BOFH: We're miracle workers. But you want us to fix THAT in 10 minutes? "What do you mean 'why's it not working'," the PFY asks. "I mean WHY ISN'T IT WORKING? What's happened?" the Boss snaps, expecting an excuse that will be both technical and understandable to someone with his level of tertiary education. "Nothing's happened, it's all the same as usual," the PFY responds, suspecting – as we all …
But as a font can it be worse than Adrenaline Bubble Outline?
...why not just find a sadist who'll gouge out your eyes with hot spoons for free?
Because with the sadist option, it probably could be traced back to you when you send it toward your victim of choice, but combining that font with an anonymous email... yeah, that could do some untraceable damage.
For some real class, how about Doves Type?
I'm writing a lot of internal work stuff in Doves these days (my boss is a bit of a printing / typeface geek and decided to buy the font for no reason other than he liked the story, and it's quite easy on the eye) and not having bold or italic options really concentrates the mind on how to convey the mesage clearly...
M.
Why o Why in God's name would anyone and I mean ANYONE design that font or use that found, it makes Comic Sans seem normal or even Quark Neon seem passable..
I've seen some presentations that make me wonder if they people who did them are "some kind of special stupid"
Gotta love the BOFH and I've seen fonts that were only Upper and Lower case....
Why design it? Someone has an old copy of Fontographer and nothing better to do.
Why have it? It's free.
Why use it? When put into a customer's advert, poster, tee-shirt, or other promotional product that needs a "cool" headline to draw in da yoofs, customer will say "oooooh, I like it!".
Lol, the
"no-changes-on-a-Friday window"
which always translates into
"no-changes-on-a-friday-unless-somebody does their 'baby wants is rattle' impression and cries loud enough and then you'll have to fix it I dont care how long it it takes and yes the person who asked for the changes does get to go home on time but you dont."
Golden time at my bacon getting place of operation has to be widespread panic on every front, otherwise it can wait until 8:00am Monday (which I hate). Because Friday represents the end of the week and probably the most productive day I dissuade my superiors from these actions.
the person who asked for the changes does get to go home on time but you don't
Hah, that will be the day. The change is logged as well as the forced override against our explicit advice with the name of the person forcing that change, and the network will fail just as we have leave the building and put our mobile on silent because they were too cheap to add a 24/7 clause to our contract.
If we need the overtime we may "discover" the panic messages later, come in on Saturday and maybe rig the access logs so we'll have worked on Sunday as well, but you can be damn sure that anything the board wants to play with on Monday will still have problems, and the name of the person who ignored the advice of us superbly qualified magicians/technical people is on record so no guessing what will happen next.
Generally it only takes two managers being demoted to car parking duties for the rest to get the hint.
:)
Sadly our lot have developed a response to all of that. They try to get to the board first and say that we're "obstructive", haven't got a "can do" attitude, try to push for admin access for themselves, tell the board that they, the customer, aren't happy with the service we provide etc.
It doesn't matter how stupid the argument they sling mud and sadly a lot of board members are too thick to see what's going on.
In the end you rely on your boss having the courage to stand up for you and getting the right points put across.
My current bug bear is this "we're the customer" rubbish. I pointed out that they've misunderstood the relationship, The truth is that we were chosen by the board to provide a service and that our ultimate responsibility is to provide a good service to the betterment of the company which is not always doing whatever half cocked idea passes fleetingly through the head of some manager.
OK, that's my rant for today :-)
Sadly our lot have developed a response to all of that. They try to get to the board first and say that we're "obstructive", haven't got a "can do" attitude, try to push for admin access for themselves, tell the board that they, the customer, aren't happy with the service we provide etc.
Oooooh, yum. Such a *rich* source of fun things to play with. Can I have your job for a while?
Getting to the board first doesn't matter really, but if it bugs you, be very helpful in sorting out communication and access control. The moment you have that in hand your manager is history. It's rather hard to get to a board member when your phone, email and physical access have failures that originate in what you tried to force on Friday :). Especially VoIP diverts are hard to get right, but maybe it's a hint of things to come that calling any board member gets you the recruitment company instead..
However, also do not underestimate the power of "facts" stored on a computer as that "doesn't lie". Your average end user (aka board member) has no clue that such records are not immutable and can be edited at will. Since your manager knows full well he gave the order against logged objections, he will do everything possible to avoid the raw "facts" as stored being tabled, which is why it is so sad that by a stroke of sheer luck, the email of the board still sort of works, not very stable, but enough to email the change control note upwards as root cause.
Naturally, you cannot "fix" the manager's email until you fixed that of the board, unless he wants the board to know that he considers himself a higher priority without giving a reason for it, but just in case he insists, you would naturally be happy to pass on the "I screwed up and want to correct it before if affected you" message (at least, that's what it will imply when you're done with it and release it to the queue).
