Office High Jinx: Insert Coin

There's no better way to welcome back your coworkers from the holidays, vacation, or that long sales trip than with an office prank. There is no need for pranks to be relegated to April Fool's Day; any day of the year is good for a small joke. A prescription for safe office pranks if often perfect for some fun lighthearted fun and/or well deserved payback.

In this day and age, Technology and the Internet rule, and most people spend their time online browsing, emailing or shopping. Why not try and play a joke on your friends where they spend most of their time…their computers and offices.

Remember, any prank you can easily play on someone could just as easily be used against you as well.

Insert Coin

Hewlett Packards laserjet printers, a standard in most office spaces, have a customizable LCD display just waiting for your creative spark. Using the attached Perl script, you can forgo the ever-present and tiresome "Ready" and replace it with your own clever and witty phrase.

While this is sure to work on any networked HP printer, it will also work for any other printer that uses the HPPJL.

Replacement suggestions include:

Knock, Knock, Neo
I'm Lonely
Hug Me
Insert Coin
Enter Password
Internal Fire Detected
Feed Me Kittens
Clean Lint Filter
I Can See You
Feed Me...
Will Print For Beer
Nap Time
Skynet Online

#!/usr/bin/perl

  # $Id: hpsetdisp.pl 2 2008-07-10 00:05:58Z yaakov $

  # hpsetdisp.pl

  # Connects to a JetDirect equipped HP printer and uses

  # HP's control language to set the ready message on the

  # LCD display.  Takes an IP address and message on the

  # command line. My favorite message is "INSERT COIN".

  # Keep in mind the limitations of the display when composing

  # your clever verbiage.

  #

  # THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED WITH NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED

  # IF YOU ARE UNCERTAIN ABOUT THE ADVISABILITY OF USING IT, DO NOT!

  #

use strict;

use warnings;

unless (@ARGV) { print "usage: $0  \"\"\n" ; exit }

if ($ARGV[3]) { print "Did you forget the quotes around your new message?\n" ; exit }

my $peeraddr = $ARGV[0];

my $rdymsg = $ARGV[1];

chomp $peeraddr;

use IO::Socket;

my $socket = IO::Socket::INET->new(

   PeerAddr  => $peeraddr,

   PeerPort  => "9100",

   Proto     => "tcp",

   Type      => SOCK_STREAM

   ) or die "Could not create socket: $!";

my $data = <<EOJ

\e%-12345X\@PJL JOB

\@PJL RDYMSG DISPLAY="$rdymsg"

\@PJL EOJ

\e%-12345X

EOJ

;

print $socket $data;

Insert Coin

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