BOFH: Insecurity complex

It’s Mission Control late one morning and we’re giving the Boss a damn good listening to... “...and I’ve been talking to Jim from P.R and he says that we can probably do a little better on our machine maintenance because when he was working in a former company he managed to get a 48 per cent reduction in price by presenting …

[Michael Jolly]

Does everyone know a Jeff...

.. cos i sure as hell do, BOFH back and damn cool to

[Ginger]

Getting the boss in on the act

That's gotta be an unlimited amount of goodwill for the BOFH and PFY now

[Anonymous Coward]

finally ...

.. it hit a person who really deserverd it.

Posted anonymously because you never know who has a cattle prod

[Carol Yates]

It's a belter!

Mission Control is back on form...but the Boss is now in the clan, where will it all end?

It couldn't happen to a better victim, PR types are the scum of the earth - especially when they call themselves "Information officers"; they wouldn't recognise the truth if it bit them on the bum.

[Ian99]

My Jeff.....

.... is the head of our HR Department! He is the Sauron to our Gandalf!

Paris becasue she thinks "HR" is hormone replacement!

[John Paul McAuley]

oops

did he fall down that riser?

mwahaha!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only one Jeff?

I will have you know that I know at least twice as many Jeff's as anyone else, in fact when I was .............

[Dr. Mouse]

@Michael Jolly

I certainly do know a 'Jeff'. Unfortunately he happens to be one of my genetic donors :(

I still rememeber a conversation between him, myself (a mechanical and electronic engineer, and a car buff) and my brother (a mechanic from VW) in which we were discussing turbo/super-chargers and nitrous injection. It didnt help that it took about an hour to explain the rincipal involved in these (ie more oxygen=more power, simplified), after which he couldnt understand why we didnt carry around oxygen tanks for increasing power, and was convinced that he could make a fortune doing so. In the end my brother and I gave it up as a bad job and went out for a cig (or 3, it was very stressful). In everything he does, he is right. Always. If you use a different method to what he would do, you are wrong. If you suggest an alternative approach, you are wrong. If you have an idea, he has a better one, and you are wrong.

OK, enough bitching about my dad :)

Well done BOFH, removing another bullshitter from the human gene pool. Darwin would be proud!

(Oh and last week obviously worked wonders, the boss seems to have caught on)

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a wild stab in the dark...

I'm pretty sure the government assigns you a Jeff when you are born to make sure you direct all negative thoughts onto him rather than the current leadership.

The one with the tinfoil cap in the pocket, would you please?

[Robert Ryan]

@Carol Yates

I'm sure the lads are just trying to lull the boss into a false sense of security.

[mark]

our jeff

we've got one : "Bullshit Barry" He's off to Iraq soon to work for 3K a week

[big yinn]

Erm wasnt the BS merch called Jim, not Jeff?

! because of the pendantary alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

My Jeff...

Is a ninja. No, really. He's studied Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu (the name of the organisation that licences "official ninja schools" in the UK) since before birth (ok, since he was about 20), can smell blood at 100 feet (that one's a REAL CLAIM) and is an expert in every martial arts weapon, ever (so's that one).

He's an athletic 18 or so stones, and straps a knife to his bike (in case anyone steals it. He hasn't yet figured out that they would then have the knife, too).

He refuses to tell any of us where he trains, because it's a "secret school" (despite the Bujinkan listing openly where they teach), and the only instructor in the area (whom I know) has never heard of him.

This is particularly hilarious for me, as I'm a martial artist myself, and about the nearest he could get to a ninja is sumo wrestling. Whenever I ask him about something technical, he tends to stutter a bit and then mutter about "secret teachings".

AC just in case he reads this, and comes to give me the "Ninja Death Grip Of Doom (TM)"

Pirate logo because there isn't a ninja one. But pirates aren't as cool/deadly/hard as ninjas. Can we have a ninja logo PRETTY PLEASE???

[Chika]

Actually...

...back in the day, we had a name for such people as Jim(/Jeff).

We called them "experts".

[TEQ]

@ Chika

And the definition of an expert?

An ex is something that has been, and a spurt is a drip under pressure.

[James]

Two Jeffs

I used to work in an office where there were two Jeffs. I feel I have an insight into the cold war arms race as eventually one would 'push the button' blow his lid and they wouldn't talk to each other until the next thing to have an opinion about.

We need a mushroom cloud icon....

[Bob]

@ Mark

Only 3k a week, i have a job lined up where i get 5k a week, all my expenses paid for and a fresh young virgin every evening...hopefully female.

