BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns There's nothing I like more than a chat with an expert. So many people have vague and uninformed opinions about things, it's good to talk to someone with experience who knows what they're talking about. I can hardly wait. "And so, when it detects movement, it sends you a text message …
Unfortunately and wandering off topic....
I've just received this as well, so please feel free to off topic as much as you like. I've always been a huge fan of the SFTW column and am very sad to read this. If Bofh goes as well there will be little worth coming here for. Tech news I can get anywhere; the Reg was always light relief for me.
I find myself conflicted as to whether to up or downvote your post. Downvote for the message itself, but upvote for making it known!
If you look at the comment counts after SFTW articles, they not untypically exceed 100 and can get into the 200s. It seems odd for ElReg to ignore that evidence of reader engagement, even if the pieces could be regarded as somewhat frivolous ... especially since it's not like ElReg is the most "this is my serious face" example of reporting.
"especially since it's not like ElReg is the most "this is my serious face" example of reporting."
On the other hand, there does seem to be a slight slide towards more seriousness and little less frivolity in the headlines and sub-heads.
Paris is also gone. Coinkydink? Did she and Dabbsy elope? :-)
I suspect it has something to do with this...
Nicole Hemsoth Joins Situation Publishing to Drive Editorial Strategy
It would seem that she is from California. So expect anything requiring a British sense of humour, or passive contempt for large corporations and corporate culture, to be banned forthwith.
"Hemsoth will help drive far-reaching strategies to bolster further growth across all Situation Publishing titles"
Now, where have I seen this line before? Oh, yes, attached to every announcement of a new director at work. There must be a book of these sentences, sort of a "Mad Libs* for Business" (alternatively, "The Idiot's Guide to Corporate Announcements").
I would not last a week, writing these things. I would be thrown out on my ear, yelling in protest that auto-correct was to blame.
*apologies to those in countries which don't have Mad Libs...they're sentences with blanks where you fill in your own words to make unusual statements. Popular among the 10-13 age group.
Efficiently operationalize our strategies and invest in world-class technology to leverage our core competencies in order to holistically administrate exceptional synergy to set a brand trajectory and advance our market share with proven methodology and a strong commitment to quality.
Nicole Hemsoth is the one who needs to be axed, before El Reg becomes another shitrag that quicky goes under. Californians are like rodents, they scurry in and widdle all over the place, ruining everything they touch. Spoken as a USian who has a sense of humor. This WAS a great little site, but Californians are offended by everything.
the SFTW weekend column has been axed
What? Is that just because I've missed the significance of El Reg's survey ("what do you value most" and stuff like that) and have not marked NSFWSFTW as the most valuable feature (at least after the parting of Verity, Lewis, and Tim) on a par with the BOFH??
Whoever makes decisions at El Reg, do restore Dabbsy to his usual glory and glow (oh, that's Mme D., but still...), or I'll grass you to Simon and Stephen... and it will be "just a matter of time, really."
Unfortunately and wandering off topic I got an email message from a Mr Dabbs saying the SFTW weekend column has been axed so you need to go to https://autosaveisforwimps.substack.com to read his latest musings
Just in case others hadn’t seen it
I'm making an assumption that El Reg has someone, somewhere, in charge who's taking everything too seriously. I note that the "Biting the hand that feeds IT" banner has long since disappeared.
I think that it means they are not taking their job seriously - ElReg has always covered the serious side as well as the silly. Looking back, it might have started when they stopped mocking phablets (ffs, they are too big for regular trouser pockets, I'm not wearing cargo trousers / army surplus every day!)...
And as written in the BOFH "he is upset that it always chooses the American way of spelling..."
So, what now? I hate looking for a new website with that balance, and the other IT news site I sort of frequented has a forum that frankly sucks. Too many trolls and too few IT literate people. And no BOFH or SFTW either. Oh, and the articles are... dry as Norwegian stockfish.
The first thing I noticed was the "Sir" on the end of SFTW disappeared. I thought OK fine maybe the woke brigade might take exception and say that wasn't inclusive (but dropping the 'sir' lost some of the character and implied humour I think)
But now they have axed the whole column, with no consultation? Why?
Are there new bosses at El Reg?
I noticed the absence of SFTW but not the missing banner (I’m not counting anything that requires scrolling to the very bottom of the page) and the Paris icon clearly shows that time’s arrow is telling me it’s time to knock work on the head. I mean, if I’m missing stuff I’m interested in what has happened to my paid work!!
Really? I've been a somewhat regular visitor for more years than I care to remember. It's always been the irreverent nature of the content that keeps me coming back. Dabbsy and BOFH provide the anchor which draws me in every Friday. And when I'm here I will often read a few more articles. The Register, sans Dabbs or someone similar? Probably just Yet Another Tech News Site.
Hums: Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20
I really hope this isn't the beginning of the end for El Reg.
I had already noticed the distinct lowering of headline and subheadline quality in terms of the lack of dodgy puns, veiled insults, irreverence and humour. If this place gets woke-ified and made as bland and sterile as most IT news sites, the Internet will have lost one of its few enduring quality sites. Somewhere I come to not only catch up on IT news but to have a laugh and enjoy reading a distinctly UK flavoured comments section.
I saw the recent "What do you want from The Register" questions but couldn't answer many of them because the choices seemed to insist that I agreed with statements which were chosen to push things in the direction desired by the person asking the questions. An ominous portent of things to come, I fear.
Thanks for posting the link to Dabbsy's substack. Subscribed!
There is the opposite phenomenon - appearance of teaspoons dissimilar to those already present. I think quantum tunnelling is responsible.
