BOFH: Is everybody ready for the meeting? Grab a crayon – let's get technical BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns So I'm doing some documentation – which we all know is a waste of my valuable time because everything I do is self-documenting – and the Boss walks in. "How's that documentation coming along?" he asks, looking at a long list of items on his personnel disorganiser. "It stopped the …
"You know this is a technical document, right?" "Made for technical people?"
All my documentation starts with a disclaimer "This guide documents $COMPANY standards and is intended for the use of staff already trained on $TECHNOLOGY". Y'know, when the manufacturer guide says "This is how to partition your disk as required", I document* the partition sizes to be used, but not how to do it.
* Though just printing out the config of a gold build and writing BOFH-type guides instead might be a better use of my time. "How to securely decommission a server (with a rubber mallet and a cattle prod)".
Not really,
Wasn't specific on which political leader, and sadly the quote can be applied to oh so many of them. So, it may be about a politician, the joke isn't of itself political.
(yes, I've had to explain political humour to HR recently, for my "not my fault, I voted for Kodos" poster)
"I know only 3 languages, Technical, Plain English and Idiot."
Neat, very neat phrase indeed. Must use this one on more annoying students and/or management (annoying is the default mode for management).
Might have to extend that as I also can do "Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands" (==Plain Dutch) and "Idioot" (take a wild guess)
@ MHF Wilkinson : "management" is the fourth stage in the progression nowadays. Idiots can't help being what they are. Management tends to be deliberately obtuse.
Forcing Manglement to speak proper dutch is a neverending source of entertainment at dreary meetings.
O, I always thought that Plain Dutch was 'Jip en Janneketaal', laced with 'Bootwerker' (which roughly translates as 'Harlot'), while ABN was bankers lingo, hiding their incompetence (or general state of confusion, hence the empty stares when you ask something in 'Jip en Janneke') behind multisylabic 'Idiot', but I get your point.
My moderately fluent version of French, after thirty years of working in France, is a mix of basic French from half-remembered O level and a book on irregular verbs (the 'Jip en Janneke') plus a lot of 'argot' (the 'Bootwerker'). Works fine but causes some amusement in polite society.
To be honest... While at Uni the math dept. there had some large boards out in the hallways on knot theory, and the Stuff on it lost me in about 30 seconds. I still maintain they had that stuff out there to ensure Peace and Quiet in their bit of the building. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment...
It's true PHBs have to shovel stuff. If they're good at it, they shovel it away from the project critical path. If they're bad at it, they shovel it the other way.
But hot air - that's easy. What do you think the fan was doing in the moments before the excrement hit it?
My thoughts exactly. But as commented above: if they are worth their pay they help the project / job / whatever, or at least act as a DMZ to deflect incoming interference from above. Oh, and make sure the techies in their jeans-and-dirty-t-shirt (or around here: outdoor trousers + t-shirt) are kept away from the upper floors... and yes, this sort of works for me at the moment.
... the GoreTEX one please, the one in expedition quality...
(WHO are you calling an Anorak?!)
I had a great boss a while back who said to us: "You all know what you're doing, it's my job to shield you from the political crap." He did - resulting in a happy, productive department while he basked in our success and gained (as we did to a lesser extent, obviously) much in the way of bonuses.
"We have a new person at work, and his job is mainly to shield us from customers."
"That way I can get on with developing and support with supporting."
As a tech author, that was often how I got the techies to talk to me. I would explain that talking Idiot was my job, and if they gave me the griff they could stop answering the phone all the time and trying to do it themselves. After that, their enthusiasm for Technical became the gift that kept on giving. Icon for the fond memories, folks!
The current head of my department is the greatest boss ever.
She used to have a shepherd that we all loved. One day I nodded off at the keyboard and suddenly the dog walks into my office and woofs. I got up just in time before the main boss arrived. That dog treated me and my colleagues as his herd and he protected us against people from other departments and especially anyone smelling of management.
Good dog that one. Very good dog. He is sadly missed. (stupid vet didn't want to continue treatment, in retrospect we should've gone all out BOFH on his rear)
I had a Boss like that.
He was a competent SUN Microsystems SysAdmin before Manglement promoted him.
And then he went and hired me. I'm independent, I know my job, and by the time he came to me with a Task List (three weeks), I'd already done 80% of it, three items were good ideas and I added them to my project plan, and handed him back his list. At That Point, he sat back and said:
"You're making us look good. You do you job and I'll be the umbrella that keeps the shit off of you."
He did.
We're good friends to this very day and I wish to hell I could hire him as My Boss.
I can only assume he is testing the boss for 'loyalty'. If any senior manglement or HR suddenly appear wanting to scrutinise this documentation, then the boss may be due a little 'accident'. If not, then presumably the BoFH knows he doesn't need to go and get some more quicklime and carpet samples.
No, it's really not.
I used to be a licensee and the process is :-
1. Undo all the grundy heads and attach to the line.
2. Fill up the right mix of line cleaner and water into the huge bottle
3. Draw the liquid through the beer taps until you feel the mixture of cleaner and water - it should feel soapy.
4. Leave for 30 mins
5. Empty the huge bottle of the line clean mix - it makes a great cleaner for cellar floors.
6. Connect hose up to the water line.
7. Draw the liquid through the beer taps until it doesn't feel soapy.
8. Reconnect the grundy head to the keg
9. Draw through the water until it magically turns to beer.
A good landlord knows how long his lines are and how much cleaning solution they take. If you get diluted beer that tastes of line cleaner then the landlord is a feckless tool.Find another pub.
