BOFH 2004: Episode 1
It's upgrade time again - like it always is when there's money laying about the place not being used - so I scan down the long list of complaint frequencies and pick the HR database server performance problem from near the top of the pile. I love upgrades!

In a word, crap! A ZX-81 with tape drive could almost give better performance than the server concerned, and it's easy to see why - all the money was spent on the chassis, not the internals, to give "room for expansion" which never occurred. With a single processor, 128 megs of memory and a single hard drive, it's all rather depressing. Something should be done.

"But it doesn't NEED an upgrade!" the Boss burbles, trying to hide the executive edition of the mobile phone and accessory brochure he's been looking through. "Anyway, we don't have the money!"

"Well as luck would have it, the beancounters misaddressed the finance reporting output, and it appears that our cost centre is over twenty thousand quid underspent this quarter - due to under-spending in the last quarter."

"Really?" the Boss asks. "How did that occur?"

"We put it down to the fact as that your predecessor was on life support for so long that he didn't have time to fritter money away on 'tat' like cellphones, handsfree kits, etc", I respond.

"Ah. And how much do you expect this upgrade to cost?"

"The HR Database server - uuuh, I dunno, not a lot. Maybe five k in processors, a couple in memory and another couple for disk and RAID card. Under ten?"

"Which would leave the remaining ten thousand for..."

"Projects which you consider strategically important," I respond, playing his game for him.

"Well... I suppose it might be in our best interests to address this," he grudgingly admits, "so long as your budget figures are accurate and you obtain written quotes."

"No sooner said than done," I say.

A statement which turns out to be bollocks.

"And the serial number of the machine is?" the vendor's sales droid asks.

"373847201B."

"B's not a number," he comments.

"It's on the panel at the back, beside the 'S', stroke and 'N'," I reply.

"Well it must be an eight!" he snaps back, oozing condescension.

"Not unless your eights have flat sides."

"Ah, so it's flat both sides?" he asks, thinking digitally.

"No, just the left. ONE flat side, you know, like the letter 'B'."

"The configurator isn't going to like it - it only expects numbers," he warns.

"Tell you what, why don't you punch it in anyway to save me popping down there and punching something myself?" I ask, testily.

"I... uh... >clickety< Well look at that! It did work. So, it's a quad box, four processors and a gig of RAM."

"It's a quad capable box, one processor, 128 meg of memory."

"That's not what it says here."

"But it is what I'm looking at here - I have the box with the lid off in front of me."

"I think you'll find it's got four processors. The configurator is never wrong! Big things with heatsinks on them, and fans."

"Yes, there's one of those. And in the other three slots are some proprietary looking cards with some active components on them instead."

"With heatsinks on them?" he asks, not wanting to give up too soon. "Told you the configurator is never wrong!"

"No. Just small cards."

"Screw-in cards?" he asks.

"No, not PCI cards, just cards," I sigh, putting the cattleprod battery pack into the charger.

"Well let's just skip that. What would you like?"

"A quote for three more processors the same as the original, two gig of memory in 512s, a high performance Ultra SCSI 3 Raid card, and four 15k RPM 36 gig Ultra SCSI 3 disks."

>clickety< "OK, you can't get processors for it, because it's full."

"It's got one processor."

"Yes, but the configurator says it's full."

"Tell it it's not."

"We can't. But we could do a field uninstall, but then it would automatically charge you three hours' engineer time for the uninstall."

"Tell it that the client will do it."

"But you'll void your warranty."

"It's not ON warranty. Besides, I've got the cover off and I'm not certified, so I think we've already crossed that bridge."

"Oh. Well >clickety< it'll only remove ALL four processors, unless we trade the processors in."

"Do that then."

"But you haven't got processors!" he blurts.

"Yes, we have, the configurator says so!"

"But you told me you didn't."

"Yes, when you mentioned the trade-in option, I just realised that they were."

"They can't be, they don't have heatsinks on them!"

"They will by the time your engineer gets here..."

"He'll never accept them - he'll know they're processor bypass cards!"

"Would this be the same engineer we normally get whose specialist technical field is lifting?"

"I..."

"So, we'll trade the four PROCESSORS in on four faster ones. And we'll trade the gig of RAM in on two gig."

"You said you had 128."

"No, no, it was a gig, I'm sure of it now!" I cry.

"He'll count it."

"I'm sure he will, and will not find me lacking. In fact, he can take as many SIMMs as he likes from the big bag under my desk."

"I think you mean DIMMs," he responds.

"Like your engineer is going to know."

>sob<</p>

"Is that all then?"

"No, I'd like to buy a Raid card and four disks."

>clickety< "We can only give you three - that's all that will fit into the machine."

"With ten slots in the front? Oh, how many disks have we currently got?"

"One."

"I think you're lying. And while you can lie to me, I don't think you want to lie to the configurator..."

"I.... seven disks," he sniffs.

"Lets trade them in on four new ones. And a Raid card. Now, what's all that going to cost me?"

"Well, with... trade-in allowance... one thousand three hundred and forty quid."

"Really. It seems a little steep. Can I trade in anything else from my box?"

"That's all you have!"

"So of the eight PCI slots, there's nothing I can cash in on?"

"No."

"I think you're lying. Tell you what, configure me up the cheapest ten meg PCI NIC card."

"OK." >click<</p>

"What's the total?"

>clickety< "1380."

"Givvus another."

>tap tap< "1420."

"And another..."

>clickety< "1460."

"And another..."

>click< >click-click< "You can't, the configurator won't let you."

"Why?"

"Because the bus is full," he sighs, knowing he's trapped.

"What's in the box?" I ask.

"Five high-spec graphic cards with 256 meg."

"AGP Cards?" I ask.

"AGP 8s, yes."

"And how many AGP slots does the machine come with?"

"One."

"And so the configurator tells you that I have another four in there somewhere, taking up PCI slots?"

"Yes," he gabbles. "It's because the AGP Connector's right near the first PCI slot, so if you have a AGP card, you lose a PCI slot."

"Ah, and because I have five cards, I lose five slots."

"Yes," he sighs.

"OK, so I'll trade in the five cards and use the on-board video, drop the NIC cards, now what's the total."

"Minus 53 quid."

"Better. Have the cheque sent to me personally would you?"

"You'll never get away with it," he sneers. "They'll find out."

"Course they won't. It's all in the Configurator. And the Configurator's never wrong! Gosh, wouldn't it be awful if the we asked specifically for YOU to do the install and you returned to work with a box of old parts - and they started to suspect that you'd rigged the whole thing?"

"Make the cheque out to cash then?"

"That'll do nicely. And put an expedited delivery on those parts will you - I'd like to get this sorted out quickly so we don't have to upgrade another of your servers to cope with the load. We've got an eight-way in the computer room!"

>click<</p>

Now to forge a second quote and get the company cheque made out to Computing Access Support and Hardware (or its acronym) too...

Did I mention how much I love upgrades?


BOFH 2004: Episode 2
 "Ah... Now I don't think you want to be doing that..." I murmur, watching the Boss authoring an online Client Survey form for the masses about things that don't matter. (i.e. their expectations, How they'd like us to deliver them, etc.)

"Really?" he asks "Why's that?"

"It doesn't pay to ask questions! We already know what people want - everything, yesterday. AND we know that they're used to disappointment. But if you start asking them what they think we should be doing, you'll just ignite a spark of hope"

"A spark is a good thing!"

"Not when I stamp that spark out with the cold hard boot of reality."

"What?! Why? I happen to think that some of the staff may have something valuable to contribute!"

"To the lengthening unemployment queues, yes. But you don't want them mixing stupidity with technology. That's your job. Leave it to them and they'll be recommending that we upgrade to those 'new' voice-operated computers they saw on Bladerunner... ... Oh, and you definitely don't want to be asking for any additional comments they might have about IT, the department, or our ongoing strategy."

"Why not!?"

"Because it's a drift net for stupid ideas. Sure, you'll get one or two people who actually give a sane suggestion, but then you'll hit all the dolphins - the people who, because they've been asked to contribute feel that they have to contribute - like it's an intelligence test or something. Only they've got nothing useful to contribute, so they start off on some innovative tangent, like if we installed a large plasma screen in reception we could use it to have customised messages of the day for staff and visitors, etc, instead of what it would really be used for"

"Which would be?"

"Security would use it to watch porn movies late at night when everyone's left the building."

"Oh I doubt that. Though the screen itself sounds like a good idea!"

"They all sound like good ideas...!"

"So what do you suggest?"

"Lets start with basic concepts. Firstly, the only cavassing of users you should be doing is with a heavy tarpaulin, a stack of bricks and a deep stretch of water"

"Huh?"

Completely over his head. Ah well.

"... When composing a questionnaire, you tailor the questions so that the answers can be made to support whatever it is you're after - sort of like the way they rig election popularity figures prior to the elections and before they get rigged at the electronic ballot boxes. "

"How do you mean?"

"What, the elections, the questionairres or the ballot boxes?"

"Questionnaires."

"OK, as a for instance, say you wanted a pay rise."

"You'd ask if they think that we're paid enough?"

"No! No, if you ask that question, everyone would tick yes, with a few respondents writing 'too much' in the margins. No, instead you ask something open ended like 'Should the company be paying market rates to retain the services of key technical staff?' to which most people will respond yes. Then you go find some IT rag that says that market rates have just risen by 20% in the past year, and pass it to the Head of IT to bring up with personnel.."

"I don't think it's tha.."

"Or maybe you ask the question 'Do you feel that IT doing a good job with the people they have?' with only two answers, Yes and No. All the Yes answers will end up supporting pay rises for the staff, while all the No answers support the requirement for more staff."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Oh Pulllllleeeeeeze! Say you wanted a larger office. You don't say 'Do we need a larger office?'. You would ask a question like 'Of the two improvements that we have the money to finance this year, which would be of more benefit to the company - buying the a new espresso machine for the IT Administrators, or enlarging technical office space.'"

"And they'd say enlarging offices because they all hate you?"

"No, they'd say enlarging office spaces because they'd think that if they worked it properly they might qualify as 'technical staff' somehow."

"I see your point. But... No... I don't think I want to do that, it's just sneaky!"

"Of course it is! Look, You tell me the results you want and I'll give you a questionairre that makes it look like the whole building supports it."

"And what's in it for you - You want to take the PR credit for the questionnaire?"

"No - I'm assuming that anything you improve can only be a knock-on improvement for us. I'll put your name as author if it makes you feel better.."

"Yes, I think that's best. Well I suppose what I'd really like to do is...."

Half an hour of rambling later. . .

"OK, Leave it to me!"

Three days and one survey later. . .

"Fantastic!" the Boss burbles, looking over the PFY's shoulder as the results are presented "That question about whether they have confidence in IT Management's ability to deliver service within the constraints of our budget is sure to get us good funding next year."

"Bound to," the PFY responds. "...unless..."

"Unless what?"

"Well unless - and I'm just suggesting this as a possibility - someone misread the question as an indication of a confidence problem instead of an indication of a budget problem".

"Well I don't see how tha... oh."

"Yes, and when you consider that with the question immediately following it 'Do you think that outsourcing IT Staff would improve delivery of services?'"

"And they said No!"

"Yes, which could mean that they're happy with the IT Staff, or it could mean that they think the poor delivery of services is because of IT Management - who should be outsourced."

"Well I... uh.. Do you think I've been set up?!" he gasps.

"I'd have thought that was obvious in question 23"

"Question 23?!"

"On the second webpage."

"What second webpage?"

"Ah well. Perhaps you'd like to take a couple of moments to collect your thoughts. And personal belongings. Question 23 was 'Who is the weakest link?' with your name .vs. the old mailroom guy - who's one year off retirement, wife just died, and who franks people's personal mail for free."

"Well, I..."

"And speaking of mail, Question 27, asking how offended staff would be at you reading their personal emails - that didn't go so well for you.."

"That's slander!"

"It's only slander if the question said you DID it, this just asks how offended they would be IF you did.."

"There'd have to be a good reason for me to read someone's personal email!"

"Toilet paper theft?"

"What?"

"Question 29. Do you think that cameras in the toilets would prevent toilet paper theft?"

"I.. I.."

"Yes, I know, it's all come as a bit of a shock, but that's how it goes around here. We like our bosses to rollover every couple of months or so - you know, so they don't get stagnant. Why don't I make you a nice cup of tea while you wait for the howling mob?"

. . .

Told you it doesn't pay to ask questions.


BOFH 2004: Episode 3
So I'm relaxing in the office when the Boss has a loneliness attack and decides to come visiting. I know it's loneliness because he hasn't brought the wadge of paper he generally carries with him to remind him of what he came for.

"Just... ah... checking to see how things are going at... er... Mission Control. As it were..." he says, gesturing expansively about the room.

"Fine," I respond, "business as usual."

"And your assistant?" he asks as he sits in the PFY's vacant chair.

"Oh, he's out and about getti--"

"My, these are nice chairs!" he sighs, getting comfortable, just as the PFY arrives.

"Yes, they're the new Ergo 3000s," the PFY comments. "Full lumbar, thoracic and cervical support, built-in infrared linked multimedia speakers in the headpiece, servo-assisted adjustment, and full recline. This model even has the servo interface to your desktop to allow it tilt, roll and rise in response to computer control. They market it as the ulimate in gaming chairs, but we needed them because... uhhhhhm... BECAUSE they could proactively put you into micropause position!" he adlibs. "Do you mind?"

"No, not at all, don't want to interrupt your work! So where did they come from?" he asks. "Might grab myself one!"

"Dunno who the vendor is, but the secretary's got the catalogue in her admin folder," I respond, to the boss' departing back.

. . . Two minutes later . . .

"THEY'RE BLOODY 2500 QUID EACH!" the boss gasps "They're REAL LEATHER! You used the WHOLE of last year's furniture and fittings budget on a couple of chairs!"

"Well technically, we used the whole of last year's and the whole of this years as well," the PFY corrects. "For the chairs we use at home."

"YOU BOUGHT CHAIRS FOR HOME!?!"

"Of course! Wouldn't want to put my back in jeopardy by working remotely on a substandard item - that could cost you a stack in health penalties. It makes financial sense, because if we had to come in to work to use a proper chair to reboot a server - with a three-hour minimum call-out, overtime, plus travel expenses - it'd only take about five call-outs and the chairs would be paid for."

"But you've used the entire furniture and fittings budget. What happens if someone else's chair breaks?"

"Get it fixed under the maintenance budget?" the PFY suggests.

"I'd use the training budget myself," I suggest. "And justify it by buying an ergonomic chair and saying that you're 'training' their posture."

"No, say it's a Health and Safety item!" the PFY cries. "That's centrally funded and there's always a stack of Health and Saftey money for that sort of thing."

"There's no Health and Safety budget left this year, I checked - Sharon says that the money all went into building electrical safety after some incidents last year."

"Oh right - before your time," I concur. "Nasty business. Had to buy a huge box of warning labels to put on most of the building's powerpoints to indicate electricity is harmful and that it's dangerous to put foreign objects into them."

"What, people put all those things into power sockets?"

"Hard to believe, isn't it? Some even said that we'd TOLD them to do it!"

"Did you?"

"Of course not. They were just in shock - jumbles the mind, you know."

"So anyway, there's not enough budget for another chair," the Boss says, getting back to his favourite topic, himself.

"Yes, we know," I add. "We wanted one for the Computer Room Console desk, but the cupboard was bare. Still, can't you use the Management Innovation Budget?"

"Hmm?"

"The MIB - it's the slush fund for Company Managers to invest in 'Innovative' technology."

"I hardly think a chair counts as innovative."

"Neither's a GIS unit for your private car, but the Head of IT got one last week!" the PFY notes.

"Why?"

"Because it's a slush fund - they're always tapped out within weeks of the New Year by people wanting new gadgets!"

"What was the model number again?" the Boss burbles quickly, penny dropping.

I write the model number down, adding an "X 2" to the bottom of the page.

"Times TWO?!?" the Boss asks.

"You don't want to put yourself at risk when working from home now, do you?"

"I don't work from home. I haven't got a machine there."

"And you've never taken a work-related phone call?"

"Well, a couple of times..."

"And you sit down sometimes when you're on the phone?"

"Wellll, it's possible..."

"There you go then!"

Two days later, I notice the TWO chairs arrive in their spanky new plastic wrapping, and wait at my desk for the inevitable phone call.

> Ring, Ring <</p>

Told you so.

"How do you hook these things up again?" the Boss asks.

"Plug the chair into the charger for four hours..." I sigh. "The interface is infrared, so no wires needed after that."

"And what do I do with the coiled wire?

"The coiled wire?"

"A long green curly wire connected to the arm rests. It says it's an... uh... 'antistatic safety earthing flylead'."

I cast a quick glance at my chair and notice the lead in question still in it's plastic bag, taped under the armrest. Woopsy.

"Just plug it into the earth pin of any power point."

"And which one's the earth pin?"

"Uh..." I say, thinking of how a good console chair would be good. And two, even better...

. . .

"Any of those warning labels left?" I ask the PFY minutes later, as a high pitched scream punctuates the building... 


BOFH 2004: Episode 4
"I... I... I'm not sure I'm up to work today," the PFY sighs sadly, staring vacantly in restrained grief.

"Oh for Pete's sake, pull yourself together, man!" the Boss snaps. "We can get past this!"

"I don't think we can..."

"Course we can. It'll be difficult for a while, but you'll get back into the swing of things. Think of the doors that are now open for you to explore new things!"

"I don't want to explore new things!" the PFY sniffs. "Why couldn't you have been more careful?"

"It was an accident," the Boss confesses, "a tragic accident. The sooner we put it behind us and move on, things will stand a chance of getting back to normal!"

"It won't be the same," the PFY sniffles. "It'll never be the same. It's all ruined now. You don't just replace the love and respect of a long working relationship!"

"Get a grip!" the Boss snaps. "It's not like you lost a family member!"

"May as well have..."

"Don't be ridiculous! Family bonds are much stronger than those in a workplace - everyone knows that!"

"You just don't understand..." the PFY sobs.

"You're right, I don't understand," the Boss blurts callously. "It's just a f***ing coffee machine!"

"What's 'just a f***ing coffee machine'?" I ask, entering the break room.

"That is," the PFY responds, pointing at the smoking mess that was a cafe-quality high volume three group espresso machine. "Well, was..."

"What happened?!?" I gasp.

"He broke it!" the PFY sniffles.

"How?!?"

"I don't know, it just stopped working!" the Boss snaps irritably.

"It's a cafe-issue machine - they don't just stop working!"

"That one did."

"Right, I'd better call the bloke!" the PFY says.

"Tell him it's urgent!" I add.

. . . Three hours later . . .

"TWO THOUSAND QUID!" the Boss gasps. "That's ridiculous. You could buy a new machine for that!"

"Not a high volume one like this," the coffee bloke replies. "That's a work of art. Apart from the stuffed pump, dodgy pressure switch and half blocked lines that is."

"I haven't got budget for that!" the Boss blurts.

"Sure you do. It's a small price to pay for a happy energetic workers," I chip in.

"You can switch to instant like the rest of them!"

Even the coffee bloke is stunned by the blasphemy.

"I'm NOT paying 2000 quid to get a coffee machine fixed!" the Boss repeats.

"He's right in a way," the coffee bloke adds unhelpfully. "Most big machines like this are treated well and last forever - well, outside of accidents. But I could line you up with a single group one for about 500."

"A home model?" I snap "That's not even plumbed in! I'd rather use a plunger! What's a new one of these worth?"

"These babies?" the coffee bloke replies, as the car salesman in him takes over. "Anything from four to ten kay, depending on the features you want with them. You can get them with computers in now."

"Really?" the PFY asks, interested.

"Yeah, for those cafes where the waiters use portable computers to take your order. They tap the info in by the time they get to the counter the coffee's ground, poured and ready!"

"I'm not buying one!" the Boss says firmly.

"Could we buy a base model and upgrade?" the PFY asks.

"The computer-controlled model is built on the mid-level three group unit," the coffee bloke chirps, "which is around six kay. The extras are relay controlled valves, conveyor and interface computer."

"So if we built our own interface and just got the valves and conveyor off you..."

"It'd cost around seven and a half."

"With trade in?" I ask.

"Well... it's a bit of a dinosaur, isn't it?"

"Dinosaur? You just said it was a work of art!"

"Yeah, and like most works of art it's old. Seven kay, and I'm doing you a favour!"

"Done!" I blurt.

"I'm not paying seven grand for a coffee machine!" the Boss snaps.

"No, I will. And I'll give the company a grand for the old one!"

"Done!" the Boss chortles.

"But it's only worth 500 as a trade-in!" the PFY snaps.

"Yeah, but I'll buy it under my private company, depreciate it at 30 per cent, then claim it's stuffed, claim tax back on it as a loss, buy the new one, claim THAT as a business expense, get you to whack the computer control on it, build a web front end and charge the hordes a quid a time for coffee which they can order from their desktop and collect from the machine."

I scratch out a cheque and hand it over to the Boss, who takes but a moment to scratch out a receipt before dashing off to get the cheque banked before I can cancel it.

"You're going to do all that?"

"The web coffee thing? Yeah!"

"And the depreciation thing?"

"Nah, it's too much hassle," I say, nabbing the coffee bloke's screwdriver. "How long would it take to source the base model?" >tweak< >tweak< >tweak<</p>

"Couple of days," the coffee bloke responds as we exit and I lock the break room door, snapping the key off in the process.

"Best get that ordered now then!"

"Running all the way," he responds, doing just that.

"What's going on?" the PFY asks, watching me wheel a large trolley in front of the door.

"Oh nothing. Fancy a couple of pints?"

. . .

Four days and one explosion later.

"So it all worked out in the end," the PFY burbles.

"Yes, the insurance company accepted the claim - apparently the coffee bloke found that the safety release valve didn't operate and the temperature sensor wasn't working, resulting in--"

"The creation of this very convenient servery hole in the wall," the PFY guestures, "and the replacement of your company's computer-controlled espresso machine."

"Indeed. Righto then" >click< >click< "One cappucino, charged" >clickety< "to the Boss' credit card, as Adult Entertainment Expenses?"

"Don't mind if I do!"

>Grind< >Grind< >Whirrrrrrrrrr< >CCCCCCsssssssssss< >Rumble<<p>


BOFH 2004: Episode 5
Sigh.

Interviewing for new Helldesk types with the Boss and the Helldesk Coordinator is a tedious, timewasting and pointless job and I sometimes find myself wondering why the agency doesn't just cut out the middle man and send us people who've never used a computer before.

As the "technical person", I'm included in the interview process to contrive some tricky questions to determine the person's level of technical expertise. Once that's complete it's then my job to advise the interview committee that the prospective candidate has all the technical acumen of a sack of spanners. Which they then ignore by appointing the person anyway.

It's company policy.

"It's a bloody helldesk position!" I blurt, when the Boss tells me that we're up for another set of interviews. "It's not like their experience is going to make a difference!"

"Course it does!" the Helldesk Coordinator argues. "We need someone with experience of the software that our users have - so that problems are resolved in good time!"

"The only skill a Helldesk person needs is the ability to spot idiots!" I respond. "The rest is just tat you can pick up from the other Helldesk people. You know, like how many times you have to rapidly toggle the powersupply switch to open the secret Intel BIOS Easter Egg."

"What secret Intel BIOS Easter Egg?" the Helldesk Coordinator asks.

The fact that there's NO secret powersupply-toggle-activated Intel BIOS easter egg, never was, and never will be only serves to illustrate my key point about the ability to recognise idiots. They come in all shapes and sizes, and are represented at all levels of the IT foodchain.

"Nothing," I reply, faking sincerity badly to ensure at least one loud bang in the department before day's end.

"Well we still need some questions to help us determine his level of expertise, what extra skills he might have, and what sort of offer we make to him," the Boss comments.

"His, Him?" I ask, PC-ly

"Uh, Him or Her," the Boss responds quickly.

I make a mental note to accidentally mention this incident to one of the more rampant windup toys at HR for a bit of at-work entertainment later in the week...

. . .

"So you're wanting something like 'Can you name and explain the FSMO roles in a Windows 2000 Domain Controller?'" I ask later while we're waiting for the first victim to show.

"Pardon?" the Boss asks, while the Helldesk Coordinator looks on blankly.

"FSMO roles. In a Domain Controller."

"Ahh.. I was thinking about something a little, well, more user orientated."

"Without FSMO roles, we'd have no users!"

"Something a user would ask about!" the Helldesk Coordinator snaps.

"Oh you mean like 'What happened to all my files?', 'When are you going to let me out of this tape safe?', or 'Did you just break the key off in the lock?'"

"NO! I mean questions like 'A user is not able to login. What would you look at first?'"

"Ah!"

"But more open ended," the Boss comments, "like 'Can you give me an example of..' questions."

"Of course!" I blurt. "I think I've got the hang of it. Send in the accused!"

. . .

"Can you give me an example of..." I ask, watching the Boss and Helldesk Coordinator brace themselves, "..causes of login failure."

"Caps Lock down," the candidate replies knowledgably. "Wrong Password, the User's been disabled, they're not logging into the right domain..."

. . Several Interviews later . .

