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I put an Easter egg into a product, that if you enter the string "final countdown" into the stock code search field, it plays a YouTube vid of Europe's "The Final Countdown", in a hidden div. It's an in-joke for a few people in the company.

A well meaning maintainer with no sense of humour or judgement takes over and goes on the warpath against any hardcoded strings. The secret code gets moved into a config file.

A third developer changes the deployment script so that it clears any configs that aren't explicitly set in the deployment settings.

So the secret code is now "".

Literally every PC in the stock buying department is now blaring out "The Final Countdown" at top volume.

...Except none of them have speakers, so it remains this way for over a year and two more changes of maintainer.

I just noticed this afternoon and quietly re-hardcoded the string. The buying dept.'s PCs will silently sing no more.

Comments
  • 123
    This is so beautiful! One could write a book about that. :D
  • 71
    Stories you can't find anywhere else! Beautiful! ^^
  • 17
    I died 😂😂😂
  • 46
    How did you notice? XD

    How come no one used an audio peripheral? XD

    I would pay to see the faces of normal users when one of them attach a speaker and they all hear the final countdown 😂😂😂
  • 9
    I had a good guffaw
  • 31
    @Etrunon I don't want to go investigating too closely, but I think those PCs are locked down by corporate IT and don't even have audio drivers, so I guess they just use their phones for music?

    And to answer your fist question second, our dev machines are not so locked down, so I noticed immediately when I was asked to look into a bug today :D
  • 14
    Dude this is an awesome story. If I could give you more upvotes I would.
  • 7
    Lovely....

    Would like more of that, especially the playing on top volume without speakers - great.
  • 11
    I'm ++ #200
    Go get your ball !😎
  • 3
  • 5
    You sir, have an amazing story.
  • 11
    Add a Rick Rolled visual div with 1% opacity
  • 7
    I love putting Easter eggs in. But they have to be very clever and complete inside jokes.

    Oh, and never let the PM know about it... or you face having to answer to why you spent your time doing it. Lol

    In fact, they are way better when they are about the PMs.
  • 2
    @BoomeH to the top with you, sir.
  • 2
    Epic! 😂
  • 3
    Woo! 500! Thanks everyone.
  • 3
    Internal server error
    😆😂
  • 2
  • 1
    "Yeah about that one night I had to stay at work alone with weed in my drawer..."
  • 7
    Love that someone refactored your Easter egg into configuration 😂
  • 2
    Wickedly funny... Love it!
  • 2
    Thank you! This rant notably improved my day.
  • 2
    Cool story. Laughed really hard!
  • 3
    I remember adding the konami code into one web app and it made a picture of a chihuahua in a sombrero pop up on screen..

    Ah it's the little things.
  • 2
    I remember adding the konami code into one web app and it made a picture of a chihuahua in a sombrero pop up on screen..

    Ah it's the little things.
  • 2
    Hope your company doesn't pay for bandwidth-usage. All computers streaming a YouTube-video for years! :p
  • 0
    In other words... Don't implement Easter eggs!
  • 0
    One of the best storie I heard of my life
  • 1
    Holy mother of Stories!
  • 0
    Shoulda keep em singing
  • 0
    Nooo bring the singing back! 😂
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