Thursday, April 23, 2020

Roommate Ignores Chores For Video Games, Sysadmin Takes Revenge


Oh man, this is gold. This'll strike a chord for anyone who has ever navigated coexisting with a roommate who can't be bothered to pitch in around the house. The fact that there was a box of busted computer mouses by the end of this revenge does indeed indicate that it was pro. 

1.

Text - r/ProRevenge u/alter3d · 1y JOIN Video games are more important than chores? That's some nice internet you have, it would be a shame if something were to happen to it. (I originally shared this in a comment over at r/ChoosingBeggars but several people suggested I post it here as well. I've added a few explanatory notes for those who aren't network-savvy.)

2.

Text - When I was in 3rd year of university, I lived with a couple of housemates. One was super-awesome, and the other guy turned out to be completely fucking useless. He wouldn't help out with the chores AT ALL... not even just turning on the dishwasher when it was full. He just wanted to play computer games all day. I mean... I get it. Gaming is awesome; me and the awesome housemate were playing a lot of Lineage II at the time, but we still made time for real life stuff. Eventually me and awes

3.

Text - I wrote a script that, periodically, would scan through the NAT state table on the router (a list of all connections the router was handling between the internal computers and the Internet), identify connections from shitty housemate's PC, and then would randomly, in descending order of likelihood: • Do nothing Forge a FIN packet that appeared to be from housemate's PC and send it to the remote server

4.

Text - Forge a FIN packet that appeared to be from the remote server and send it to housemate's PC Forge a RST packet that appeared to be from housemate's PC and send it to the remote server Forge a RST packet that appeared to be from the remote server and send it to housemate's PC Drop the connection from the NAT state table To explain this to the non-initiated:

5.

Text - A FIN packet is a notification to one side of the connection that the other side would like to terminate the connection; there is a negotiation that happens between both sides to tear down the connection, so both sides know about it. This is a "graceful" disconnect. A RST packet is a "hard disconnect" -- drop the connection immediately, don't negotiate with the other side, don't send any more packets -- just stop. Removing the connection from the state table effectively stops all traffic

6.

Text - The last 3 options in the list are particularly nasty because it leaves one (or both) sides of the connection thinking that they are still connected. Now, understand -- this is wayyyy back when WoW first launched, and that is pretty much the only game shitty housemate was playing. If you played WoW around that time, you'll remember the LOO00ONNNNNNNGGGGGG queues to get onto a server -- 20+ minutes at least.

7.

Text - Imagine, if you will, what would happen in an MMO if you tell the client to disconnect, but the server thinks the client is still connected. The client quits immediately with a "you have been disconnected" message, but the server won't log the user out for a LONG time (at least several minutes), and in the worst case will continue doing the last-commanded action (like.... "walk forward"). In the case of early WoW, you couldn't even log in and wait in the queue again because... the server

8.

Text - As time went on, we pestered the bad roommate to help with the chores. Each time he refused, we would bump the likelihood that one of the non-"do nothing" options would happen. Every time it killed one of his WoW connections, we would hear a loud "FUCK". Somewhat quietly at first, then louder and louder over time, then he started literally smashing his keyboard and/or mouse (and at least once, his monitor, which left some nice dead pixels in the shape of a fist). When we moved out, he rem

9.

Text - It got to the point where he would log in, wait in the queue, get into the game, start moving around, and within 5-10 minutes, it would kill his connection, and after he eventually got back in, he would often find his character dead from NPCS or at the bottom of a cliff because his character had continued to walk forward for 5 minutes. Sometimes he wouldn't even make it out of the queue before being disconnected. It was hilarious to us, but he was absolutely RAGING. Even more hilariously,

10.

Text - Eventually (at least 3-4 weeks later) he came and asked me if there was something wrong with the internet connection. I said something to the effect of "Oh, yeah, I applied an update to the router to make the internet connection as reliable as the person using it." He got the hint.. but still didn't help with housework. He put up with a practically-unusable internet connection until we moved out (which wasn't long after that). Meddle not in the affairs of sysadmins, for your network conne

Submitted by:

Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)