BOFH: Testing the obscenity filters

"Hi, I'd just like some help setting up my Macintosh for access t..." >SLAM< . . . >Ring< "Hello?" the PFY says. "Hi, we must have got cut off, I was ringing for a bit of help setting up my Mac..." >SLAM< . . . >RING< "Is there something wrong with your phone?" the voice asks. "I don't think so," the PFY says. "But …

[Anonymous Coward]

Brightened up my day, thanks!

That put the smile back on my face! Only wish we had the luxury! ;-)

[Louis]

GENIUS!

This one had me almost wetting myself, first one for ages (though they are all funny)... Even had my manager stick his head out the office to ask if I was alright...

[punks unite]

Brilliant

Need to try that here ;p

[James L]

Can't

Accent-related humour FTW

[Jon]

Am I

Firs... >SLAM!<

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally succeeded

I finally descended into helpless laughter while supposed to be working.

Bastard.

[Ryan]

Back to the old school

Like the "classic-BOFH" style of this one.

[Trygve Henriksen]

Wish I could do that...

I tried doing the same on our Helpdesk phonesystem, but...

My boss nixed it when he saw the list of words I wanted to include...

Office

Excel

Outlook

Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

What about

Manchester United - I had that on the obscenity filters to test them whenever they were updated :)

[Colpaz]

More evil than ever

Simon is an inspiration to us all, one of the funniest one's yet

[Echowitch]

lol

Aah that put a big smile on my face after making a major cock SLAM .....bugger SLAM

Err I mean major mistake yesterday that has had me not in the best of moods for the last 24 hours.

Paris because.......well I always feel like laughing when looking at her =D

[The Repulsive Monkey]

Destroy all Macs

The use of unnecessary violence in the prevention of macs infiltrating our utopian society has been approved.

This most certainly includes all macs installed by idiot directors on helldesks when the customer base is 95%+ Windows (without benefit of Bootcamp)

[Michael McLean]

Class!!

Loved this one, very good, last few have been amazing

[Alex Cooper]

Pure class

One of the best in a while, very very funny!

[Rob Holmes]

Awesome!

"....and he recalibrates himself out of a job."

Best. Line. Ever :D

[dervheid]

New anchors...

<SLAM>

the tears are running down my face.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quality stuff!

A return to the "solar-flare" era of user-baiting story :-) Utterly wonderful - more please!

[Andy Blackburn]

It's been a while

Since I read a BOFH as good as that one. Took me back to the old school days.

Paris, as she needs a good slamming every now and again.

[William Hunter]

*mutter mutter*

I really don't know what everyone's got against Ma... >SLAM<

[Anonymous Coward]

CHUTNEY FERRET!

ROFL...

[Bad Beaver]

Bah

How cliché, IT person hating on Mac due to inherent threat to his own job, plus USER too daft to even set up a Mac by himself. All pretty worn out, if you ask me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tempt me...

I'm upgrading the phone system next week and people are asking what extra features there are....Oh I must resist....

[Chika]

Like it!

I'll just have to remember it next time some user asks for optical<SLAM>

[Simon B]

A timeless classic is born!

What a classic! Deffinately one that will be held as a timeless classic as it is reread in years to come! Brilliant!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring the flip chart back!

Simon, was that one from the "Excuses of the Day" flip chart?

I reckon it was!

[Steve Medway]

Classic

Classic - Absolute classic! I was ROLF, got some odd looks from my boss!

[Dunstan Vavasour]

Return to user baiting

Don't get me wrong, baiting bosses and suppliers is good stuff, but good to see the BOFH get back to basics.

[Andraž Levstik]

Great one

After this hellish week(something with exchange(thankfully will be getting rid of it soon)+ad+win2k3 failinng monday) this made it all worth while....

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Hey I hadn't finished

>SLAM!<

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Took my breath away and so...

<gasp>

<SLAM>

<sigh>

<SLAM>

<groan>

<SLAM>

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

A version for comments?

That can't

>SLAM!<

[Rusty Warrior]

Sheer Genius

This episodes is the dog's bol >SLAM!<

[Chad H.]

clickety...

will we soon see the return of clickety-click?

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuses of the Day flip chart

Have to say my favourite (and most used) excuse for some otherwise unexplainable IT problem is:

'hmmm must be caused by unusual levels of solar activity'

Works every time :-)

[Brian Wright]

Lol

Now that for me was one of the funniest for ages.

[Danny]

F*cking brilliant

title says it all.

[Michael Sheils]

Pure gold

You can't <SLAM>

Beat that!

[Scott]

Class

This one is the bogs dangles for this year, just wiping the tears away now..

Got a few technicains in mind that i will be trying this on for a laugh, think i'll be adding the phrase in "you couldn't do me a favour"

[SigKill]

An instant classic

I've been reading the BOFH column for years now and I have decided to sign up now just to be able to comment on this one. 'Nuff said!

[Mark Cooper]

Top

Laugh, I nearly sh >SLAM!<

Getting my coat as now too weak to w >SLAM!<

[Angus Ireland]

hahahahahaha....

Having read this half an hour ago I had to come back and read it again... the tears are still rolling down my face!

Wish i had one of these but i can't <SLAM>

[Anonymous Coward]

Merchandise it please El'Reg

We need a HellDesk Excuse calendar, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Bad Beaver

This is a site for techies, not mac zealots. Why don't you use your solitary mouse button to easily click your way back to safety and leave the nasty CLI men to it?