PH because she's a virgin...she's just not very good at it.

[Dan]

Ah Jim's =)

Yep plenty of these Jim's around and they don't have to be male either. My parents know one who no matter what you had done, she'd had it/done it better/worse. She got caught out when a family friend said that he'd had a vasectomy and it was really sore, and the woman proceeded to claim that she had also had a vasectomy but had nearly died. Despite attempts at asking if she meant hysterectomy she flatly claimed no no she'd had a vasectomy.

Mind you saying that one of my friends is 1000% bullshit. When we were at school he would make various ludicrous claims. it amused us no end lol

Paris....as she's as brain dead as the bullshitters !!

[Stewart Knight]

Jeff

Whats the betting that Jeff spoke with a Yorkshire twang?

[conan]

@AC

Pirates may be as cool and hard as ninjas, but they're no where near as deadly. I mean, would you be more worried if someone told you they'd hired a ninja to kill you or a pirate?

We should definitely have a ninja logo. Or a pirate one. Because they both are pretty cool.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Dan

The friend who had the vasectomy should have asked the female "Jim" if she cared to compare scars.

[Fluffykins]

@Dan

I recall an elderly female acquaintance of mine recounted the time she was telling some friends about her angioplasty operation. Innocuous enough, but the word "angioplasty" completeley eluded her. The reaction of the little old ladies, listening agog to her experiences, underwent a wonderful change when the only word she could utter was "vasectomy".

[Darkside]

@ Pedant

Jim will have the satisfaction of knowing he died Right - the open riser *was* a safety hazard.

Thanks - pass me the hi-viz one with Kevlar stab/dog bite protection, transceiver for finding me under the rubble, built-in bouyancy aid and UNION SAFETY REP on the back.

[Andrew Moore]

What 'Jeff'???

I'd just like to say RTFA- His name's Jim, not Jeff.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ AC

Wow, he gives modern day ninpo schools a bad name!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really good Jeffs?!

My Jeff has our company compleley snowed over. They think she is just great. I am just waiting for the sh*t to bite them in the arse. It will be an amusing day.

We need to implant these people with BS meters on their foreheads so we can tell how full of it they actually are.

[gizmo23]

Ninja or pirate? How about both!

Chris the Ninja Pirate

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/kungfu/

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why things get Jeffed up!

I have to agree with the Jeff thread. It was so bad at one place I worked we had a term for it, things got Jeffed Up.

[Scott]

Jim, not Jeff

Problem is, if you take out Jim he finds a Larry H Parker to sue you for millions, so the company has to pay him even more money not to work than it was paying him before.

A previous employer used to use their Jim to their advantage. They'd team him with you. If you complained he was not doing work they'd shovel all the work into your lap, and make an entry in a book somewhere about him. Trouble was, he had been there 25 years and was union (a unionized systems engineer!), so he couldn't be fired. Saw it happen over and over again. I heard he never got raises, but he never did any work for the company either so that's expected.

[Stu_The_Jock]

My "Jeff"

Classic "Jeff moment" KNOWING we were heading towards his home town, a colleage at uni proceded to tell a group of use how he'd given directions to a lost MFI furniture lorry, only to realise after they'd driven off that the road had a low arched bridge. AND of course later saw the truck with the imprint of the bridge in the fron of the cargo box (Doesn't realise most are NOT made of metal)

He gave enough detail to make it sound almost convincing, including clear enough info about the road. So as we drove the road we videod it, end to end.

Back at uni, we sat down and made some comment about the story before showing a photo of the road, he convirms it, then we show the video. OOPS . . . there was NO bridge. But yes I think EVERYONE knows at least ONE Jeff.

They're not placed by governments though, the A L I E N S left them.

[red floyd]

My sister

Who told me, to my face, in front of witnesses, that she knows more about computers than I do.

I have a degree in CS, at the time, I had been a professional software developer for 20 years, and had been playing with computers for over 30.

She was an English major, who never got her degree.

Every now and then, I and the rest of the family take some fun in noting that she knows more about my job than I do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ours is Head of Group Development...

and he doesn't have a clue. He goes into meetings with non-technical departments and tries to dazzle them with acronyms so they think he's really clever.

My boss and one co-worker have already left because of him (he only came into the company a few months ago).

The questions is how long until I follow them...

I hate Jeffs/Jims

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a ninja logo.

See? I've used it right here.

