The Coolest Hack I've Ever Pulled Off
July, 2007
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.