BOFH: Selling the boss on a crypto startup BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "So what's causing it?" the Boss asks, looking down at his screen. "No idea," I say. "Surely you have some idea?" "It's an intermittent problem. Intermittent problems are the hardest to diagnose." "Yes but you fixed it last time." "No, last time it was working when I arrived." "No, …
They sure do, especially that dodgy switch on the lift door that seems to detect when the assistant beancounter has come up with a bright idea for making more money that you just know the manglement will implement without thinking about it with the result theres a shed load more work and faffing about for the rest of us.
And then you get the help call from one of the manglers saying the lift does'nt line up with the ground floor again and can you sort it.
Few times up and down the shaft with it and it soon lines up and you learn to ignore next week's complaints about the funny smell thats come back again....
". . . Simplified English . . ."
Not really. Just simplified English speakers. Consider the hell of being in third grade, living in California, having relatives who spell "coloured" "colored" and others that spell it vice versa. You learn to use the dictionary very young, and argue with the teacher about spelling work as "labor" or "labour," and with the dictionary you prove to the teacher that both are accepted spellings. But the teacher doesn't like smart ass little nine year olds, and you spend more time writing sentences on the chalk board than any one else in history.
make your minds up... why use color instead of colour, or license instead of licence?
Do you really need to be *that* different or subtle?
Or do the Brits need to grow stiff upper lips and start using the bastardized versions instead?
:)
peace out, let's all go to ye olde pubbe and have a good time, no good will come from fighting amongst ourselves...
We were once set the task of transforming various words into different parts of speech. The only one my class partner and I couldn't work out was "idolise" - I guess we must have been tired, because we actually did know the answer, but what we put down on the answer sheet was "idoliseify", which has a nice ring to it all the same.
Is it strange if some of us non-native users of English are confused?
I “try” to stick to British conventions (as I worked there for five years, and consistency), but it can be effing hard.
BTW, I think my spellchecker gives the option of English (Jamaica). Could be interesting.
*bastardised*
Er, no, really not. Not according to Fowler
Wikipedia link to entry for Fowler's Modern English Usage.
I know most of us in Rightpondia like to spell everything that ends with an "-ise" sound with an 's' because it saves thinking, but when the ending is an "-ize" suffix to verb a noun-form it is a borrowing from Greek, in which it would have been spelt with a Zeta. The usual transliteration of Zeta into the English alphabet is 'Z'.
The OED records both spellings, but prefers '-ize'.
Since the US didn't exist in either of those centuries, I think that perhaps the argument from that historical linguistic angle is rendered rather moot. Standardi[sz]ed spellings of things didn't really emerge until the arrival of mass literacy (in the 20th century in the UK, and still a work in progress in the US)
In English licence/license, etc. have distinct meanings when written: "c" is the noun, "s" the verb. Yes, I know you can't hear the difference but that's the explanation. More details are available from the classicists.
US English contains some deliberate abberations. Some of them good, some of them stupid: defense but fence. If we're going to use "z" surely, it should be "vizualize"? British English reintroduced French spelling for some words (colour, autumn, etc.) after US independence. Although it's been clear for hundreds of years that English spelling is illogical and inconsistent, it doesn't stop people from using this as an argument for more arbitrary changes.
My biggest beef with US English is that it seems more susceptible to the bullshit coined in the various marketing departments. This often leads to unnecessary verbosity – creating nouns from verbs where nouns already exist – or confusing terseness as in the current fad for dropping prepositions from intranstitive verbs (protest this, appeal something, etc.).
But language moves on and both countries are fortunately admirably resistant to prescriptive dictums such as those trying to force data as a plural on us.
But language moves on and both countries are fortunately admirably resistant to prescriptive dictums such as those trying to force data as a plural on us.
The "data/datum" argument is a bit of a subtle one. "Datum" is unambiguously talking about a single piece of data, however "data" as a singular mass noun kind-of makes sense as well (as in saying "this data" to mean "this mass of data", as opposed to "these data" to signify countable data, and "this datum" as a single one of them.)
I short, it's because data is both the plural of a countable noun (datum) and the plural and singular of a mass noun. So "fewer data" and "less data" are both valid, but one means having fewer of the countable data (e.g. one less datum), and "less data" means less of it (e.g. 50% of the data is less than 60% of it, but 5 data are fewer than 6 of them).
Confused? The English language is just getting started...
Oh, I know the reasoning behind it and can counter it with "spaghetti" and "date/dates", which have the same etymology. In English, the collective noun "data" makes more sense giving us the option to be more specific when necessary. To persist with it is to pursue more pseudo-scientific linguistic meddling. I think I want a t-shirt with that on it!
Medium and media have the same problem as datum/data.
Worse, I have a book on XML Schema by an author (or maybe his editor) who obviously thought they were clever enough to know "schema" followed the same pattern and was a plural noun. It isn't. Schemas seems to have become acceptable as a plural alongside the original schemata. But the frequent use of "schemas are" sets my teeth on edge. Oh well, I don't need to read about XML very much these days.
I had an argument with my (Bulgarian) wife yesterday about the past tense of the verb "swell". I said it can be "swelled" or "swollen" and the one that you use in any scenario is the one that makes it sound best. She insisted that no, it must always be "swollen", and was right miffed when I pointed out examples like "My heart swelled to see you" and "The river swelled to twice it's normal size", but also allowed "The river was swollen".
It ended with "Eurgh, your language is so stupid. Who is supposed to remember all these bullshit differences"
Yes, but one is the past participle of a verb (swelled), and the other is the adjective (swollen). Quite often the past participle and the adjectival form are the same (as in "my heart melted", and "my heart is melted"), but there are plenty of cases where it is not, for example all those irregular verbs, like "to go": "I went", "I'm gone".