[Robert Moore]

We have a word for Jim's here

We call them 'consultants'. :)

[Unknown_Noel]

The Canucks found a whole country of Jeffs ...

... just south of their border. The comedy show "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" had a regular segment by Rick Mercer called "Talking to Americans". They'd make up some outrageous Canadian "news" story, then head south and ask Americans what they thought. Results? Absolutely hilarious.

Back in 2001, they even got Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to wish Canadians encouragement on preserving their Parliamentary Igloo from melting. Just google "Huckabee igloo". Hey wait ... haven't I heard that name somewhere else ... ?

Paris 'cuz she'd make a better prez than Huckabee.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jim..

In the last place I (allegedly) worked there was a 'Jim'. Nicknamed 'Two Shits' cos guaranteed if you said you'd been for a shit that morning.........

[Simon Travaglia]

Where this came from

Many years ago I was hostelling in London and there was this bloke there who we called 'The Revolution'. He would sideline any new person and talk about their travel plans and then go on to poke holes at thier proposed destination because when HE was there it was much better, more interesting, gritty, realistic, accessible, etc. Especially Berlin, which he'd apparently spent some time at when the wall was still up. Our favourite quote - and hence his name - came from when someone was going to 'do europe' and then travel to some place in South America, to which our bloke said "Oh, it's really gone downhill. It was so much better before the revolution". Sack of cack.

But everyone's an expert in IT. If you can drive a pocket caculator without getting an E, you're it.

[Anonymous Coward]

@conan

Agreed, ninjas are more deadly than pirates... But what about a ninja pirate?

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/yarr/

Jolly Roger seems rather appropriate here...

[s]

My Jeff was in the SAS

And was a multi-millionaire.

And only worked becuase he lied it soo much

And lived in one of the biggest houses in Amsterdam

And...

And...

And...

And pissed off his co workers enough for them to make a web site dedicated to his bull.

Anonymous as I'm sure ex-colleagues of mine who read this will know who I am talking about...

[amanfromMars]

Poor Little Rich Kids .... Sugar Daddies Pets?

Now there's magic for you ..... Jim became a Jeff in a jiffy although they're both recognised as right Jessies.

And talking of blowhard Jessies, the likes of which could do with the "attentions" of the BOFH and PFY and the Boss, now that he's coming round to more lateral thinking, this is very clear with the End being just the start of a different kind of the Beginning for some who should have known better. ...... and it is dedicated to all them Jessies out there ..... http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?revision=_latest&fs=true&docID=ddv7hj34_03774hsc7&skipauth=true

I doubt whether the blow is worth it though. And it make you think and possibly even realise that the Markets are awash with Jims and Jeffs doing a Line and Spinning a Yarn and Totally Dysfunctional and therefore Vulnerable and Hopeless and Virtually Helpless.

Masters of the Universe? Only in their own scrambled minds, maybe?

[Herby]

Authors notes...

I like it!!

Yes, everyone has had the experience.

Then again, I can say (with photographic proof mind you) that I've further south on earth than anyone (except an astronaut, but that's not earth!). Yes it was a while ago (over 30 years), and I was doing IT (we called it computers then) stuff as well.

[Gerrit Tijhof]

@ sir Travaglia

An accompanying word by the BofH-master himself: what an honour that he came to read this comments! Mind you, I remember when I emailed him 8 years ago from Ireland that he is a true inspira <ZZZAAAAPPPP>

[black plastic with zipper and 'bodybag']

[Jerry]

Yank asks: Riser?

What's a "riser"?

[Brett Weaver]

Reminds me of "Centigrade Jack"

Anything you said had to be halved and at least 10 removed from it to convert to reality....

[WRMartin]

Other Jeffs/Jims

What about the Jeffs/Jims that do apparently know everything even though we don't care?

I can't count the time wasted listening to hours upon hours about perfume or wine or some video game intricacies or the color of the power supply cables on a PDP 8/e.

Arrg, just thinking about him makes me want a pint.

Why yes, thank you, the one with the Persian cashmere belt (only found on the underside of a rare species of underground frog) and the filigree buttons (from a small craftsman in the back room of a coffee shop once frequented by the Duke of Earl) and matching (oh never mind)...

[Iamfanboy]

I remember my Jim...

Ninja naturally, or was it vampire? He never could tell the difference. Oh, and a crack shot with any gun you'd care to name.

He went paintballing with a group of us, and we got our revenge. He was about our only target - on both sides.

At one point, he tried hiding behind a tree that was only 1 foot wide - unfortunately for him, he was about FOUR feet wide. Cue hilarious Benny Hill blooper theme.

