Richard Brey has a bit of the practical joker in him. He really knows how to have fun, and he’s not afraid to get creative, or to ask for help either. Because this time, he had a good one, one that he thought we here at X10 would find exceptionally interesting.

Richard had a coworker who went to lunch every day at exactly 12:00 noon. She would head to the lunchroom so that she could watch the news on the television set there. This was her daily routine, and she never missed the latest headlines.

One day, with the help of another coworker, Richard set up the greatest practical joke the office had seen in a long time. He tells us about it in his own words. "We set up an XCam2 in the break room, and hooked that up to the VCR. Then we set the TV channels so that the only show she could see was... herself, watching the TV." That had her very confused. As she flipped through the channels, every channel was her mug, dazed and confused, as she tried to figure out what happened to her news program. She was on every channel. She may as well been the president addressing the nation for all the TV coverage she was getting.

"It worked great for laughs," Richard said. "And we got the whole thing on video so that we could play it back and show her what we saw." Not to mention the fact that they created Mpegs out of the video, and sent it around as email.

"She’s got a great sense of humor, so we knew she wouldn’t mind," Richard said to us. Which is good, because we wouldn’t want that. But Richard also mentioned that "she’s also good at practical jokes herself, and so I had better keep my eyes peeled. After all, she doesn’t get mad, she gets even."

Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down, and the games have begun. And X10 gets to play a part in these games. The practical joke has evolved quite extensively over the years, and we’re right there with it.

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