BOFH: I'm so pleased to be on the call, Boss. No, of course this isn't a recording BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "But you agreed to it!!!" the Boss snaps at us through the screen. (Since COVID he's really embraced the whole videoconferencing vibe as a way of avoiding leaving the comfort of his gas-operated chair.) "You said you'd do it on one of our Zoom meetings!" The problem with all those COVID …
"On the other hand, you'd think that if you were going to nick a bunch of kit you'd do something more impressive in scale than 10 laptops."
--True that, but a properly spec'd "high-end" laptop, such as an Alienware or Dell Precision can easily come in at over $6K USD, so that would be a nice nest egg, especially if you're planning on retiring to a country where the cost of living might be significantly lower. And I'm assuming this wouldn't be the first appropriation by "Dave."
After re-reading, I think you're mistaken. There's two separate scams here.
The BOFH personally arranged for 10 high end laptops to be delivered directly to "the user" and then sold by the company for 70p.
The BOFH was surprised to hear that Dave has retired at the same time as a bunch of untracked laptops that had been delivered to Dave went missing. The number of laptops is not specified - it's however many they bought less the 20 that came back and the 10 that the BOFH bought. It's implied that it is a lot.
Providing your paperwork, insurance and financials are correct, it is easy to get residency.
I know of at least half a dozen people who have done or are doing it here at the moment.
Don't forget, Dave has just retired.
The verb form of inventory is inventory.
Inventorise, even if it is spelled with an 's' is an Americanism and not an English word.
"I do sometimes wish the English would do a better job of administrating their language."
The very fact that English is known as (the) lingua franca which is Latin for the language of the Franks should surely sound alarm bells in any civilised region of the planet.
I'm loving your use of the word administrating. You know exactly how to make my teeth itch, even whilst I pop out and mug another language for yet more words to add to our bulging ... err ... ooooh dictIONARY!
OK, Simon, where is the bug(listening device) placed in my office? We had the exact same thing, the supplies manager did this to us!! He ordered us metal sticker asset tags with Black text on Silver tags one year. Two years later, he ordered the same number range with Blue text on Silver tags! We have since purchased our own multipurpose label printer...
IT Icon because never send a boy to do a man's job!
Both HP and DELL are willing to sell you pre-labelled computers if you order enough of them.
All they need is the Logo, text and a number range.
They'll even email you a list of serial numbers and the corresponding asset tag as they ship them.
and those are slightly more secure than what your Dymo or Brother labelprinter can produce.
I used to sell labels (and more importantly the software to track them) to both companies. If you can get the labels they use to identify real vs counterfeit product go with HP, those things are amazing. Otherwise you're better off sourcing security labels yourself.
Heh.
They did that at Data General, too.
And we had the same problem...$1k software tool? Right, we'll bolt the tag to the floppy!
Tags had some kind of adhesive on the back and came with a little blue bean of solvent. After it had cured, they were a real bear to remove.
Where's the "buy it now" button?
Because now that it's so easy and convenient to have meetings by video, the morning starts with a forty minute meeting by the production managers, that always overruns. Then Quality control wants a meeting that is scheduled to take half an hour, actually takes twice that, but is only ever noted as being half an hour. Then rinse and repeat with HR. That's the first three hours of the day and zero actual work done. Then there's the time for doing work, unless Production and/or Quality have a (mostly imaginary) crisis, in which case it's back to the group meeting where everything must be examined in detail right now. Then it's lunch. Then it's another meeting with HR, this time some crap about how to be a better employee. They're currently promoting the Japanese idea of the 5S. It's sad that they feel the need to engage in cultural appropriation in order to get people to not organise their workspace like the municipal dump. Of course, my suggestion of other Japanese workplace ethics, such as throwing yourself off a roof when you've failed hard, did not go down so well. When that's done, there's maybe a half hour to do work until it's time for another group meeting with Quality to discuss what was done today and what would aid you in performing better. Then it's time to go home, having maybe (if we're lucky) done about forty five minutes of work and spent over six hours listening to people blather endlessly about stuff you don't give the faintest inkling of a shit about.
<sarcasm>I'm so sorry you are bored and miss interacting with other humans</sarcasm> but the biggest hindrance right now are these endless meetings, of which maybe 0.1% (like two minutes in a day) has anything to do with me, but it's obligatory for everybody to attend because you know that if participating was optional, you'd be staring at an empty screen.
You didnt have my personal favorite in there, the meeting about having too many meetings and what can be done about it.
Normally at some point during the call we get the old chestnut that if we dont think we need to be contributing in the meeting or if its not beneficial to us, then we are fully empowered to drop off the call.
I'm still a bit confused as to why I got into trouble for dropping off that particular call, but havent made the same mistake since
We need a campaign to refuse to turn our cameras on. I'll be on your call, but I'm not sending a feed of my face for no good reason. All the important stuff is spoken or on a shared screen. All the camera does is add to bandwidth usage and make it clearer when I'm multitasking.
Has figured out the connection between el-reg and the routine destruction of keyboards on a friday
Hence he got our IT gurus to block el-reg at the company firewall.... the bast
However, he does not realise he is dealing with a fiendishly cunning beast.... whos noticed that the new machine is controlled by a custom application running ontop of a XFCE linux installation... however.. the machine does not have internet connection... or didnt until someone plugged a USB lead into the port on the back and set his phone to 'tethered' mode, then rebooted said machine.
Minimise the control application and I have a desktop complete with browser to play with.
Although after reading the bit about Dave retiring, I now have to explain how a machine less than 14 days old has a keyboard that looks like its been in use 14 years.......
"Although after reading the bit about Dave retiring, I now have to explain how a machine less than 14 days old has a keyboard that looks like its been in use 14 years......."
I'd go with "Localized environmental aqueous ingression testing and product accelerated lifecycle simulation."
Beer, for all the phones and laptops that have had a drink before us.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
