The Coolest Hack I’ve Ever Pulled Off
I was 17 and it was the last lecture of biology class. Dr. Donahue was the lecturer. He was also the academic director of the early college program I was at. And he was retiring. It was the last lecture he would give after a career that was decades long.
Lecture began at 8am. My friend and I snuck into the classroom at 6am. It was a big lecture hall that could hold 300 people. We booted up the lecture computer. I can’t remember how we managed to log in, but we did. I installed the hidden program I had written, and we left.
At 8:32am, in the middle of Dr. Donahue’s powerpoint lecture to 200 students, the screen went black. It started flashing, and the following video played.
Some of the inside jokes:
- Dr. Donahue used to erupt “Scoff!” at things he disagreed with
- “Street LSD is not pure. It’s made by biochem dropouts” he used to say
We got the photoshop’ed pictures by posting a black and white photo of him onto somethingawful.com.
Dr. Donahue asked Who did this after the video ended. Aaron Jacobs and I didn’t volunteer ourselves because we didn’t know if he was happy or upset. Afterwards we decided he was happy, and we stepped forward.
What a great hack! I really need to beat it out; seventeen years old was some time ago! Any good ideas?
I recently wrote about the ugliest hack I’ve ever pulled off here.
July 8th, 2007 at 5:05 am
Wow, this is really funny, great hack!
Next time Matt is presenting something in a funding round, surprise him with something like this, that would be awful…
July 12th, 2007 at 11:15 am
That was you?? And Aaron?? I had no idea. Nice!
August 20th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Man, that was great. Vijay yelled “Dim the lights!” when it came on and Donahue was just looking at the screen, puzzled.
I remember it looked like he had actually been crying a bit when he stood up at the end of the video. It’s probably one of the things I’m most proud of in my life, as far as good deeds go. I think he loved it.