"Well," the Boss burbles. "They all seem to be of the same level to me."

"Yes," I respond. "Reasonably experienced too, which makes a change. They're all so similar it's going to be a hard choice."

"Perhaps not - One more to go," the Boss burbles. "Ah..uuum I don't seem to have a name on my pad?"

"Late applicant," the Helldesk Coordinator responds. "HR emailled me the CV earlier this morning. He seemed the cream of the crop, loads of experience!"

"I'll get him in then," I say, noticing the name and wandering over to the door.

. . .

"Hello," the PFY says, sitting down in the candidate's chair.

"Is this some sort of joke?" the Boss asks.

"What?" the PFY asks.

"You've already got a job here!"

"Yes, but I was thinking of downskilling. And there's a lot of things about the helpdesk that appeal to me."

"Like what?" the Helldesk coordinator asks.

"The ability to sleep on the job, for one. And, I was thinking that I could just record the words 'Have you rebooted your machine?' and put them into an answerphone on my desk to increase resolution times."

"I think you'll find there's a lot more to a Helpdesk role than that!"

"Yes, drinking coffee and looking at porn, true, but I thought I'd just start off slowly and work my into the advanced career options over time..."

"I think this interview is over," the Boss snaps.

. . .

"So, how do we decide?" the Boss asks when we reconvene later.

"Well, I took the liberty of phoning the applicants and asking them another 'Can you give an example' question, and one candidate stands out head and shoulders above the rest. Number 3, uuuum... Mr Watters."

"Really. You're that impressed with his answer?"

"Oh yes, his answer was a lot more than I'd expected and I think he's the man for the job. Told him so in fact!"

"Oh well, I suppose it works out. Ah.. What was the question?"

"Can you give an example of a situation where you bribed an interview panel to get a position?"

"Ah." 


BOFH 2004: Episode 6

So it's a site visit - one of those rare opportunities to check out a "superior" government installation on a brand new site which has won awards from those members of the industry easily impressed by colours and lights. 
What the hell, it's a couple of hours off work with the chance of a protracted visit to the pub (after a quick spark plug lead reshuffle of the Boss' car).

So we're in.

The sad thing about new installations is that while they look nice and work well, it's the test of time which turns most comms rooms into rats' nests of cabling and pristine computer rooms into stacks of dead and dying equipment. Still, it looks nice in the beginning (before installation rot sets in) and that's when you grab the snapshots that you use in your publicity for years to come.

The Boss, the PFY and I rock on up at the appointed time and wait patiently at reception for the arrival of our host. The PFY takes this opportunity to excuse himself for a rest stop, returning with the slightly greasy hands that indicate a successful major engine timing rejig.

Sorted. Now just to put up with the condescending hour-long monologue... I know I'm not too far off in my expectations when a charcoal-suited bloke strolls over and introduces himself as Karl, the "Installation guru", noting his pride and joy - a monitor at reception showing the computer room in all its glory. I mentally prepare myself for the onslaught of smugness, the trauma of which will hopefully be alleviated by the presence of a couple of attractive female reporters who've also signed up for the tour...

. . Two hours of Powerpoint Presentations about how his installation is much better than everyone in the whole world's...

"And here we have our Comms room," he burbles, gesturing through a viewing window at a clean new room. "As you can see, full patch by exception frames, Cat 6 cabling in structured cabling retaining systems, linked to dual redundant comms rooms at either end of each floor via twin redundant fibre in purpose-built risers completely isolated from other installation ducting. Full fire protection throughout, external and internal UPS systems, raised floor and full length armoured observation window allowing monitoring from the Control room. And here's the computer room. As you can see, it too has a fully armoured observation window - with redundant aircon, UPS, Fire systems. Obviously we'll fit the glass with a one way film once we commission the room - after the big party tomorrow."

"Party?" I ask, smelling free drinks, food and the chance to annoy politicians.

"Yes, for the opening. The new technology minister, a couple of MPs, some drinks - more of a photo op than anything else," he says, playing it down. "Right, we'll just pop through to the room so you can see some state-of-the-art installation techniques which I think you'll find surprising. Just have to swipe myself through - if you don't mind looking away."

"Not at all!" I burble, turning my back on the door while he swipes his card and types in enough numbers to program the Mars probe in binary.

We traipse into the computer room, and I have to admit that it is impressive.

"See these?" Karl says. "Quick-release sliding rack systems to enable rapid removal for maintenance. Fits all major vendor's equipment. Each rack unit has its own microprocessor controlled reactive venting to eliminate hotspots and power monitoring to indicate equipment which deviates from its normal consumption ... Yes?"

"Just need to pop off to the gents," the PFY murmurs. "Dicky bladder at the mo..."

"Right, press the red release button and it's the door over there," Karl responds, indicating a room off the Control Room through the glass.

"You have a toilet off the control room?" I ask.

"Oh yes. The Computing core is designed to be completely secure and self sustaining for 48 hours. We even have our own kitchen and everything - although the fridges are, at the moment, stocked with the drinks and nibbles for tomorrow."

"Why self sustaining?" one of the reporters asks.

"Terrorists," Karl responds. "This site will be doing some of the top level information processing for various government agencies, and as such might present a target. Anything untoward happens, the operational staff hit any of the emergency buttons in the control area and the three rooms are time-locked from each other and the rest of the building for 48 hours."

"Or until someone breaks through the walls or floors, or takes a hostage to make you open the door..."

"No," Karl burbles happily. "The Computing core is surrounded by three feet of vault-strength concrete, each room isolated from the other by armour glass and one foot of concrete. Emergency doors are three quadlayer isolation slides which lock into place, making the place impenetrable! AND you can't take a hostage to force someone to open the doors because all the phones are disconnected. Security has been the watchword for this installation!"

"It certainly seems that way," I say, as we make our way back into the control area, to the assenting voices of the reporters. "Is that a rat?!" I gasp pointing to the bottom of a rack in the computer room.

"It shouldn't be!" Karl gasps, worriedly typing the binary bible into the swipe card reader and rushing back with the Boss in tow. "We have traps in all the ducting!" . . . . "No, nothing here," he chirps into the intercom after he and the Boss have a good look about. "Must have been your imagination!"

"Must've been," I agree as they wander back to the control room. "Don't worry, I'll get the doo..."

"NOT THAT BUTTON!" Karl screams just as a large armoured door slams shut, appearing from somewhere in the ceiling.

"Woopsy!" I gasp, looking through the observation window at the Boss and Karl's frantic attempts to cancel the lockdown. "How do I reverse it?"

"You can't reverse it!" Karl snaps angrily, "I told you!"

"Damn it!" the PFY snaps, not very convincingly, on his way to the kitchen.

"What'll we do?" one of the reporters asks unhappily.

"There's no need to panic," I respond, taking control. "I've been in situations like this before, and know that panic does not help!"

"Really?" the other reporter gasps.

"Not at all," the PFY replies, coming back from the fridge with laden arms. "Alcohol, on the other hand >ffsssss POP!< does. Anyone care for a glass of Champaine and ... errrm ... a canape of some sort?"

"That's for the opening!" Karl shouts through the intercom.

"Surely you don't expect us to starve or dehydrate?" I respond, tipping liberal amounts into the glasses of the reporters and the PFY.

"What about us?!" the Boss gasps, obviously feeling a little peckish.

"Well it doesn't look good. As far as I can see there's only one waterproof container in the room - which will have to suffice for both your ablutary and culinary needs for the next two days."

"MMmmmMMMM tasty!" the PFY adds turning back to the women brandishing another Moet & Chandon bottle. "Top you up?"

"Bit of a mistake that locking system," the PFY comments.

"I'd be more worried about that camera in the foyer when the thirst sets in," I add. "I wonder if they're taping it?"

"Could we get them a message?" the PFY asks evilly.

"Doesn't look like it," I sigh.

Nasty business these lock-ins.


BOFH 2004: Episode 7
It's quiet. Damn quiet.

And I like it! Apart from the boredom that is...

The PFY's skipped off to an extended lunch with some woman he was "accidentally" stuck in the lift with for a couple of hours yesterday, and I have the place to myself.

Peace.

Quiet.

Boredom.

>clickety< 
>Ring<

"My mail's just come up with an error when I send - is there something wrong with the server?" the user whines.

"I doubt it, mail's still coming and going like it normally does," I respond, looking at the mailer logs.

"Not for me," the user snaps.

"Right, so the problem seems to be isolated to you, which means we should ask the technical fault diagnosis questions."

"You mean like: 'What has changed?'" he asks.

"No, more like: 'Who have you pissed off?'"

"What?!"

"Did you bring a car to work today?"

"Yes."

"Cut anyone off?"

"No."

"Park in someone else's park?"

"No."

"Fail to hold the lift door open for someone with a geeky look about them?"

"No."

"Say something nasty - however quietly and discreetly - about a technical support person?"

"No."

"Laugh when someone else did?"

"No."

"Date someone that a technical support person has had a recent failed relationship with?"

"No."

"Date someone that a technical support person is trying to have a failed relationship with?"

"What?! No."

"Run off at the mouth about some technical standard or the other which you don't subscribe to?"

"No."

"Push in front of someone at the lunch queue?"

"No."

"Push in front of someone geeky looking at the pub?"

"No."

"Spill your beer on someone geeky looking at the pub?"

"No."

"Only shout half-pints when it was your round at the pub?"

"No. And I don't go to the pub anyway."

"You don't go to the pub?! That could be it!"

"What?!"

"Yes, you're right, you're a user and it's next to impossible for a user to offend a technical person with their absence. Nope, you've got me stuffed, I have no idea why your mail client's not working!"

"It wouldn't be something to do with the O-something Service pack that the support guy installed this morning would it?"

"By service pack you mean something that looks like a cheap electronic clock with a couple of large waxy sticks connected to it by wires?"

"What! No, he installed something on my computer."

"Right, good point. Open your browser will you?"

>clickey< "Ok."

"Is your favourites tab full of links to porn sites, and has your hard drive been running non-stop since the 'Service Pack' was installed?"

"No, and.. uh.. No."

"Hmm. Perhaps they DID install a Service Pack…"

"That's what I told you!" he whines again.

"Yes yes, well done. What mailer are you using - Outlook Express?"

"No, Outlook."

"Which is updated by the Office Service Pack, not the OS Service pack."

"I...."

"Tricky."

"Yes, but when will I be able to send my email? It's important!"

"Of course it is - all our clients are important to us. Ok, I'll have to give you a call number to track this while I look into it. You'll need to quote this number when you call back, so write it down."

"OK."

"7PQ8339017B," I say, reading the serial number off my deskphone.

"7PQ8339017B."

"No, P."

"7PQ8339017P?"

"No 7PQ8339017B"

"That's what I said the first time!"

"Ok, read me what you've got?"

"7PQ8339017B," he blurts.

"Ah, I see the problem, it's 7PQ8339017B!"

"That's what I said!"

"With one B and one P."

"But not in that order," he says.

"In what order?"

"The BLOODY NUMBER!" he shouts. "7PQ8339017B!"

"Look, I can see that you're getting a little upset about this, so why don't I give you a shorter number," I say, calmly.

"Right. What?"

"17."

"17," he repeats.

"No 70, 7-0."

"70."

"And that's a shortcut to the first number?"

"Yeah, we don't get that many calls. OK, can you call me back in five minutes?"

. . . Five minutes of relaxation later . . .

>Ring<</p>

"I'm calling about my call."

"Which call was that?"

"Call number 70."

"Seventy? That's not a call number!"

"You said you'd give me a short one, 70!"

"Ah. You don't have the 11 digit one do you?"

"NNGggg.... Yes, I WROTE it down. 7PQ8339017B."

">clickety< Ah right, you can't get to the website www.screaminglygaycontacts.com. Huh, there's no username logged against it. Hang on, I'll just put yours in. >clickety<"

"THAT'S NOT MY CALL!"

"Sure it is - it's the number you gave me."

"7PQ8339017B?"

"uhhhhhh, yeah."

"What about 7BQ8339017P?"

">clickety< Ah, user can't send mail. Short call code 17."

"Nnnnggggg... Can you take my name off the other call please?"

"The first call you logged?"

"I DIDN'T LOG IT!!"

"Oh, right. Well, I've assigned it to the helpdesk group, so you'll have to talk to them to get them to cancel it."

"I DON'T WANT IT CANCELLED, I.."

"Just want to get to the website, I know. Although frankly I think you should probably be doing that sort of thing from home..."

"IT'S NOT MY BLOODY CALL!"

"But you gave me the call number?"

"It was the number you gave me when I logged my call!"

"About not being able to get to the screamingly gay site. Yes."

"No, about my mail!"

"Your mail? What mail?"

"BASTARDS!" he snaps, slamming the phone down.

"Who's bastards?" the PFY asks, back from the pub with a 5 degree lean.

"We are, apparently. Guy's mailer won't work."

"That the user you blacklisted this morning cos you were bored?"

"Probably."

"Service Pack Job?" he asks.

"I think so."

"The CD version?"

"He called you a bastard," I murmur.

"Not the CD version then. Got any clock batteries?"

. . .

Boredom. The silent killer.


BOFH 2004: Episode 8
"You’re looking pretty cheerful," the PFY observes, as the Boss rolls into mission control.

“Mmmf!” he responds, between mouthfuls of a large apple.

“Mmm?”

“It’s this fruit, it’s delicious!” he burbles.

“What, the cafeteria’s run out of fried lavatory paper?” I ask. “Someone’s going to have to update the menu on their webpage!”

“Funny you should say lavatory,” the Boss continues, “as that’s just where this item came from.”

“You nicked an apple from the bog?!” the PFY responds. “That’s hardly hygienic!”

“No, this apple is a direct product of our toilet system!” he snorts.

“You nicked an apple from out of the toilet?” the PFY gasps, wrinkling his nose.

“NO! No, the company signed up to a sustainability and reduced ecological impact initiative a couple of years back, and this is one of the outcomes!”

“How?”

“Simple. For the past two years we’ve been sending our effluent to one of those biodome things as a raw product for their planting system.”

“We’ve been giving them crap?” the PFY asks.

“For want of better wording, yes.”

“So does that mean we’re giving our clients a break?” I ask, rhetorically.

“AND THE OUTCOME OF THIS,” the Boss continues, ignoring me, “is fruit and veg, free for the taking, in the cafeteria!”

“So let me get this straight,” I ask “You’ve been giving my excrement away to people.”

“It’s crap!” the boss responds.

“It’s MY crap, and I work long and hard choosing the products to eat to make it high yield fertiliser.”

“It would’ve got sent to the bloody sewer system anyway,” the Boss replies.

“If I so choose to release my products to the public domain, so be it. However, if you take something which is mine, which I created, and give it to another – well that’s theft!”

“Yeah, sure,” the Boss snaps wearily.

“I thought about it, and created it, it’s my intellectual property!”

“I doubt it!”

. . . three days later . . .

“What the hell is this?” the Head of IT snaps, crashing into mission control, waving a piece of paper.

“A ... piece of paper?” the PFY suggests.

“Well?” he asks, ignoring the PFY and addressing me directly.

“I can’t see from here.”

“It’s a letter from your solicitors, saying they’re going to take legal action against the company – and all the staff in the company who took any of the free fruit and veg earlier in the week!”

“Oh that!” I said. “Yes, about the company stealing my IP.”

“They stole your excrement!” he snaps.

“So you agree they stole it?” I ask.

“No, I didn’t mean that, I meant it was just ... shit.”

“It may be shit, but it was incorporated into a better product without my permission.”

“And so if we don’t…. purchase a licence to your excrement… you’re going to sue us.”

“Yes.”

“But we don’t want your excrement – it’s smelly and worthless.”

“That may be the case, but parts of my excrement made up the fruit and veg you took, without my permission. And as I don’t license components of my excrement, just the excrement, you’d need a license for my excrement to own the fruit and veg.”

“It’s SHIT!” he snaps.

“There would be few people in the world who would disagree with you. However, my thought went into its construction, and it’s my intellectual property.”

“It’s SHIT!”

“I’m not arguing with you.”

“OK, how much is the licence?”

“50 quid.”

“FIFTY BLOODY QUID!”

“Yes, now. Course if you wait till after the court case, the price might go up.”

“That’s extortion!”

“I’m not going to argue with you about that either.”

“But what good is an excrement license to me?”

“Well, should you want to use my excrement for something – in the future – you have a license for it. And you can keep eating the free fruit and veg!”

“So what PART of your excrement contributed to this carrot?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose that.”

“We’ll I’ll tell the biodome to stop using your crap.”

“It would mean a complete cleanup, start from scratch, to remove all the vestages of my IP from the ground substrate… Very costly. And it wouldn’t help all you people who still have the fruit and veg.”

“So let me get this straight – I buy a poo license from you for 50 quid.”

“At today’s prices, yes.”

“And you allow me to keep eating free fruit and veg.”

“Yes.”

“And if it transpires that you used a toilet that didn’t empty into the storage container, but into the sewer instead would you refund me?”

“Well no, because you bought a licence to use my poo. Contained in that license is the option to use things made from my poo. But you can still use my poo.”

“So if there was none of your poo in the biodome, I’d have paid you 50 quid.”

“At today's prices.”

“Yes, at today’s prices, for nothing.”

“No, for the license to use my poo.”

“Right, well I’m not paying.”

“Well, I guess I’ll see you in court.”

. . .

“Are you really going to take them to court?”

“Depends on how much money I get outside of court. If I get a lot, I’ve lined up a private investor who’ll buy all the rights and then charge an annual support fee.”

“If not?”

“Dunno, I might settle for a couple of pints and a pickled egg at the pub. So, was that a pear you were eating yesterday?”

“You bastard.”

“I don’t think Bastard goes anywhere near to describing the unmitigated scum sucking, bottom feeding toerag that is me. But hey – who knew shit could be worth so much…”


BOFH 2004: Episode 9
So my plan to extort money from company staff under threats of legal action is coming along nicely. The case is fairly open and shut in that the staff consumed food grown with the aid of my excrement, which was in turn used without my knowledge or approval.

As I later revealed, my excrement is the 'fruit' of considerable intellectual effort, both in the selection of food of varying types, and the amount of lager to accompany it so as to reach it's full nutrient potential.

As expected, the weaker staff caved in almost immediately to my threats of legal action and bought licenses to use my excrement. The rest of them though, are waiting to see how things go, so it seems a couple of examples need to be made...

...a day later, the Boss and the PFY aren't happy.

"But I paid my license fee in pints!" the PFY snaps, annoyed, whilst scanning the content of my lawyer's letter.

"If that were true, you'd have a license certificate, surely."

"What, you actually printed license certificates for the use of your excrement?!" the Boss asks.

"Of course! What sort of vendor would I be if I didn't issue license certificates?"

"I paid!" the PFY snaps.

"Alright, have a license document," I say, handing over a tastefully printed document headed with a three letter acronym recognised in the computing community as being synonymous with excrement.

"You can't prove that I had any of the fruit or veg that has your IP in it!" the Boss blurts, placing his summons on my desk.

"You may be right," I say, "but I'm sure that a quick subpoena would sort everything out."

"Subpoena?" he asks. "What for?"

"Just a sample of your DNA - to prove that you now contain some of my IP."

"It won't show anything!"

"Oh, don't worry, I'd subpoena your tissue again if the first test was inconclusive."

"And keep on doing it until you find something I suppose?"

"Oh no. No, we only get two cracks at it - unless you've got three testicles"

"WHAT!"

"Yes, Well you realise that if you've absorbed my IP, any children you have would have to be licensed, and of course the only way I can prove absorption would be through your reproductive organs."

"That's preposterous!"

"I have the documented opinion of a couple of medical experts."

"You bribed them!"

"No," I lie. "If I'd bribed them, they'd say that they needed both your testicles to start with, and if any IP were found you'd need to be subjected to six months of female hormones to cleanse your system. Hmm, I might just make a quick phone call...."

"Do you take cheques?" the Boss asks, snapping like a twig.

"Of course. Made out to 'BIP PLC'."

. . .

As with all good plans, the PFY is there to throw a spanner in the works...

"Course..." he says, once the Boss has left, "I'd need my share."

"Of what?"

"Your IP - for my unpaid consultancy."

"When?"

"When I diagnosed the non-solid portions of your IP."

"?!"

"My opinion on your flatulence. Beta testing if you like. You altered your food intake in response to my diagnosis. Therefore not all the development credit is yours."

"And?"

"And so you owe me credit for what you call 'your' IP."

"?"

"Your product was modified in response to the feedback I gave you! Say I'd licensed some software off you, it was complete and utter crap - the stuff that all your clients couldn't WAIT to be shot of when something - ANYTHING - better came along. For instance. Hypothetically. Now because it's so crap, I'd be placing service calls to you to report the faults in your product, which would, in turn, cause you to alter your product in some way. In effect if you've actually modified your code in response to my service call, which means I'm helping to shape your product with my diagnosis. Now unless you had a contract with me that expressly stated that any problems I logged with you would become the property of your company, I would in fact be owed some compensation for helping to develop your software."

"So you're saying that by pointing out how smelly I am, you deserve a share of my product license fees for helping to develop it?"

"That's what my lawyer tells me," the PFY says, handing over an envelope.

"So you're suing me for a share of my excrement!"

"In a nutshell - to be O'Relily-like" he chirps.

"You bastard!"

"However, I will bring something tangible to the party."

"What's that?"

"I won't tell anyone that the supermarket down the road put you up to this, AND, I do believe that you could claim your food, drink and toilet paper as business expenses."

"Oooo yes," I blurt, penny dropping.

"So I take it I'm a 50 per cent shareholder in BIP PLC?"

"Ah... 25 per cent, and the company will shout you curry and lagers - for research purposes."

"Done!" 


BOFH 2004: Episode 10
Some days I just look at my Inbox and feel uninspired. Stacked ahead of me are the dull and mundane tasks that'd bore anyone with an IQ higher than their pants size. You know the sort of thing: "Can you install a printer driver on the server?", "Can we get more disk on the Homeshare machine?" etc.

So, at times like this, I like to take solace in something comforting.

>clickety..< >tap< >tap!<

>rustle< >tap!< >tap!<

"Bugger!"

>tap< >tap< >TAP!< >BASH!<

"What is it?" the PFY asks.

>BASH< >BASH!< >BASH!!!<

"The bloody VMS machine has crashed!"

"Is it still switched on, then?"

"Course it's bloody switched on!"

>tap< >tap<

"This calls for drastic measures!!!" >clickety<

>clickety<

. . 10 minutes later . .

"The HR Server is down!" the Boss burbles, ripping into Mission Control.

"No, no, it's fine," I say calmly.

"It's down. I've had three calls about it!"

"Yes, I've had a couple myself, but the server's up. It seems that it's got some... uh.. legacy.. application.. integration.. codependencies..., which have upset it's network connectivity."

The PFY looks up at the unnotified use of the excuse calendar but remains silent.

"What does that mean, exactly?"

"It's plugged into the old VMS machine - which died this morning."

"Which one's that?" he asks, peering through the observation glass in the door.

"The big one in the middle."

"The one that looks like a big fridge?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Have you rung the engineer?"

"No - it's not under maintenance."

"It's not under maintenance! Why not?!"

"Too expensive, I guess."

"Well can you see if you can fix it?"

"Nothing I can do - I left my hammer at home."

"Well can't you call someone out?"

"I could, but it's liable to cost money, so I didn't think you'd want to..."

"THE BLOODY HR SERVER IS DOWN!" the Boss gasps. "IF it's not up by midnight tonight the bank authorities won't go out and people won't be paid! It'll be bedlam!"

"Oh," I say, faking enlightenment. "So I should just get the engineer out?"

"Too bloody right."

"They'll need a Purchase Order Number."

"I'll get one to you - meantime, ring!" the Boss responds, exiting stage left.

. . .

"Since when has the HR system been linked to the VMS machine?" the PFY asks as I look up the VMS support company.

"Since the VMS machine crashed this morning!"

"No, that was you disabling the HR server's switch port."

"Yeah well, I needed to raise the priority of the fix!" I respond fervently.

"Why?"

"Because my dungeon savegame is on it!"

"Your dungeon savegame?"

"Yes, my dungeon savegame, WHICH I HAVE BEEN PLAYING FOR THE BETTER PART OF TEN YEARS!!!" I snap.

"Are you still playing that? Didn't I give you a map for it years ago? You should be through it by now!"

"That's cheating," I respond.

"*sigh*. Didn't you back your game up to tape?"

"Course I didn't bloody back it up to tape! It's a VMS machine! The internal drive failed about FIVE years ago. And even when it was working it had the error-free capacity of half a floppy!"

"So why didn't you get it fixed?"

"The machine's not on maintenance!"

"Why not?"

"Nothing runs on the box - Apart from my game of dungeon."

"So you're saying that we have this huge system which consumes GOBS of power, 1.5 square metres of extremely valuable computer room floor space, and has a lower processor spec than my cellphone - all because you want to play a game?"

"Not 'a game', dungeon!"

"Which is a game.."

"No. Soltaire is 'a game' - Ureal Tournament is 'a game'.. Dungeon is.. an experience!"

"Yeah, yeah, I played Zork."