He ended the day dripping with paintballs, with a scar on his cheek because he disdained face masks "Goggles are enough for me; heck, I'd just wear my glasses most of the time because I don't get hit anyway" and lo and behold, he was actually quiet for a month afterwards.

The only thing he was good at was playing the didgeridoo, and he was actually GOOD at it. Maybe if he'd've plied that dedication to his ninjutsu...

[Highlander]

Watershed moment....

OMFG! The Boss actually showed some common sense and a glimmer of self preservation. What next? the PFY and BOFH walking on water? What other miracles will we be blessed with?

[milur]

Wonderful

Between this and last week's "Silence of the Servers," BOFH is truly back on his game. Also I agree, we really need a ninja icon!!!

[poons]

@Chika

An expert is someone who spends their life learning more and more about less and less until they now everything about nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Another term

Yet another term for Jeff: IT Teacher.

We have a couple at my school. I have to teach the lessons.

One of their recent claims:

"Websites are better developed in Microsoft PowerPoke or Office Paint then by using some other fancy thing, what was it? PHP? Hangon, let me just check the mark scheme. Yes, it definately says, making a website. You need to use, what was it? Ah yes, PowerPoke or Office Paint."

or

"You need to be very careful with search engines. You could break the entire interweb by typing google into google"

OR EVEN WORSE:

School IT adminitrators

Me: "I need to use PHP for my ICT coursework"

Admin: "Doesn't fit our curriculum needs"

Me: "Can you install the free office 07 compatibility pack for your office"

Admin: "Its not in our roadplan. It would cost too much. We've just upgraded to the Windows 'ExPeh' operating machine, anyway. We've done our work for this term"

*silent fume*

[StopthePropaganda]

here, he has a different name

we call him Tom. Too bad he doesn't read this....

[Rebecca Putman]

@TEC

I have another definition of expert:

A person who knows more and more about less and less, until he knows everything about nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ninja required.

Just wanted to add my vote for a Ninja, excellent BOFH.

Oh, and let's be honest here, anyone who's been in IT for a decade or more is treading a fine line between Jim/Jeff ness and normality.

Paris, well, because she's had a little bit of Jim/Jeff in her at one time or another. At least that's what my Jim claims..

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a jeff?

Uh oh. it's my boss. (the icon)

reality distortion field = expert?

[Tris Orendorff]

@Ours is Head of Group Development...

If you have a "Jim" at work the thing to do is to get him to oversell himself and not necessarily on something for work. The Jim I knew used to think he was God's gift to pitching [baseball] and amazed us with tales of high-school championships, grapefruit leagues and AAA farm teams. No one called BS on him; instead we let him spin his stories.

On the day of the company picnic and baseball game he threw like a girl and could barely get the ball over home plate. We made sure he knew we were onto his BS tales and even his boss and someone from HR called him on the carpet about his resume & job skills.

He was gone by the end of the week.

[Jon Tocker]

What a delightful collection of stories.

I flatted with a "Jim" who was a master in the secret Korean art of Sinanju and knew death touches etc etc - anyone who has read the "Destroyer" pulp novels would recognise every word he uttered about his training and his teacher.

He was also an powerfully psychic and had one many a psionic battle against extremely powerful psychics.

His brother was also a "Jim" who claimed to be a trained Ninja and wandered around everywhere with a pouch containing the largest shurikens I've ever seen - machined from the front sprockets of a couple of bicycles so they were damned near a foot across and weighed quite a bit. Odd, considering shuriken are small, light concealable and designed to distract rather than kill (unless tipped with poison).

He used to hang out with another "Jim" who was the greatest street fighter in town (can't've been because I later met another "Jim" who was...) and had raced Formula 1 class for years (despite not being old enough to have held an F1 licence for a year) and played me a tape which he said was by his band (I actually had the same album at home, a professional cover band playing popular tunes so the record label could cash in on their popularity...)

I seem to have met a few "Jims" over the years - if only I'd had access to a couple of risers at the time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let there be flames: Most Jim's/Jeff's I know are Mac Converts

I know, I know, it will begin, however....

Most of the Jim's I know are recent Mac converts.

They insist that, because they've just converted to a i-something that the world should do the same.

