December 29, 2003

Let's See A Show of Hands

How many of you have ever forgotten you have the sound turned up on the computer, and you get email and the email notification sound booms out suddenly and unexpectedly in a heretofore very quiet house, louder moreso because you mistakenly cranked up the volume and are sitting about 1 foot away from the speakers, so when your wav of Paul Harvey proclaiming "Gonads are useful for their purpose, but they are no substitute for brains" pops on you nearly shit yourself?

Or is it just me a friend of mine?

Posted by LeeAnn at December 29, 2003 05:46 PM
Comments

Heh heh, when I was using EarthLink's program, it would go "MAILTRUCK!" Perhaps I had turned up the sound to compensate for my cheap-ass Wal-Mart headphones, so when I unplugged them, I sort of forgot. I didn't crap my pants, but I think I peed a little.

Posted by: Tiffany at December 29, 2003 05:52 PM

My mail sound is a loon, so when that happnes, it sounds like a Godzilla movie.

Posted by: Ith at December 29, 2003 06:01 PM

Been there, done that. Except because I work at home on my computer, I always put my work headphones on, so its directly into my ears. Bif fun!

Posted by: JaxVenus at December 29, 2003 06:49 PM

Heh heh. I can so relate to this post. Especially first thing in the morning...

Posted by: Jane at December 29, 2003 06:49 PM

Yes, I've done that. Hal, the ever so friendly computer from 2001 announces "I have a message for you" whenever I get email or someone I read posts to their weblog.

I've almost needed to change my drawers when I forgot I had been listening to Peter Gabriel at full volume and didn't turn it down.

Posted by: Jack at December 29, 2003 07:26 PM

One time when I was covering the Daytona 500, I was in the media room typing on my laptop. I became friendly with one of the reps for a racing team and we started swapping funny e-mail to amuse each other.

Gullible to the last, he sends me an e-mail and tells me to turn up my speakers on the laptop. I do, I click on the link and the e-mail immediately announces to the room, "I'M GAY!"

Nice.

Posted by: Jeff at December 30, 2003 04:42 AM

When my boss was away, I installed a new mail sound on her PC, and she doesn't know how to get rid of it. Now when she gets mail, Gus (Robert Duvall) from Lonesome Dove says "You do more work than you have to, so I'm obligated to do less."

Posted by: Ted at December 30, 2003 05:38 AM

yeah.. when i used to use aol. *gasp* I changed the "you've got mail" to "you've got snatch"... a couple times that went off with my speakers full blast... yeah not good...

Posted by: pylorns at December 30, 2003 06:10 AM

I use the same HAL quote as Jack, but there are no drivers for the sound system on my new motherboard that work with my old OS, so it's a non-issue right now. At work the sound on the desktop machine is muted except when I specifically want to hear something, so as to stay safe.

BTW, my startup sound is Dorothy asking "What would you do with a brain if you had one?" and shutdown is Worf proclaiming "It is a good day to die" but at least I don't do like one member of my household did and have goofy quotes enabled for every single sound assignment in Windows.

Posted by: triticale at December 30, 2003 05:31 PM

I thought you weren't going to tell anyone about that :-) I now changed it to David Lettermen, "Look Skippy, you have mail!"

Posted by: Lee at December 31, 2003 06:41 AM