"Zork's a spinoff! It's the Angel to dungeon's Buffy!"

"Uh huh," the PFY adds, looking at me sadly, "And you didn't ftp it somewhere?"

"It's only got UCX installed."

"Ah, so no networking."

"No."

"And you're going to make the company pay for an engineer just for a game?"

"Uh-huh," I say, as the helpdesk answers...

. . . Two hours later . .

"We don't get many urgent calls," the Engineer blurts "Not any more leastways. Time was we'd have urgent calls from dawn till dusk, but these days you'd be lucky to get a couple of calls a week, and as far as URGENT calls go, I think the last one of THEM we got was about six months ago when..."

I shove some earplugs in before I lapse into a coma and motion him into the computer room. That's the problem with old engineers, they get called out so rarely they have to get over their Robinson Crusoe Syndrome by talking incessantly...

Like a true engineering professional he wanders around the machine for a couple of minutes mouthing things like "Interesting" and "Hmmm" before resetting the breaker handle at the rear of the machine, at which time the machine hmms to life.

"Just the breaker popped," he burbles as I pull the earplugs out, wandering around the front of the unit and opening the front panel "Soooo.., that should be the lot, so you'll just be up for about 350 quid. Can you sign here?"

"Three hunded and fifty quid - just so you can play a game?!" the PFY blurts.

"Ah, it looks like a little more than that" the Engineer interrupts, looking at the console output, "I think you've lost the userdisk as well - probably stiction, maybe a headcrash."

"Ooooh, that's your savegame down the toilet!" the PFY smirks unkindly.

"The savegame yes, but not the game itself - installed in SYSEXE."

"What, you're going to start again from the beginning!!?"

"If I have to."

"Tell you what," the engineer blurts. "I got a couple of refurbished spares in the car with me - disk crashes are a VERY common occurrence in kit of this age. In fact ... >burble< >burble<. . . ."

. . .

"TWO BLOODY GRAND!!!" the Boss cries. "What the hell for?"

"Power supply problem and a disk failure," I respond.

"And our HR system is dependent on this?"

"It won't come up till it's fixed," I reply. "Although I think I know a way to remove our dependancy on the kit."

"Before midnight!?"

"No, but before tomorrow - if my assistant and I... worked... on it.. all night."

"So you'll get it running before midnight and decoupled by morning?"

"I think we can," I respond, looking up the Gourmet Pizza Parlour in my address book. "But you're looking at maybe 12 hours, double time, times two people..."

"If it works, it'll be worth it?" he asks. "What sort of planning do you need to do?"

"Well I just have one document that I need to familiarise myself with," I respond, pulling the PFY's dungeon map from out of my filing cabinet. "But apart from that it'll just be hard slog..."

Funny how we get our inspiration, isn't it... 


BOFH 2004: Episode 11
"Didn't we just DO an inventory?" the PFY asks, looking through the pages of items which we're going to have to find and account for.

"Yes, but that was an internal inventory - for the IT Department. This one's for the Beancounters."

"And the difference is?"

"Our internal inventory simply consists of us ticking off items as we locate them. The Beancounter inventory requires us to enter the serial number of the piece of kit with the supplied inventory number and description."

"Why?"

"To reduce the chance of 'shrinkage'. See, they check the serial number we supply against the one in their database - if they don't match, they know we've made it up and the piece of kit cannot be found."

"And?"

"And then they recommend a full and complete audit, A-Z of our equipment, complete with lazy beancounter overseer to sight every item and make sure it's legit."

"Ah."

"So, I suppose we'd better get down to it. Item 1. Alpha box, Inventory number 101211."

"We haven't got an Alpha box."

"No, I pushed it into the dumpster about 18 months ago during a cleanout, but couldn't be stuffed filling out an asset disposal form. So we'll mark that down as missing."

"Won't that mean we'll have to have the A-Z audit."

"Oh no. You need your 'missing' items. They'll expect something to be missing, and what they'll do is look at the unit's book value - which will be zero after all these years - and decide not to pursue it."

"Ah, right."

"Next. Anamorphous Solar Panels, two."

"On the roof of my flat."

"Missing."

"But we only bought them last year - they'll still have a book value!"

"Indeed. And the beancounter will think - the lazy bastards couldn't be bothered getting up onto the roof. Next Dell Server, 6600, four. Inventory numbers 330765, 330766, 334189 and 334190."

"Computer Room," the PFY says . . . . "First one: HZT881S."

"That's the service tag. They'll want the serial number, as that'll be what's in their database."

"Oh. 39170708416."

"Slower,"

"391 ... 707 ... 084 ... 16"

"39170708416, Right. Next one?"

"391..."

. . . and so it goes, box by box . . .

"Tape Drives, six, First Inventory Number 288907."

"Wow!"

"What?"

"Look at the serial number on that baby!"

"That's not the serial number, that's a dump of it's BIOS firmware!" I blurt hopefully." I'm not writing that down! What is that, 70 characters?"

"...sixty... three," the PFY says, gazing intently at the number concerned "I think.. I might have lost my place there."

"Ok, DAMAGED."

"It's not…"

>CRASH!<

"Yes it is."

"You can't break them all!"

"True, we'll have to use the old list."

"The old list?!?"

"Yeah, the photocopy of the list we did last time."

"Last time?"

"A couple of years ago."

"If we've got a list, why are we doing this?!"

"Just establishing an alibi," I respond.

"?"

"The Boss has seen us in the computer room all morning, so when we're away all afternoon he'll think we're inventorising the kit in the comms rooms, etc., instead of at the pub."

"Ah!"

"So what do we do about the stuff we've bought since the 'old list'?"

"We just change the entries in the beancounter's database to be whatever number we think up at the pub this afternoon."

. . . two days later . . .

"Just a couple of things," the beancounter auditor chirps, reading down his clipboard. "Solar Panels, two - you say they're missing."

"Yes," I reply. "We turned the place over looking for them. Probably stolen."

"Did you check the roof?"

"The roof?"

"Yes, where solar panels normally live."

"Oh yes, you're right. That completely slipped my mind!"

"Next, these tape drives - you list their serial numbers as... 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and Damaged."

"Is that what it says on the sheet?" the PFY asks.

"Yes."

"It must be the case then - we copied it off the units."

"But no-one would use a single digit serial number!"

"They might if they only made 10 of them," I point out. "Anyway, don't you guys keep records of serial numbers from the store when the kit arrives?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"Well the database has single digits too, but there must be some mistake."

"So you're complaining that our records match yours?!!!!"

"I.... Well that's not the point. I mean look at this! >shuffle< UPS, Standalone. Serial Number: K-N-O-B,F-A-C-E."

"Yes?"

"It spells KNOBFACE!"

"It doesn't spell anything!" I cry. "It's a serial code. SERIAL. The UPS before it was K-N-O-B-F-A-C-D, the one after it was K-N-O-B-F-A-C-F. It's just random. We were just lucky."

"And I suppose... The UPS 20KVA really has a serial number of ALLBEANCOUNTERSARETOSSERS."

"That's what's on the machine!" the PFY replies.

"And the one before it was ALLBEANCOUNTERSARETOSSERR, and the one after it was ALLBEANCOUNTERSARETOSSERT?"

"Probably," I say, "If it's serial. Maybe the makers just didn't like beancounters?"

"I want to bloody see it!"

"It's in a secure area, I'm afraid, we can't possibly allow it."

"We'll see about that!" he snaps, grabbing my desk phone and punching out some numbers.

. . .

A couple of minutes later the Boss trundles in.

"I've just been talking to the Head of Accounting," he says officiously, "and this man here is to audit ALL equipment with any query against it. You are to provide him with COMPLETE access to sight this equipment so that he can verify it's serial and inventory numbers."

"I see," I respond. "Fair enough. What's first on the list?"

"Solar panels!" he snaps.

. . .

"... all a terrible accident," I say to the Boss as the ambulance pulls away. "He bent over to read the serial number and slipped. Six floors into the recycling bin!"

"We're very lucky all the cardboard was in there to break his fall," the Boss blurts.

"If you say so."

"He says you pushed him."

"That's just the shock talking!"

"He said there were no solar panels!"

"Ridiculous! He's had a bump to the head."

"I tend to believe him."

"You take his word against one of your employees! I'll take you up and show you if you like!"

The Boss eyes the bin with the newly "compacted" cardboard briefly.

"No, I think that will be OK…"

"What about you?" I say, to the Head of Accounting.

"I... ah.. think everything is in order."

"Because while I was up on the roof I found some more of the missing kit, and would you believe it, the serial numbers of all those are, coincidentally 'ALLBEANCOUNTERSARETOSSERS' too. I mean, what a coincidence. Would you like to check?"

"No, no, I'm sure you're right."

"Right, well, I'll have someone send the paperwork up to you this afternoon then?"


BOFH 2004: Episode 12
"What do you mean, generic replacement?" I ask, thinking very unkind thoughts about the stores person.

"It's a substitute... for the part you ordered."

"It's not the same!"

"According to the system it is!" the stores bloke burbles.

"It's not!"

"But the system says they're the same - it must be a vendor substitute part."

"Is it THE vendors substitute part, or the substitute part of a third party vendor?"

"Well, a third party one, I guess. But it should work exactly the same as the power supply you want it to replace."

"Tell you what," I say, realising that this could go on for some time: "Why don't you pop up here and we'll show you the problem."

"I guess so," the stores guy says, knowing full well that he was employed a couple of days after the last time this phrase was used...

Ten minutes later, he's up in Mission Control, and unless I'm very much mistaken (which rarely occurs) he's got a dictaphone running in his pocket.

Sigh.

"OK!" I snap, "Let me show you what I mean. Over here, we have the dead power supply which came out of our box, and over here we have the replacement power supply. Does anything strike you as different about them?"

"Well the new one is smaller I guess."

"Indeed. Allow me to demonstrate!"

I slide the supply down the rails, wiggle it around for a bit until the contacts line up, then push it home.

"It plugs into the machine!" the stores bloke comments.

"Leaving a large hole along one edge."

"Couldn't you just cover it up with some tape?" he suggests helpfully

"Perhaps in the technological equivalent of the third world, yes, but in the real world, no. So how about we get the part we ordered?"

"Well it's like this," he starts "I enter your part in the system and it finds a cheaper alternative and automatically chooses it. I'm not allowed to chose anything else."

"You wa?" the PFY asks, horrified.

"It's the new financials system - it does everything for you. I just enter the number required and the shipping requirements" he sweats.

"I see. Thank you for your time"

. . one hour later . .

"It's a vendor substitute!" the Beancounter tells me, after I point out the fly in the ointment for the second time.

"It's A vendor substitute, not THE vendor substitute," I repeat.

"Yes but it must work exactly the same way!"

"It provides the same power, but it's not the same unit - so it doesn't fit properly."

"But it does the same job!"

"No, because an element of the power supply is cooling, and if it doesn't fit properly, the cooling doesn't work."

"It doesn't say 'Power supply and cooling' on the description," he responds.

"Ah right. So if it doesn't say it in the description, then it's not supposed to do it?"

"Obviously. I mean if it was meant to do cooling, they would call it a 'power and cooling unit' and probably charge us more for it."

"So we can't get the right power supply?" the PFY calls from across the room.

"The ordering system will choose the cheapest alternative. Perhaps you could get the original vendor to change the description of that part and give it a new part number?" he adds helpfully, not realising that the chances of getting a vendor to change a part number are lower than the Titanic's golden rivet... "That way there wouldn't be a substitute part."

"Or maybe we could just override it this once?" I suggest.

"Oh no," he blurts chuckling at the thought, "We have a policy of not overriding the system - it sets a bad precedent you see."

"So nothing's going to happen till we get the vendor to change their part number?" I ask.

"It's like you read my mind," he replies smugly.

...Later that same day....

>Ring<

"Systems!" the PFY blurts, slapping the phone on hands free as soon as he sees the calling number.

"There's a problem with the lift!" a familiar voice echoes tinnily.

"What's that then?" the PFY asks.

"It's stuck on the 6th floor!" the voice responds.

"No...." the PFY responds, tapping away on the lift interface. "It's stuck on the 6.01999th floor."

"What?"

"It's on the 6.01999ths floor. It's slightly overshot the top floor."

"Well can you get it to get back down?"

"Hang on, I'll get Simon."

..The PFY and I finish our game of poker...

"Hello, Systems."

"I'm stuck in a lift on the 6.01999th floor."

"We haven't got a 6.01999th floor!" I reply.

"That's what your assistant said, we'd overshot or something."

"Hang on." >clickety< "Ohh yes, so you have. That was silly."

"What do you mean? It's not like we chose to go there!"

"True."

"Can you get us down?"

"I'm not sure I can. You see it's described as a 'Lift', not a Drop or a Fall."

"What?"

"You're in a Lift, i.e. UP. I could call the service company, but they might say that if it were meant to go down as well as up it would be called a 'Lift and Fall or Drop or something'."

"What?!"

"See, it's lifted you, like it said in the description of the device - so technically, if the lift did anything else, it would be in the description and they'd charge more for it - like that power supply we had this morning."

"Oh. It's you."

"Now I could ring the lift company and ask them if they'd change the description of this unit so that it's clear that it goes both up and down - but that's liable to take some considerable time."

"Or we could just get out the escape hatch," he snaps.

"Ordinarily, yes, but when you're at the absolute top of the shaft the proximity of the motor prevents the escape hatch from opening - uh - so I've been told."

"Look just make the thing go down will you?" he says, a touch of angst creeping into his voice.

"You mean override the system?" I ask "Because we have a policy about overr.."

"ALRIGHT, I'LL GET YOUR BLOODY POWERSUPPLY."

"Really? Would you?" I gush "That would be fantastic! Now what about on all future lift trips?"

"What?"

"Well if you could permanently override the purchasing system for us, I think I might be able to override the lift system for you...."

"And if I don't agree I'll be stuck here forever?"

"It's like you read my mind!" 


BOFH 2004: Episode 13
So we’ve got someone on the network who considers themselves a bit of a ‘leet dood’ hacker.

I notice when IDS starts throwing up portscans stepping through our IP address range one at a time.

“He’s not even bothering to disguise it...” the PFY remarks drily, pointing at an IP address allocated to one of the lesser machines in beancounter central.

“Yeah, AND he’s using a desktop machine, not a service kiosk, which would have obscured the trail a little bit.”

“Really? I prefer turning off Mac-Address change warnings on the router then use a networked printer’s address.”

“Sneaky,” I comment.

“Yeah. So what’s he doing now the scan has finished?”

>Clickety<

“Hmmm. Looks like he’s testing rootpaks against our main web server.”

“We're still running Apache on it aren't we?” the PFY asks worriedly.

“No no, 'secure' IIS.”

We laugh a bit at that one, and continue watching. As if..

"Ah! Now he's switching to ftp vulnerabilities.. ... and now back to the portscanning again."

"So not much of a threat?"

"Not as yet. But bear in mind, once he gets into the Beancounters' area with their requirement to administer their own 'servers' it's going to be intrusion city Arizona!"

"Should we warn them?"

"Yeah, I suppose so."

"Give their geek a ring?"

"I was thinking more of pings-of-death on their older unpatched machines.."

... Several crashes later...

"There's something wrong with the network," the Boss blurts, bumbling into Mission Control. "The phones are going mad!"

"Yes, it seems we have a hacker..." I say, pointing at the IDS console.

"It looks like he's using a prepackaged kit to attack our servers in a pseudo random manner to avoid detection," the PFY adds.

"Aren't you going to stop him?"

"Ordinarily yes, but we'd like him to get in somewhere so that we can eavesdrop and see what he's looking for."

"How?"

"We'll activate the remote snoop client on his machine."

"Remote snoop client?"

"Yeah, we fudged their install media to always install the snoop client. Just to... uh.. help them diagnose problems... if they ask us."

"So they don't know that it's installed on their machines?"

"No."

"Do you install this remote stuff on everyone's machines?" the Boss asks.

"What would be the point of that?" I respond, dodging the question so as to avoid putting a quid in the 'lie jar' that the PFY and I recently installed.

"Shouldn't we be calling the police?!" the Boss asks.

"What for?" the PFY asks. "It'll just be some wingnut down in Finance who's watched that movie Wargames one too many times in his childhood and believes he can use the system to trigger a nuclear incident if he tries really hard."

"Which of course he can't," the Boss finishes.

"Well..... probably not. Well 95 per cent certain," the PFY responds.

"You don't sound too sure."

"It's difficult - I mean he might be quite intelligent, he might have outside help, or he might just have beginner's luck."

"So do you know where it's coming from?"

"Yeah, down in accounts. From the IP number I'd guess it's over in the far corner, near where that new guy is."

"New guy?" the Boss asks, forming a theory.

"Yeah, what's his name...... Almed, Amal" the PFY replies, dropping a quid in the lie jar with a >clink<

"Amal," I say. "Remember, he came up to introduce himself. Arab guy, new to London," I say, adding a quid with another quid.

"I... uh..." the Boss says, not wanting to say it.

Honesty, it's just too bloody easy sometimes, and at this rate the jar will be full by lunchtime.

"What.. uh.. does he do?" the Boss asks.

"Something in accounts I think he said," the PFY says >clink<

"Yeah," >clink< I add. "But he needed to borrow a laptop for the time being because they didn't have a machine for him - hey, maybe that's the machine he's using!"

"And you checked his ID."

"WhatID?" the PFY asks.

"His company ID."

"You have to be here for a couple of weeks before your ID's made!" I say.

"Well did he have a swipe card?"

"Uuuuuhhhhm, no, I think I let him through the door." >clink<

"Right. OK," the Boss chirps irrationally, trying to gather his thoughts while pacing excitedly "Right! This Amal chap, what did he look like?"

"Hard to tell. Normal I spose, Tall, strong?"

"Strong."

"Yeah, he was carrying his bag like it was nothing. Huge bag, canvas thing. Green." >clink<

"Khaki, not green," >clink< I correct. "One of those army surplus things that flooded the market after the Gulf W..."

>slam<

. . . two hours later . . .

"Well it was all a bit of mistake," I say, to the Head of IT as the Boss is taken away for a bit of questioning. "It seems that someone down in Beancounter Central was running a Nessus scan across our hosts - without telling us, mind - which looked to all intents and purposes like an attack from inside the company. Meanwhile my assistant and I were talking about a movie that we'd seen sometime, and he must have mixed the two together in his head." >clink< "Unless of course, he had some other reason for calling the Antiterrorism people. "

"He's often said that he doesn't like the way Microsoft always chooses the American way of spelling," the PFY adds with another >clink<

"So the whole thing was a big mistake."

"Yeah. Well, 95 per cent certain..." 


Episode 14 BOFH 2004

"Yep?" I ask, as the boss rolls into mission control with a perplexed expression on his face.

"It's my machine," he says, "Got a bit of a problem accessing the I.T. Management share and I need to pick up this month's budget figures."

"And you're logged into your machine ok?" I sigh, looking vainly around for the PFY to palm this off to. Worst luck tho', he's doing some urgent installs in some new racks so I'm lumbered with the responsibility.

"Yes."

"And your network cable is in?" I ask, knowing the boss's habit of kicking cables out.

"Yes."

"And how do you open your share?"

"With the 'run' option."

"And what do you type?"

"\-\-I-T-S-E-R-V-\-I-T-M-G-T," he spells, slowly.

"And does nothing?"

"No, it gives an error message."

"OK," I sigh, knowing that this is the quickest way back to peace and quiet. "I'll come take a look,"

. . 1 minute later, in the Boss' office . .

"You're running Linux!" I gasp.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it's more advanced!"

"In what way?" I ask, prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

"Well, it's developed by thousands of people!"

"So was the Black Death, but that doesn't mean you want to expose yourself to it!"

"Yes, but it's the latest version!"

"And YOU installed this yourself?"

"Yeah. Well, with a couple of pointers from Ron."

"Ron?"

"Yeah, you know, the electrician guy."

"MAD RON THE SPARKY?!"

"Yes..."

"And you took the opinion of a fat bloke in shorts over that of your desktop support person?"

"You say desktop support are crap!"

"Of course they're crap, but they're a hell of a lot better than Ron!"

"But he says he runs Linux at home ok!"

"And his home bears a resemblance to our office how?" I ask, sarcastically.

"It's similar. He's got his own LAN!"

"That just proves he's SAD with no mates!"

"Well I think this Linux thing is worth looking into! AND I'm going to save a bomb in license fees!"

"Not when the company's got a site license you won't!"

"Well, Linux is more secure!"

"You're behind two firewalls protecting you both from the Internet and the rest of the company, AND you WERE on automatic update for both Apps and Antivirus definitions. A vanilla Linux install is a potential minefield!"

"Well it's... got a nice look-and-feel!" he says, really grasping at straws now.

"I'll put the swimsuit picture onto your windows background" I say, realising a pivotal argument when I see one.

"Would you?" he asks, problem solved.

Sigh...

"So... What else did Ron recommend?"

"Well he gave me a couple of sites to download some useful Linux applications from.." the boss responds, hesitantly.

"Tell me none of them ended in .nl or .fi ?"

"Uh... well... maybe a couple."

"Of course" I sigh, pulling his network cable out of the wall after just realising that the activity light on his NIC hasn't flickered OFF at all during our conversation... "And what were these backdoors to bring the company to its knees - I mean useful applications - going to do?"

"Uhhh… filesharing for music, cheap phone calls on the internet, and speed up downloads," he suggests.

Sigh.

>thinking<... >thinking<

"Ok, so here's what I think we'll do: We'll get the desktop support team to recover your machine from a backup, remove your CD drive to reduce the risk of this happening again, have Ron's legs broken - after making it look like an accident - and forget this ever happened."

"I don't think that w..." the Boss simpers.

"Or alternatively, I could track the source of the virus which is most likely running rampant around the company - to your desktop machine - tell the Head of IT how it occurred, and watch on as you're escorted from the building... Your call!"

"Ok," the Boss sighs. "But you weren't serious of breaking his legs..."

"Of course not" I respond "That's a hardware job. I'd get someone else to do it!"

"I..."

"Only joking. We're not that brutal. No, I'll just give him a quick talking to about how we in the IT department are responsible for technical advice and how he's responsible for changing fluorescent tubes and scrubbing toilets when the cleaner's sick."

"Changing lights and installing powerpoints," the Boss adds.

"No, like I said that's Mad Ron - A. He's colour blind and B. he's been electrocuted more times than the Northern Line. We contract out our real electrical work for Health and Safety reasons."

"No, he installed those powerpoints in the server room two days ago because you'd said it was a rush job..."

"No, he's not allowed in the computer room after that time he slapped his current tester across the UPS to determine what it's maximum output would be. It took 1/2 a day to bring the room back up."

"Oh."

"Oh?"

"Well, he said it was a rush job to put some racks in and so I let him..."

!!!!

Come to think of it, the PFY is taking rather a long time with that install....

. . . 


Episode 15 BOFH 2004

It's not good.

I find the PFY flat on his back in the computer room with all but one of the telltale signs of electrocution (The missing sign being that he hadn't annoyed me in the recent past).

Using my rudimentary knowledge of First Aid and for once forsaking the medicinal properties of liberal application of the cattle prod, I keep him stable until the ambulance arrives. (After disconnecting the newly-installed rack from the power, of course)

One of the benefits of my long career in computing 'support' is that my location is a prerequisite for the ambulance drivers' Knowledge so they're usually fairly quick to respond to calls.

The PFY comes round before the ambulance gets there which is a good sign, however because of the nature of the accident the ambos tell me that it's best that he spends a night or two in the hospital under observation, getting some tests done. They seem somewhat surprised that he managed to survive what would appear to be sustained contact with the mains supply, but I tell them he's probably built up some immunity to the ravages of voltage over the years. I forgo the luxury of riding in the back of the ambo with him however, choosing instead to pick up some essentials for his stay.

Crisis over, my thoughts turn to voicing my displeasure.

"It's just another crap cost-cutting measure by the company!" I rant at the Boss as he drives us to hospital. Halfway there I realise it would have been quicker if I'd gone with the ambulance, however I'll probably get a second chance at that if the Boss's driving doesn't improve quickly...

"Well in this economic climate, savings have to be made.." the Boss sighs, practicing his kamikaze technique on a nearby lorry.

"I can think of one person you could get rid of!"

"As a matter of fact, Ron…"

"Mad Ron," I interject.

"...is a registered electrician. A service professional!"

"Registered where?" I ask. "They say he came with the building and that his electrical practical exam involved a kite, a key and a thunderstorm."

"I don't believe that he's quite that old!" the Boss.

"But he is crap!" I argue "and everyone knows it."

"He's not that bad!"

"HE MIXED UP THE BLOODY EARTH AND PHASE!!"

"Yes well, everyone makes mistakes..." he says, calmly.

"It's a pretty serious mistake!"

"Well, it's not really his fault though - after all, he is colour blind."

"HE'S COLOUR BLIND!?"

"Yes well, it's... ..an employment issue."

"I agree. He shouldn't BE employed."

"It's not that simple - we can't let him go because that would mean discriminating against someone on health grounds - a move the union wouldn't support."

"So you'd rather have him working there, introducing more health issues?"

"Our hands are tied," he sighs, pulling into the hospital carpark.