Need to replace the 3 year-old EMC Symmetrix serving SAP, Data Warehouse, peoplesoft? cr-Apple XRAID

How about the HP rx8640? XServe

New desktop that I use for CAD, Video Editing, Photo Editing? Mac Pro

Corporate desktop and laptop roll-out? Mac

Replace/Upgrade the VMWare farm? Mac with Parallels???? (Really)

Companies massive collection of 3G/3.5G connected Mobiles: (which they need the highspeed data) iPhone

They always seems to be some "expert" who knows better because he just got a Mac, but they never seem to really work in IT do they?

St. Steve because his jobbies are holy, aren't they?

[Anonymous Coward]

A riser is...

These tall office buildings need a way for cables to get from the basement to the higher storeys. Normally they're run through ducts that pass vertically from basement to the top. There's a panel (or sometimes a door) so you can get in in case additional cables are needed. They're often adjacent to a lift shaft, or else run through what looks like a structural column from the outside.

The ones I've seen actually have a proper floor and the cables run through a duct through a relatively narrow gap on one side. However just leaving out the floor would leave a lot more room for cables. And high-velocity descending experts.

[[e-mail]]

On a tangent.....

This may be the begining of the end for the current boss. He'll either get lumbered with the blame for Jims "accident", Will be blcakmailed out of the job by BOfH and PFY or will get ideas above his station and have his own little "accident" while attempting to arrange one for the other two.

So thats three plotlines spoiled, lets see what else Simon can come up with :)

[amanfromMars]

AIR on a tangent

[e-mail],

A BOFH Cloning .......Rise of the PFY ...... with a Radical IT Boss Mentoring to their Needs and Feeds would inject Pace and Fundamentalist ControlLed Anarchy for a New Order Vision and Version.

The BOFH and PFY get Head-Hunted for ESPecial Operations to Lead DirectXXXXion rather than thwart IT would Offer another string to Simon's Bow?

But hey, it's not our Journey/Therapy session, is it, and we all love where Simon takes us because I imagine that we recognise the terrain and the lost souls in IT.

Play some Games too well and you get a knock on the door and/or an Engaging Mysterious Magic Lodgment on Account for Services Rendered. And boy, would that be encouraging of Engaging Mysterious Magic or would that be encouraging of Engaging Mysterious Magic ? :-)

And the Egghead Boffin because IT would be a miserable place without them Rooting for Paris.

[tony trolle]

re:What a delightful collection of stories.

re bike shurikens. The jim/jeff I knew had one from a Raleigh with the bird still in the middle. I did one 'better'; mini starter ring with 2inch nails.

Not too sure how or why but his sister ended up with it painted pink on her bedroom wall just to piss him off. lol

[Andy Worth]

Another "Jeff"

About 15 years ago I used to work in a security team (physical security rather than IT) with a guy who always told us he used to be in the SAS, and of course he knew about a hundred ways to kill you without a weapon. Unfortunately, while quite loudly declaring what he used to do, he'd never actually mention anywhere he went while in the SAS, lest he be discovered as bullshitting. Of course, it was all "secret", even though it was about the same time McNab released his book.

I don't really work with a Jeff at the moment, thankfully.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to think people..

... grew out of oneupmanship at somewhere between the ages of 20 and 25. Sadly, it doesn't seem so.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Rebecca Putman

Does that mean he becomes Henry's Cat?

[Stuart]

Our Jim was....

an expert on so many things and had so many jobs that we reckon he must've been at least 132 years old! He regaled us with his stories at any opportunity and I started on the night shift just to get away from him ;-) He even said he lost his hair due to his time with the "SAS", so we called him "mudguard" - Shiny on top, Bullsh*t underneath. Don't pass up a good mudguard, as they can keep the workplace amused, especially if they have been put in their place - aka the cleaner.

Why the penguin, I've just started using Linux, so now I'm an instant expert (even though I've admin'd them for quite a while). Why, I remember the time when.......

Keep up the good work Simon.

[Gordon]

Jeffs

Well, they do call the SAS the Largest regiment in the British army. Oddly enough I used to know a chap who had (genuinely) served in the SAS. I'd describe him as intelligent, decisive, supremely fit and agile, personable enough to work well in any team environment and about as un-macho as a soldier is every likely to get (dedicated family man & Camra member). I should think the last thing the SAS want is the kind of man who'd blab about being in the regiment - they thrive on professionalism and dedication.

I've known a few Jeffs. I tend to just leave them alone - if they're so desperate for other's aprobation that they need to make up fancilful careers and histories for themselves you might actually do their psyche some real damage by showing them up.

[Daniel Fiander]

My JIm....

...was actually Pedro the Portuguese Prat.

