Issue 125: April Fools 2024 - Are You Ready?
Article 200 - newsletter issue 125! This year, we could get AI involved in some creative harmless April Fools pranks - I want to hear from you and echo the thoughts of Jennifer Gentleman - please don’t make others feel “less” techy on Monday, April 1st. But if you need a techie by your side, I’m here to help!
So let’s get started preparing you with some suggested April Fools pranks!
Here’s a final #Tip before we get to April Fools 2024! If you know someone who uses their desktop for all their favorite programs, documents, shortcuts – this one is for you. It involves changing or creating a new shortcut to this post! I’ll explain how to set it up and how to return to normal after the panic and upset user has calmed down!
Right click on Desktop – point to New – Shortcut
You can create a shortcut to an Internet site (your favorite site, a humorous one, this article, etc.) or even a file on their computer! All you have to do on the shortcut is type in address or copy it from your browser (CTRL+C)
Setup a shortcut to this site’s home page!
Now comes the fun/creative part – name your shortcut!
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Don’t just leave it as “New Internet Shortcut”! Rename it to “File Missing or Corrupt”, “Program Not Found, “Missing”, etc. – let me know in the comments what you come up with!
On my computer, the path to Microsoft Word’s executable is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\winword.exe (yours might be different!)
Choose your icon and you are all set! Place it on the desktop and either move it to where the favorite document or link is or if there were icons on the desktop previously, continue to make lots and lots of icons!
Winword is a good one (if your victim uses a different program frequently, you can probably find it's executable and do the same thing so the icon "looks" the same!)
There’s also the hide all the desktop icons, flip the display of a desktop upside down and several others I have done. Just be sure to be there when the user tries to use their computer (right Lisa Marostica ? Sorry for my foolish ways in the early days!)
Have a wonderful rest of the week and I’ll add a Windows 11 background (or Windows 7, 8, 10) option you can make the wallpaper on a computer too!