The English language, much like the English population, is a mash-up of different lineages from around Europe, with bits of Nordic, Celtic, Germanic, and Latinate languages (and a sprinkling of other further-away ones, if you like a tsunami of yoghurt in your yacht) all smashed together and somehow made to work. It's also why people who go on about racial purity and "native" British people are such utter morons, because such things don't exist.
"And sometimes it's just the alignment of the stars"
I have said to users that IT kit have star signs, and so are affected by the stars. No other explanation of how a laptop connected with a USB-C cable to a monitor can work for weeks and then just stop, unless it's incompatible star signs.
It's much more likely that you will shortly receive an email pointing out that should you wish to continue to use the USB-C ports, all you need to do is pay $7.99 a month.
Motor manufacturers are all jumping on the subscription bandwagon. Being online with a current sub seems to be de rigeur for any hardware advertised on telly to work these days.
Mainly it is an issue with the crisis diode, they used to be manufactured to a pretty tight tolerance when mainly fitted to copiers and then network printers, unfortunately now they are included as standard in most IT equipment. Much effort went into producing these as a low price commodity product and the accuracy of the discrimination circuits is now quite poor. This means they can trigger under 'in a rush' or 'I'll just do this before lunch' conditions rather than the true crisis level they were designed to detect originally.
This... was too easy.
Did this happen like a decade ago? Before crypto scams happened several times a day?
Also is the BOFH going soft? Whatever happened with getting rid of anyone who tried to get his job?
You had the perfect setup to kill a guy who helped video cards become really expensive and everything.
"You had the perfect setup to kill a guy who helped video cards become really expensive and everything."
I have this feeling that both crypto startups are going to be that kind that doesn't need a bunch of GPUs for mining. Instead of proof of work or stake, they're probably working on proof of cash. No need to kill a guy for scamming someone they weren't in a position to scam.
Also, Derek isn't trying to get their jobs. He made it clear that he's just hiding out and having fun until he goes back to his normal position, and he gave them a tested method of cashing in on stupidity. It sounds like he's an ally. If he comes back and tries to gain more power, I wouldn't expect that to stay the same.
I don't think they need to worry. As long as they stay in different zones, they can work together when needed. The BOFH and PFY aren't large enough to take over Derek's zone and keep their own, and if Derek tried to take over theirs (assuming he even could which is doubtful), he'd find a lot of pitfalls they've already placed in the way. I think they both understand that there's nothing to be gained by attacking one another, and as long as Derek doesn't annoy them, he's probably safer and more useful as an ally. They've had people with similar attitudes before who they've worked with. Until they try unseating the BOFH, they generally survive the experience.
Oh, I like that.
You get the mugs^^^^investors putting in more money for each cryptocoin up front: no need to wait for any actual trading in some silly public market, you can see the price of coins rocketing immediately! Here, would you like to buy another? Oops, just gone up again!
"It doesn't matter – we're just looking for something that shouldn't be happening – something unusual enough to have disturbed the fabric of time, space and IT."
You mean something non-trivial like something/an agency/a body/a novel force/a royal and ancient source discovering how everything is easily made to virtually work without any competition or opposition having even the faintest of clues about who and/or what now is able to pull such strings and yank such almighty chains as can in a fast flash crash also turn everything practically to shit/madness and mayhem/conflict and chaos with CHAOS [Clouds Hosting advanced Operating Systems] ..... with the free sharing of a simple complex of multiple myriad word strings with sublime instructions supporting and reinforcing subsequent absolutely fabulous revelations that create, command and control and destroy worlds/neo geo-political disorders/corrupt and perverse and ignorant societies with ill-informed and badly pharmed populations/colonised outposts/virgin territories ‽ .
You might like to rethink and revise any sort of suggestion that would put forward the notion that it doesn't matter, although whenever so much can be so easily done with one having no chance to make one's own views on the future direction of existential travel heard and considered and incorporated into Grand Master Pilot AIdDevelopment Plans, I do suppose it is not wrong when nothing can be done to change things.
well he just went contract to perm
Nope, sounds like he's way too clever for the BOFH to keep around. The way he immediately thought to rope the BOFH and PFY into his crypto scam will have them setting him up as the fall guy once they're able to take the money the scam earns. He'll have to go back to the water company, so you better drink bottled instead of from the cooler for the next few months.
of my working life described in the first half (up to where the Hell desk makes its appearance)!
I probably fixed half the issues that people had with their IT equipment just by turning up to see what the problem is. My standard answer was "I am glad it was a simple fix, as I am rather busy" or something in similar vein.
And yes, a substantial percentage of problems were self-inflicted (like a person kicking the power plug switch under the desk, or against the wall, causing a temporary loss of power (many of which I only solved by spending some time with the user, observing what they did in order to see if it was a real intermittent problem or something else)).
Other weird behaviours were caused by files depressing one of the Esc, Ctrl or Enter keys, where people had lots of files and books strewn all over their desks.
I also had a number of people who did disturb the fabric of space and time (no chesterfield sofas appeared, though, thankfully).
Yes. The manilla folder that the person lifts off the desk in order to let you sit down and drive the computer, which then works perfectly, when you're not holding down ctrl-alt. My cat's paws are perfectly proportioned to hold down control keys even though it just looks like he's just chilling sitting between me and the keyboard. It took me quite. awhile to work out why my browser kept going peculiar - who knew you could "alt-click" hyperlinks instead of just clicking or right-clicking on them?
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