For the poor mugs who have been conned into running pub co franchising operations, they usually find the pub co does not allow anything like sufficient wastage (which includes loss on cleaning pipes)
So (as they are being really shafted and struggle to keep head above water), the mug managers often have to cut corners, which leads to worse beer, which leads to less customers in a vicious spiral of poor quality.
Really? Where I drink, all of the vendors clean their own lines, obviously with the bar's beer, but they do come in every week and clean all of the taps/lines/etc.
Unfortunately, I've had a couple of episodes, and have had to give up caffiene and alcohol...
I once lost a new contract because the first thing I did was to push a part-finished document through for signing-off.
The system was crufty and the details confused, but since it had been around a couple of years and the sysadmins knew it backwards, the sole purpose of the document was to sign it off and throw it in a cupboard, that was what I was getting done.
The project manager (call him Scumspawn) called me in and carpeted me for some trivial typo - "call yourself a professional?" blah, blah.
I checked with his boss and yes, it was fit for sign-off and thanks for a tremendous job, this document had been bugging them for literally years, it was the last thing keeping the delivery project open.
Turned out Scumspawn was nearing retirement and was using the chaotic state of the report to keep his project open until his retirement date, just to be sure of the big fat pension coming his way. He was horrified that this new author knew his job well enough to cut straight through his carefully woven web of confusion. I had to go with immediate effect, before I tipped off his Boss.
Oops!
Thank goodness we were in a basement room at the time and there were no windows to open.
My replacement assignment turned out to be the job of a lifetime, you couldn't make it up. I can only thank the miserable git from the bottom of my heart.
Hehehehe.... Former career. We had a fountain in the entry way, right behind the receptionist's desk. Whenever we had a temp covering that position, the fountain always got turned up to high. And by 10am the little Miss had to make a wee-wee run, but as I said she was a temp. Didn't know where the can was, and didn't dare ask a regular FTE to cover the desk. Good times!
And was the 'disorganiser' not an invention by Pratchett?
Oh yes.
Bingely boop, bingely bingely... Appointment with the Thieves Guild 11:00 am
It's 2 in the afternoon. And that was last Tuesday
So do you want me to take it off the Things To Do list then?
Just (re)reading Feet of Clay and getting some funny looks from my fellow commuters as I try to suppress my sniggers.
Palm? Windows Immobile?
Real BOFHs used Psions...
If you couldn't run a terminal emulator on it and hook it up to a console port on a Switch, Router or 'that weird box' in the corner, what use was it anyway?
The Psions had the terminal emulator and rather nifty scripting functions.
Add the WYSIWYG word processor, spreadsheet and DBs, and you had all your important documentation in your pocket.
The modern replacement is the Planet Computers Gemini clamshell which is Dual or even Tripleboot...
(Android and Debian, and possibly also Sailfish or whatever floats your boat)
Mine only runs Android... yet...
And yes, the keyboard is just as good as on the Psion S5 series.
No, a BOM is a general use manual, probably explaining best practises for using electric cattleprods and best impact points on a cranium. You know, the stuff that's the same on every site.
What he was writing is the BSM - Bastard Site Manual, because it mostly deals with site-specific issues and resources.
Simon hands out some of his latest documentation.
A hush descends as the technical documentation is astutely studied, before the excited babble and arguments break out. Blimey! Useful tech docs. I wish we had this type of info in my day. I didn't know that,... lets give it a try, and the "damn it don't tell everyone you'll spoil it for us!"
more arguments, followed by th boss getting a delegation later that week. Of all his friends trying to evaluate the usefulness of the documentation. Maybe even a judicious trial of the window hinge.
Hello BOFH?
Is there anybody in there?
Just write if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?
Come on, now,
I hear you're feeling down.
Well you can ease my pain
Get me on my feet again.
Relax.
I'll need a new story first.
Just the basic facts.
Can you show me why it's quiet?
New measurement of time between BOFH articles - how far your hairline has receded since the last one.
I do believe this is the longest gap in BOFH articles since I started reading them here in like 2005. I remember several years ago, Simon took off for like 3 or 4 months. This time, it seems ages longer.
Naah, I have the problem that people were joking about my receding hairline since I was 18 (24 years ago). The people that were joking me back then are all bald now, while my hairline is still receding (but veeeeerrrry slowly).
So for this measurement to work, Simon would need to stop with his stories for at least 2 years, which is not a good idea.
In the mean time, I'll just put on a little John Waite - Missing you, since I'm obviously in denial and/or in a rehab clinic.
I just had an awesome BOFH moment....
user called to complain that the scanner was making the files too big and asked us to make the files smaller. The DPI was set to 300 so I set it to 75 DPI....
they then called to complain that they couldn't read the text on the scanned files.
My response was, you asked for the files to be smaller, you didn't ask for them to also be legible.
Totally reminded me of the old I need more space on my drive....hey, where did all my files go BOFH article....
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