[A J Stiles]

Definitely getting it back

..... although TBH I'm not really sure he ever lost it.

So how long do you reckon before someone writes an Asterisk module to do exactly this?

[Daniel B.]

Reminds me ...

Of my "line failures" when my dad was scolding me on the phone

Dad: I told you that <SLAM>

*ring*

Dad: Call went dead. Ok, I was telling <SLAM>

*ring*

Dad: Hey why are you hanging up?

Me: I'm not. <SLAM>

For helldesk-style support, though, my favorite is the infinite hold method. If your phone doesn't actually have a "hold" button, you can just leave the phone besides you (on mute, of course) and you get the added benefit of no *other* calls getting in! Ah, those old days...

[RW]

Me too!

Nearly pissed myself laughing. El Reg really shouldn't inflict this kind of humor on aging gentlemen with weak bladders. Fortunately, Sphincter Control was maintained, though with difficulty.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Simon

BOFH, I love them. Some are brilliant, some less but always enjoyable. But this one is just straight, classic, superb! Just like those back in the early 90ies.

It made my weekend and left me with some nice ideas to think about.

EAfH

[hexacet]

just like the good ol' days

reminds me of the good old skool bofh's, except it was ewe anchors back then instead of can't, perfect timing tho as i had to ring a mr huan king today (no, i am NOT making the name up!)

hex

[Anonymous Coward]

@bad beaver

can't <SLAM> you accept that modern macs ARE pc's albeit with dodgy styling, idiot proof OS and massively over inflated price tag...

the mac not being a pc thing died the moment apple switched to using x86 hardware

AC

[Gerrit Tijhof]

Grand!

Old skool BOFH!

[Quirkafleeg]

Dodgy filtering

Apple filtering is bananas. Consider networking and MAC <SLAM>

[Hrishikesh]

Didn't he discover voice recognition a while back?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/05/19/bofh_discovers_voice_recognition/

I think having the obscenity filters is a bit mellow .. undoing his past work and all that.

Mine's the Mac <SLAM> Merde! Doesn't it know the difference between coats and computers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic

Love it old school BOFH brings tears to the eyes and a cattle prod to the bol<SLAM>

[Mike]

Classic

Possibly the best BOFH since "lunar cycles". <SLAM>

[Anonymous Coward]

The PFY & BOFH should be scared...

...Because if we all used <SLAM> then we wouldn't need to have so many coc<SLAM> uckers, er, helpdesk staff. They'd be out of a job.

The truth is that Windows is a nasty anachronistic mess. It doesn't work properly and it's a nightmare to code for - I speak as a Windows programmer here, unlike helpdesk staff who spend their weekends wan<SLAM> themselves stupider over XBox and fooling themselves that they have the first clue about computing.

Windows? Not POSIX compliant without supposedly POSIX compatible, but not really, extensions - and therefore not cross-platform. In short, a surprisingly popular dinosaur in a world that should belong to Unix. I couldn't care less which Unix variant - Linux (I'll permit it into the club, although purists say I shouldn't), Solaris, Mac etc. Once you've developed for one, it's quite easy to port to another. If only the same thing could be said for Windows.

My apologies. Rant (and, indeed, flame) over. But please, get a clue - abolish Windows (at least until it has Unix underpinnings), and don't open your mouth to respond until you've engaged your brain and considered whether you have the experience to respond intelligently.

Anonymous because I do have some helldesk friends, and because it wouldn't be a flame if it wasn't.

[amanfromMars]

Toys for Grown Men?

Apple .... Vorsprung durch ITechnik? Very Churchillian Fourth Rendering

[Jeff Held]

Hello! I think they work in out IT department!

The C*$%^$%^*&$%@#!

<SLAM!>

[Andrew Tunney]

Filters??

Now if only they can develop one so that the next time some idiot calls after developing a web site in Publisher and says that they can't upload it, they get disconnected...

Paris?? Because even she isn't stupid enough to use Publisher to build a web site.

[Phil A]

ahh, Scunthorpe syndrome again...

& yes for you Johnny Foreigners, there is a town in the UK called Scunthorpe and yes, it has caused problems with email filtering software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Very funny

Got me some odd looks from my cow-orkers, so it must've been good!

[Anonymous Coward]

BRILLIANT

Now all we need is the return of clickety-cl<SLAM>

...

...

Funny, come to think of it. I didn't know the Internet did a <SLAM> whenever a packet was dropped.

[jhardy]

RE: Good old days of BOFH

As a matter of fact <SLAM>

I can't <SLAM>

help but <SLAM>

think that what goes around comes <SLAM>

Oh, never mind ...

[Nick Pettefar]

One wonders

What do the BOFH and PFY's users use for desktop machines? Obviously not Macs from this episode but I have not read (maybe missed) anything about their deals with anti-virus companies and programs. There must be so much BOFH-ish fun to be had with such things. They could blame almost anything on viruses, spyware, etc.

Perhaps they are all running Gnome or KDE desktops on Solaris or Linux or something?

[Anonymous Coward]

No hardware

Best BOFH evar.

Simon doesn't use a desktop machine, he just reads the source code and communicates telepathically with his peripherals.

[mittfh]

PFY's box

We don't know what the PFY's work box is, but we do know he does (or at least, did) have a stockpile of Acorn Archimedes boxes...