...

Three hours later we find out where the PFY is and make our way to his ward. Our numbers have swollen somewhat, with the PFY's latest female companion, a company lawyer and Mad Ron all in attendance...

...

"I have to admit, you seem to be taking this rather well," the Company legal representative says, as a precursor to greasing the PFY to sign away any liability that the company might have for his current condition.

"These things happen," the PFY says calmly, tapping on the ECG monitor "...and no harm done."

"Yes well, it was a narrow shave." Mad Ron says. "Still, you really should check the earthing of equipment before you use it."

"Wouldn't that normally be the role of the electrician?" the PFY asks quietly.

"Some might say, but you should really know better than to just trust anything electrical."

The PFY's "quiet" demeanour has just slipped into the "too quiet category", methinks…

"SO!" I say, sensing danger, "who's up for a coffee then?"

"Not me thanks," the Boss burbles.

"Really? Are you sure? Why LOOK AT THAT, your defibrillator isn't even plugged in!"

"Oh? Get that will you, Ron," the PFY gasps weakly.

"Actually I DO feel like a coffee, come to think of it!" the Boss blurts, dragging the Company Lawyer with him.

"Now," I say, as we're walking down the hallway, "I hope that colour recognition will be noted in the prerequisites for the new sparky?"

"What new sparky?" the lawyer asks.

The words are hardly out of his mouth when the lights dim slightly. "Ah, that new sparky!" he continues, without missing a step. "Yes, yes, good as done."

"And my assistant will probably be billing you separately for his... uhmm.. HR consultancy."

"Beg Pardon!?" he gasps.

"Or he could just proceed with the negligence case?"

"Oh THAT HR Consultancy, yes, by all means... so long as it's... reasonable."

"I'm sure that'll be no problem." I respond.

"What's going on?" the Boss asks blankly.

"Nothing - just pretend we're speaking a different language."

"Like English," the lawyer adds unkindly.

So unkindly you have to wonder if he'd make a good operator... 


Episode 16 BOFH 2004

A man could go mad in this business.

One minute you’re hanging off the front of a mainframe shouting about how you’re king of the world - the wave of technology heralding an install which would make even the most hardened geek weep just from the ingenuity, the next moment you’ve got a SCSI card in your hand, not able to understand how, when you put it into a specific machine, it fails to see the devices connected to it.

You plug the card into another box, no problems, the devices make themselves known as they should. You plug it back into the machine it’s supposed to work on, nothing.

When hardware decides to misbehave, it really decides to misbehave.

Unlike the precocious child who will taunt you mercilessly, knowing just how to report the beating they deserve to their school teacher in a manner that will have you in Police custody before lunchtime, hardware is sneaky.

When hardware decides to misbehave, it starts out small. One tiny device doesn’t work properly, but everything else is working exactly as it should. You wander in completely unprepared, believing it's a simple dud disk or a loose cable – because lets face it, that’s what the statistics would suggest.

In today’s case the cable is fine, and replacing the disk has no effect..

I mentally toss up the possibility that it’s an addressing problem – something to do with that particular address - and change the address of the drive and probe the SCSI bus.

Another disk disappears.

I take a quick break to clear my rage and grab another coffee while I'm at it.

While I’m there, I realize that the new test address I chose must have conflicted with the address of the newly missing drive.

>clickety<

Then again, maybe not…

“What’s the matter?” the PFY asks, blundering into a situation that could escalate out of control at a moment’s notice if my temper doesn’t remain in check…

I fill him in on the sordid details, the Boss asking me to get the server up, me lightly saying that it would be up in half an hour, tops, and then the myriad of hardware upsets till now.

“So where are you at?”

“A hardware wizard has popped up on the desktop asking if maybe I want to remove some SCSI devices. But it only has a 'Yes' and 'No' box”

“What other buttons were you expecting?” he asks, voice laced liberally with sarcasm.

“The button saying ‘F-ck off. If I’d wanted a f-ing hardware wizard to read my f-ing mind, I would have configured the f-ing thing in the first f-ing place. Only I didn’t get an option to NOT install the f-ing hardware wizard, did I? NO, because someone at Operating System Central thought that everying f-ing one would want a f-ing hardware wizard to make inane suggestions’,” I say.

“Ah THAT button,” the PFY says. “Say, how many double espressos have you had?”

“Three or Four. Why?”

“Well, I just noticed that you were a little – just a little, mind - testy, and maybe it’s time to take a break…”

“Yes, only I’m on a bit of a time budget with this box. Besides, the Espresso figure was only from this afternoon.”

“And how many this morning?”

“About ten I guess.”

“So you’re just taking your caffeine level past the medical definition of ‘stimulant’ into the ‘poisons’ category?”

“Whatever,” I blurt distractedly. “What’s coming up on the monitor now?” I ask holding the cable in a semi-angled position.

>clickety<

“Yep, I can see them 5 disks, addresses 1,2,3,4 and 5.”

“Bingo – it’s the socket in the cabinet!” I say triumphantly. “One of the connectors in the plug must have moved slightly, probably because the cable’s been bent around the place a bit, putting a lot of stress on the socket and forcing open a contact!”

“So how would you see ANY disks on the Bus?” the PFY asks

“Simple” I say smugly, knowing my experience in this particular field is far superior to the PFY’s own. “The pin concerned is one of the addressing pins.”

“And so how come you had another drive disappear?”

“The physical stress which caused one pin on the connector to fail has most likely caused another to become intermittent.”

So simple when you know how. I put all the disks into a new box and throw out both the box and the old cable, just to be on the safe side.

“Up she comes!” the PFY says, powering up the disk box and rebooting the machine.

“And?” I ask, pushing in front of him.

. . .

“No disks found!” he gasps.

. . .

“So how’s that server going?" the Boss asks, wandering in after what he believes to be a safe interval.

“It’s a hardware problem.” the PFY says “uh…. >flick< >flick< Transient Component Fatigue.”

“Really?” the Boss asks. “I’ve never seen that. Where’s the machine?”

“Well, there’s a bit of it over there in the corner, a bit of it under the desk, and some of it on the table.”

“Bloody Hell! It looks like it’s been hit with a sledgehammer!”

“Yes, TCF is particularly nasty,” I add, helping myself to another coffee. “Also known and TOTAL Component Fatigue. The box basically just falls to pieces.”

“Amazing! Although I did wonder if it might have been that batch of cheap cables we bought a couple of months back.”

“Cheap cables?” I gasp, as the blood rushes to my head and things start to go a little red…

. . .

"You people seen your Boss?" the Head of IT asks

"Went home sick." the PFY says "A touch of TCF."

"TCF," the Head chuckles. "You know back when I was an apprentice, that used to mean something had been hit with a sl... Oh. So who's going to be on the interview panel?"

Give him his due - for a computer crusty, he's a quick learner... 


Episode 17 BOFH 2004

So I’m tootling through the crowd at a security conference, minding my own business and getting down as many lagers as I can before the end-of-night gong sounds. It’s an impressive turnout, with stacks of the industry represented, and, more importantly, lots of those mini-kebabs on a stick.

I cruise past some ubergeeks talking about something or the other as I head to the stand that’s captured my interest

“And so we looked into to,” Ubergeek#001 says, “and you wouldn’t believe it, but he’d only configured the proxy with –d –d –d and put the WHOLE THING INTO DEBUG MODE WITH NO ACCESS CHECKING!!!”

The assembled ubergeeks laugh hilariously at this as if it were the greatest joke in the world (you know, the one about the three guys and the dead turkey).

The things you see when you don’t have your overvoltage cattle prod, a shovel and a sack of lime…

I get to the stand I’m after only to find it’s been abandoned by it’s stallholder for now - which really annoys me as they had some really great pens earlier and I was more than prepared to feign interest (and possibly even lie about buying their product) in order to get one.

. . .

“So what’s your product do?” a half-trolleyed IT Manager type demands, mistaking me for someone from the stand just because I’m standing behind it stuffing pens into my jacket. “What’s a… hardware encryption device when it’s at home?”

What the hell..

“Well.. er.. John,” I say, popping out from behind the stand. “How’s your data currently encrypted and transferred around your company LAN?”

“Buggered if I know!” he bubbles. “TCPIP?”

“Ok, TCPIP – but what about encryption?”

“DES?” he asks, remembering that from somewhere, and establishing his technical knowledge firmly in the upper IT Management scale (Which corresponds to would-even-get-an-interview level on most other scales).

Time to lay it on thick.

“DES, right, good answer. Now did you know that over half the CPU in your organization’s computing is wasted simply converting data into encrypted form, and decrypting it at the other end?”

“No!”

“As sure as I’m working here! AND, did you know that this encryption/decryption process causes a delay which can critically affect anything which has synchronisation dependencies – database logging and locking, disk IO, etc, so that the operational delays are magnified to such an extent that the performance of your organization will suffer – SILENTLY – for years.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You’d think so wouldn’t you?” I say, technically not actually telling a lie. “So what a… hardware encryption device does, it does all that encryption decryption stuff for you on-the-fly, freeing up CPU, which will in turn will be used to free up logging, locking and disk io operations.”

“If it was that bloody good, they’d be built into machines already!” John responds, dubiously.

“That’s what everyone today’s been asking me,” I burble, to kill time while I think of a response. “But until now, the NSAs been keeping a tight lid on these babies.”

“So the NSA made these – is that what you’re saying?” John asks, even more dubiously.

“Absolutely not!” I respond rapidly and emphatically, “And the company adamantly denies that. They don’t even USE our devices, anywhere.”

“Ah-HA!” John snaps, convinced he’s caught me out in a lie. “I didn’t ask whether they used them, I just asked if they made them.”

“They didn’t, we did. And I also said they didn’t use them.”

“I think you’re lying,” John says. “I think the NSA does use them, but you’re not allowed to say!”

“That’s preposterous!” I bluster, seeing an opportunity and going for it. “Anyway, we’re not selling these any more – I’m just packing the stand away.”

“You’re not selling them?” John asks. “But you were a moment ago!”

“No. There’s a…. …. …. a firmware problem… yes, a firmware problem.”

“I don’t believe you.” John smirks, knowing he has me in a corner. “And I want to buy one. How much are they?”

“The list price is seven thousand pounds,” I say, faking defeat.

“But there’s a show special, isn’t there?”

“I…”

“What’s the show special?”

“Two thousand quid.”

“I’ll take one.”

“We haven’t got any.”

“What about that one?”

“It’s a demo, we’re not allowed to sell it,” I say, playing my hand very, very carefully.

“Well take my order!”

“I can’t,” I say. “I…. … don’t have an order pad – you’ll have to call us after the show.”

“When you don’t have a special price and probably won’t be selling the product any more because the NSA will stop you! I’ll give you a cheque as a deposit.”

…almost there…

“We don’t take cheques. And I don’t have a receipt book!”

“I’ve got cash – say 100 quid. And I’ll write a receipt on the back of one of my business cards.”

“I….”

“I don’t think the NSA would like it if I made a big fuss here, with all these people around – do you?”

“Ok, quickly then.”

2 minutes later I’m 100 quid richer, and John’s wandering around believing that he’s going to get some hardware encryption device the NSA doesn’t want him to have.

Sweet.

Half an hour later, I’m several thousand pounds richer, and there’s a lot of booze and rumour enhanced people wandering about the place. I’m going to have to make a break for it soon before the whole thing turns pear shaped…

“Excuse me,” another potential customer says from behind me.

I turn around and smell the pears, so to speak. It’s the bloke from the hardware encryption box stand.

“Uh yes?”

“I understand you’re selling ‘Hardware Encryption Boxes’ that the… NSA use?”

“No,” I respond.

“I was told you did”

“No,” I repeat.

“Whether you do or not is irrelevant. I was wanting to know if you’d allow me to access the firmware code of your device – for… peer review purposes.”

“So you want to look at my – I mean my company’s - code.”

“Yes.”

“Of my COMPANY’S hardware encryption device.”

“Yes.”

“Not ask to see my box, my stand, my business card or anything?”

“I know how these things work. You probably don’t even HAVE a business card. Or a real company address.”

I feel a little like I’m sitting in front of a one-armed bandit with three jackpot symbols showing and the final wheel still spinning.

“I see. And how much cash have you got on you?”

“A substantial amount. 20K, in non sequential small denomination bills.”

“I…” I say, now that the 4th wheel has stopped spinning. “Where?”

”In this case,” he says, handing it over.

“Right well, I’ll just go and pop this in my car. Where can I meet you in 10 minutes?”

10 minutes later he’s waiting patiently in his room and I’m waiting impatiently at some traffic lights 8 miles away.

The life of a geeky secret agent just doesn’t get any better than this…


Episode 18 BOFH 2004

"Where the HELL have you been?" the Boss blurts unhappily as I enter Mission Control very queasily after a night on some paint thinner disguised as fruit punch.

"Recovering from a product launch party last night," I respond slowly.

"Well there's a bit of a flap on!" he responds, talking rapidly in an effort to make me walk faster.

"Mmmm?"

"The.. authentication server is down?" he suggests, replaying the contents of his recent memory. "Anyway, no one can log in."

"Right. And what's the PFY done?"

"Your assistant? Nothing - he's not in yet."

I troll through the remnants of last night's revelries and do vaguely remember seeing the PFY ‘with the wobbly shoe on’ passing through the crowd with a half empty bottle of Ouzo.

"That's right, he's not well," I respond, covering for him. “He had a touch of the flu yesterday I think.”

"Who's not well?" the PFY asks slowly, entering Mission Control grasping a bagful of sundries from the chemist down the road.

"uhhh... You?" the Boss asks, fooled momentarily by the bloodshot eyes, facial grazes and general bruising that indicates a fantastic night at a supplier’s expense.

"Don't be ridiculous I'm... fit as a fiddle!" the PFY slurs, pausing momentarily to suppress a gag reflex which would have seen the Boss covered ouzo soaked kebab portions…

I decide to cut the interchange short as the PFY's blood alcohol level is probably very near the medical definition of a fatal overdose, which isn’t conducive to conversations with one’s superiors…

"Right, well, we'd best be looking into this authentication problem then!" I say, leading the PFY into Mission Control.

. . .

Half an hour later the Boss taps on the door, interrupting three things: the PFY's aspirin sandwich, the lager from our emergency stash that he's washing the sandwich down with, and an amusing recollection of what transpired when he mistook the elevator at last night’s venue for a Gentleman’s convenience…

"So how's it going?" the Boss asks.

"Hard at it," I lie. "Just recovering some of the… uh.. firmware settings from… tape while we do some… probes of the… redundant network interfaces."

As far as excuses go it’s not my best work, but with the amount I drank last night I’d qualify for the special Olympics just for being vertical.

. . .

. . .

. . .

"Right so... ... ... I.. I'll leave you to it"

The combined power buzzwords and lengthy silences is too much for the Boss, and he leaves us to get back to the PFY’s story…

. . .

Half an hour later, he’s back, finding me in a not very pleasant mood – probably because I was woken from a therapeutic nap…

“Were… you asleep?!” he gasps, obviously contemplating some form of disciplinary action.

“ASLEEP!” I shout loudly enough that the PFY can hear me from under his desk. “Of course not! I was resting my eyes.”

“Resting your eyes!” he says dubiously

“Yes, it’s these cheap bloody monitors” I snap, buying the PFY some more wake-up time. “They’re ok to use for maybe and hour or two, but when you’ve been using them for a whole morning the..”

“But you’ve only been at work for an hour!”

“I’m probably hypersensitive because of the poor lighting over my desk – it’s given me a monster headache!”

“Didn’t you ARRIVE with a headache?!”

“Yes, you’re right, it must be the cumulative effects of the years of poor working conditions. I must speak to my Union delegate.”

“You’re a contractor, not IN the Union.”

“HERE IT IS!” the PFY interjects emerging from under his desk with a suitable technical excuse for his location “It must have been interfering with the network connectivity.”

“It’s a shoe!” the boss blurts disbelievingly.

I have to be honest here – I was expecting the PFY to deliver something a bit better than that. The UTP cable from his desktop at least. Still it’s not the excuse, but how you market it that counts…

“That’s not a… graphite polymer sole is it?”

“It might be” the PFY replies, injecting a bit of guilt in at the end of his reply in case that’s required.

(Honestly, it’s like writing a collaborative novel)

“But I’ve already told you, the graphite is a mild conductor and the polymer…..”

..and just then my overworked brain cuts out..

. . .

“..Causes the graphite to adhere to spring-metal contacts,” the PFY finishes, saving the day. “But I thought it would be ok out here in the control room, away from the uh…”

“Authentication servers?” I finish, my mind back from its short vacation “No – any reduction in signal voltage at any point in the network will be reflected in core router supply – potentially causing overheating.”

“You mean this whole thing’s been caused by a set of shoes?!” The boss gasps.

“Polymer Graphite shoes, yes.”

“So if I hear you correctly, anyone in the Company could bring the systems down just by wearing the wrong shoes?!”

Caught out in a lie!! It’s fairly easy to predict that the Boss will now check all shoes on premises, issue an edict about appropriate footwear sole material, find out (eventually) that it was all a fabrication, become a laughing stock, and eventually have his revenge upon us. I really it’s best to tell the truth and just fess up that we haven’t got around to looking at the servers yet.

“Yes,” the PFY responds, before I can get a word in.

What the hell, it’ll keep him busy for a day, which’ll be more than enough time to start that nasty rumour about him having a foot fetish.

. . .

Well, it’s a laugh isn’t it, which helps to pass the time between naps.


Episode 19 BOFH 2004

"Oh yeah, he's been with us a couple of years now and I have to say that he's got a fantastic grasp of IT!" I burble down the phone. "Second to none!"

. . .

"S.A.P?" I continue. "Yeah, Phil practically installed and configured it singlehandedly - in under three months!!!!!"

. . .

"Team Player - hell yes! Though the funny thing is, I've found that he works just as well on solo unsupervised projects."

. . .

"Who're you talking about?" the PFY mouths silently, as I'm chatting away.

"Phil," I respond, covering the mouthpiece.

"Phil?"

"Shepherd."

"Phil Shepherd?" he asks, looking to the Boss to see if he knows anything.

The Boss shakes his head blankly.

"The tall guy with the tash on the Helldesk."

"Crap Phil?" the PFY asks. "The guy you said couldn't count to 21 without unzipping his fly?"

"That's him!"

"Oohhhh!" the PFY says, nodding.

"What is going on?" the Boss asks, drawn into the conversation by a feeling of being left out of something important.

"Simon's CV-loading."

"Huh?" the Boss asks.

"You know, falsifying a glowing reference for a chunk of human deadwood so they get a better job and leave the company."

"Are you sure that's... uh... entirely... ethical?" the Boss asks.

"Yeah, course it is," I say, hanging up.

"How?"

"If a prospective employer is stupid enough to believe the current employer when they're poaching staff they deserve everything they get."

"But don't you have some form of.. well.. duty.. to...."

"Help them steal staff? Piss off!"

"But won't they rumble your game? You know, wait for the opportunity to offload someone onto you when the time comes?"

"I think that's how we got Phil in the first place."

"Oooooh, grudge match at the OK Computer Room!" the PFY chirps. "Surely they won't take him back if they know he's crap?" the boss asks.

"Ordinarily no, but it seems that half their organisation has left in the intervening period, and no-one seems to remember him. That happens a lot in large organisations. Besides, I put it in his CV that he's done a stack of training and really turned over a new leaf."

"YOU put in his CV?"

"Yeah - When I applied for the job on his behalf."

"You mean you applied for the job without his knowing?"

"Of course! I do it all the time with the crap people!"

"But what happens if he gets the job?"

"Ah, I'll just say it was a fortuitous error - something about his CV getting accidentally sent to an employment agency by a virus on the HR server."

"And you'd expect him to believe you and take the job?"

"Fairly sure. I'll be leaking hints of downsizing in the IT department at lunchtime, saying that I heard that the helldesk will be the first lot to go."

"But won't that rumour affect morale?"

"Helpdesk Morale? Have you actually been to the helpdesk?!"

"I... well... anyway, I still don't think any company would believe your recommendation."

"Of course they will. I'm telling them what they want to hear!"

"What do you mean?"

"Look, you've been in the business a while, you know which way the wind blows and you've got a handle on things, right?"

"Yes."

"No you don't, I was just telling you what you wanted to hear! Which is what I was doing for Phil's prospective new employers. They're stuck with an unfillable technical position with next to no job scope, and I'm creating a fictitious character with next to no personality - to not fill it. It's a quadruple negative, they cancel out, and everyone will be happy."

The Boss stops scratching his genitals, which is a sure sign he's putting his entire body into background processing while he tries to comprehend the logic.

"I..." he says, as he crosses the cpu limit of his attention span.

"And if we go back to the issue of ethics, don't you think it's more ethical of us to find a place of employment to which he is more suited?"

"I suppose..."

"With people who will respect his newfound experience?"

"I..."

"People who won't be waiting outside the building in the dark to give him a good hiding with a sock with a hard drive in it...."

"Ah..." the Boss says uncomfortably.

"Or who won't be orchestrating a strange workplace accident involving his tie and the rollers of the photocopier feed mechanism - while he's still wearing the aforementioned tie..."

"Uhhhh," the Boss says, wondering if this means he's an accomplice before the act.... "I suppose if it's... going to save him.... some trouble it can't be too b..."

>Ring<

"Hello?" I respond.

. . .

"He's uh ... out of the office at the moment, can I take a message for you?"

. . .

"Really?" . . .

"Uh huh. Well thank you very much, I'm sure he'll be very pleased to hear it!"

>click<

"He got the job???!" the Boss asks happily.

"I don't know, it's too soon. But good news, there was a virus on our HR server and your CV accidentally got sent to a placement agency..."

"You don't expect me to fall for that, do you?" the Boss asks.

"True," I say. "Hey, has anyone seen that heavy woollen sock of mine?"

"Isn't it underneath that large pile of photocopying that needs to be done later on this evening when no-one's around to hear a choking sound?" the PFY asks.

The things I do to help people! 


Episode 20 

What the hell's that?" the PFY asks as he enters Mission Control, narrowly missing a huge pile of paper just inside the door.

"That would be the identified hazards in our workplace," I reply.

"What the BLOODY HELL are they playing at?!" the PFY snaps, echoing my own frustration. "They've been annoying us for more than a bloody year now!"

"They claim that the IT Division’s injury rate approaches that of a small civil war so they're paying particular attention to the Division, and our office in particular."

"So that' the office covered then?"

"No that pile is just for this room!"

"You're joking!"

"No, they've really gone overboard," I reply, grabbing several sheets of paper. "These bookshelves, >tap< >wobble< >wobble<, are not fixed to the wall and have heavy objects at a height which raises its centre of gravity dangerously."

"But they made us put them there because they said they were too low before and would cause back strain in lifting!"

"Uh huh. >flip< And this table >clank< >clank< has a wobbly leg, which could mean that if someone stumbled into it, it would collapse, dropping that machine onto someone's foot."

"It was them who made us turn the table around because they said it blocked an egress path."

"Again, yes. >flip< These boxes of tapes are also dodgy, bump into them and they might topple down on top of you..."

"But they said the tape room was too overcrowded for people to access and that we’d have to store some tapes in a different location!"

"Uh-huh. >flip< The table top bulk eraser has no electrical earth."

"It’s double insulated! It’s not supposed to have an earth! The only way it’d cause a problem unless you poured water down it! Anyway it's isolated on the deskside UPS."

"AH HAH!" I cry ">flip< Overvoltage warning lamp on deskside UPS unit."

"It's done that since we bought it. It's perfectly alright. Anyway, it's only an eraser."

"You're talking to the wrong man. >flip< That >scuff< carpet tile in the doorway has lifted, causing a trip hazard."

“THEY BLOODY LIFTED IT WHEN THEY WERE TESTED THEM TO SEE HOW WELL STUCK DOWN THEY WERE."

"Again, I am not disagreeing with you."

"So you're just going to fix all these things now so that the solutions will be next inspection's problems?" he asks sarcastically.

"Not at all. I rang the inspector bloke, who, it has to be admitted, has the personality of a tamponvending machine, who told me that once we read the 150-page newly-revised safety-in-the-workplace manual, we'll know all we need to about making the place safe."

"I don't do manuals," the PFY snips.

"Yes, that's what I said, but he told me that it's our responsibility to have a safe workplace. He also said that he'll be doing fortnightly inspections to ensure that we comply with the company's new work-safe policy."

"What new work-safe policy?"

"Buggered if I know. Anyway he said he'd walk us through the main points today so that we could make a start and avoid the non-compliance penalties."

"Penalties?" the PFY says

"Yeah, in the work-safe policy. It's a carrot and stick idea, with more of the stick than the carrot. Apparently, the company's considering moving to a deferred bonus for staff and contractors, and this could be one of the things that puts the kybosh on your bonus. You know, too many accidents, no bonus."

"The bastard!"

"No, no, he's just doing his job, keeping us safe. Anyway, he should be here anytime to..."

>Knock Knock<

"Just thought I'd grab the bull by the horns and get down to business as soon as pos.." he starts, tripping on the aforementioned carpet tile, then regaining his balance momentarily by standing on the large stack of H&S violation reports ...

