BOFH: The vengeance bus is coming, and everybody's jumping. An Xmas bonus hits me… BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns It wouldn't be Christmas without the smell of chestnuts on an open fire and the sound of carols in the air … christmas bus Click to enlarge And, as I wake up from my brandy-induced chair-nap in Mission Control, the thought occurs to me that the roasting smell is more dumpster-fire …
Oh, the PFY has at least a dozen such learnings behind him. Given that the PFY must be at least 50 this year, I think he needs rebranding as the POF.
But he seems to age about as rapidly as Bart Simpson...
The same goes for the BOFH, he must be well on his way to 70 this year...
I made myself a collection of all the public BOFH episodes (there were a couple of special episodes for those that paid the Reg bribe money), I call the "book", The Complete Bastard... The first numbered year was 1996, but the BOFH goes back to the early 90s with the original Striped Irregular Bucket episodes.
I didn't get around to updating it last year, but as of 2020, the BOFH had killed 133 people, got 125 fired and a further 202 maimed. The PFY is only at 31, 28 and 101 respectively. I need to get busy updating my collection for last year.
I still remember reading some of the first BOFH episodes, where Simon was employed at a University IT dept and had fun deleting student access to the mainframes or redirecting account backups to dev/null while blaming it all on cosmic radiation anomolies. And I've not seen it mentioned in years, how many people here these days even know (or remember) what PFY stands for? Good times...
Ahhh yes, fingering the results of purity tests, introducing IT students to the remark command (or as professionals call it 'rm'), adding lots of space to user's accounts using that aforementioned "remark" command as an archiving tool, but being the professional he is, making sure there is a backup (on paper printouts)
The first BOFH I ever read mentioned redirecting a doctoral dissertation to /dev/null IIRC. I worked at a company with absolutely no reason to deal with the more intricate details of computers, networks, servers and such. Then the "boss" got a wild hair up an orifice and decided to diversify, become an ISP. Briefly I and my co-workers were drafted to help as "support" staff, hell desk and such. Then he brought in a young Goth to manage the ISP side of things, and another to support him. The young Goth decided that all computers in the office were HIS domain, regardless of the needs of the rest of the business's other side, which, as I said had nothing whatsoever to do with ISP trivia. But I and a colleague HAD installed the peer to peer network, before the Boss had his brainstorm. Our would be IT manager would lock the rest of the office out of access to the print server for no good reason when he left for the night. It was NT, but we had a floppy disk that could reboot it to useability for its intended purpose - printing. He would rage about the instability that would ensue. NT didn't like the by pass trick. Finally, he quit, calling out "harassment" as the reason, since he received no respect for his decisions regarding the Print Server. Even the Boss pointed out that there were others that needed the printers. His understudy moved up, and after actually talking with us about what was "wrong" with the print server, nearly died laughing, and directed me to the early BOFH pieces.
I didn't get around to updating it last year, but as of 2020, the BOFH had killed 133 people, got 125 fired and a further 202 maimed. The PFY is only at 31, 28 and 101 respectively. I need to get busy updating my collection for last year.
Don't forget, the BOFH even came back from the dead once, much to the PFY's surprise.
That was one of the PFY's learnings:
Never open the BOFH's hidden stash, until you have seen the body, dismembered it, covered it in quicklime, rolled it in a carpet, driven it to a dump, poured petrol over it and bunt it... Even then, you can never be sure, best leave it alone...
2 massive quotes in there to finish the year off;
The rub is that the last time he tightened his belt was probably 40kg and two wives ago. But he still has the same belt, which gives him the look of a partially made balloon animal.
VERY FUNNY
By the end of the day I'm less popular than a Yoko Ono double album.
SADLY TRUE
many thanks Simon for all the laughs
I think the BOFH and PFY are a bit like the heroes in any long-running book series - they don't age like you or me. Steve Carella was in his early thirties in the fifties when Ed McBain's 87th Precinct started. By 2005, he was probably in his late forties. See also: the Famous Five, Roy of the Rovers, Spenser, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, the Black Widowers, etc etc etc....
...not to mention the Cabot Cove Serial Killer, Jessica Fletcher.
Merry Christmas Everyone.
May all your Festive support call outs be:
a) trivially solved remotely in 2 minutes flat
and
b) chargeable as overtime with an obscene Christmas rate multiplier in a minimum whole day billing period due to an overlooked clause in your contract.
Yes, he did. But he was meant to be old and retired in 1921 in his first novel and was still detecting in the sixties and seventies. Reference is made in one of the books to his cases in the Belgian Police in the eighteen nineties. So either he was well over a hundred at the end of his career, or, like Steve Carella, he got older at a slower rate than the rest of us.
We have read about age & treachery beating youth & inexperience for years. Imagine the creative writing fun if the BOFH is stuck with a Young Chippy for an assistant. Especially if she is secretly as devious as he is.
Of course T&A vs BOFH would only be good if this column included pictures....
I first got them as a fanfold printout from our ops at around the same time.
I made myself a "complete set" in 2020, although it needs updating with last years episodes. It runs to well over 1,600 pages. I call it The Complete Bastard. I keep it with me for rainy days.
I even went through it again marking who they killed, maimed or got fired. The London "talent" pool has been truly decimated over the last 3 decades (well, it was down under for the first few episodes).
Err dunno about you .. but for me that's bottom scrapes of the barrel .. should listen to her rendition of 21th century schizoid man that's .. horrible .. :D
If your less popular than that .. consider euthanasia :D
Thanks for the laughs .. Merry Christmas everyone.
1) You know you are getting the blame for the fire, right Simon?
2) Is extremely easy to expend fake cash without getting caught... as long as it is in low numbered bills and you mix it with real cash.
3) Better check he has not removed the bus engine and sold it online. Or that it is now in some museum as modern art. Actually it is probably in some museum as modem art.
as I wake up from my brandy-induced chair-nap in Mission Control
As long as you're only drinking Tesco's Own Brand rather than something decent, the trick is to mix it with Coke Zero so that the adverse effects broadly kick in 20% later. That gives you plenty of time and a sufficient retained degree of manual dexterity to text the activation code to the Serbian hitman once your suspicions have been confirmed.
Oh Simon, thank you :) I didn't take you for a man who was in to the Vengaboys (unless it's an El Reg editor titivating the title and caressing the caption). Well done for not losing the upper hand over Stephen the Pimply-Faced "Youth" :) Always be your bastard self, please :)
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