BOFH: In search of the lazy atom

"That's that stuffed then," the PFY sighs, looking up from his screen. "What, OpenOffice?" I ask, having read the recent blue whale news. "No, no, an experiment I was doing." "What's that then?" I ask, peering over his shoulder. "... Actually what IS that?" "This is a view down an electron microscope." "At what?" "All …

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm

Lazy atoms, I think I'm made of them...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are the corpses, where's the gore?

I asked myself until I read the third last line...

EAfH

[Matthias Claes]

Consequence of the lazy atom on the detector

The trouble is, even if you build the detector, the lazy atom will make it stop working if it's near.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm,

I was going to reply to this but I couldn't be bothered. Too lazy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ummm

So were you the one who came up with the idea for this BOFH, then? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Ummmm

If you were indeed made of lazy atoms, you'd have never got it together to tell us about it.

[Daniel Kay]

Heavy Electricity

heh, couldn't help but remember the "Heavy Electricity" episode of Chris Morris' delightfully crude series Brass Eye when reading this...

My mind is awash with images of Bernard Manning screaming "It's a fucking disgrace!"

AAAARRRGGGHH!!

[Anonymous Coward]

That Explains It!

There must be something about lazy atoms that causes them to collect over the course of a work week, so that by Friday afternoon, I'm almost completely inert. Polarised by apathy, perhaps? And since apathy clears almost immediately upon leaving the office on Friday, the lazy atoms are dispersed back into the air, surely being drawn up into a truly bored HVAC. Come Monday, the biological apathy attractors pull the lazy atoms back from the chiller coils. And so the cycle continues. Makes perfect sense! Thank you, Simon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't think of a plot this week?

It's the "My Dinner With Andre" episode of BOFH!

[Dan]

@That Explains It!

I think you'll find its more of a case that Friday's themselves are made up of lazy atoms.Albeit a small number of them. Saturdays and Sundays progressively consist of more and more lazy atoms as they accrue. Hence the "urrgh Monday" feeling on Monday morning, which is rapidly discharged by a volt of New Week degaussing the week.

[A J Stiles]

Heavy Electricity

Actually, it's not too great a stretch that coils could contain heavier electrons* than straight pieces of wire. So the current builds up slowly because it takes a great effort to get the heavy electrons to start to move. And then, when you disconnect the battery, the heavy electrons take awhile to stop moving and so cause a back EMF.

Of course, when you start to get up into the VHF and UHF, even the slightest bend in a piece of wire starts to look like a coil; which is why FM radios don't have as many coils in them as MW radios.

[Douglas Norton]

The real story

So there is all this preamble about lazy atoms, and then right at the end P.F.Y. confesses to having Angela in his car and being drunk and then what?

Dish the dirt guys, don't string us on for two and a half pages and then leave us hanging.

That's as bad as the old Doctor Who episodes --- at least _they_ have stopped that now.

[Tom Chiverton]

you can actually see a single atom

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/atomo.html

[Charley]

Whine

How come all the episodes, including last week's, are displayed where they're supposed to be?

[Dan]

@The real story

I believe.....the insinuation is that Angela did as they say......."got her rat out" :)

Oh yes there's the reference to the old "I didn't inhale" reference to smoking Mary Jane's tobacco. But its the underlying "I was young and needed money" that hints at the PFY's involvement in seeing to Amanda's rat :)

[Michael Born]

I can't be sure, but I may...

Have found the 'HOST' for the lazy atom!

It is basically a viral intrusion on my entire department!!!

Lately, I have found that everything everyone else touches that I have to revisit turns to custard and stops working, and then I have to sort it all out!!!

Ahh...hang on a minute...nope, could be wrong, could be that my colleagues are all 'TARDS!!!

Yep, aftwer seeing the emails flying around from the guys with nothing better to do, I am CERTAIN that it is the LAZINESS ATOM at work!

Thank you to the BOFH for highlighting it!!!

[Al Storer]

re: you can actually see a single atom

Tom: that's as maybe, but those pictures were produced using a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (also know as an Atomic Force Microscope), which is an entirely different beast to an Electron Microscope (be it common or garden Scanning or somewhat more expensive Transmission).