31–40 of 70 posts
My 'episode' was in '93. I'd just learned about TSR's and execution vectors and really wanted to try to write a floppy disk boot sector virus. Coded it up in turbo pascal. Thought I was being ultra careful: promptly spread it everywhere. My school was much more laid back, thankfully.
I nearly got expelled for learning how to use Flash 8 in middle school to make games.
I nearly got expelled for learning how to use Flash 8 in middle school to make games.
I nearly got expelled for learning how to use Flash 8 in middle school to make games.
It was 1995, and I had made a fake parking permit for Fairview Hugh school in Boulder Colorado using Corel draw and Kinko's. The junior class president--my arch enemy--found out and narked.
I got pulled into the principal's office and was threatened with suspension. When they asked me how I made it, I told them I downloaded it from the internet. I explained further, that I had my own business making websites for local businesses. "Oh, ok then." They told me that my "we sentencing" would take place the next week.
I didn't sleep that weekend for fear of someone molesting my "permanent record." That next Monday, a student assistant pulled me out of class and took me to the principal's office for my sentencing: teacj the principal how to use the internet!
The best part of all this, is that I later learned the snitch had purchased his ap history term paper from the back of Vanity Fair magazine. I called him to tell him that I knew and he hung up. I called again and it went to his answering machine, where I explained that this was blackmail: he had exactly 1 hour to deliver me his authentic parking permit for the entire next semester, otherwise I would snitch. He answered the call mid-message and delivered the goods 40min later.
When I first got busted, my dad told me about revenge being best served cold (it's a saying in French), that I should bide my time. He was right!
I got the date with the girl and I annoyed some people and pissed off the network admin, win/win.
The computers had Visual Basic installed, and my uncle had given me a "Teach yourself VB in 24 hours" book. I followed all the exercises, but I didn't know what to do next. The book was obviously intended for business programming, so it didn't have any interesting suggestions. I wanted to make a game, or animations, but didn't know where to start.
I did implement a card game, but couldn't get any animations to work smoothly, and eventually gave up. The teachers knew nothing about programming, so they couldn't help, and couldn't even recommend other books or a web site. I think they regarded whatever I made with suspicion.
Competant teachers should have been able to provide programming exercises (or a larger project) that I was capable of implementing, but challenged me to learn something new with each task.
Instead, we made bar charts in Excel, and had about as much respect for IT as a subject as we did for gym class.
In 1998 I installed the NetBus server on computers in the computerlab at my school. I would then run the NetBus client on a computer in a secluded corner, and watch the reaction from people while I messed with their computer. The best reactions I got from randomly opening and closing the CD-tray. Good times.
We did the exact same thing! This one time, me and my group of similarly nerdy friends sat in a different room and opened all of the CD-trays in the computer lab during a computer class. The teacher came running to the room we sat in, and we were so sure we had been caught. But no, she started explaining that all the computers were acting up horribly, and that we were the only ones who could help her. She didn't know…
I just brought a Linux live USB stick with me and did my work that way.
The first was when I created a small messaging application that allowed students to message each other on school computers when in study rooms that had an enforced silence rule - it was really basic and just used text files that were stored on the shared files on the school network.
The second was worse simply because I was pulled out of class for looking up how another student was making pop-up messages appear on all the networked PCs using the school's printing system. So, this student was in the middle of somehow gaining admin rights, and I was threatened with expulsion because I was looking up how he was doing it.
Real fun times