I thought the joke was things were running on HP-UX (said the guy that had to use campus services running on HP-UX in the 90s).
Let the 90's Unix flame wars begin!
The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
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Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#52I think the joke would have been funnier without the accompanying email. The fear I guess is people trying to jam change into the printers.
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#53Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#54Informix is the april fools joke.
Does anyone remember the Informix / Oracle wars? What a time to be alive that was.
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#55TLDR: Just skip to the 7th paragraph where the story starts.
For reference, see the HN thread from a few days ago: "How to write blog posts that developers read": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43503872
Edit: A few section headers might help. For example, paragraphs 2-6 could be under "Background," then add a header "The Joke" before paragraph 7. "Aftermath" might be good towards the end, too.
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BTW, taking a joke is an important life skill, too. The people who flipped out over a silly April Fool's email need to get a life.
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
For reasons I can't remember, I was able to send emails through the company's Windows email server under any name that I wanted. I know of several fortune 100 companies that still allow this due to the way they set up email protection with o365 and Proofpoint, ironically. not naming them. I've done similar pranks and got by with the skin of my teeth but would not recommend people do this early in their career especia…
> especially if leadership are sensitive to embarrassment. Funny thing is that I cleared my prank with Peter Sachs because he was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, but he told me to go for it and he thought it was hilarious. I didn't clear it with Jim Collinsworth because he was a bit of a jokester himself so I (incorrectly) assumed he'd have no problem with it.
Having approval from one of them would be quite the saving grace.
I had a CTO tell me to fill a cubicle with quick drying cement after a prank went wrong but I stalled him long enough to cool down. I knew the building management company would have been furious had I followed orders. The CSO had pranked the CTO with a dongle that opens excel and slowly types "I know what you were doing..."
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#57No post body was provided.
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#58> By 8:30am it was chaos in the main office and this filtered up to the head of HR, who most definitely did know me, and told me I'd better send a retraction before the CFO got in or I was in big trouble. That went wrong also, because my retraction said that campus administration was not considering charging per-page fees when in fact they actually were, so I had to retract it and send a new retraction that didn't call attention to that fact.
I wonder if the joke would have gone over better with the higher ups if it didn't coincide with their plans to implement an actual pay-to-print system. I'm sure they were none too happy about having attention drawn to an unpopular change they were already planning.
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#59I worked at a biotech startup about 20 years ago. - Two of the VPs at the company were named Jim Collinsworth and Peter Sachs (not their real names). - For reasons I can't remember, I was able to send emails through the company's Windows email server under any name that I wanted. - So, I merged the two VP names and I sent an email blast to the entire company from "Peter Collinsworth" (just swapping first and last nam…
For reasons I can't remember, I was able to send emails through the company's Windows email server under any name that I wanted. I know of several fortune 100 companies that still allow this due to the way they set up email protection with o365 and Proofpoint, ironically. not naming them. I've done similar pranks and got by with the skin of my teeth but would not recommend people do this early in their career especia…
>leadership are sensitive to embarrassment
Or they don't want distractions that are too costly.
Re: The April Fools joke that might have got me fired
#60A year ago on March 31st, was my ex's birthday - she told me she loved me. Today, I just don't know if that was the most elaborate prank I ever fell for. Kudos to this guy, at least his prank email was kinda funny.
April Fools day is on the 1st, so no?