8

On chat.meta.stackoverflow, there's a little easter egg where text entered as

[status-blah]

will be rendered as a moderator only tag.

We'd like to do something similar, but specific to serverfault -- namely, when you type a magic string, something amusing and in-joke-y for serverfault.com happens, and it's visible to the entire chat room.

Do you have any ideas for anything server-fault-y we can do as an easter egg in chat.serverfault.com ?

Answer here, or in the dedicated chat room for this topic at http://chat.serverfault.com/rooms/31/pick-a-meme

6
  • 1
    It's moments like these I wish I was creative... Sep 21, 2010 at 0:16
  • 3
    How about "[dismiss-system-notification-bar]"?
    – squillman
    Sep 21, 2010 at 1:59
  • @squill - [status-bydesign] Sep 21, 2010 at 3:23
  • 1
    I did a small double-take when I saw the OP's name on this one.
    – Pops
    Sep 21, 2010 at 16:37
  • 1
    You might find something involving ASCII or non-binary data more appealing to most of this crowd.
    – Warner
    Sep 24, 2010 at 14:55
  • @Warner see my answer :-)
    – Josh
    Sep 25, 2010 at 17:35

7 Answers 7

5

I was just reading through the chat transcript for the room, and I quite like the idea of

rm -rf /

doing something that appears to do something nasty, but perhaps to the end-user's session only? Perhaps pretend to purge the chat history and then crash Server Fault (perhaps bring up a BSOD (or a panic/halt if you don't want to mix operating system faults)).

7
  • 1
    I really like the idea of BBS era linenoise.
    – Warner
    Sep 21, 2010 at 14:19
  • 1
    Nothing brings me back like a good fake NO CARRIER, or a long string of ^H^H^H^H^H^H.
    – sysadmin1138 Mod
    Sep 21, 2010 at 15:41
  • 1
    This is funny, but probably too disruptive to implement. (Not too technically challenging to implement, mind you; I just think a lot of people would abuse it and cause everyone else to leave chat in frustration.)
    – Pops
    Sep 21, 2010 at 16:39
  • It could be implemented to discourage abuse. It's an easter egg, not a documented feature.
    – Warner
    Sep 22, 2010 at 2:10
  • Noone said that the message had to end being sent to any of the users... although maybe that's the point? Sep 22, 2010 at 4:55
  • @Farseeker: @Jeff's question says "and it's visible to the entire chat room."
    – jscott
    Sep 24, 2010 at 13:51
  • 2
    I still like the idea of line noise!
    – Warner
    Sep 24, 2010 at 20:42
4

How about a favico-style icon in front of certain links? Say, Windows icon for Microsoft links, that kind of thing. Kind of like this:

Thingy http://sysadmin1138.net/images/mickysoft.png

Oo! I know! Some kind of animated lightbulb whenever anyone has "any [thoughts|ideas]?" in a message. We get that a lot.

1
  • 3
    ooo i like the light bulb idea!
    – Zypher
    Sep 24, 2010 at 22:53
3

@gWaldo's answer made me think... I like the blinkenlights and the rm -rf /, but, those are just two specific examples. As a frequent user of chat.meta.stackoverflow.com what I like best about the [status-*] easter egg is that you can use it for anything. Leading to very funny back-and-forths. blinkenlights would probably be just a single image, or maybe a small handful.

In the spirit of the easter egg taking arbitrary user input and doing something to it, how about using either figlet or cowsay or something?

Examples:

serverfault-answer:Reboot Your Server! produces:

  ____      _                 _    __   __               
 |  _ \ ___| |__   ___   ___ | |_  \ \ / /__  _   _ _ __ 
 | |_) / _ \ '_ \ / _ \ / _ \| __|  \ V / _ \| | | | '__|
 |  _ <  __/ |_) | (_) | (_) | |_    | | (_) | |_| | |   
 |_| \_\___|_.__/ \___/ \___/ \__|   |_|\___/ \__,_|_|   

  ____                           _ 
 / ___|  ___ _ ____   _____ _ __| |
 \___ \ / _ \ '__\ \ / / _ \ '__| |
  ___) |  __/ |   \ V /  __/ |  |_|
 |____/ \___|_|    \_/ \___|_|  (_)

Or:

 _____________________
< Reboot Your Server! >
 ---------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||
3
  • ASCII art, right up there with a fake NO CARRIER for bringing me back.
    – sysadmin1138 Mod
    Sep 25, 2010 at 14:54
  • @sysadmin1138 yeah I was trying to think of something, well, sysadmin-y... ASCII art isn't exactly sysadminy, but it's the best I have come up with so far :-)
    – Josh
    Sep 25, 2010 at 15:08
  • Could be prone to abuse but I like figlet. Not a bad idea. I use sysvbanner for a lot of my documentation.
    – Warner
    Sep 27, 2010 at 18:00
2

I was thinking something with blinkenlights..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights

Like some kind of light (image) with an optional text such as

blinkenlights server overloaded

would produce something like..

alt text

.. (but more small single line icon-y) with the text "server overload" next to it

(from http://www.blinkenlights.nl/)

2
  • Not bad. Maybe it can print the optional text in binary lights? Sep 21, 2010 at 2:50
  • 1
    I was going to downvote until I saw "(but more small single line icon-y)"; I'm not sure how well a standalone small blinkenlight would work, though.
    – Pops
    Sep 21, 2010 at 16:38
1

How about supporting changing the way usernames/gravatars/rep etc are displayed by typing something like PS1=<something>. also when you do this regular users have a '$' appended to their user name, and mods have '#' appended.

1
  • prompt $p$g aaah the memories Sep 24, 2010 at 6:10
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0

How about involving the term

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

.. for random questions? Not sure how it would work, but that quote solves about 90% of the questions right? :-)

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