...which slides out from under his foot.

"Whoops!" he says, ploughing into one of the aforementioned bookcases.

>Wobble<

>CRASH!

"Hey, they were right about that bookcase!" the PFY cries, surprised.

>Clank!<

>Crash<

"And that table!"

>Topple<

>Crash< >crash< >crash<

"And the boxes of tapes."

>KZZZZZEeeerrrrrt!<

>ZZzzzzzzzzzap<

>Bang!<

"Maybe that overvoltage light was actually working after all," he mumbles as the smoke clears. "Bloody lucky we had a Health and Safety bloke to point it all out to us..."

>slam<

"What the hell is going o..." the Boss starts, crashing into Mission Control to see what all the noise is about.

>trip<

>Wobble<

>CRASH<

>BZZZERRRRRT!<

>Zip< >Zip< >zzzzap<

.. one ambulance ride for two later . .

"This place is a BLOODY DEATHTRAP!" I gasp, recounting the past half-hour.

"I'd agree," the PFY responds. "We definitely need to be putting some things into place."

"Warning signs?" I suggest.

"I was thinking more of a video camera. I almost pissed myself when the boss faceplanted the bulk eraser. A memory like that would have been priceless on tape."

"Yeah. And we could have made a tidy little sum from those bloopers shows too."

"Ah well, there's always next time," the PFY sighs, picking at the corner of a floor tile..


Episode 21 BOFH 2004

I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!!!!

>bip< >bip< >bip< >bip<

>brrrr< >brrrr< ... >brrrr< >brrrr<

"Hello?" the user answers.

"ASTALAVISTA!" I snap down the phone at the user.

"What?!" he gasps, not exactly sure about the reason for my unsolicited call nor its one word content.

"ASTALAVISTA, not ALTAVISTA!"

"What do you mean?" he asks, warily.

"The search engine you wanted - for software cracks."

"Software cracks?" he gasps, faking ignorance.

"Yes, for the pirate game you just downloaded."

"I didn't download a pirate game."

"Of course you did, I saw you on the proxy mirror. I've been watching your session."

"Proxy mirror?" the PFY whispers.

"Yes," I say, muting the phone. "I made some quick changes to the Squid and Mozilla source allowing me to pick a client IP on the proxy and basically get the same content as them."

"Smooth," the PFY responds, nodding. "What if they're using IE?"

"I've dumbed Mozilla down to cope with it."

"Isn't that... an invasion of privacy?" the user interrupts tentatively.

"No, an invasion of privacy would be if I were to ring your wife and ask her how she liked those flowers you ordered over the Internet and mistakenly sent to the new girl in salaries, who is patently disinterested in your advances..."

"I..."

"Or if I played back your website browsing of two weeks ago, when you were 'working late'. That was a flashcard session I don't think I'll forget in a hurry!"

"A..."

"So, if we go back to the original case in point, astalavista. Not altavista."

"I…"

>click<

"He hung up!" the PFY blurts.

"True. But look, he's going to astalavista, so my work is done. What are you up to?"

"As it happens, something which fits in snugly with you?"

"You're dating the new girl in salaries!" I gasp, foiled again. "After all that work I did on changing the attached note on that guy's flower order."

"What? No no, I've just submitted OUR proxy address to an open, anonymous proxy list on some questionable websites."

"And you were going to use my proxy mirror."

"No, I was just going to turn on full cacheing and grab copies of anything interesting that people 'found' on the Web."

"And by interesting you were meaning..."

"Pirated software mainly," the PFY blurts.

"Not Internet porn?"

"Nah, you can get that anywhere. But a limited pre-release version of a new first person shooter game is worth it's weight in gold."

"Of course it is!" I say doubtfully.

"So how does this proxy mirror of yours work then?" the PFY asks.

"You go to the index page, which lists the IP addresses it believes are still currently using the proxy and the last link they actively clicked on. Using your advanced ferret-like nose for naughtiness, you click on the address most likely to be doing dodgy stuff and bob's your auntie, the proxy feeds both of you the content that they're seeing - without them knowing."

"That's fantastic!" the Boss blurts, appearing as if by magic behind us.

"Where the hell did you come from?"

"The tape cupboard you locked me in this morning!"

"Oh yeah," the PFY murmurs to himself. "I really should have put up a sign."

"I'll get back to that later," the Boss seethes, "but for the meantime, tell me more about this mirror thing. You can watch anyone's traffic?"

"I suppose," I admit grudgingly.

"And they don't know."

"No."

"And how do you access it?"

"You don't - it's not really in production yet - more of a work in progress," I babble.

"Yeah well, I think I'd like to have a look at the sort of thing we're downloading, so just email me the address," he says, ambling at a slow run to get back to his desktop in time.

"Houston, we have a problem," I say to the PFY once he's gone.

"Why?"

"Because in no time he'll realise just how little work-related stuff is done, do a bit of maths about how much the network connectivity costs us, and recommend something stupid like bandwidth restrictions or content filtering at the ISP?!"

"We could turn the proxy off."

"He'd notice."

"Disable new connections."

"The users would complain pretty quick and give the game away."

"Tricky," the PFY blurts. "Unless..."

"Unless?"

. . .

"Disgusting," the Head of IT says, as I show him the proxy mirror in action. "Is that sort of thing even legal here?"

"I don't even think it's even legal in Leeds!" I blurt.

"And you're sure you're not mistaken?"

"Only one way to find out..." I respond.

. . .

Ten minutes after the Boss's door has been crash-opened by security I let the PFY know that he can stop his whirlwind tour of the nastiest sites on the Internet. The damage is done, and the Boss' protestations of innocence fall on deaf ears. Doubly so, when the head of IT notes he's been saving some of the data to his desktop machine. Naughty!

Five minutes after that, as the Boss is hailing a cab with his box of personal possessions, the PFY stops in to congratulate me on my work.

"Work?" I say. "No, I just consider it pushing back the frontiers of Computing Science."

Lets face it, some of us are born sneaky, others have sneakiness thrust upon them. 


Episode 22 BOFH 2004

Sometimes, the urge to strangle someone is so strong it's almost as if there's a higher power calling you to follow your instincts…

Take today, for instance. A normal, ordinary day at Mission Control. The usual bunch of what the PFY and I refer to as idiot calls, but nothing untoward or out of the ordinary.

A day like any other.

Till the Boss gets involved because no one's paid attention to him all week. His need to be recognised in his role manifests itself today as the requirement to make some sweeping changes to the Computer Usage Policy of the company.

"It's just that we should be consistent with our other policies," he says. "We should have some form of statement to say that you mustn't use computers to harass people for instance."

"Isn't that already in the company's code-of-conduct?"

"Yes, but it doesn't refer to using computers!"

"It's a blanket cover!" I respond.

"No, because someone could say that email isn't harassing."

"Something a mailbomb program takes a very short time to disprove."

"So it's true, you can harass someone with email!"

"YOU CAN HARRASS SOMEONE WITH A BLOODY SAUSAGE ON A STICK, BUT WE DON'T NEED A SAUSAGE USE POLICY TO TELL US NOT TO!" I shout, losing my rag.

"And you really don't want him to prove that last point…." the PFY advises.

"But shouldn’t we be clear about what people should and shouldn't do with computers?"

"Indeed." I say, rage subsiding. "But if an existing policy has it covered, why introduce another piece of bureaucracy?"

"Ok, so maybe harassment is covered, but what about privacy? What about someone reading my email?" he asks.

"What do you mean?" the PFY asks a little too casually.

"Someone. Reading my email without my permission."

"I think that's covered by the existing Computer Usage Policy where it says that no-one should attempt to access information that they're not entitled to access."

"But someone might access it, mightn't they?"

"They could, yes, but they'd leave audit information in the server logs."

"But YOU can erase that information, can't you?" he asks.

"We COULD erase it, yes, but in practice it's a lot harder than that," I admit.

"Really? How?"

"Well, there's audit trails, gaps in logfiles, that sort of thing. I mean if someone were to cover up access to you email, there'd be a myriad of things they'd have to do to make sure it remains undiscovered."

"Like what?"

"Suspend auditing, strip the evidence from the audit file, recreate false evidence to cover up the gaps when the evidence disappeared, possibly tamper with the system time, insert false audit records to cover the time lapse where the auditing was suspended, untamper with the system time and then resume auditing. Off the top of my head of course."

"And how long would that take?"

"Oh, the commonplace user would take days - with mistakes, etc. - to do all that."

"And you?"

"I usually do it while the PFY’s getting a coffee. Mind you, I do have a script that does most of it…"

"THIS IS EXACTLY MY POINT! WE NEED POLICY TO SAY IT SHOULDN'T BE DONE."

"And you believe that a policy would prevent this?"

"Yes."

"There's no policy to say that I shouldn't push the social club piano off the balcony while you're walking underneath it, but it hasn't happened so far!!"

“It’s not my problem, because I’m only interested in computing policy.”

“So if he pushed a desktop machine off the balcony, you’d be concerned?” the PFY asks.

“It’s not a recognized or commonplace use of a computer.”

“It is if it’s got OS2 installed on it!” I respond, confusing the Boss and alienating another batch of OS2-loving readers. On purpose.

"All I'm worried about is computers," the Boss re-states. "And now, the privacy of my email."

"Don't worry, we don't access email that we're not entitled to access," I respond.

"Which email is that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Which email are you not entitled to access?"

"None of it."

"So you mean that you're entitled to access all email?"

"Yes, for the purposes outlined in the service level agreement in our individual contracts with the company. In fact, we're pretty much required to read your email."

"Why?"

"To maintain performance and reliability of the server, to fix problems before they occur."

"How?" the Boss gasps, completely thrown by this revelation.

"Well say there's a server issue with lack of disk resource in the mail store. Obviously we would need to investigate the individual users to see where the resource is wasted."

"Why not just see who's using the most space?"

"Because that doesn't necessarily find mailboxes responsible for, say, fragmentation. I mean do you honestly think that the PFY and I enjoy trolling through the inane messages to your sister-in-law? You might wish to slip away for a quiet weekend in Bristol with her while your wife's visiting your son in Egypt, but WE just don't need to know that."

"But we do," the PFY adds slyly.

"So you're saying I should just drop the policy idea altogether and nothing more will be said?"

"Exactly."

"But how do we discipline questionable computer use?"

"The old fashioned way," I reply.

"Interviews, recommendations then dismissal?"

"No, I said the old fashioned way, not the slow way."

"What's the old fashioned way?"

"Threats, blackmail."

"And when that doesn't work?" the Boss asks, doubtfully.

"The old toaster in the shower has been known to work."

"I.. ... We thought that was a cry for help?!" the Boss gasps, remembering an incident a few weeks back involving a helpdesker with a penchant for running port scanners to find fileshares he shouldn't...

"I think I actually did hear a cry for help at the time. But that was a LONG time before the ambulance showed up..."

"I can't believe you'd do that!" the Boss gasps.

"*I* can't believe the PFY would put a couple of slices of bread in the toaster beforehand," I add. "Now that really confused people - bizarre accident or strange cry for help?"

"Yes," the PFY chuckles, remembering the incident fondly.

"Right, well, I'll just... go and put this in..."

"The shredder," the PFY says.

What do you know, it looks like being a good day after all!


Episode 23 BOFH 2004

"It's.... a new ID card!?" the PFY says, looking at the item proffered to him by the Boss.

"Yes, and here’s yours," the Boss responds, handing me a duplicate of my current ID card. "If you two could just give me your old ones back - to.. stop them getting um.. mislaid, or into the wrong hands."

"Sure," I respond, handing mine over. "And we're getting new cards because why?"

"Some magnetic stripe thing for the security system - they're upgrading or something and the old cards won't work."

"Oh, of course!" I blurt, feigning knowledge. "That's probably what all the work on the readers has been about. Tightening up the place a little?"

"Yes, well, in these troubled times…" the Boss burbles, moving quickly on to the next batch of people.

"Troubled times, my arse!" the PFY snaps, echoing my own thoughts.

"Indeed," I say. "Let's just see what the Mailsafex has to say!"

I chuck the card into the X-ray unit we borrowed (late at night, without asking, for an indefinite period) from the mail room.

"Ooooh," I blurt. "I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with RFID transponder."

"An RFID transponder?" the PFY suggests.

"Indeed! >sigh< They must think we came down in the last service pack..."

. . .

Later that day at the Boss' office.

>knock< >knock<

"Wha - how the hell did you get there?" the Boss asks, quickly flicking away from what looks to be a geeky version of the Marauders Map, complete with thumbnails of people wandering about the building.

"Walked?"

"Uh - yes, right, of course, how interesting," the Boss gabbles, as he attempts to seem busy and distract my attention till the application closes.

"I was just wanting you to sign off this expense claim," I say, handing over a piece of paper.

"Not a problem," he gabbles, so rattled he's not noticed that the important fields are filled out in pencil. "So how's that.. uh.. new ID card working out for you?"

"This?" I say, holding up my card.

"Yes, that's it...or is that the old one?" the Boss says, holding out his hand.

I hand the card over and he burbles about appreciating technology of modern access methods, blah, blah, blah, whilst copping a quick shufti at it.

"It's got a hole in it!" he says.

"Yeah, I was going to hang it off one of those retractable cord things that people hook onto their belts, then I remembered how sad and geeky they look. You know, when people wear them believing them to be some form of fashion accessory or status symbol and that if they turn up at the pub with one dangling off their beergut Claudia Schiffer is just going to drop everything and go for them like a ferret up a trouser le.."

"I wear mine on my belt!" the Boss snaps.

"And that M'Lord concludes the case for the prosecution," the PFY chirps, appearing from below the partition immediately behind me.

"How long have you been there?" the Boss gasps.

"Ages! I'm installing the secretary’s copier."

"And you put a hole in your card as well?" the Boss asks drily.

"Yeah, and I thought the better of wearing it!"

"So you know about the RFID thing?" he sighs.

"What RFID thing?" I ask blankly.

"Don't play games with me - in your ID card. They're afraid of a civil liberties outcry."

"So why did you do it?"

The Boss thinks about it for a bit, then makes a quick decision.

"Come in - both of you - and close the door. . . >slam< This isn't for public consumption" he blurts.

"Ah... like the cafeteria's macaroni cheese" the PFY nods.

The Boss ignores him and continues. "There’s been a lot of thefts recently – small things mostly, a coffee mug here, a pair of sunglasses there – nothing much to get upset about. But last month someone stole the X-ray machine from the mailroom!"

"The thieving bastards!" the PFY cries "What did security say?"

"Nothing. As usual," he snaps, annoyed. "So we got a private company in to fit these detectors under the guise of upgrading the readers so we’ll know where everyone is. And we’re changing things so you'll need a card for everything - to use the lifts, do photocopying, get lunch at the cafeteria – you name it."

"So people keep their cards with them. Sneaky," the PFY says. "And then you'll know EXACTLY where people are."

"You know what you should do?" I say.

"What?" the Boss asks.

"Replace all asset tags with RFIDs as well - like RFIDs are supposed to be used - that way you'll know who left the building AND what equipment they took with them...."

"I... Yes!" the Boss gasps. "So we'll know who stole it!!"

"Exactly!"

...two weeks later the Boss is helping security with their enquiries...

It seems he didn't notice the self-adhesive RFID tag (of every piece of kit we wanted replaced) stuck on the 'letters to the editor page' of the newspaper he obligingly took to the tube with him on the way home.

And it seems that no-one noticed the aforementioned pieces of kit accelerating at 9.81m/s from the second floor Mission Control window into the skip bin below.

But security did notice the thefts, eventually.

And the discovery of the mail scanner in the Boss's office didn't help either... 


Episode 24 BOFH 2004

I get so bored at times…

The sort of bored you are when you can't even be stuffed firing up a browser and seeing what's new at smuttysmuttychicks.com.

But if I don't do it, who's going to care about the girls?!

The Boss comes in mid browse, and starts rabbiting on about how it's not acceptable workplace behaviour, etc., etc.

I ask him to kindly be quiet because I'm not giving the girls the attention they deserve.

Next thing you know, he's back with a guy from HR. And they want to have a quiet interview!!!

. . .

What the hell, I am bored.

"Is there some reason you were looking at that porn site?" the HR Guy asks, carefully

"Apart from checking out the girls?" I ask.

"Yes."

"I don't think so. Hang on!"

"What?"

"Nope, I've got nothing."

"And you're aware that the company has a policy regarding acceptable use of computers?"

"Really?"

"YES" the Boss snaps, annoyed. "It's been in place for at least 18 months!"

"Ah, I see, so it's not actually a policy I agreed to several years ago when I started."

"Your contract gives the company the right to vary acceptable behaviour policies."

"Not my contract," I say

"I think you'll find it does," the HR Guy responds.

"No, mine was sent as an electronic document, so I just cut out the clauses I didn't like, added a couple of my own, printed two copies and signed them. Then your guy signed them too – probably without checking. Or maybe he liked the idea of clause F.3 that I'm allowed to call Managers... 'knobface'."

"I.." the HR Guy says, then ducks out the door to check something.

… two hours later . . .

"It's true," the HR Guy says. "There is a clause saying he can call you knobface."

"Which was also signed by your HR guy – in ink," I add.

"Yes."

"Including the eight or so extra clauses I added... er.. Knobface?"

There's an extended pause while the HR Guy contemplates some form of retaliatory attack, thinks the better of it, and goes to weep to the company solicitors. A couple of hours later he comes back with some fairly weak Force Majeur clause which would hold as much water as a paper g-string.

Still, I am bored....

"Which leads us to the fact that you're still in contravention of company policy," the HR guy continues.

"Ok, it's a fair cop," I say.

"So you're admitting that you committed an act which could have you dismissed?"

"My contract terminated, yes."

"Knowingly?"

"Sure."

"You don't seem to be taking this situation very seriously. You realise that if the company were to publicly terminate your contract for browsing porn, it's possible you'd never work in the industry again?"

"I think you're forgetting I work in the Computing Industry..."

"I don't think even they would tolerate this activity - if we were to let you go."

It would seem that the HR Guy has his heart set on me breaking down and blubbering like a big girl's blouse - which just isn't going to happen. Well, not now I've had my brainwave anyway.

"I don't actually think you CAN fire me for browsing porn.."

"Why not?"

"Well, I think I'm addicted to porn."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Addicted. To porn."

"You're joking!"

"Oh no. You see I'm fairly sure that the browsing of porn causes the release of testosterone, endorphins or something like that, which in turn causes a pleasure response in the body – or so my doctor will tell me if I ask. I'm addicted to that pleasure response, in much the same way as a drug addict is addicted to the pleasure they obtain from their drugs."

"So you're saying you have no control over your actions?"

"None."

"And you…. Believe that this is somehow the company's problem?"

"Oh no."

"Good."

"No, I think it's the company's fault. It's completely different."

"I think you'll find that to demonstrate fault, the company would have to be aware of a problem."

"They are. I filled out a workplace hazard form about it six months ago."

The HR Guy looks at the Boss, who shrugs silently, having only been in the company a few weeks.

"The company MADE me look at porn – what people were browsing, what was in their fileshares, etc."

"Eh?"

"I didn't want to - but it was my job! The things I've seen! The nightmares I have!"

"That's ridiculous - no-one can prove it's harmful!"

"Ah yes - the asbestos company defence," I say. "Still, you have your job to do..."

"So you're going to go quietly?"

"Of course! Although I will be pursuing the company for the costs of my treatment."

"What treatment?"

"The porn equivalent of methadone. Apparently it involves daily doses of bikini calendar photos."

"You can't be serious!"

"No, you're probably right. I guess I'll just have to make a full and frank disclosure as part of my class action suit against the company - just before the big share float."

"I think you'll find a class action suit is where a group of ..."

"Would you look at the bezels on her!" the PFY snaps from behind his monitor having until now been silent.

"Ah. Well, how about we forget the whole thing then?" the HR Guy says, realising that this could get rather nasty...

"That'll be fine," I say. "And could you close the door on your way out... knobface?"

I think I'll wait till next week to get help for my p2p piracy problem.... 


Episode 25 BOFH 2004

"..and so the point of this meeting is to decide on the service level for your equipment, so we know what you're expecting when we purchase your new box."

"Well, 24 by 7 obviously," one of the assembled beancounters responds.

It never, EVER, amazes me at how a box in the throes of dying sharpens the minds of the beancounters - particularly when it's their box that's going down every half hour or so.

"Ordinarily I'd agree with you, but seeing as the company would appear to be 'beancounter rich', with none of you starting before 9 or staying after 4, I'm wondering if this is the most cost effective way of providing coverage for your machines?"

"We do run batch jobs out of hours," another beancounter adds drily.

"Yes, a weekly pay preparation for the HR machine, a weekly report, a monthly projection plus the annualised runs - from what I can determine. The annual combined total of which is about 40 hours runtime..."

"So you're suggesting what exactly?"

"I'm suggesting that as we're about to replace your financials box you might want to revise your service level to determine if you really want to be paying for 24x7 maintenance when you could probably get away with 9x5 or less?"

"Couldn't you people just maintain the equipment and reduce the cost further?"

"We could, but there's always the chance the mangelfreuzer switch will trip - which would be a problem."

"What's a manglef.. r."

"Manglefreuzer - as in Mangle-Froy-TSir. It's a switch or other device that hardware manufacturers put into their equipment to detect unuathorised access to a box - and makes the system act strangely."

"Strangely?"

"Yes, you know, the odd memory error, harddisk write error, machine crashes, etc. To encourage you not to tamper with the box. And generate revenue for the maintenance provider of course."

"Are you serious?!"

"Of course. Some of our major outages have been those exact same problems."

"You mean they're all caused by a manglefreuzer?"

"Some of them, yes. Obviously no sane vendor would build in something which could be conclusively linked as the source of a problem, so they make the outages sporadic and hard to track down..."

"And people know about this?"

"Technical people, yes."

"And you're ok with that?"

"We don't really have that much choice in the matter, do we? Anyway all the vendors do it - and not just in computers."

"I bet that's what's wrong with my home machine!" one beancounter adds, accompanied by the nods of other would be system builders.

"Yes," I comment. "It's bound to be that and not your lack of antistatic protection, earthing and poor installation method. Those vendor bastards!"

I avoid the topic of the PFY's habit of onselling dodgy RAM to company staff as this could muddy the discussion somewhat...

"So what you're saying is you can't look after the kit properly and you're recommending that we buy a machine that has a warranty that matches our real need for server availability?" one the beancounters asks - basically reiterating the content of the email message which asked for this meeting.

"Yes," I sigh.

"And does this come at a premium?"

"Any extra service comes at a premium, but when you take into account the potential impact of not doing it - like the outages you've been having - it's a small price to pay."

"So what are we talking about?"

"It's about triple the price for a five-year onsite warranty."

"TRIPLE?!" a beancounter gasps.

"BUT, if you reduce the service level to 5x9, 4 hour response, it's only about twice the price."

"TWICE! Is that what we've paid in the past?!!!"

"No, we've paid nothing in the past, which is why you've had to spend so much time waiting for engineers to show up for machine failures."

"Yes, I suppose we realise that now - but surely machines should last longer than a year?!"

"Entry level desktops, you'd get four years out of - I guess. But leading edge hardware like yours is pretty special and as computer vendors say - the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long..."

"I... well how much is it going to cost?"

"All up, maybe 4000 quid."

"Oh! Well that's not as bad as..."

"Plus maintenance," I add, carpe dieming.

"8000 quid!!!!"

"Worst case scenario. I mean we might be able to get the vendor to drop a couple of grand if we pushed it - but no promises..."

"How much do you think?"

"Maybe - if we can really get them over a barrel - 6k - but like I say, no promises."

"Really?" the Head beancounter gasps, semi-happily.

"Maybe."

"Well, I suppose we can go with that, and the level of support. But how long would it take to get a stable system back again?"

"Delivery time on this kit - if we're lucky - could be something like two weeks if they have the units on hand"

"And how long to change over to the new machine?"

"If we pulled an all-nighter we could probably do it in one - if it's urgent."

. . .

Later, in Mission Control.

"So how'd it go?" the PFY asks.

"Two new top-of-the-range desktops and a stack of overtime!!!"

"Excellent."

"Just remember to put a note in your diary for a fortnight away to remind you to stop powercycling their server every time you go into the computer room."

"Sorted!"

"And start mentioning the manglefreuzer problems on the Human Resources server - I fancy a new laptop."

"Good as done..." 


Episode 26 BOFH 2004

So the Boss wanders into the office with the yellow folder of doom. Ever since the Beancounters discovered the horrendous disappearance rate of our kit they've been getting us to do a six-monthly asset audit to track its movements.

"I've just got a little job for you - in your free time," he burbles.

"We don't have any free time!" the PFY responds, knowing full well what the folder bodes.

"So what I'd like you to do," he continues, ignoring the PFY, "is to fill in the last three digits of the asset number once you've located the machine in question."

"Sneaky," the PFY replies.

"What?"

"Sneaky. It means we have to actually GO to the machine - instead of just ticking it off. Which means it'll take months to get around everything."

"I…" the Boss says, a bit concerned at the turn of events , "... I could get a temp in?"

