Category — Office Supplies

Technology is advancing rapidly these days, and while many of us are able to keep up with the emerging trends and evolving technical language, there are those among us who are simply unable to understand or operate any piece of technology more advanced than the television remote in their living room.

I recently noticed that my office happens to have one of these people. This man was attempting to operate the idiot proof shredder we have at my office, but somehow, someway, despite the simplistic nature of the machine, this man failed at using it to shred his documents. Consequently, the man was forced to shred his stack of papers manually.

I’m not sure why I didn’t bother to help him at the time, but I wound up feeling rather bad about it later that day, so I decided I would attempt to help him in some way. After a bit of research, I found what can only be described as the absolute perfect gift for this technologically challenged person; the Think Tank Hand Crank Paper Shredder.

I am fairly certain that my co-worker will have no problems operating this piece of machinery in the future since the only advertised requirements for use of this machine are “paper” and “hand with opposable thumb”. At a mere $3.99 I actually can’t think of a better x-mas present for my other co-workers, so I may just order ten.

The last few days at my office have been dreadfully slow, and as usual when that happens I have been lurking around the office looking for ideal candidates to pull pranks on. When it comes to office pranks, there are the old harmless classics like taking a screenshot of someones computer desktop and hiding all of their icons, or gluing someones pencaps to their pens, but in today’s high tech work environment these classics often don’t get the desired effect.

Luckily I found a great list of high tech pranks that are sure to provide you with the perfect prank for your situation. Here are some of the pranks I pulled over the last couple days.

The Restart Remap: The first one i pulled is rather evil, so I made care to do it to a person I didn’t like all that much. My victim was a guy who sits in the cubicle next to me who: 1. constantly makes personal phone calls, and 2. has a massively obnoxious voice. Simply right-click the Firefox shortcut icon, select Properties, go to the Shortcut tab, and change the Target to “%windir%\system32\shutdown.exe -r -t 00″. Then watch as your co-worker pull their hair out as their computer keeps restarting every time they try to open up Firefox. Brilliant!

Crazy Keys: A man called August Dvorak once created an alternate keyboard layout which is considered helpful for people who type with one hand or finger. While his keyboard layout is mostly useless for those of us adept at using the QWERTY layout, it is perfect for driving a co-worker insane by remapping his keyboard. To learn how to remap the keyboard click here.

The Poltergeist: Lastly, I had been dying to try out a program called The Office Poltergeist. By installing it as a Firefox extension on someones computer, you can remotely take over their computer and play random sounds, turn their monitors on and off, shake their windows, and send pop-up alert messages.

To learn about more awesome pranks you can pull at work head over to TechCult for the list of The 25 Best High-Tech Pranks.

And just for fun, here’s a clip of some of the pranks pulled on Dwight from The Office.

click for a bigger picture.

So a friend of mine has been working on some ads for Post-It notes manufactured by 3M, and has been asking me for some feedback on his ideas. Naturally the first thing I did was go online and try to find some of their previous marketing efforts. After doing a few quick searches on the old google I was amazed to find an endless offering of art/pranks made with post-it notes. Its truly amazing. Sure, we have all used up a whole pad of post-it notes on a small prank, or for drawing doodles during the company quarterly meeting, but I only dreamed of using them in the capacity that some of these people did.

Here’s some of the best ones I found:

[Read more →]

Spending half your day laboriously typing out emails can become a real drag, especially if you have poor spelling and pudgy fingers. Luckily there is an easy solution. The Voice-Mail Email Sender allows you to record your messages, and send them as email attachments. It comes with a mouse-sized USB powered recorder with a button for recording and a button for sending the message.  Nice.

Let everybody at the office know you mean business with one of these Cut Throat straight razor ties from Cyberoptix.

When it comes to working in a corporate office, the only thing that disappears faster than leftover cupcakes in the kitchen is your pen supply.  While pen borrowing/theft is common practice, and generally considered acceptable in times of need, it ultimately becomes a burden for those of us forced to make a trip to the supply room every day.  Sure, stockpiling a years worth of pens in your drawer is an easy solution, but if you are looking for a more classy approach to deal with the situation, let me suggest the Borrow My Pen? pens.  Each set contains 8 pens marked with advertisements for companies you probably don’t want to be associated with.  Put these in your pen jar, and watch as rumors start circulating, and reputations get ruined.

Buy them Here 

If you happen to be searching for an appropriate birthday gift for a female colleague at your office, then look no further. Every man knows that both chocolate and diamonds are a sure bet to gain the favor of a womans affection, so why not give her both by combining the Diamanta Mouse with Michael Sholk’s Chocolate Keyboard.  Absolutely perfect if said female colleague happens to share your immense interest in Warcraft.

I saw a story on CNN the other day that offered up some sources of distraction for cubicle dwellers, the highlight of which was a website called True Office Confessions. The site is basically a big message board that allows disgruntled office workers to vent their frustrations, or confess unspeakable acts.  Here are a few of my favorite confessions thus far:

“Has anyone ever been typing a memo and tried to type the word “and”, but you slip and type the word “nad”? I do it often and every time I laugh to myself. God, I’m such a loser. ”

“i try to get rid of all my restroom issues at work… might as well s**t on them… they do it to me everyday…. ”

“Thanks to the endless amount of time before the whistle blows, I’m tempted to test the velocity needed to ram a ballpoint pen into my brain via the temple.”

“I hate when people lick their fingers in order to pick up papers from the universally used printer. This woman in my office was searching for something she printed and she started to lick from her elbow to her middle finger tip. She basically licked the entire stack of papers…effing gross!”

I recently discovered Adobe’s new online image-retouching tool, Photoshop Express, and it is a delight. While it doesn’t include most of the heavy duty image-editing tools included in Photoshop, it has everything you need to jazz up your photos. The whole thing is very easy to use and intuitive, you can even access photos from your facebook account for quick retouching.