As for admin access, yes please. As seasoned professional you will have other accounts with admin rights such as "accounts" and "sanitation". Only the manager's account is called "admin", so when things start to go mysteriously wrong they will always originate from that "admin" account. All you need to set up next is a cascade failure that will happen as soon as he logs in, preferably something with dramatic and notable side effects such as zapping the shareholder presentation the chairman has been practising the whole week for next week's AGM.
Naturally you will save the day by first spending 4 hours in the pub with PHB developing a "recovery strategy" to recover what was nuked "by the manager making beginner mistakes at admin level". Once you have drunk and lunched enough on the company's expenses you amble back and copy all the data back from the USB3 stick you have had in your bag since Friday when you set it all up, and presto, you're the hero.
When can I start?
:)
Very good J.
1) note, of course, that this is only from a perspective of being able to walk away with a new job in sight. I know that is hard for some people.
2) this is all as fictional as the real BOFH stories. Not that I wouldn't be up for it, but as I am not called The United States of America I *do* worry about collateral damage.
3) J? Who is J? Or do you mean Jay, in which case why the insult? As that is the second time you use that, does not denying it somehow confirm it? When did you stop beating your wife?
try to push for admin access for themselves...
That, right there, is your problem. And it's an easily enough problem to solve. One bit of network devastating malware traceable back to the machine of a manager with admin access should clear that one up. If it doesn't then repeated infections all traced to the machines of managers who should bloody well not have admin access, along with a couple techs making it clear why this keeps happening, will.
Why would the managers keep getting infected? Because social engineering is too danged easy when people don't understand the threats, that's why.
AC,
quite a while ago (I had hair) I worked for a then well-known consulting company, churning out graphics and fiddling with Excel.
They had a fabulous rule re out-of-hours work (which was very regularly needed), in that ANY CONSULTANT could ask you to work on anything, for as long as it takes (regularly overnight!) until it was sorted.
BUT the relevant Consultant had to stay within sight of you until you were happy that the job was done.
We did crazy hours, a 24hr stint was not unusual - and earned very well for it in the process, and no Consultant ever removed the urine...
I still think it was a most effective approach.
Regards,
Jay
<quote>Generally it only takes two managers being demoted to car parking duties for the rest to get the hint.</quote>
Nahhhh!
Around here, we just send them on a new career trajectory, using one of these:
http://www.timeref.com/castles/trebuchet.htm
"put their ass in the sling, and give them a fling...."
@Jay,
whilst I can sympathise with your situation, I have never beaten my wife - it was a play on the original implication that I actually started beating my wife at some point.
My answer was 100% truthful, you cannot stop something you never started :)
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"Yes. This is important! The board have all flown to Edinburgh with the Director so they can see our videoconferencing presentation in action!""And you just found out about this 17 minutes ago?!" the PFY gasps.
The Boss ignores him.
"Ah," the PFY adds. "So it IS as usual."
This section would be incredibly funny IF it didn't describe almost every job I had to do...
"And you just found out about this 17 minutes ago?!"
Reminds me of an IT manager I once worked with. When the usual rush and panic about creating the quarterly reports was in full swing he was faced with a director demanding action to fix a small problem as the report had to get out the next morning.
His response was a calm, considered lecture on the lines of the Sumerians and Babylonians had calendars 700 years ago, Stonehenge was at least 6000 years old and was an effective calendar, settlements in China, Peru.... and so on... finally leading to "it's the 21st century and you're STILL surprised by calendar dates!"
Needless to say the calm lecture did wonders for the boss's blood pressure :-)
Trouble is, most execs use the Mayan Long Count calendar.
Ohshittheworldisgoingtoendifwedon'tfixthisnow, ohshittheworldisgoingtoendifwedon'tfixthisnow, ohshittheworldisgoingtoendifwedon'tfixthisnow, ohshittheworldisgoingtoendifwedon'tfixthisnow...........ah............it didn't after all.
Only vaguely related - however it being friday and beer o'clock and whatever...
Clever use of IT for shirking: Reddid skin that looks like outlook
So....got someone who thinks they're important demanding something be done right freaking now because they didn't bother to let you know about it last week when it first came up and it needs finished in 17 minutes.
Simon, do you have spies in my office passing on ideas for BOFH stories? Because I gotta say this one sounds a lot like my life.
Got a few scars from this exact scenario my self.
My other favorite? Can you fix this and I'll be leaving in ten minutes but I'll leave my computer on.
When it's something that requires them to be logged in on their account. The ones we don't have passwords too. (oh we could change them, but sometimes the users disappears for hours or even days and then will phone in unable to log in... while we're working some new fire that needs putting out)
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