My Successful April Fool’s Prank!

Well, as I am sure everyone was aware… today was April 1st (aka April Fool’s day!). I hadn’t planned on doing any kind of pranks today for the sole reason that I was just unable to think of anything that I felt would be worth trying to pull off. But that all changed on my drive home from the gym as I was able to come up with the perfect (and even harmless) prank to pull off on my wife Kelly.

A few days ago I came across this post on reddit.com with someone sharing a computer background that looks like a cracked LCD screen. When I had first come this post I thought it was cool, but kind of dismissed it as something that would probably be funny for whoever did end up trying it.

My original plan was to put it on my desktop, kill explorer.exe to hide the taskbar and desktop icons and just turn on my monitor when Kelly got home from work. Then start freaking out and see how she reacts. I had it all setup and ready to go… took off the screensaver, and stood back and was looked at it when I noticed the 46inch flat screen TV sitting about 6 feet from my computer. This is when the amazing idea popped into my head.

Our TV has 3 HDMI ports, and my computer has 2 HDMI ports, and it just so happened that I had a 25 foot HDMI cable sitting next to my desk. So I hooked up the TV to my computer, then set it up to duplicate my desktop onto the TV. Tested it out, looked awesome, so I turned off the TV and waited for Kelly to come home. Here are a few of the pictures I took with my Droid…

So she finally got home, after I had been sitting around for about an hour and a half pacing around not wanting to do anything on my computer because I was afraid she might see my desktop and the prank would be ruined. Usually soon after she gets home she sits down on the sofa with her laptop and turns on the TV to see if any of her shows will be on at some point… but tonight she wasn’t doing it. So after another 30 or so minutes I was finally able to get her to turn on the TV by asking her “Can you check the DVR and make sure Stargate Universe is set to record tomorrow?”. She agrees and as she is grabbing the remote I quickly walk to the other side of the room to act like I am looking for something while she turns on the TV.

“ANDREW….. LOOK AT THE TV!!!” is what I heard next. At this point I knew it was a success and she thought something was wrong with the TV. I turned around and looked at the TV all confused and asked her if she had bumped into it with something or if she knew of anything that might have hit it. She paused for a minute, said she couldn’t think of anything… looked back at the TV… then turned to me again and asked “Is this some kind of joke?” in the voice of someone thinking “oh great… we are screwed… please let this not be true” type of thinking.

Sadly at this point I couldn’t hold it back anymore and burst out laughing and had to admit that it was all a joke. She just stared at me while I turned on my computer screen and changed my background which instantly changed on the TV as well. Looking at her right after I changed it, it was great to see the “ok, he got me” look on her face, and then proceeded to sternly say to me “You are such an ASS!”.

Mission accomplished! I hadn’t done any good pranks over the last few years, but this one turned out great… So I just had to share it as it couldn’t have been more perfect.