We got this letter this morning from Jill in No-wheresville.

“Alright let me start out by saying there is this woman who works in my office, who is SUPER annoying. She annoys everyone around her. She has her own office but comes over to “Visit” with everyone spreading the urgency to kill her. Now I don’t want to resort to violence is there a Techie way I can annoy her?”

We have something that sounds like it might be what you need. For $10 this will be hours and hours of fun loving entertainment / revenge We found this over @ thinkGeek:

The ThinkGeek Annoy-a-tron would be useless against an army of Snowbots, but it’s very effective at disturbing that guy in the sales department or your “friend” down the hall. With its thin design and embedded magnet for easy hiding, the Annoy-a-tron can be placed in a variety of locations. Select one of the three sound choices (2 kHz, 12 kHz, or alternating) and push the switch to the on position. Place it in a proper hiding spot and let the “fun” begin.

The Annoy-a-tron generates a short (but very annoying, hence the name) beep every few minutes. Your unsuspecting target will have a hard time ‘timing’ the location of the sound because the beeps will vary in intervals ranging from 2 to 8 minutes. The 2kHz sound is generically annoying enough, but if you really really want to aggravate somebody, select the 12 kHz sound. Trust us. The higher frequency and slight ‘electronic noise’ built into that soundbyte will make a full-grown Admin wonder where his packets are.

    3 simple steps.
  • Turn on.*
  • Hide it.
  • Muahahaha…

Assuming you have done your part in selecting a suitable hiding location for the Annoy-a-tron, it will do its part to drive your co-workers slowly mad with its short and seemingly random beeps. And when someone does locate the Annoy-a-tron, they’re really not going to know what it is – which is almost as much fun as watching them search for it. Muahaha.

The Annoy-a-tron takes one CR2032 battery (included) and measures approximately: 2.5″ x 1.25″ x .3″. It will run for 3 to 4 weeks on a single battery.

Some Recommendations:

  • Don’t hide it inside of food (the chemicals in a burrito are known to be quite destructive to electrical components)
  • You should probably avoid the area near your local BOFH (we understand that most likely you are the local BOFH, but still please take note)
  • Yes, we realize you could buy a dozen and hide them all inside someone’s office (oh, did we say that out loud?)
  • Please reserve the use of the Annoy-a-tron for deserving subjects only (we’ll leave it up to you to determine who qualifies)
  • * Note: Please remember to remove the small plastic tab underneath battery.

Not convinced of the Annoy-a-tron’s evil powers?

Read this letter we received from a satisfied customer and be enlightened:

Dear friends at thinkgeek.com,

I recently acquired the “Annoy-A-Tron” from your web site. Actually, I acquired two, thinking that perhaps two devices might be necessary to truly splinter the minds of my friends and co-workers. How woefully did I underestimate this powerful tool.

I have watched this simple device transform an (until-now) mild-mannered colleague into a spitting, cussing, paranoid lunatic.

He has ordered all of the staff he supervises (not a small number) to locate the source of the dread beeping before doing anything else (but since they are in on the prank, they haven’t been much help). So he waits, white-knuckles gripping the edge of his desk, anticipating the next beep.

He has set a timer on his computer to track the duration between beeps. It hasn’t been much help.

My favorite quote so far, nearly bursting that vein on his temple as he shouted it: “That beep has been F***ING with me for HOURS now.”

He has called the facilities department to schedule a maintenance worker to investigate.

He speculates that “they” might be doing air-quality testing in the building. This beep must be some device in the ducts detecting dangerous levels of asbestos in the air. Or worse. Radon? Aerosolized mercury? Legionella spores?

The beep means something. What does the beep mean? Is it a warning? It sounds urgent, doesn’t it? It’s telling us to do something. But what? Replace a battery? Call the authorities? Evacuate the premises? Scrub ourselves with disinfectant and put on haz-mat suits and call our families to give them our tearful goodbyes?

I imagine that soon he will begin to take things apart. He will methodically dismantle all of the electrical devices in his office, creating an unusually precise metaphor for what is happening in his psyche.

I am reminded what a thin and fragile thread keeps us attached to sanity. Today, this tiny little device helped me break a co-worker’s mind, and I thank you for the sinfully pleasurable schadenfreude.

My best to you,
John
Seattle, WA

And for another way to Annoy the hell out of some one legally check this out…

_TheMuhahahahaAdmiN_


  1. The Slothman

    You are so evil for posting that I am almost ashamed to be affiliated with this site….

