfast -- but not now.

There was however one man in the audience who did have the unit outline as his disposal. My helpful and diligent friend, with the USB of destiny in his pocket -- his helpful and diligent nature yearned for approval and he was up in a flash to offer his services -- bless his conscientious nature.

Now, knowing what is on the USB, I am not sitting there with an open grin on my face; I was actually a little scared. I didn’t know what was about to happen, about a million scenarios ran through my head; most of them ending in some kind of punishment or repercussion against me. So, with my brain in hyper-paranoia mode, he continued purposefully towards the lecturer’s stand, the moment seeming to take forever, he was now walking in slow-mo. My stomach was tightening and I almost wanted to scream out “NO! DON’T DO IT!” but I knew that would only lead to further problems, and with no rational explanation for that kind of action; it would serve only to create confused questions from the lecturer et al.

It was inevitable now, it really was, it was as if the whole universe had been leading up to this moment since the dawning of time – the prophecy was about to be fulfilled – it was a make or break time indeed.

The USB was loaded in the drive, it took a while to load the device driver and read the USB – but once that little yellow confirmation message box popped up, I knew it was the end. Projected on a screen that rivals a cinema in front of over two hundred people, suddenly did appear -- this:

+ Show Spoiler +

Needless to say, there were mixed reactions -- but fuck, thankfully the majority share was the roaring laughter. I quickly looked at the lecturer and my friend. He was already explaining to the not-so-impressed lecturer that he had no idea how it got there, and it was a joke...he was flailing his arms and looking dismayed. I felt a pang of guilt, but I really, really had no idea this little joke would escalate to such goliath proportions.

As the laughter continued, any shocked reactions soon turned to humorous reactions, and laughter soon was the only thing to be heard and I simply just had to join in.

My friend quickly jumped on the computer; located the outline, copied and pasted it to the desktop...jerked the USB drive out as fast as he could and stamped back to his seat.

He was somewhat amused, but he was somewhat angry at the same time. He is a fairly gentle kind of guy by nature, and he didn't try anything. He just had a bit of a yell at me, and was a bit unresponsive for a while. He was after-all being subjected to everyone gawking at him and shouting little comments at him. (Various cries from guys around the hall were funny "GOAT DICK!" and other such variants at random times were heard.) This stopped eventually and as the lecture ended, we got up and promptly left.

We were already laughing by the time we arrived to our next class, it was a computer lab tutorial, so there was no formal lesson as such. So we had time to take a screenshot of the offending files -- before he deleted them.

It was definitely weird, embarrassing and fairly perverted.

But it was worth every, fucking, minute.