Hacker News Reader

Comment by giarc | Hacker News Reader

I can still remember the "uh-oh" sound. I remember searching for and download sound boards to replace the sounds. They also had that chat window where you could actually the user typing. Nostalgia eh.

View on HN

I used to work in one game company and one of my team mate had parrot that he was bringing to our offices. This parrot like to annoy certain people with uh-oh sound, which always cause automatic reaction of checking the the ICQ client and angry swears to the parrot.

I fell asleep with ICQ running and my speakers turned way up once. 3 AM and someone decided to send me a message. That was like 15 years ago, I still freeze up a little when I hear it.

I had something similar just after I moved out of home for the first time. ICQ running, speakers still on from the music I'd been playing before, late at night. Someone logged on. Huge loud KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK sound. Just about gave myself a coronary!

In my late-90s undergrad dorm, this happened all the time. Somebody down the hall would have the system cranked, hooked up to the computer. 3am, he gets an ICQ message. A thundrous UH-OH wakes half the hall.

Nowadays I hear that exact sound… at McDonald's. In Russia, they use this sound at their kitchens to signal that something's ready. Or something. You can hear it when you're ordering.

The cash register at my favourite health food store uses the "uh-oh" sound. To this day it remains one of the most annoying sounds I've ever heard, and it will not leave my life.

I have it set as the notification sound for a friend with whom I exchange text messages very frequently. After we graduated from high school in 1999 we communicated with ICQ almost exclusively for the first couple of years until we switched to MSN Messenger, so it constitutes a form of vestigial nostalgia.

I'm surprised to read of people hating it so much.

I'm not 100% certain about this, but I always felt like they stole that sound from the game Worms.

I believe it was from Chip's Challenge.

The Worms sound is slightly lower and has a slightly longer "oh", imo.[0][1] I don't remember there being an "uh oh" sound in Chip's Challenge (the death sound was "bummer" iirc)[2]

0: https://youtu.be/6iCPIUGnHQ8

1: https://youtu.be/eQwJaDyzet8?t=2m54s (apologies for the video track, couldn't find anything better)

2: https://youtu.be/N32ZTPtD9AM

Reply on news.ycombinator.com