"A temp!" the PFY gasps. "But we'll spend as much time helping them find things as doing it ourselves."

"No, no, I think a temp would work," I add.

"Right, so it's sorted then!" the Boss gasps, happy to be leaving on a high note.

"?" the PFY asks, once the Boss has gone. "They'll be more a nuisance than anything!"

"Not exactly. We say it'll take two weeks, then get the temp to just copy the asset numbers over from a dump I'll grab out of the asset database. The remaining temp time can be used for something worthwhile, like painting the office..."

"Fantastic!"

"I thought so."

. . .

Two days later...

"And I'd like you to meet the two men you'll be working for. Guys, this is Cathy."

"A. Mmm," the PFY and I respond.

...

"Breathtaking," the PFY says, once the Boss has taken her off to find some office supplies.

"What's the word?" I respond. "Unspoilt? You know, like a tract of rainforest?"

"Like a silent and crystal clear mountain lake," the PFY sighs.

"Like a breath of fresh country air."

"Like an Intel box with no OS2 on it," the PFY adds, taking my role in annoying the two OS2-loving readers.

. . .

"And so what we'd like you to do, Cathy, is just copy these numbers from this page onto this page," I say.

"Is that all you'll need me to do? Your Boss said there was a lot of leg work?"

"We did all that before you got here, but unfortunately we just need the data across," I respond, stifling the mental image that the words 'leg work' inspired.

"Or I could just sample your handwriting and reprint those pages in colour with the correct data," the PFY offers, trying to win some brownie points.

"No, they'd spot the similarity of characters which would result in Cathy being blamed for not doing her job properly."

"I could fill them in for you," the PFY says.

"And I could get you tea and biscuits," I say, raising the stakes somewhat.

. . .

As the afternoon wears on, it becomes increasingly apparent that the office is witnessing a geeky re-enactment of clash of the Titans, with the PFY and I attempting to win Cathy's affection with our every deed.

. . .

Though it's only later in the afternoon as the PFY is calling out Asset Numbers to me to write down that I fully appreciate the irony of the situation.

"You realise that we're actually doing what we're supposed to with this Asset Inventory?" I say.

"You mean we were set up?!?! The Boss actually PLANNED all this!?!?"

"No, I think it was purely coincidental - but still, you have to laugh!"

"So what should we do?"

"I don't think either of us wants to disappoint Cathy, so we may as well finish this page, then come up with some form of plan."

"OK. But I want to tell Cathy!"

"Yes, yes, but I think we should possibly declare a truce for now, and find some other way of deciding the matter. So let's finish this page before one of those helldesk geeks sees her and does some spade work in our absence."

"Right!" the PFY responds, realising the dangers.

"Of course you do. OK, second to last item, a thick wire repeater."

"Where the hell would that be?"

"I don't think it's actually in use, so it's probably in the spares cupboard."

"Can't see it!" the PFY.

"Top shelf, behind the Macintosh boxes."

"No.. nothing here but..:"

>Boot!< >Slam!<

"Hey!" the PFY shouts from within the cupboard, as I up-end a desk in front of the door. "What about our truce."

"I did say 'possibly declare a truce'," I say in my defence, as I make a break for the door.

. . .

"So we've worked our way through these pages and wonder if you could just.. check them against the list. I'll help you if you like," I say, brownnosing like a champ.

"And the other guy, where's he gone?"

"The VD clinic," I say, before I can stop myself.

I know, it's cruel, unsportsmanlike and not all that nice, but all's fair…

"What IS it with this place?" Cathy asks.

"What do you mean?"

"Well he's got VD, you're HIV positive..."

THE SCHEMING BASTARD! I knew I shouldn't have ducked out to the toilet with the PFY in the room.

Denying the accusation at this time would be pointless, because no matter what I say I'm relegated to the bench from now on. A true gentleman knows when he's been bested and accepts defeat gracefully…

"Tell me, you've obviously spoken to my assistant at length - do you know why all his ex-girlfriends call him JustIn?"

So I'm not a gentleman, sue me.

"No. But Grandpa says that you've worked with each other for years, so why don't you ask him?"

"Grandpa."

"Gerry. Davis. The CEO."

**WOOP WOOP, PULL UP!**

"Ah!"

. . .

The crashing about in the cupboard stops as I enter the Computer room and the PFY senses a shift in the power of the force. Opening the storage cover door reveals that he's made reasonable progress cutting the wood around the hinges with a mounting bracket and is probably only a couple of hours away from freedom.

"It's over," I say. "I've sent her away."

"You WHAT!?"

"Sent her away. She was the CEO's granddaughter."

"So?"

"So when things turned to custard, hell would have no fury like him. One or both of us would be down the road in an instant - regardless of our indispensability."

"Why do you automatically think it'd turn to custard?"

"History. Think about it. You know it'd end badly…"

The PFY thinks about it for a bit. "Yeah, you're probably right. No hard feelings?"

"None!"

>Boot!< >Slam<

Well, maybe just a little.


Episode 27 BOFH 2004

The problem with being an authority for something is there's always a bit of testosterone involved when someone wants to show you who's really boss.

How do you handle the transition of power into another hands? Take this little test to find out...

1. The boss is concerned about the amount of network traffic you consume and asks you to come and explain it. You'd take with you:

A. Traffic logs showing it was mostly Windows security updates  
B. Falsified traffic logs showing it was mostly...  
C. Your union representative  
D. An axe, a large roll of carpet, and a large quantity of polythene, a bag of lime...  

2. The finance user group wants you to explain the poor performance of their fileshare at their weekly meeting. Your first response is:

A. What finance user group?  
B. What weekly meeting?  
C. What performance problems?  
D. >clickety< what fileshare?  

3. The company auditor is concerned about anomalies in the asset register. You would assuage his fears with:

A. Comprehensive asset tracking information  
B. Falsified tracking information  
C. A large cash payment  
D. An axe, a large roll of carpet...  

4. The police are called in because of the disappearance of some senior members of staff. In helping them with their enquiries, you might need access to:

A. Security camera footage.  
B. Swipe card access records  
C. A bank vault  
D. A hardware shop and a carpet factory...  

5. A staff member complains about his files disappearing from the fileshare and the poor quality of the recovery mechanism. You would:

A. Check records for evidence of the files existance  
B. Check backup logs for evidence of their removal  
C. Cast your mind back to your recent needs for space to store music  
D. Clean out his desktop machine as well - as a warning to others  

6. The helpdesk would like a definitive answer on the time to resolve a user's problem. You would approximate the time by:

A. Past experience  
B. Passing the case onto an assistant  
C. Picking a number out of the air  
D. (C) and reporting it in weeks.  

7. Security want you to account for your movements the night you were working overtime and the boardroom plasma screen disappeared. You would:

A. Produce swipe card logs for the period  
B. Produce login information and records  
C. Produce your online gaming stats for the time  
D. Produce a cattleprod and ask them to repeat the question...  

8. With the turnover of managers, one thing that concerns you is:

A. The loss of institutional knowledge about why you do things the way you do  
B. The need for some managers to assert their authority over you  
C. Their bitchiness when you convince them otherwise  
D. The high price of carpet and lime when they can't come to terms with (C)  

9. The buildings maintenance people have identified that the computer room is only half utilised and wish to recover some space to create a new office, citing the opinion that the building is theirs to allocate as required. You would:

A. Argue that the growth of computing will more than account for your ongoing needs for office real estate  
B. (A), then take them on a field trip to a similar organisation  
C. (A), then take them on a field trip to a group of similar organisations  
D. (A), then take them on a field trip to an end-of-run carpet warehouse...  

10. You've got a floor tile up moving some cabling inside Mission Control when the Health and Safety person informs you that you haven't put high visibilty warning signs outside the office, filed a work plan with the Buildings Maintenance people, roped off the open area... You:

A. Thank them for their input and suspend your activities  
B. Say you did, but Security's dog ate all your documentation  
C. Say you did all the paperwork and left it beside the pump action shotgun in the computer rooom, and hopefully you'll remember which one you're supposed to bring back - if you have to go and get it  
D. Remember to tell everyone that you saw a rat's nest under the floor - to explain the smell in a couple of weeks... 


Episode 28 BOFH 2004

"What's he reading?" I ask the PFY, noticing the Boss standing outside his office pointing excitedly at a magazine while one of our nastier buildings maintenance people looks on.

"Ah. An article about saving power. The boss was in earlier with the buildings bloke, wanting to know if we shutdown or 'put our servers to sleep' at night."

"And you told them that servers were like old people - you put them to sleep at night and there's a few dead ones in the morning?"

"Yeah; then he asked why we didn't spin down the disk drives at night like the powersave options on most computers allow you to."

"And you told him that if he asked really nicely we'd cancel backups to let that happen?"

"Uh-huh."

"Management!" I sigh.

"What about management?" the Boss asks, entering the room with the buildings bloke in tow.

"I was talking about Power Management," I say. "It's not my problem - it's everyone's problem!"

"Exactly what I was saying!!" the Boss gasps happily "So you won't mind getting rid of your bar heater then?"

"What?! Didn't you just hear me when I said it wasn't my problem?"

"You said it was everyone's problem!"

"Yes, but I'm someone, not everyone."

"So you're saying you're a special case?"

"Of course. While the normal run-of-the-mill worker in this building occupies their workplace during the hours of 9-5, my assistant and I are called upon to attend problems at any time of the day or night. You can't expect us to come to a freezing cold office!!!"

"I.. Well what about lighting - surely you don't need all this lighting on all the time - even when you're not here?"

"You know that's just what I said, till a security guy known for his nosiness tripped in the dark in an incident that has all the hallmarks of someone stringing a piece of 100lb breaking strain fishing line across the doorway. Very nasty. After that H&S got in on the act and the place is lit up like a Christmas tree, 24x7!"

"I see. What about your desktop machines?"

"What about them?"

"You could switch them off at night.."

"Four machines won't make a hell of a lot of difference.."

"Well what about if everyone in the building's desktop machine was switched off?"

"Good luck getting that to happen! Getting people to remember to switch their desktops off is about as likely as getting them to change their passwords every 90 days."

"Surely we can control it... ..remotely?" he asks carefully, giving the proverbial sleeping tiger of user annoyance a tentative prod.

"It'd take a lot of jiggering about and testing," the PFY warns.

"We can justify it, in power savings alone!" he says, as the buildings maintenance guy nods happily.

. . .15 company-wide reboots and two hours later. . . "Ok, I need you to stop testing the shutdown thing," the Boss gasps.

"Really?" the PFY asks. "I think we've almost cracked it!"

"How close are you?"

"Well we got the company-wide shutdown going ages ago, but getting the little machine icons to change from blue to red giving us a little trouble.."

"You've rebooted the whole company repeatedly just to get an icon to change!!!?" the Boss blurts, horrified.

"Yeah?"

"Did you refresh your screen?" I ask.

"Actually no!" the PFY gasps "Maybe that was it!!!"

"!" the boss says wordlessly.

"It's the little things that always trip you up.." I say, nodding sagely to the Boss.

"I see," the Boss seethes. "So it's working now?"

"Yep," I say. "All you need to do is click on this button here >click< and everything shuts down."

>whirr< >click<

...Five minutes later...

"DON'T TOUCH THAT BUTTON AGAIN!" the Boss says testily.

"Wouldn't dream of it, complete accident last time - didn't realise it was actually hooked up. Anyway, we'll schedule the shutdown from now on - to take place automatically at... what time?"

"6:15pm."

"6:15pm it is then!" I say, entering the time.

>whirr< >click<

"What just happened?"

"My mistake!" I say "I set the clock time on this machine to 6:15 instead of the shutdown time. And the preset value of the shutdown time was 5:30pm, which is after the clock time, which means that all...."

The Boss has just realised that he's going to be as big a joke in the department as unbreakable Oracle - although less well received - and will be needing someone to blame if he doesn't want a new job in unemployment statistics...

"I can't believe that you'd cause so many problems for the company!" he says to me, hoping I'll fall on my sword.

"We did tell you it would require a lot of testing," I respond, passing the fiery mantle back to him.

"Well surely your assistant should have known the disruption this would cause to the workplace?!!"

"You and the buildings guy did okay the testing...."

"Yes!" the boss gasps, dashing from the room to spread the word around the building. "It was the buildings guy!"

"Say," the PFY says. "Does the buildings guy still eavesdrop on conversations through the old heating vents?"

>CLACK!<

"What happened to the lights?!" the PFY gasps.

"Allow me," I reply, thinking quickly. "OF.. COURSE.. HE.. DOESN'T LISTEN IN. HE'S TOO BUSY... WORKING."

>CLACK!<

"And there was light!" the PFY says quietly.

"You think he can still hear us?" the PFY whispers. >CLACK!< >CLACK!<

"It would seem that way.." I respond "Which can mean only one thing."

"It was the Bosses fault after all?"

>CLACK!< >CLACK!<

"And.." I ask.

"I should.... update the boss's online calendar to reflect the amount of time he'll be stuck in the lift due to... engineering problems?"

>CLACK!< >CLACK!<

It's always good when professionals from different spheres can reach an understanding... 


Episode 29 BOFH 2004

"What's going on downstairs?" the Boss asks excitely slipping into Mission Control.

"Can I have a sports question?" I ask, not knowing what he's going on about.

"The building!"

"The one we're in, or another building?"

"I mean the CONSTRUCTION, in the foyer!"

"Oh I think it's a visitor's centre," the PFY responds.

"The Technology Centre?" the Boss asks, happily.

"No, I think it's just a visitor's area - desk, couch, phone and coffee machine?"

"No, no, no!" the Boss chatters excitedly, "If it's any centre it'll be the Technology Centre for building visitors to plug themselves in and work online back to home."

"'Technology' being a phone line and a 56k modem?" the PFY asks.

"Oh no, it's going to be very impressive, Video conferencing, wireless, infrared, VPN thingies, connections to various ISPs, etc. Then there's those big plasma screens, wireless peripherals, and integrated something or the other. There's going to be a whole network of them all over the country - maybe even the world."

"When did we budget for that sort of thing?" I ask.

"We don't - it's all being done by some startup venture thingummy company. They pay the setup costs and your visitors pay the running costs."

"So it costs people money to use?" the PFY asks.

"Oh yes. You just swipe your credit card to enter and the centre comes alive, and then swipe it again when you exit to shut it down and get your bill. It's all automated!!!" he gasps.

"I think I might just mosey on down and take a butcher's," the PFY says, exiting stage left.

.. Half an hour later ..

"So who's setting up the geeky stuff?" I ask.

"Some external company that the technology centre people have hired," the PFY replies. "Get this, though, they even have their own Interior Designer who specialises in IT installs. Apparently these centres really are going to go in companies all over the place, as well as train stations, tourist spots, the works!"

"Like a geeky phone booth. And so what's the 'designer' going to make it look like?"

"His name's Patriq - with a Q - What do you think it's going to be like?"

"Oh dear."

"Well, at least it'll have nice curtains," the PFY adds .

"ACTUALLY," the Boss cries, ending his eavesdropping and entering the conversation, "they want the centres to all look the same and have the same features whilst still aligning with the company theme."

"So our one will have a Mickey Mouse outfit over the door?" I ask.

"What?"

"Nothing," the PFY responds. "Private joke. .. About you... .. You'd have liked it too... .. Except that it was about you."

"What?!"

"Just ignore him," I say, tapping the side of my head. "He missed his prescription this morning and so he's failing parity checks."

"What?"

"So anyway, this centre - what will it look like?"

"Oh it'll be a full business centre - pen, paper, workstation, video suite, meeting room, leather couches and plasma screens in the viewing centre, deskside expresso machines, conferencing phones, wireless network, everything a travelling business person would want."

"It sounds rather large."

"That's the beauty of it - it's using all the empty foyer space and giving us a technology centre!"

"Don't we already have all that technology here?" the PFY asks.

"Yes, but this stuff's all in one place."

"As opposed to a walk of about 30 metres."

"Everyone likes it!" the Boss responds, having run out of real reasons.

"By everyone, you mean?"

The Boss pauses for a moment, not wanting to add names to tomorrow's workplace accident register.

"Oh, just everyone. The media too. They're all excited about the big unveiling tommorrow."

"It'll be up by tomorrow?"

"It'll be up by this afternoon! That's the beauty of it, it's all modular, just plug it into the power and you're away! An idiot could assemble one."

"And we're having an unveiling?"

"Yes, well, because it's the first in London!"

"They're opening the first in London... here?"

"Yes, because..." the Boss burbles, then stopping abruptly

"Because?"

"Oh, no reason."

"I'm sure there's a reason," the PFY says kindly, closing the office door.

The soundproof office door..

"The company's a major shareholder in the business centre startup company!" the Boss gasps, crumpling quicker than a SCO press release at a Linux conference.

"And they got someone else in to do the technical stuff instead of us?" the PFY asks.

"Yes."

"And installed it into the building using outside staff instead of us?"

"Yes."

"And weren't even going to tell us about it till it was over?"

"Uhhh. No."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," the Boss lies.

"I think you do.." the PFY says gently, locking the office door from the inside.

"I... Well it's because they were afraid there might..."

"Go on..."

"...be some problems at the unveiling. NOT because they don't trust your technical ability, but because if there were problems then they could just blame the installing company," the Boss gabbles. "They just want it to go smoothly."

"And they thought we'd be that shallow?"

"I.." the Boss says, embarrassed.

"There are limits to our childishness," the PFY sighs, unlocking the door. "They could have simply explained it."

"I..." the Boss says, exiting shamefully.

. . .

"So how do you think the unveiling is going?" the PFY asks the next morning when we're out of the building getting our mid-morning coffee at a brand new internet cafe round the corner.

"Dunno, but I have to admit that the Boss was right about one thing."

"What?"

"That modularity business - not only can an idiot assemble it, but they can also disassemble it, carry it round the corner and reassemble it again."

"Wha?"

"Obviously getting a lease and signage overnight was a little bit of an ask, but I know some people..."

"You stole the Technology centre!!!"

"Of course not, I simply replaced it with functional substitutes."

"?"

"A kitchen table and chair, a 486 and a 14" black and white telly. Oh and a beta video player - had to ring around a bit to find that baby!"

"And security didn't ask any questions?"

"Not once they'd settled into their new leather couch.. Now, would you like another cappucino from this deskside unit."

"I..."

"Don't worry, the Boss is paying," I say, holding up his credit card.

Obviously I haven't reached the limit of my childishness just yet... 


Episode 30 BOFH 2004

Sometimes the offer of a junket from a vendor simply MUST be avoided. Particularly when you just know that the torture you're going to endure is not going to be outweighed by the benefits. Take, for instance, the slimy reptile who's been chasing me for a couple of days to meet him and listen to him talk about how his company has the best whatever-it-is that ever was, and how I would be completely remiss in my duties as an IT professional to not subscribe to, purchase, lease, or at least want to steal whatever it is that he's panhandling today.

"He can't be that bad," the PFY says, hanging up after failing to take yet another 'please call me back message' from the salesman in question.

"He is," I say. "He probably left the used car sales force because they weren't hard-sell enough for him."

"I..."

"Before that, he would've left Real Estate because they'd run out of ex-nuclear waste storage sites to whack low cost homes onto."

"He can't b.."

"And before that, he sold one of the ex-bosses that room full of NeXTs that no-one used."

"Really?"

"Uh-huh, and before that, the stack of Archimedes boxes stashed in the basement."

"The bastard!"

"Indeed."

"And you don't want to meet with him?"

"And get the hard sell for a couple of hours? I'd rather talk in reverse Polish notation for the rest of my life."

"Huh?"

"Yoda like is it."

"Oh. So why do you get me to take messages?"

"Just seeing what's on offer. You see, meeting a salesperson can be a little like playing poker."

"?"

"You look at what they might bring to the table before you decide to play."

"?"

"Ok, so you've got some junior salesdroid, who's probably only going to be able to pony up with a business card and maybe a pen and pad with the company logo all over it. Mid-rangers can probably ante up with with a vinyl writing set and a seat in an average position at a sporting event - with the possibility of a couple of drinks at half time. The Kenny Rogers Gambler types, on the other hand, are likely to have the keys to the Corporate box, endless bar tabs, quality company merchandise and a bit of international travel under the guise of technical briefings."

"I see, so where does this guy fit?"

"He's new so it's hard to tell. He opened with a coffee - the equivalent of a couple of matchsticks. He raised it to brunch, which is more like 50p."

"Right. And where are you in all this?"

"I'm on the other side of the table with a pair of twos, bluffing and holding out for more substantial stakes. At this point, I'll need to flash him a card or two to keep him keen - by implying that we have money coming out our petootie and don't know what to spend it on."

"And then?"

"One of three things will happen. 1. He'll fold and I'll get a call from a senior salesperson who wants to get in the game; 2. He'll have - or assume he has - enough to cover his bets and raise me... or..."

"Or.."

"Or 3. He'll go balls out and pull everything on the table on a spectacular gamble that'll either earn him big dosh and a seat at the big card table of multinational marketing."

".. or?"

"Have him launching a Hutchence in the local by lunchtime."

>ring ring<

"And so the game commences.. Hello?"

"Simon hi, it's Dave here, wanting to touch base with you over lunch, don't know how you're fixed for, say, tomorrow, one, at the Ritz?"

"Ritz is good," the PFY whispers.

"Yeah Dave, not too sure if I can make it, it's a little tricky, what with our budget planning and stuff. It's so busy I'm lucky to step out of the office to fart."

"Ooh, a bluff and a raise," the PFY comments.

"Well I suppose we could catch up after your budget planning - or I guess we could just meet up after work sometime if it's convenient. Is the budget thing running on a bit long?"

"Gentle probe for what you're holding," the PFY murmurs.

"Yeah, it's a bloody infrastructure replacement plan for year end, it's driving me barmy! One minute they're saying we can spend whatever it takes, the next they're cutting it back to a couple of million. I mean what can you bloody acheive with a couple of bloody million?"

"Smooth," the PFY nods, translating: "I have two diamonds and three hearts and think that's what I need for a flush..."

We wait patiently, giving Dave time to wet himself.

".... .. . . .Yeah, I see what you mean," he commisserates, masking his excitement. "Tell you what, I could share a few ideas with you about some innovative approaches that our company's been using to leverage effect replacement plans in the States - In fact, I think I could probably jack up a quick weekend trip to the Big Apple to talk to a couple of our previous synergy-solution recipients."

"There he goes," the PFY sighs. "Nuts in a vice time."

"Well, I was planning to get a bit of rest in the weekend," I reply.

"What the hell, we'll go first class and you can catch some zeds on the flight!" he says.

"And there goes the farm," the PFY sighs.

"Well....."

. . .

"So are you going to go through with it?"

"Well, I have to admit that it'd give me little joy to see his career go down the toilet. Still, sometimes a little joy is better than nothing!" 


Episode 31 BOFH 2004

Slow weeks are bad for systems people, you end up having to make your own fun. To pass the dull week, I challenge the PFY to make me a truly inventive mod for our proxy server. The stakes are a night of drinking at the other person's expense.

Like I said, it passes the time...

Two days on, he's ready for his demo, which I'm convinced is bound to be far less spectacular than my proxy mirror and will ultimately lead to my whipping up a nice fresh pavement pizza by the end of the night...

"Ladies und Gentlemans, I present to you... The Newsmaker!" the PFY chirps happily, waving his hand at his squid plug-in.

"Which does?"

"Give me a news headline, anything, no matter how ridiculous!"

"Scientists discover intelligent life in Redmond!"

>clickety< >clickety< >click< >clickety< >tap< >tap< >clickety< ... >click<

"Right, now Google for it!"

I dutifully fire up Google, bash in Redmond and Intelligence, and roger me senseless with a full height drive if the first 10 hits don't point show up the headline I've just created, pointing at Time Warner, Yahoo News, all the greats...

"Interesting - injecting false links into Google to point at news sites. I like it!"

"Ahem," the PFY interrupts. "Click on one of the links."

I do so, and grab that hard drive for a second go if the site concerned doesn't come up with the headline in question!

"You hacked the news site?"

"Not at all! I used the base idea behind banner blocking to remove the lead headline of a news site and insert my headline instead. You can even add a picture if you want, but obviously only for things that are possible to prove."

"So will this work for all the news sites listed?"

"Oh yes. And more importantly, the various search sites as well. So no matter what common search engine you use, the proxy discards the first 100 matches and inserts 100 of its own 'matches' instead."

"What about secure sites?"

"Oh, you fake that. Most people wouldn't check for or be concerned about security - outside their personal banking anyway."

"Ok, so you've thought this through. Now why are you so pleased with yourself?"

"Because of the potential applications!!! You can lie your way into anything! You tell the Boss that wheelie chairs cause bum cancer and he'll say it's rubbish, then check the web, just to make sure. Next thing you know, he's replacing all the chairs in the department for 'Health reasons'. If anyone in the building calls him on it, he'll tell them that it's news, they'll check on the web..."

"And on it goes. Hmmm. He who controls the proxy controls the world... Ok, I admit, it's a great mod, and worth a pint."

"All the pints I can drink, I believe you said. But wait, there's more!"

"What?"