    Almost

    ;-) :-D

  2. El Di Pablo

    You can also run this little program i wrote a while back using Autoit, where it locks a users workstation and puts it into a never ending loop. Every time they unlock their workstation it locks again. the only way to stop it is to reboot. Drop it in their startup folder and let the fun begin. You better do it when they forget to unlock their computer, so there are no tracks :-) i made it available here.

    Bauer-Power

  3. El Di Pablo

    I meant drop it in their startup when they forget to LOCK their computer. I was so excited about this post I forgot how to type!

  4. NinjaAdmin

    As an admin you should be ashamed of your self!

    But I find it the coolest shit ever! I just bought 4 and let the fun start! I have evil plans for these to go inside ppl’s computer boxes! Maybe inside the drop ceiling!

    i cant wait bitches!

  5. JILL

    Thanks Admin I Just Ordered 1 and I will let you know how it goes. I dont know if I can wait 3 days to get this thing any thing quick, easy and I can do it now??

  6. Anonymous

    My house is on a cul-de-sac. Neighborhood kids that don’t want to hang out at home, park their cars near our house and hang out. They leave their cigarette butts on the ground, which has gotten quite annoying. Does anyone have any ideas? So far we put the butts in a ziplock and leave that with a note in the neighbors mailbox.

  7. Karl L. Gechlik

    Annon – check out this article on a device called the mosquito that has high pitched frequency that only kids find annoying.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/international/europe/29repellent.html?_r=1

    They make downloadable mp3’s and cd’s of it as well but this is a all in device.

    let us know how it goes. Or you could set up a web cam and email their parents their shenanigans…

    When did I get so evil??

  8. The Slothman

    Karl Wrote:

    When did I get so evil??
    —————————-

    Answer: When you started dealing with end losers(users).

  9. Topher

    This thing is a lot of fun. Trust me, it will manage to piss someone off.

  10. Anonymous

    I’m a college student an I have some already paranoid profs. Oh this is going to be so amazing.

  11. Karl L. Gechlik

    Annon – you better come back and tell us how it went!!

  12. David

    David= last annon.

    Will Do.

    I StumbledUpon this page by the way.

  13. Prankster21

    Thanks David – I just got mine in the mail today!!!! &

    I have some REALLY evil plans Karl!!!

    EVERYONE LET ME KNOW HOW URS WENT SO I CAN PLAN MY ATTACK!!!

  14. Sjoerd

    Just go to your local bookstore and buy the most annoying sound in the world postcards [the ones with the little soundchips in them that go off when you open them] and rig ‘m so they keep going off constantly.

    Now, the battery will last for about a month. So there’s the challenge. Where to hide it? And this is where we go matrix, baby.

    Between the walls. Just unscrew an unsuspecting power-outlet at a friends house, drop it in and get away.

    Did i tell you it’ll last for about a month? Imagine Wham’s christmas song or London bridge is falling down for that long…

  15. Wakela Runen

    ohh… I am definitely getting some of these for my job. I am so sick of some of the idiot things they say there. We have one woman who came running over to me because the scanner attached to her computer didn’t work. I go over to look at it and the thing is unplugged. She then had the nerve to say that she didn’t know it wouldn’t work if it wasn’t plugged in. She is getting several of these strategically placed around her office!!!

  16. Anonymous

    You can achieve the same affect if you have a laptop with linux on it. Type the following into a console…

    for i in /usr/share/sounds/*.wav; do play –file=$i; sleep $(($RANDOM/1000)); done

    Add a ‘while true’ loop to make it run forever.

    Lock your Laptop and go to lunch, your computer will play random sounds at random intervals. Don’t blame me if you come back and find your laptop smashed though. :D

  17. Karl L. Gechlik

    Annon – that is awesome I will give that a go on my Ubuntu system and casually leave it under my desk…

    I will report back!

  18. Anonymous

    Karl: I don’t know if that command will work on Gnome… I only have KDE. You might have to change the directory to the Gnome sounds folder.

  19. MeanEme

    This can also be done with a simple musical greeting card, they play for days……. Another fun thing at an unlocked, unattended computer is to adjust the mouse to move so fast it cant be controlled, switch the mouse buttons and of course, set the language to something else……

  20. George

    You should really quote the Think Geek article and site them.

  21. NinjaAdmiN

    George should really learn English – you CITE a SITE moe moe! And they did right before the quote.

    And it is not a article he quoted it was AN AD. LMFAO! What a…

  22. Karl L. Gechlik

    Play Nicely Kiddies. Everyone needs attention.

    Even little george. One more word and I’ll close the comment thread.




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