Wasting Time...

Or a day in the Life of Brian (NOT the Monty Python movie, which is hilarious, but so sac relig that I can't even recommend it). Last week we left the kids with my mom and Holly and I headed back home with plans to get a lot of things done at work. Holly did, but I got a little sidetracked.
I have an excuse as to why I didn't get what I planned done: some people I needed to get things from were not around. But instead of working on all the other projects I need to finish before school starts I just played. Like you've never done that!! I wanted to share a couple of the more memorable time wasters here.

1. Tried to break through the Office of Education's security to view youtube, facebook, download torrents (not even kidding my download speed is over 16,000 kbps!!! here at the school, new record: 25,000 kbps - check your speed here), etc. Nothing doing, proxies didn't work, circumventors, nada. Granted I am no authority on hacking through security systems (not a bad thing imo), but I don't think I am a dolt either. Only wasted a few hours trying to hack through. I did have a legit reason, I'm the tech guy here right? So I have to know if students can hack through, hopefully they know less than I do.

2. Has anyone not switched their home page to igoogle yet? If not you should really check it out. To the left is a screenshot of my homepage I created. You can customize just about everything on the page, any bit of news you want, your favorite website feeds, local movie times, etc. all right there on one page.
Not only that, but they have the most comprehensive list of widgets (google calls them gadgets btw) and they make them so easy to adjust and get code for them for your blog. I spent a few hours playing with that one as well. -Oh yeah and you definitely want to get the Frogger and Flood It widgets!!

3. This one took a lot longer than I want to admit, but it was fun!! I am not usually one of those people who walk around laughing at myself like a goof, but this was an exception. Little background first: we have a financial secretary, Millie, who is a total control freak. We call her the paper nazi because at the end of last year she printed off this list of how much paper each teacher used and caused a huge uproar.
Anyway I happen across this office practical joke post on Lifehacker (click here to see it). So one of them is how to change the "READY" message to anything you want: INSERT COIN, GONE FOR COFFEE BRB, DID YOU REALLY NEED TO PRINT THAT?, etc. At first I just changed it to INSERT COIN, pretty funny. But then I was talking to someone else in the office and we started talking about how relieved we were that the paper nazi is quitting this month, and the light bulb clicks on, so I let him in on my joke and we come up with a better one. Every time anyone goes to pick up their stuff at the printer the printer will say to them "MILLIE SAYS YOU ARE OUT OF PAPER". :)
Okay, so in order to actually do this you have to use the telnet command through PUTTY and enter printer job language, so it took me a while to get it down. If you need any help let me know, I am a pro now; it takes me 2 minutes to change all of the printers in the school. I am going to be changing the message every once in a while so if you have any good suggestions, let me know!!!

4. Minesweeper hack. Oh yeah!! Want the best score on Minesweeper? Here's the hack, at least for windows xp: Open Minesweeper, and type "xyzzy", then hold down the shift key for one second. Now when you move the mouse cursor over a Minesweeper square you will see a tiny white pixel in the top left corner of your desktop screen. This pixel will change to black when your mouse moves over a mine. So I played Minesweeper for a while.
Inconspicuous enough that your friends could sit and watch you and still not catch on! Good luck minesweeping!!

5. I hate Windows Paint, but don't want to spend money on a paint program. Ultimate Paint is highly rated freeware alternative if you are interested! I played around on this for a while.

The rest of the time I spent updating the look of the blog and talking to anyone who happened to come visit me. I did actually get a server up and fix a couple things, but for the most part what a wasted day!!