"It also catches dictionary and thesaurus sites and sends back deliberate misspellings, antonyms instead of synonyms, etc. And, as a bonus the thesaurus introduces hundreds of 'new words' into the English language which idiots will pretentiously add into their memos - and which no-one will understand."

"Ok, I'll buy you drinks for a night - but only because the Boss using 'New' words in his official documents would be as funny as the time you mapped all his keyboard shortcut keys to bring up porn."

"Well speaking of porn, how about a proxy that makes all his searches which aren't related to our fake news link instead to porn pages?"

"Nah, he'd click on the back button to prove that he didn't go there in the first place."

"UNLESS... Some bastard set the proxy to make the pages non-browser-cached, so you can't click back, then delivering a disgusting porn bbs in response to a refresh...."

"Nasty. But it'll never work, no-one's that stupid!"

"How stupid?" the Boss asks, rolling into Mission Control.

"As stupid as the guy in the news," the PFY replies.

"Mmm?"

"The one on the web who claims he has proof," the PFY adlibs, drying up on the details.

"Proof of what?"

"That the research that proves that masturbation reverses male pattern baldness has been suppressed by the Catholic church."

"That's ridiculous!" the Boss says touching his head self-consciously.

Honestly, it's not fair that it's so easy!

"That's just what I said," I respond. "But you know the idiocy of youth."

The boss wanders nonchalantly back to his office, and I take the opportunity to ring the head of IT to say the Boss had something to show him.

"Why'd you do that?" the PFY says.

"So the Boss is looking up Masturbation and hair loss on the web, right."

"Uhuh."

"And he sees the Head walking up, what's he going to do?"

"Close the browser?"

"Get serious, everyone knows what a disappearing window means. No, he'll type a quick word like 'DOG' into Google and click on the first link."

"Which will go to a porn site," the PFY smiles.

"And he'll get flustered and click back, to get to the dog page to have an excuse in case the Head saw something."

"And get a porn bbs..."

"And panic some more."

"And click back again to get out of it..."

"And get the masturbation search again..."

"Which, if you turn off your newsmaker at exactly the right moment..."

"Would give no headlines, just stick links..."

"Oooh, there goes the Head now..."

We hear the very distant sounds of scrabbling...

Slow weeks are bad for everyone.


Episode 32 BOFH 2004

 "I'M NOT A SIMPLEMINDED BLOODY IDIOT YOU KNOW!" the Boss shouts.

"MMmmmff," the PFY responds, getting a mouthful of the book I'm holding before he can say something he'll regret. Well, something that the Boss will regret. Actually, something the Boss won't understand, ask for clarification for, get annoyed about, do something stupid and retaliatory, in turn receive something from the PFY in the stupid and retaliatory line. That he'll regret.

"What's wrong with me having full network access?"

>Sigh<

"If we allow the application you're using to contact the internet, it'll most likely cause your machine to be infected with one of a number of new viruses, which will most likely cause a lot of the workplace machines to be infected."

"Don't people have antivirus programs on their machines?"

"Yes, but the definitions are rarely up to date - and peer-to-peer networking is a good way of downloading the latest in viruses."

"But if I kept my machine up to date, it would all be ok then?"

"Not necessarily, no," I reply.

"Why not?"

"Because you're an idiot," the PFY blurts, before I can install another chapter.

"I beg your pardon?" the Boss says, in a tone which would tend to suggest the matter isn't going to end here.

"ID-I-OT," the PFY says slowly. "YOU... ARE… ONE."

Which clears up any potential misunderstanding the boss might have about the message that the PFY is trying to convey to him. All that we need now is the Boss to want to make a big deal out of it…

"Right!" the Boss says, storming out.

Cat, Pigeons, frantic fluttering noises.

. . .

"So the purpose of this interview is to investigate the complaint that's been made to ascertain what actually took place from the viewpoint of all parties," the HR woman says. "Now we have a statement here, which I'll read shortly, but at this point I'd just like you to recount your memory of what took place earlier today - in your own words. Bear in mind that anything said in this room should remain in this room."

"Well," the PFY starts. "I got to work at about 8:15am…"

"Yes, ok, I should have been a bit more precise," the HR rep says. "What I actually meant was what occurred earlier this morning - in the conversation with your manager."

"The conversation with my manager?" the PFY repeats vacantly.

"I think you know which conversation…" the HR rep says kindly.

"Do we really have to go into it - I mean it's all water under the bridge!"

"Once a complaint's been made, we have to investigate it thoroughly."

"But what if Simon withdraws it?"

"Withdraws what?!" the Boss snaps.

"Why would you think that Simon would've brought the complaint?" the HR person asks, raising a finger for the Boss's silence.

"I... Isn't this about the harassment thing?"

"The harassment thing?"

"The boss. Propositioning me. I only told Simon because it disturbed me - I didn't want to get anyone in trouble."

Ooooh, the old "boss is all over me" defence.

"WHAT!?" the boss shouts.

"I didn't even mention the doors thing," the PFY adds.

"The doors thing?" the HR person asks.

"The way he... always closes the door when I go into his office. It makes me... uncomfortable."

"It's for privacy!"

"You never close the door for the secretary or the Head's PA!"

"I don't get complaints about them!"

"Actually, people complain about me," I add, "but I don't get the closed door treatment."

"You never bloody turn up!"

"Uh-huh. Very convenient."

"I'M A HAPPILY MARRIED MAN - WITH TWO CHILDREN!"

"Cover story," the PFY murmurs quietly.

"Ok, I… I think this may have got a little out of hand," The HR droid interjects, holding up a hand. "Simon, what's your opinion?"

"I'm sure some people find my assistant attractive, but I favour the child bearing - as opposed to ball bearing – gender."

"I'M NOT BLOODY GAY!"

"Sure, Elton," the PFY snaps.

"Well I have to say that this complicates matters somewhat," the HR person interrupts. "I'm going to have to seek some advice from my supervisor before we go any further."

. . .

Several extended "counselling" sessions later…

"So we're agreed that you might have misheard him, and he, in turn might have misunderstood your... concern for his wellbeing," the HR rep says, scratching notes as she goes.

"I suppose I may have been mistaken," the PFY admits.

"And I might have heard him say something else I guess," the Boss responds.

"Ok, in that case I can't see any reason in us following this up any further," the HR rep says, signing the bottom of her page and making to leave.

"All this because you don't want me to run a file sharing program," the Boss murmurs to the PFY quietly. "It's sort of pathetic really." "Plonker," the PFY mouths back.

And there go those words he's going to regret... Well, the Boss is going to regret..

"BAD TOUCHING!" the PFY shouts, jumping up from the table and hiding behind the HR rep before Boss can move.

Sigh. It is sort of pathetic really. But the touch of fun makes everything worthwhile.

"I saw everything!!!.." I blurt.


Episode 33 BOFH 2004

 Exciting times...

It seems the power supply of our webserver crapped itself and, in an excellent example of superior technology, grounded the phase for the rack - which in turn tripped the breaker and took out all the non-redundant powered systems within.

The PFY is on the job in a flash having seen exactly this type of thing many times before in kit from this vendor. (It's always reassuring to note that when a company merges with a company that in turn merged with the original hardware manufacturer, they still manage to incorporate the worst design features from the original product.)

But I digress.

"When's the website going to be up?" the Boss asks, sputniking around me madly.

"Not sure," I respond. "It'll depend on how long the engineer takes to get here."

"Can't you fix it?"

"I could, but it would void the warranty - me not being a certified engineer and all."

"Well, have you called it in?"

"Just getting round to it," I say, firing up the systems page on the browser to get the serial number. >scratchey< >scratch< “Righto, Sorted."

"Where are you going now?!" the Boss gasps as I get up.

"Just getting a coffee and some lunch."

"But it's only 11:30?!"

"Yeah but I am planning on waiting on the line till they answer..."

..later that day outside the Boss' office..

"So how important is it that we get the website back online?" I ask.

"Very!!" the boss blurts.

"Ah!"

"Why?"

"I told them it was a severity three call."

"That's good isn't it?"

"Not really. Watering their pot plants is Sev-2, so I doubt they'll be here today..."

"What?! Ring them back, change the severity!"

"Well, I could try calling, but it's 4pm now and their call desk closes at five."

"THAT ISN'T SERVICE!"

"No, but it's only a web server."

"Every minute the site's down we're losing money!" he gasps.

"No we're not. We don't do any business over the web so we're not losing money! Had it been the Stocks trading server at this time of day though, it'd be a completely different story and half the company would be banging on your door.."

"But the web's a valuable customer interface!"

"If you're Amazon, or Sendit, but not if you're us. We're a web nothing! Baby seals get more hits!"

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I realise I may have stepped over a line here - if only in good taste.

"I..." the Boss says, slightly deterred, "... but it's core business!"

"Nah, that's just what the website company said. In reality, it could disappear without anyone noticing."

"I think that's an overstatement!"

"How much traffic does the website do on the average day?" I ask the PFY.

>clickety< >tap< >tap< >click<

"Hmm, about a meg. Including the index rebuild," The PFY responds.

"And the index rebuild generates?"

"Just under a meg."

"So in effect, the loss of our website would have as much impact..."

"As Karen Carpenter on a Salad Bar," the PFY says, joining me over this side of the line.

"Well I still want it up!" the Boss snaps, liking the feel of an executive decision.

"But the only way to get it up today would be to borrow the spare supply out of another server," the PFY suggests. "A more important server. We don't generally like to do it beca.."

"JUST DO IT!"

"Bu.."

"GET IT DONE!"

Five minutes and one large >clack< from the powerboard later.

"What the hell's happened?" the Boss blurts.

"The only similar power supply was in the Stocks and Tradings server, so I whipped that out to test if it would work, but the problem seems to be on the motherboard so it's cooked another supply," the PFY gabbles.

"YOU USED THE REDUNDANT SUPPLY FROM THE STOCKS TRADING SERVER!" the Boss gasps. "No."

"Oh thankgoodnessforthat!"

"No it seems it wasn't redundant after all."

"What are you telling me?" the Boss asks, paling slightly.

"You can take the power supply out and the machine will work ok."

"Yes?"

"..for about five minutes, then it overheats because the cooling fan in the power supply is missing from the machine," the PFY finishes.

"THAT'S BLOODY CRAP REDUNDANCY!" the Boss shouts.

"Sort of. You see, there's a fan unit somewhere that you remove when you install the redundant power supply."

"Then put it back in the machine!"

"There's the problem, no-one knows where it is, and there's less than a minute left."

"So what do we do?"

"I'm going to check the stock exchange website to see what the company's holding in its system and get a printout up to the traders. You might want to grab the newspaper."

"To check stock prices?"

"Nah. The job pages. I foresee another crap redundancy on the horizon..." 


Episode 34 BOFH 2004

 "And this is what again?"

"The heatsink," the PFY responds calmly. "It fits on top of the processor."

"And the fan sits on top of it!" the new Boss says happily.

"Yes. No, not that fan, that's a case fan. The small fan screws into the heatsink."

"Of course - it's obvious when you think about it!"

"If you think about it, yes."

Building your own PC is not one of the activities we recommend for non-technical managers. Or technical managers for that matter. Even more so for technical managers who aren't all that technical, but think they are. It’s even worse when the non-technical technical manager is the new boss with a great idea of saving cash by making our own machines. The PFY, after trying to talk him out of it by recounting the MTBF of build-your-own-kit and the sliding scale of cost over reliability decides - out of the kindness of his heart and stupidity of his mind – to help the new Boss in his endeavour.

"And we swing the little lever over now?"

"No, screw the fan to the heatsink first, THEN we put the processor in, THEN we swing the lever over, THEN we take the little sticker off the heatsink, THEN we clip the heatsink on."

"And you have to be careful to get the chip in the right way around?"

"Yes."

"Well there doesn't seem to be all that much to it really. Honestly, the way you people talk, you'd think you were building Beagle III, when in actual fact it’s more like Meccano."

"Yeah, we do make it out to be a lot more than it is," he responds drily.

If I could somehow distract the PFY, I'd to warn the Boss that comments like this are the equivalent of teasing a hungry attack dog...

Still, it is a slow week…

>click<

"And I plug the memory in now?"

"Uh huh, but the other way around," the PFY says, gesturing.

"Yes yes, I'm not stupid," the Boss snaps.

(>tease tease<)

>clip<

"And now I connect up the power supply!" he says.

"No, plug the disk cables in first."

"Yes, yes, I was going to do that."

"And now the disk power cables."

"GIVE ME A BLOODY CHANCE, I'M MAKING SURE THE CABLES ARE THE RIGHT WAY AROUND!" the Boss lies, annoyed. “Honestly.”

(>tease< >tease< >jab with a sharp stick<)

"Oh, you're right, they're not in the right way,” the PFY adds. “Which is surprising, because you shouldn't be able to do that!"

"Well you are in my light…" the boss snips.

(>jab< >jab<)

Around about now I'm wondering who's going to crack first as the Boss is starting to get a little testy too.

Oooooh BITCH FIGHT! I'd best get a coffee and some popcorn!

By the time I'm back from the coffee machine, the Boss has tried to bury the hatchet .in a non-escalating manner by apologising to the PFY.

Ah well, Can’t win em all.

"And so it should be able to start now?" the Boss asks.

"Should do, yes."

The Boss pushes the power switch, and, in the manner of a poorly located xyzzy, Nothing happens.

"It's broken," the Boss says.

"No, it's probably something simple," the PFY says. "Lets have a look inside."

An hour later. . .

"I don't get it," the PFY says. "I've checked everything on another box and they're all working ok.”

"Perhaps it's something you've forgotten," the Boss says smarmily.

>prod< >tease<

"The power supply is switched off at the back of the machine!" the Boss notes, locating the source of the problem.

When caught out by someone with technical ability so far below yours it looks like an ant on a runway, there are two possible responses: Like 98 per cent of the population and admit that you have made a mistake, or lie like a bastard in a pathetic manner to cover up for your momentary lapse of technical acumen.

"No, I turned that off to isolate the unit," the PFY lies, taking the path less traveled. "So that won't be the problem. But I think it's possibly a thermal lag heating coefficient problem in the processor mount."

Now that the PFY has gone down this road the Boss’ machine is a goner. There’s no way on earth he’s going to let it work once the power is switched on.

Which means it’s popcorn time!

"A what?" the Boss asks, being new and not knowing the smell of recycled hay.

"It doesn't matter." the PFY says. "We just need to remove and reseat all the components again."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive."

"Right, I'll just plug myself in," the Boss says, clipping the earth lead onto his antistatic bracelet.

"Don’t worry about that,” the PFY blurts. “You plugged it in earlier so it’ll be operating in wireless mode! Oh, look, you haven’t secured the CPU fan. Right, grab the hot glue gun and drop a huge glob onto the fan just there.”

"Right, done," the Boss says dully. "Anything else?"

"You’ll want to zero the memory.”

“How?”

“Just pop it out and rub it up and down on the carpet tiles for a couple of minutes…”

. . .

Switching the voltage on the power supply to 115 just after the processor cooked was just cruel, and I would have called a halt to the whole thing if I hadn’t been videotaping it.

She’s a hard road finding the perfect balance of cost to reliability though…


Episode 35 BOFH 2004

 There are times in a professional Systems Administrator's life when he must ignore the opinion of Managers and even cast aside the sage advice of his assistant. For from his experience he knows what all others do not - that this is a pivotal situation with issues at stake that others are unaware of. In these situations, the professional administrator shines out, weighing up his practical experience and taking the burden of decision (and possible blame) upon himself - The Bastard Operator's Manual

It's one of those times. It's dark - almost pitch black thanks to a cleverly disabled switchboard - and I'm outside a prison camp with my MP5. And I'm annoyed...

"Switch off Night Vision and creep up to the Guard Box!" the Boss whispers.

"No," the PFY counters. "The Proximity Detector's off, no-one's there! Keep night vision on, do a circuit of the Camp to eliminating any guards, THEN switch Night Vision off, and enter through the main tower!"

"Sssh!" I murmer, flipping on the Sniper Scope and looking around the camp. BINGO! Guard standing beside the far tower...

Playing Ghost Recon during work hours isn't an approved work activity, but it certainly draws the crowds and passes the time. The entertainment provided by a Quick Mission during a slow period can only be devalued by the input and distraction presented by others. I decide on the unsubtle approach to the tower problem...

>BZerrrrrt!< >BZzzzzzerrrt<

I wheel the recently cattleprodded PFY and Boss into the corner of the room, returning to my desk to find that I've lost a team member. Suppressing the urge to give them another zap for the inconvenience, I get back to the game...

I sneak up to the Camp doorway as the proximity detector comes on. I slowly creep around the corn...

>RING!<

The game's interrupted by a phone call from HR.

"Systems," I say on hands free while creeping up the Prison Camp steps.

"The helpdesk say I have to talk to you about a file problem, they can't help me - it's something to do with a space problem on the Server."

"Which means you'll need to delete some files to free up space."

"But we need all our files!"

"When the disk space runs out, it runs out. It's what we call a finite resource…"

"Can't you do something?"

"Well I could delete all your files for you?"

"I... uh.. No.."

"Ok, nice talking with you then!"

I get back to the game and am creeping into the Camp with the phone rings again. The tiny distraction of looking at the caller ID display is all that's required for me to lose another man >BOOM< to a grenade launcher.

"YES?" I snap.

"Uh, it's me again. The helpdesk said that maybe you can archive some material from the server."

"Did they? Well sure, just slap it into a folder called 'DELETE ME' and I'll back it up for you."

"Don't you mean 'Archive Me'?"

"Yes, of course - my mistake, I was distracted."

"And when can you have that done by?"

"The stuff in the 'DELETE ME' Folder?"

"No The 'Archive Me' Folder!"

"Yes, right! Ahh.. I'm copying it over now."

One drag-and-drop later…

"Is it done?"

"You betcha!"

"Ok, Thank... Was that the trash bin emptying noise?!?!"

"No no, that was something else. Bye now."

I'm in the prison camp and am half way to the prisoner's compound when THE BLOODY PHONE GOES AGAIN! The Boss and PFY are no help, still being in half-stupor (although the PFY twitches slightly as >Boom!< I LOSE ANOTHER MAN TO THAT BLOODY GRENADE LAUNCHER!)

"YES?!"

"Sorry, I need to revert to the first version of the file I was working on, which is in the Archived folder. Can you bring it back online please?"

"Sure, but it's on tape, so it'll take a day to recover."

"You just deleted my files before didn't you?" the user sighs, "and now you're going to recover them from backup tape - aren't you?"

"No…"

"So you did archive them?!" he gasps.

"No."

"But you said they weren't on backup tape either."

"No, I said I wasn't going to recover them. But they are on backup tape and NOT on archive."

"Well how do I get them back?"

"You'll have to speak to my assistant."

"Can I speak to him?"

"He's Incapac… >BANG!< BUGGER IT TWO DOWN!. You'll have to ring back later!"

>slam<

The remains of my team make it through the prison camp gates and I progress slowly through the camp eliminating my opposition, which has a strangely calming effect on the annoyance I felt moments ago. It's almost enough to…

>RING!<

>BOOM!<

"Yes?"

"Just ringing back to tell you that you don't need to recover that file after all, I just undid all the changes I'd made and it's all worked out. Hey, was that an explosion sound? Are you playing games..... Hello? Anyone there...?"

. . .

It's dark - almost pitch black thanks to a cleverly disabled switchboard - and I'm in the HR stairwell with my cattleprod. And I'm annoyed... I reach up to the fire alarm breakglass... 


Episode 36 "So he says: 'You'd think Nicholas would have shown us his chopper last nig...' look out!" the PFY says dropping to the floor like a stone while pressing the lockout footpad under his desk.

Trusting the PFY's visual acuity, I hit the floor as well, looking at the CCTV screen to see what horrified him so.

Boring Geek Alert!!!

The helpdesk, in their infinite wisdom, have just employed Dull Dave, one of the blandest men in Britain - possibly the world. The man has the ability to leech any interest out of a subject so quickly it's uncanny.

One minute you're talking about how you really enjoyed some movie, then next minute he's telling you how it was shot on panachromatic 70mm stock as a base print with colour added in post production by a morphing process involving pixellated prediction of motion and .....

..and the next minute you're waking up in a hospital the moment they switch the life support machine off as you've been in a coma for seven years.

Well perhaps I'm exaggerating it a little, but the guy is a serial bore. No-one in the department is safe! Three of the cleaners have quit because the guy comes to work extra early to tell them how floor wax they use is a combination of beeswax, carnuba wax, linseed oil, damar varnish, with a 28 per cent petroleum-based solvent which is used to improve the malleability of the...

>click<

... beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I can't stand serial bores! I mean I know I work in computing, which has more than it's fair share of dullards and fanatics, but the enthusiasm of it all is just too much for me. I just want to come to work, do the geeky stuff, leave work, have a quick couple of lagers with the PFY then catch the 2am night bus home. Hopefully the right night bus and hopefully travelling in the right direction. Is that too much to ask?

"Hellooooooo?" the guy says, trying the door, which won't budge thanks to the PFY initiated lockout. "Anyone thereeeee?"

>knock< >knock<

The PFY and I are quieter than Sonny Bono's tree detector, waiting patiently for him to get bored and drift off.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Which just isn't going to happen...

It'd seem that as well as the ability to bore the life out of a cleaner, he also has an infinite capacity to keep himself entertained by simply staring at a section of wall and waiting...

"Let's just talk to him," the PFY whispers. "How bad can it be?"

"Bad!"

"Tell him we have some urgent network work on that can't wait. That we have to go and attend to."

"Yes, and listen to him tell us about the history ethernet, the advent of UTP cabling, the performance of collision-detect media as bandwidth usage increases, how the insulation in Cat-6 cabling actually contains tiny air pockets to try and reduce the effects of crosstalk in..."

>Clunk<

"Oh!" The PFY says, lifting his head up off the floor. "I see what you mean! What about a cattle prod?"

"His hide's so thick he doesn't notice people glazing over so I'm guessing he's impervious to conventional weapons."

"oh.."

. . . .

Some time later...

. . .

"What time is it?" the PFY whispers.

"3:45pm"

"It's only been fifteen minutes! I can't take much more of this!"

"Pull yourself together man!" I snap. "We need to think! Now, he's not going anywhere which means that we'll have to. Can you crawl over here without being seen?"

"No, he'll spot me between the desks."

"I've got an idea!" I say.

"What?"

"I'll crawl under this desk, swipe myself into the Computer room and leave the back way."

"How does that help me?"

"Oh. I stopped thinking about you when I realised that Dave's going to stay late and wait for us."

"So you're just going to abandon me?"

"Law of the Jungle I'm afraid."

"What?"

"Survival of the fittest!"

"That's Natural Selection!"

"Is it? Oh. What what's law of the Jungle then? OH!, That's right it's..."

>bip< >bip< >bip< >bip< >creak<

"What are you two doing down there?" the Boss asks, entering from the Computer Room side of the room.

"... human sacrifice," I finish.

"What's human sacrifice?" he asks.

"Law of the jungle," the PFY says. "We were just talking about it while we finished off the... uh... network patching."

"I thought you patched networks at the Comms room."

"Ordinarily, yes," I respond, "but this is an experiment we're trying out - terminating cables at the desktop, not at the data rack."

"Yes, it's something that came up in a conversation with Dave the other day," the PFY says.

"But don't you still need to patch them..."

"You'll have to ask Dave about the ins and outs of it al,l" the PFY says. "He's just outside..."

. . . Some time later . . .

>Clunk<

"Right lets sneak out the back way!"

"What about the boss?"

"We'll have a minute's silence for him at the pub!"

Dangerous place, the jungle...


Episode 37 Sigh. It seems that no matter what I do nor how helpful I try to be, there's always someone who's not happy. It seems that all the PFY and I get is negative feedback. It's enough to make a man question his career in technical support. Worse still, I know the Boss has received a complaint about my most recent efforts and has made some very rash promises about how it will be made right...

The Boss tries the softly-softly approach at first so as to lull me into a false sense of security - not knowing that all calls originating in the sixth floor and terminating at his office are automatically flagged for my attention.

"So, how're things going?" he asks.

"Good."

"I see... Anything... ... going on?" he asks.

"Not really."

"No calls from, say Board members?" he hints, with a tiny tinge of annoyance.

"Board members.... Board Members.... No, can't say offhand that I... wait a minute! Yes, I got a call this morning from one. Helped him with a mailing problem!"

"Yes, he says your instructions deleted all his mail and public folders."

"Really? What was the problem again?"

"He's had errors accessing his Mail data ever since someone set his home computer up as a synchronisation server."

"And does he get errors now?"

"Obviously not!"

"So you're saying that the problem's gone away?" I respond, helpfully. "Always a pleasure to receive positive feedback!"

"Making it disappear is not solving a problem!"

"But, it's not causing problems any more!!!"

"You can't just resolve a problem by removing it!"

"Can't we?" The PFY replies, entering the conversation from the Computer room doorway.

"No!"

"So I should put the virus back onto the financials fileserver?"

"No!"

"But you just..."

"I know what I said, but if we used that approach to everything the answer to the virus-in-email problem would have been to remove the mail system!"

"Why didn't I think of that?!" the PFY blurts excitedly, grabbing a hammer. "Back in a tick!"

