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anna

My name is Anna and I am an asshole

by anna at 06:26 PM on June 26, 2003

As you'd probably guess I'm just as much of an irritant in the physical realm as I am here in the vapors. This tendency manifests itself in myriad ways. I'm that boorish dick who muscles his way into the front of the line when traffic backs up. When drunk I'll ask complete strangers if they're still into bondage & humiliation. I even snag the last cup of coffee but refuse to brew another pot. I'm like a cloud of tear gas wafting through a drunken orgy.

My latest obsession involves sending instant messages at work via Command Prompt. Clicking this icon leads you to a DOS prompt where you type in "net send" followed by the recipient's email name and your message. The beauty of this primitive IM format is that it's totally anonymous. There is no way to block it as far as I know.

So I prowl the corridors on the lookout for various nefarious activities my coworkers may be engaged in. Then I skulk back to my computer and begin sending them surreptitious IMs. My favorites include: "Company property was stolen at this work station." "This employee took a big dump, stunk up the restroom and didn't wash his hands afterwards." "A personal phone call was detected at this desk." "You have just visited a pornographic website." "We're reading your email." "We're counting your keystrokes." "Stop scratching yourself down there." An omminous grey message box appears on their screen, accompanied by the jarring ring of a bell.

It's jolly good fun to watch as paranoia sets in. Coworkers scratch their heads and wonder if this could possibly be for real. Then they quickly close whatever website they were viewing. Big Brother is watching your every move!

Yeah he is. Come to find out that in those insider trading scandals which proved Martha Stewart's downfall, most communication was via IM. Brokers and clients alike feared that email trail which caused such headaches for Bill Gates. So the SEC now mandates that financial companies keep tabs on employees' IMs and maintain a record thereof. D'oh!

Penis puppeteers have more sense than me.

comments (6)

Anna, if you really heckled someone anonymously about a not washing their hands after a big ole dump, you are my new hero.

by Linz at June 27, 2003 9:18 AM


technically, it's not anonymous. the message box pops up w/ your computer name. (Usually just a string of numbers/letters, unless you or your IT dept renamed it to show that it's your work station.) so someone could track you down if they really wanted to. but if you're just sending these to people who are doing something they're not supposed to, chances are they're not going to report it. hooray for fucking with coworker's brains!

by JC at June 27, 2003 10:45 AM


Yeah I've been careful never to IM IT types. And Linz, you mentioned heckling. I never thought of it that way. Hecklers suck. I encountered lots of them doing stand-up years back. It's one thing not to laugh or applaud but another entirely to disrupt the show for everyone else.

by anna at June 27, 2003 6:47 PM


Heh. We used to do that with my college dorm resnet. It's email usernames there, too.

I think blocking it involves just stopping that NT "service", or uninstalling that part of Windows. I can't remember which. Or maybe it's either. I'm too lazy to look it up.

by Andy at June 28, 2003 3:30 PM


The simplest way to halt these messages is to disable the Messenger service [if you're running NT, 2K, or XP].

Refer to Stopmessengerspam.com.

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by Mad Fucker at July 14, 2005 11:30 PM