We once spent an afternoon adding up all the jobs he said he'd done. It averaged at 8 hours, 36 minutes a role....

He also spent an equal amount of time bitching how crap England was to live in and the other half telling us how it took him ages to decide where to move to after leaving Portugal...

Boffin, because of course he knew everything....

[Anonymous Coward]

Jimdom

We had a jim, he'd been a contractor at the place for about 15 years. The first time I met him, my boss had said he was a real expert in our field (security & servers) so we gave him the run through of a few setups and he took notes (or so it seemed). He did seem a bit odd, but Ive worked with odd geniuses before so we gave him the benefit.

Later we found out he'd been writing down the words that sounded good, so he could learn them to repeat. He had a brilliant knack of memorizing buzzwords from a conversation without any technical grasp whatsoever of the subject and repeating them ad nauseam to upper management. The keywords all came out, jumbled in with enough bluster to make him sound convincing to a phb. Sadly for him we weren't phbs...

All of the PHB's thought he was a genius and everyone with any technical ability thought he was a complete knob so he had to be kept away from vendors, customers, representing our team in calls etc, I was so appalled by his complete lack of knowledge, yet utter refusal to accept he was anything but the worlds best expert in any field we came across, I officially refused to create him accounts on the boxes stating I had no way of knowing if he knew about something, or would ask if he didnt. His very worst habit was to turn up uninvited to management meetings and pretend to represent us, or dial into conference calls without announcement and chip in some random nonsense when we were trying to respond to something in a sensible manner. He also had a nasty habit of "passing on" messages from upper management, only he'd invented them, and did the same thing from us to others to get stuff he wanted for his "lab".

He brought me a "present" once from home (some rj11's, of which we had about 20000 in the stores) and boxed it in a .22 cartridge round (gun) box to try and scare me, I told him he'd need something bigger than a .22 if it came to that. I was told later he'd brought a revolver in and waved it at someone who was calling his bluff. Id have stuck it up his bum if he had tried, he annoyed me so much. He must have had pictures of a big phb with a sheep or something to survive all those years.

I decided wasn't renewing if he stayed on the team. Jim doesnt work for us anymore after that. I almost feel sorry for him now, because I suspect he had some weird kind of autism, but he's now SEP for care in the community. Saved me finding my own handy cable duct to introduce him to...

Dead vulture because thats how working with him felt.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ultimate Jiff

Deep in the darkest corners of science fiction fandom, lies a bit of apocrypha regarding The Jim/eff To End All Jems, to wit:

Scifi author #1 enjoyed telling the exciting stories of all the wonderful things and places he'd been-done-seen. So much so that Scifi author #2 was heard to remark that in order to have anything close to a grain of truth, author #1 would need to be about two thousand years old.

Following on this notion, author #2 was inspired to create his best-known fictitious hero, born Woodrow Wilson Smith, and holding, among other aliases, "Dr. Lafe Hubert."

Author #2 (obviously to those familiar) was Robert A. Heinlein, his creation of course Lazarus Long: World's Oldest Man, hero of 'Time Enough For Love' and a few dozen other stories.

Author #1: Lafayette ("Lafe") R. Hubbard ("Hubert")

(I *believe* Mrs. Heinlein was kind enough to once verify this story to the denizens of alt.fan.heinlein before her passing several years ago, but I can't be arsed to look...)

[Anonymous Coward]

A Jeff in the family

I too am related to a Jim/Jeff/Know-it-all. In fact a few. This doesn't bode well for my genepool.

My sister claims to know more about science than science graduates (she's barely completed a foundation year in Chemistry).

My cousin claims to be everything from a biologist to a metallurgist to a jeweler.

My dad was Mr Better-Than-You-At-Everything (although to his credit, there were many things he was awesome at - RIP).

Anonymous because you never know...

[Shabble]

B*llsh*t killer

As Google is generally at hand these days, there is no reason to not openly challenge any suspected b*llsh*t - in fact its your duty to do so. 'Really? I read in X (New Scientist/BBC website/the Register etc) that its really such and such'. Google some suspect detail that will undermine the b*llsh*tter's claims and announce 'Ah, I thought so! It says here that Y is really Z.'

Voila! Jeff is instantly humbled and you are elevated into his place simply by typing a few words into the world's most ominous search engine. If Jeff makes trouble for you, take the effort to do some research and then correct him repeatedly in front of mutual superiors. Soon the bosses will be going to you to verify Jeff's claims about anything they themselves don't know about.