"STOP!" the boss commands, unsure of what the PFY would do to make a point. "Speaking of Viruses, the board member also claims that when he rang you back about his email being gone you said you thought the SureCam worm must have been unleashed on his desktop and that he should quarantine all his files in the Recycle bin!!"

What the hell!

"It's a fair cop guv!" I confess, hoping that a quick confession will get the witch hunt over and done with so I can continue my server repair.

"Wa?" the boss burbles.

"It was me. I did it, I'm not proud of it, I'll never do it again. So, I suppose it's time for a nasty memo to float down from above about us being more kind to people who don't deserve computers."

"No, nothing like that. Apparently he rang his wife and all his work is synchronised at home and he only lost a couple of email messages that came in this morning. So all he wants is an apology."

"Well I'm sure he's looking forward to your call…"

"Ah, no, he'd like an apology from you. In person and in writing."

. . .

"And I'd like a secure Microsoft application - but we can't always get what we want!"

"Well this has been up to the Chairman of the Board himself!" the Boss responds reverently, pointing at the ceiling. "But it's just a quiet word or two, no biggy. Just to show that we're approachable and make mistakes too..."

"I see. So he wants me to go up and tell him how sorry I am?"

"Him and the rest of the board, yes."

Perfect.

Two hours later I'm in the lift in my Sunday best. Ten minutes later, I'm back, to the visible pleasure of half the department.

"So how did they take it?" the Boss asks, stopping short of breaking out into laughter.

"Stunned silence."

"Really? I have to admit that I thought you'd rather quit than apolo..."

"No, I mean stunned, as in stunned. Did you know that the ornamental copper band around the boardroom table is a perfect conductor?"

"I..."

"And get this, the footrest at the base of the table is earthed!!!"

"What did you do?!" the Boss gasps.

"Not a thing!! One of the standalone light units fell onto the table, breaking the globe and electrocuting half the board members. The odds of it happening are astronomical!"

"It just 'happened'?" the Boss says drily.

"Yeah! I mean to engineer something like that would be.. well it would be a huge job! You'd have to place the lamp just so, overbalancing it so that the slightest touch would tip it over, remove the safety grill and glass, replace the building's residual current circuit breakers with hard fuse, um... earth the foot rests I suppose - it would take... I don't know how long!"

"23 minutes, 37 seconds - including travel time," the PFY says.

"What?!" the Boss and I both cry.

"Did it the whole time you were getting changed for your meeting," he says to me. "I mean how would it look, a computing professional apologising to a luser group!"

"RIGHT! You're not getting away with this!" the Boss snaps, storming out to call security.

"I..." I say, a bit choked up by the PFY's loyalty. "I don't know what to say! But.. I was away at least three quarters of an hou…"

My thanks are interrupted by a >Crash< >ZZZZZzert!< from the direction of the Boss's office just before the lights go out.

"Ah! So you'll be wanting a pint then?"

"Several," the PFY says, grabbing his coat.

Behold the power of positive feedback! 


Episode 38 "It's a work of art," the PFY sighs.

"Beautiful!" I concur. "You've done a fantastic job - as usual."

"Thanks," says Ray, our cabling contractor. "I'm well pleased with it myself. No problems or mods before I send the bill in?"

"No thanks - and add a little bonus in for yourself for, I dunno, design consultation."

"Thanks!"

Ray wanders off and the PFY and I just stand and appreciate the work he's done. The eight wonders of the modern world have absolutely nothing on a perfect Cat-6 install, beautifully velcroed strain relief, smooth turning radii, all terminated with care at a pristine new patch by exception rack. I could weep!

"Right, get two separately keyed high security locks on these doors - in fact, have them replaced with security doors labelled 'Danger - Radiation Hazard Inside' and alarm the area."

"Aren't you going just a LITTLE overboard?" the PFY asks.

"If I was able to, I'd lock a trained attack dog in there with a fixation on genitals."

"Why?"

"There's something about a new comms closet that just attracts idiots, it's like a wingnut tractor beam - they come from all over the building."

"To look?"

"No, to touch, they want to... destroy... the beauty of it. We can't have that! This is my new quiet place!"

"Your what?" the PFY cries.

"Quiet place. The place you go mentally when you need a break. Some people have ponds and some have beaches, but to me a brand new comms room - unfettered by random acts of cabling - is nirvana itself. It's beautiful ... It must be protected - Oh, and soundproofed, like an isolation chamber!"

"It'll cost!"

"I don't care what it costs, get it done - Now! When you've made the calls, bring me back a hammer and some nails - I'll stand guard meantime."

The PFY wanders off shaking his head - for all his experience he's still an amateur when it comes to the machinations of an idiot's mind. The door is duly nailed shut, and contractors scheduled to arrive within a few days.

As luck would have it, the contractors arrive the next day and I escort them personally to the comms room, opening the door to find ...

... it's exactly the way I left it. Joy of joys, saints of computing be praised!

"Now you'll be sure to vacuum up all your woodshavings, ironfilings and everything?" I ask.

"Sure," the bloke from the security company says.

"And you're not going to run ANY cables near those ones, just slap a dialer termination point over there and piezo sounders there and there," I say, pointing out the locations on the wall with little diagrams on them.

"Uh-huh," he responds .

Three hours later I have the keys but I wait patiently for him to leave the building before running upstairs, unlocking the doors to find...

...it's still ok. He's been as good as his word, it's a minter! And the doors require keys from both sides! I lock myself in for a mental recharge, noticing - nothing, absolute silence in fact.

Happy thoughts.

Happy thoughts.

Happy thoughts.

The phone rings. It's the Boss. He wants me to reinstall his desktop machine because his REGEDIT session didn't work out well. What the hell, I tell him I'm be down in Five!

Happy thoughts.

The Boss's machine is a tricky one because he's somehow managed to damage his filesystem in the process and wants to recover some personal documents. Normally, the tool I would use for this is a large hammer, but I'm in a good mood so I spend the three hours it takes and recover his holiday snapshots - saving him the hassle of rescanning them.

Happy thoughts.

The next day the PFY comes by with the maintenance engineer for the building supervisor who tells us that at we're going to need to run larger pipes from the rooftop chiller to our computer room aircon units as they can't keep up with the load. It'll be costly, noisy and dusty for a couple of days. I just nod.

Happy thoughts.

A user rings and lives through the exercise.

Happy thoughts.

I get to work the next day and security ask to see my pass, like they're supposed to do every day. I show them my pass calmly and make my way up to Mission Control.

Happy thoughts.

The PFY, concerned for my mental stability, suggests that perhaps I would like an appointment with a special doctor who really cares. Shaking my head placidly, I lead him back to the source of all joy so he can appreciate…

... the two large chiller pipes running through the middle of the room. Dust everywhere. Water cutoff relay wires heavily cable tied to my data cabling. I ... A mains cable ... terminated in a patch by exception frame.

H…

H...

It's no good. I call the buildings manager and ask him to bring the aircon guy up here ASAP.

No-one ever sees them again. True, the 'Radiation Hazard' cupboard makes a lot of very dull thumping for a while, but on the one occasion someone decides to investigate they find keys broken off in the locks ...

HAPPY THOUGHTS! 


Episode 39 >BIMM<

. . .

>BIMM<

. . .

>ERRRRrrr<

"Bugger," the bloke next to me sighs as the lift stops suddenly.

"MMmmm," I say disinterestedly, unfolding my newspaper.

. . .

"Do you know when the lift will start again?" he asks.

"Sometime after people realise that the lifts are taking a while to turn up."

"Can we raise the alarm?"

"Go for your life," I say, gesturing at the ALARM button.

He presses it several times, to no apparent avail.

"Should we hear anything?" he asks.

"The alarm bell rings outside the lift on the ground floor," I say. "You won't hear it."

"Should I call someone?"

"Knock yourself out!" I say, moving away from the phone plate.

He presses the call button and we wait while an autodial sounds.

"At the tone, it will be 11:15 and ten seconds >beeep<" the voice echoes around the lift.

"Ah, the dulcet tones of the speaking clock!" I sigh. "Nice touch."

"W..."

"At the tone, it will be 11:15 and >BASH!<"

"The autodialler seems to have been reprogrammed to call the speaking clock - instead of the 24 hour contact number," I say, putting the remains of the call plate onto the floor of the lift.

"My cellphone!" he cries reaching into his pocket. "Who should I call?"

"Five quid says there's no signal."

"uuuuhm.. no. So we're stuck here!!!" he gasps.

"Not entirely."

"No?"

"No. See this pinhole here? That's the security camera."

"So security will see us?"

"Only if internet porn goes out of fashion. No, I am prepared to wager my five pound winnings on my assistant watching us very carefully from his desk."

"Who's your assistant?"

"You don't work here then?"

"No, I'm just here for the IT Systems audit."

"Oooof course you are. That's just great!" I sigh. "So you won't know my assistant. Yet."

"Should we try and tell him we're stuck?"

"Oh I'm sure he knows that. No, the way to proceed now is to cover up >plug< the camera pinhole."

"Why?"

"So he can't see us."

"Why?"

"So he'll wonder what we're up to."

"Why?"

"So he'll think about coming to investigate."

"And get us out?"

"Unlikely."

"So why do you want him to come and investigate?"

"So we can overpower him, possibly change places with him."

"You don't appear to have a very good relationship with your assistant."

"I wouldn't say that. In a Machiavellian industry like ours it's good to have someone who appreciates the value of being a team player - on your team"

"But?"

"With Machiavellian thinking there would need to be a compelling advantage in being on my team."

"And there isn't?"

"Well, there might be a grand in cash on the premises somewhere that a one-off lift repairman might lay his hands on when I got to it..."

>CLICK< >WHIRRRR<

With a lurch, the lift starts creeping up the shaft slowly.

"So you're going to pay him a grand to let us out of the lift?!"

"No, I just wanted to know if there was a microphone in the lift as well as the camera."

>SCREECH!<

"AHAH!" I blurt, finding a radio mike glued behind the handrail. >STOMP<

"Can't you... bargain with him?"

"Now I've broken the camera and mike - no. But I wouldn't have done it anyway - it sets a bad precedent."

"So we're stuck here?"

"Yep."

"What are we going to do?"

"The lessons of the past suggest the best survival technique is to conserve body fluids ...for.... reuse."

"You've been trapped in a lift before!!!?"

"No, but there's a pinhole camera, remember?"

"You watched them?!" he gasps, horrified.

"Watched them!? We made movies! It's rather difficult to make a credible case for the cost benefits of IT staff reduction when everyone in the workplace has seen you crap in your briefcase.."

"I.. It's not going to get to that is it?!"

"It could well doo-doo - so to speak."

"You don't see to be taking this very seriously!"

"Well lets face it, it's done now, isn't it? Besides, unbeknown to my assistant and in a stroke of pure luck, I'd purchased a four-pack of drinking water on the way to work this morning."

. . .

"Uh, you wouldn't consider selling me one would you?"

"Of course. A hundred quid!"

"What, I'm not paying 100 quid for a bottle of water!"

"Suit yourself."

. . .

. . .

. . .

"How big's the bottle?"

"325mls."

"100 quid for 325mls of water! That's extortion!"

"I think you'll find it's 200 quid!"

"What?! It was 100 a minute ago!"

"And it's 300 now."

"Ok, I'll take a bottle!" he gasps, realising the shocking rate of lift-based inflation.

"Money first, drink later!"

"I.. I don't have that sort of cash on me!"

"Ah, well then," I say, cracking open a bottle and drinking its contents.

"I've got >scrabble< Twe.. Ten quid!"

"For 10 quid all you'll get is a bottle of... my... urine."

"WHAT!?!"

"I said for 15 quid, all you'll get is a bottle of my urine."

Rock. Hard place. Lift Inflation. Potential Weekend wait....

"I.. I'll take it!"

"It's now 20 quid."

"I'll take it!" he gasps.

"I'd like you to ask nicely.."

"Please sell me a bottle of your urine for 20 quid!"

>CLICK< >WHIRR<

"Oh thank goodness!" he gasps, happy the transaction didn't have to be made after all.

"So in your report say IT spending is appallingly low and overly hampered by middle management."

"Why would I say that?" he snaps.

"If you think dropping a grogan in your briefcase is career limiting, what do you think propositioning a stranger for his bodily waste will do for you?"

"SAY CHEESE," the PFY says from the speaker grille beside the second pinhole... 


Episode 40 So I get back from a couple of weeks worth of holiday in foreign climes to find Mission Control... ..in much the same state as I left it. Checking the staff register, I note no-one's left the Company employ by accident and the gossip networks are uncannily calm.

Hmm.

I run some checks on systems and find them.. ..all up and running with the logs scrupulously clean of all but the lowest level of dramatic activity.

I feel a slight tinge of obsolescence...

"Morning!" the Boss cries, bursting into Mission Control happily with the sort of spring in step and smile on face that's usually accompanied by the von Trapp family.

"Hello."

"Isn't it a great day! You know, how about we have a sit down - just you, me and your assistant and have a little chat this morning - what do you say?"

"Why not!?" I respond.

"Excellent. Say 10 minutes?"

"Yuh-huh," I scoff. "How about an hour and 10 minutes - when the PFY gets in?"

"Oh he's in!" the Boss gasps. "He just had to pop upstairs to fix a printer problem."

"A PRINTER problem?!" I ask, "The only way you fix a printer problem is with a dustbin!"

"No no, he's got some doohickey which cleans the inkjets or something, makes them good as new! He's also started refilling ink and toner cartridges to save on money. Do you realise we used to spend about 1000 quid a week on them?"

"Is that all?!" I blurt.

"Savings are savings!" the Boss burbles, all but breaking into skip as he heads to the door. "So see you in my office - say seven more minutes?"

I take a moment's silence to mourn the loss of my ink and toner cartridge dealership then have a more in depth look at Mission Control. I note that it's cleaner and has 'While you were out' note pads on the desks. (!) Popping them into the bin, I notice a newly installed call queuing display system identifying the number of waiting callers and how long they've been waiting - and wonder if it's there for business or pleasure..

While I'm wondering this the phone rings, and before I can press the call-disconnect button, an answerphone cuts in…

"Hi, this is IT Technical support. We're onsite but attending to other calls now - please leave your name, number, a brief description of your problem and it's urgency and we'll get back to you with half an hour. Calls are automatically be forwarded to the nearest technician's pager to speed up resolution time."

Hmmm. It seems that during my absence the PFY has been abducted by aliens and replaced with a some soulless automaton. I decide to pop down to the Boss' office a little ahead of time...

"Simon!" the Boss bubbles cheerfully. "Have a seat. You already know your assistant, and this is his.... uh.. assistant... Debbie."

"His assistant!?"

"Yes, we took on a temp while you were away to help with the.. day-to-day running of the operation."

"Right," I say graciously, "and now that I'm back?"

"I… Well..."

Far off in the back of my mind I hear the sound of an outdated currency falling...

"...uh.. We thought... you might.."

"I think I can help," The PFY says calmly, interrupting the Boss in order to get to the point. "They want her to stay and you to go."

"Et tu, PFY-us?" I gasp.

"Afraid so," the PFY responds, nonchalantly. "Well, it was Debbie's idea really - things are running better when you're not around!"

"We think it's better this way," Debbie says, placing her hand meaningfully on the PFY's shoulder.

Some more pennies fall...

"Ah. So a quick fling in the supply cupboard with Lady MacBeth here and your loyalty foes out the window?"

"I..... would hardly call it the Dark Side," the PFY responds, ignoring my accusation.

"But you have forgotten your professional duty to the hardware…" I ask.

"They're just bloody machines!" Debbie says.

"No," the PFY says to Debbie kindly. "A vacuum cleaner is a machine. A computer is an entity."

"Whatever."

Farbeit from me to be a harbinger of doom, but I do sense a small amount of trouble in the PFY's domestic paradise. As his superior and with a vested interest in his wellbeing, it's incumbent upon me to pour oil on these troubled waters…

"He's right you know. Birds don't often understand the complexities of computing."

Fuel oil, as it transpires, followed shortly thereafter by a match.

"Are you just going to let him talk to me like that?!"

"Just ignore him," the PFY says quietly. "He's just trying to word things as tactlessly as possible."

"You mean he's talking crap?!"

"I..."

And it's all downhill from there. Whilst the correct answer in circumstances like his is an unhesitating "Yes!", the PFY chooses the road less travelled by suggesting statistics might indicate that... uh...

At the five minute mark the PFY tries for a rally with a one-sided discussion of how shameful it is that women are so underrepresented in computing, at which stage the Boss and I slip out unnoticed.

"So, things back to normal by tomorrow?" I ask, as the thud of a coffee mug can be heard hitting the wall.

"I..."

"Think quickly, the PFY may be in hospital..."

"Ok," he sighs.

So it all ends happily.

Well, except for Brutus of course. 


Episode 41 "It... It's completely stuffed!" the PFY says, looking at the remains of a machine on my desk.

"If you think that's bad, look at this," I say, pointing at the machine beside it.

"Aggghh!" the PFY gasps "He's even... burnt out the interface chips... You mean...?"

"Yes. We have a serial killer on our hands."

"When?"

"No one knows. These were found hidden in cupboards - there may be more! I think we're dealing with a pretty sick individual here who thinks they're a hardware tech, creeping around the building operating on machines."

"Who?"

"We don't know."

"Well how are we going to find them before they strike again?!?"

"I don't know. But I have a lead. I'd like you to go and talk to one of my worst users - a real headcase by the name of Hannon Bell, the Lecturer."

"The lecturer?!"

"Yeah, academics and beancounters are the worst for this sort of thing. Somewhere in their brain they believe that just because they USE a computer means they're somehow gifted in that area."

"How?"

"Well it's a bit like the people who had the first flush toilets - They thought they were somehow a plumbing specialist when in actual fact they were just crap dispensers. Anyway, I want you to go talk to the guy."

"Where?"

"Loony bin just out of town."

"A loony bin!"

"Yeah, like I said, he was a real nut job - fitted in with academics perfectly. Complete obsessive geek with it though - which made him dangerous."

"Why don't you go?"

"Nah, he knows me. I'll go with you, but you'll have to talk to him."

. . . Later that day at the dribbling academy . . .

"Ok, so this is the computer psycho ward. You'll have to leave your PDA here, though."

"Really? Why?" the PFY asks.

"Look at this >flip<" I say, flashing him a Polaroid.

"My mum in a leotard?!"

"Oh! No, not that one, this one! >flip<"

"Aghh!" the PFY cries, stepping back.

"Yes. About two years ago he told a nurse he wanted to Google some info on heart medication ... We managed to save the floppy drive ..."

I wait back while the PFY walks down the corridor past the empty cells of Gates, Stallman and Ellison, and is almost to Bell's cell when some other weirdo shouts out something I can't make out. I switch on the receiver for the PFY's lapel transmitter.

"Mr Bell?"

"Yes."

"Hi, I'm Steven, a Systems administrator and we'd like your help tracking down a machine ... reconfigurator."

"You're one of Simon's people aren't you?"

"Uh, yes."

"May I see your company swipe card?"

>flick<

"C-loser.. Hmmm. Tell me, what did Jobs say?"

"Jobs?"

"Yeah multiple Jobs down the corridor."

"He said I can smell your coffee."

"Really? I myself cannot. You eat onion bhajis, but not today, and favour Chicken Vindaloo. Now, what do you want?"

"I was hoping you'd tell me why our man wrecks machines?"

"Simple. Tell me - how do we covet?"

"What we see?"

"No! We covet one better than what we see. We see someone with a laptop - we want one, only faster. Smaller. Lighter, with a bigger hard drive."

"I see."

"So I think you'll find your man has a slow desktop machine. Quiet, doesn't get out much. Probably has personal hygiene issues. Doesn't relate to women well."

"You just described three quarters of the geeks I know."

. . . Meantime back at the office . . .

"It squirts the silicon on its heat sink or else it gets the power again."

. . . Back at Mission Control . . .

"It's all so... random!" the PFY says, looking at the machines.

"Or maybe not" I respond. If we look at these in inventory number order, we find that the one we found last was actually the earliest machine to be mutilated - judging by the hardware address records out of the router. Which means..."

"The person killed their own desktop machine first, then mutilated others to cover up for it in a classic organised/disorganised frenzied attack!!!" the PFY gasps.

"No! Look, inside the floppy drive - what do you see?"

"Nothing! Oh, actually there's some junk... Lotsa bits of paper, floppy labels, etc. get stuck in machines..."

"No, Look closer."

"I.. What is it, a moth?" the PFY asks.

"No, it's a dead weevil."

"So you're saying that the machine killer has some fixation on BUGs in computing and is actually trying to tell us something!!!!"

"No, I'm saying the killer is you, and the weevils are from that breakfast cereal you had beside that crappy old desktop I made you use when you first started!"

"Aaaaaagg!" the PFY shouts, running from the room.

Classic Blunder. He would have got away with it too, if it hadn't been for those damn kids. 


Episode 42 So I'm prancing around the office with my Santa hat on when the PFY walks in.

"Uh... err... Compliments of the Season?" he says warily, knowing my views of the orgy of capitalism that the former orgy of laziness known as Christmas has become.

"And the very best of the festive season to you my young assistant!" I cry heartily. "A Christmas mince pie?"

"I..." the PFY says, reaching out his hand tentatively then withdrawing it.

"Have no fear!" I blurt, sensing his discomfort. "These are the pure unadulterated shop-bought items, with no unexpected extras like iron filing centres or laxative icing."

"Don't mind if I do!" the PFY says, throwing caution to the wind.

At another time such abandonment might likely have been followed by an extensive period of bowel and stomach purging over a period of days, but in the season of goodwill how could I possibly subject anyone to nastiness?

"Very good," the PFY says, reaching for another then pausing.

"Again, have no fear, it's not a wheel of misfortune, they're all sound."

"So..." the PFY asks slightly concerned. "You didn't happen to have a visit from a ghost of christmas past recently?"

"Hmm? Oh! No, no, just in a very good mood!"

"A very good mood?" the PFY asks. "What's happened, the Head Beancounter did a Jimmy Jones?"

"No, but it's funny you should mention the beancounters," I chuckle.

"Funny haha or funny anvil-on-your-head?"

"No, Funny peculiar. Look at this."

"It's gift voucher for a restaraunt!"

"Yeah, the beancounters sent them to us in a Christmas card."

"Us?"

"Yeah, there's one on your desk too."

"I... I'm..." the PFY says, opening his card.

"Confused?"

"I was going to say.. touched."

"Yeah, you would be to believe it to be gesture of goodwill. No, this is far more entertaining."

"How so?"

"It's a trojan horse - Check this out."

I pass the PFY a photocopy of a memo recently leaked to me by security.

"They want security to give them access to our offices if we can't be contacted. So?"

"So what will we do with our restaraunt vouchers?"

"Drink them."

"And three hours into our lunch hour, they'll try and ring us - and there'll be no answer..."

"And they'll get access into here!!! But why?"

"What have we got that they covet?"

"A espresso machine?"

"No..."

"Security's pirated movie server?"

"No..."

"THE SPARES BOXES!!!!"

"Indeed. So while we're away they'll rummage through the contents of our spare parts bins and steal the new stuff to upgrade their machines. They tipped their hand last week when they asked for a stack of the 200 gig drives and a couple of the screen cards from our stock to replace the crap they're currently using."

"How do they know about the spares?"

"Where do the invoices get processed?"

"Oh. So you told them to get stuffed?"

"Course! Then they threatened to slash our spending budget next year - which the Boss overheard, so there was an impromptu shouting match and some disappointed beancounters..."

"Right. So we're just going to waste these drinks vouchers then?"

"Hell no! We're going to lunch!!!"

"When?"

"What time is it now?"

"10:35"

"Now!"

"But isn't that playing into their hands?"

"Yes, but you know what the Godfather would say: Keep your friends close, but your enemies..."

"...closer?" the PFY interjects.

"No, I was going to say 'locked in the tape safe'."

"And that's relevant because?"

"Oh I'm just rambling now, must be alcohol deprivation..."

. . . Five hours later . . .

"AND NOW, PISSED, FROM NORWICH!" the PFY slurs, swiping his access card at the entrance to the building.

"Ah sorry guys, no-one's allowed in the building," Security says, stepping up. "...and can you put the warning cones back where you found them?"

"What warning cones?" I ask slipping the top third of a cone under my shirt. "And why can't we get in the building?"

"Couple of computers exploded," Security says. "Everyone has to stay away till the Bomb Squad's been through."

"And don't you think we should cast an expert eye over the area - in case there's more machines ready to go up? Your movie server for instance?"

"I... Uh.. Well maybe a quick look!"

The PFY and I make our way up the evacuated building to Mission Control and slip the remaining exploding hard drives out of the way of prying eyes inside the tape safe and replace them with the pristine versions.

"So that's it then?" the PFY sighs, relieving himself into the planter in the Beancounters' lobby.

"Pretty much. But to show there's no hard feelings we'll send them a Christmas cake tomorrow."

"Really?"

"Yeah - We'll be back in their good books in no time."

"You think so?" the PFY slurs.

"Sure! Quicker than you can say laxative icing!"