BOFH: This buck's for you

“What’s this?” the Boss snaps, pushing several sheets of paper over the desk at me in an annoyed manner. “Ah! Memo two thousand and eleven dash one dash one,” I reply, “workplace resiliency.” “Yes, I can read the title, but what is it?” “It’s a memo outlining the things we should be addressing for systems and networks …

[genome]

hes back?

yay!! :D

[Alan Ferris]

Your email address is never published

Yessss!

[Craig Vaughton]

Must Be Friday!

"IT Directors check numbers for accuracy about as often as they check their faeces for fibre – i.e. only when it’s in their face"

Time to pick a mouthful of crisps out of my keyboard!

[climbgeek]

BOFH

All is well with the world.

[Isendel Steel]

Icon for Beancounters

On hell of an Absinthe induced coma/memory loss from the BOFH if he can't remember how it ended...Probably something along the lines of '300'

[Peter Ford]

Absinthe

I think the point is that it hasn't happened...

yet...

[WonkoTheSane]

Does Simon work here?

"In actual fact we hastily cobbled together a variety of randomly selected Google documents ... into a semi-coherent ... guide for senior management. Then went to the pub for two days…"

This sounds suspiciously like our new Company Handbook.

[Colin Brett]

Or ...

"This sounds suspiciously like our new Company Handbook."

Could be the ex-German defence minister's PhD thesis or Gadaffi's son's LSE thesis.

[cavac]

and it makes sense.

It' how every multinational company works: Better use established stupidity procedures than invent your own. This way, when sh hits the f, external consultants can take your money without having to write their own nonsense documents (but reuse existing ones). The cycle begins again, everybody is happy and got their money.

Saved the world another day and all that...

[Speeder]

Office Space...

This one reminds me so much of that movie, which was so hilarious as hell. Especially the scene with the ritual killing of the printer :)

[Chris Miller]

Always remember

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader, but to protect the writer.

Dean Acheson (1893-1971)

[Brendan Sullivan]

Now it is Friday.

I always find myself wondering when we will get another installment, it just isn't a proper Friday without one. It's almost always worth the wait though.

[bugalugs]

pssst

BOFH is masterminding certain more-or-less-geographically-defined events as we speak !

[max allan]

Fiction?

About 2/3rds of this is completely true.

The number of times I hear people recommending sub optimal solutions because they know the customer won't pay for anything more.

You've got to hit them with the gold plated option and when they decline it's their decision.

If you take the decision from them, they sue you for saying that taking a USB disk with all the company's data home every night was a secure off site solution.

Pushing people down a lift shaft for not taking holiday is probably not something I'd immediately link with that policy. Particularly as it's normally me who ends the year with 90% of my holiday allocation.

[Peter Simpson 1]

Pssst!

"Particularly as it's normally me who ends the year with 90% of my holiday allocation."

You're doing it wrong.

//welcome back, Simon!

//ski pass in the pocket

[Anonymous Coward]

Your email address is never published

Good....

Been there, done that, got the bleeping T-shirt AND the scars!

[Paul 77]

This is my title. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Thank goodness - seems like ages since the last one...

[Pirate Dave]

Thanks, Simon

You've given me some ideas about our backup plan. Gotta aim for the gold ring now.

[cavac]

Just to be sure..

"You've given me some ideas about our backup plan."

If your company somehow makes the "error" of approving the plan: Make sure to name an external consultant as the responsible party for making it all work. And since it was your boss who approved the plan, you pretty much know who the two fall guys are going to be...

[Anonymous Coward]

How did it end?

Grandly. Now have another.

[Nate H.]

Cheers!

Sometimes, it hit's too close to home. Still funny, though!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Isn't this supposed to humour

And not just the minutes of rail track's meetings about automatic train protection system ?

[EL Vark]

Sum of all fears

The last bit recalls my grade ten math teacher who, apart from being an excellent math teacher, also taught excellent math above and beyond the curriculum. One of his little nuggets of wisdom concerned car insurance and liability. The thrust of his argument was, to avoid future premium hassles in the event that you deliver a crippling injury while driving, be certain to back over the victim a few times to make sure they're dead.

Come to think of it, most of Simon's columns remind me of that story...

[Black Betty]

That "nugget of wisdom" is offered in many places.

And unfortunately the truth is, you are almost invariably better off killing a person than maiming them in any situation where your intent is not malicious.

Another nugget from a serving police officer. When using a gun for self defence do two things: fire every bullet in the gun and loose your memory of the event.

A while back now a security guard was accosted just after she got into her car. Her assailant had her in a headlock through the window. She was able to reach her gun on the back seat and shot him.

IIRC she was slammed with a number of charges relating to using the gun when she was not authorised to do so and failing to secure it properly. And to really screw her over, her assailant was able to successfully sue her for compensation for his injuries.

[C 2]

This is also known as 'double tap'

Rule #2 of Zombieland - Double Tap. You think it's dead (technically it was before you shot it), one more makes 100% sure.

.. that is if pile driving some deserving beancounter with a vehicle can be called a "tap".

[jimbobmcgee]

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

This is significantly better than anything from last year.

So much so I actually had to say so.

[Aussie Brusader]

Very nice.

Good work.

[-tim]

Is Downunder office working?

Is there any chance that the new office down under encouraged our favourite author to meet his deadline or did the head office deny a reasonable pub budget?

[Youngdog]

Awesome

The only thing more tragic than this being true is knowing you are the one person howling at the moon trying to make things better in a company run on these principals.

Luckily the line "feed him absinthe till he thinks he’s Conan the Barbarian" turned the tears of despair into tears of laughter!

Top job

[Mage]

But...

What will they do if the management are so frightened that they approve the plan?

They might have to then do real work and see a big cut back on other budgets.

[Anonymous Coward]

The BOFH idea won't work...

...if the company already has QUADRUPLE redundancy UPS and diesel generators.

Being that company a nuclear power plant....

OTOH, the backup plan is pre-approved and won't cut in your current budget.

The off-site storage is one continuously printed alarm log of the entire NPP operations. Yeah, it sucks to scavenge for tripped alarms... 3 days after they took place, even if some dork smoked a cigarette close to the mess hall smoke detectors... against the wind.

But I digress. Hell, it's Friday, pub o'clock. Good job Simon.