Then there's the mystery of disappearing socks although it has been claimed that socks are the larval form of coat-hangers.
There was also a planet entirely given over to biro life-forms.
And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make their way. Slipping quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle.
Responding to highly biroid-orientated stimuli, in fact, leading the Biro equivalent of the good life and as theories go, this was all very fine and pleasant, until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet and to have worked there for a while, driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables.
back then we had two office sites, one was given those little wooden sticks to stir their drinks, our office had metal spoons. People regularly visited each others offices for meetings and the like, but we (the metal spooned office) kept running out of spoons.
One day in the kitchen area I watched as a stick person, one of a group over for some important meeting, carefully hook their teabag out of the cup then hoof the spoon, with tea bag still balanced on it, into the bin. As they would do back in their own office with one of those sticks. Being younger and still a bit keen i tried to explain to the stick person what they had just done, even pulling the spoon out of the bin to show them. They just stared back like they had been confronted with a bad conjuring trick. It did not help when i was able to pull three more spoons out of the bin - remember i said there was a group of them over that day.
Our solution, as BOFH's more darwinian solutions were not available to us back then, was to pop to the local poundland shop and buy our own personal tea spoons.
These were NEVER EVER lent to the stick people.
All was fine for a while, until one fateful day when there were no forks left either....
https://www.theregister.com/2013/02/15/cuppa_round_up/?page=2
my cunning plan to drink Lapsang Souchong, black, no sugar. Just grab a pinch of leaves from the caddy, drop in the mug, add *boiling* water. No spoon required.
Curiously, there is no tea icon --->
This is why whenever I get takeout food, delivered with plastic utensils in a sealed plastic bag, I keep some in my desk for when there are food "events". I had to give a set to our new security guard the other weeks*, when he couldn't find any utensils for his lunch.
*We must have had canteen staff at one point, but now its just a use a hot water outlet for your tea\washing up\ microwave\fridge for your own food area & a couple of vending machines.
You have vending machines? FREEDOM AND LUXURY! We have a company store which requires that you put unrefundable money on account, tracked by fingerprint, anf monitored from (I shit you not) no fewer than 12 cameras to cover a 40 square foot area including one in the thumbprint machine that watches you look at the screen AND shows you watching. So, you get to see yourself being recorded. Fort Knox or the Queen's Jewels should be monitored so well.
I haven't bought a thing there, instead using regular vending machines in the building's cafeteria area before work from home. My company leases a couple of floors, and I think the VP put the company store scheme in to line his own pockets.
what makes you think Oz has a functioning government, in either states or federally ? As being like pomland upside down. Cant be. Droughts and floods taking turns are normal here. If the land is green its because its drying out for next drought, or this year, a brief respite before going under again. And we rejoice in our lethal wildlife. Ever hit a skippy at 100 kmh ? Or feral cattle or much, much worse, a feral 4WD newly escaped from the suburbs. The snakes and spiders just give us comparisons for the party droids who make our pollies stupid.
I digress. Wheres Dabsy and Tim ? Keep the BOFH along commentards. Sometimes they can be entertaining or enlightening. I fear a Merkin manglement member will kill commentards off too as not core activity, disregarding the love of abuse and IT drollery that brings us back. Who knows, some may even read the "sponsored" articles.
Dear hairy sofa’s this is so sad, like all survivors of the 1999 overtime tsunami I remember the battle of the reichenbacker faller.
Sherlock B’stard fought a great battle with Arty Murray the bastard contractor from hell and disappeared from sight during the great “billing saga of early 2000”.
Then he rose again in the awful spring of “we spent HOW MUCH ?”.
But their was an awful consequence of that great battle between consensual lager and forced whine. A combination of low IQ, failure to look both ways and a desperate desire to “be with” as many of the historians “ oh dear god no….” lists as possible.
Like Star Wars, our original fight against the “Death Star” has spawned a never ending number of sequels and my personal descent into the world wide swearing league. But I can’t help liking our current crop of MP’s, they are the source and inspiration for my current world verbal abuse record AND setting two judges eyebrows on fire. The only “double dilbert” since the Maybot was forcibly disconnected.
Booze be with you all, hopefully paid for by a salesman of “Super high pentium graphics workstations”.
It's just like Parliamentary and global neocon geo-political shenanigans, isn't it, listening to the precocious prevarications and pretentious prognostications and pronouncements of weird and wonderfully strange subject matter experts ..... with clueless headless chicken type leadership contenders and fawning acolytes racing around chasing phantom problems of their own making with no verified simple solution on offer in sight as the wheels fall of the wagon right before the almighty inevitable devastating crash into the harsh unyielding buffers of reality that accompany the fleet flushing magic of flash QE cash trash transaction trains of prime oxymoronic stellar thought bandits .... New World Economic Forum Order type memberships.
J'accuse. ...... and the state of the worlds on Earth as you and they know it today, in this novel and noble era of emerging and expanding and exploding and horrendously expensive to compete against impossible to defeat and better 0days, is undeniable proof positive of all of the above, whether you vote to dislike it or not. One certainly cannot disagree with it if one doesn't want to be considered as having learning difficulties in such fields of enlightened endeavour as beget and award one with rewarding prolific experiences.
Further to and in furtherance of the above and in praise of and lamenting the reported demise of SFTW [Dabbsy on El Reg]
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies" ..... Groucho Marx
"If you have the hearts and minds of your people, you have the country. If you lose the hearts and minds of the people, you lose the country." ..... "You can't solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and [the problem's] past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it." ...... Mao Zedong
keyboard death has been reported
Mine.
And my estwhile keyboard replacement cannot be swiped anymore because our production engineer handed his notice in yesterday
The boss did come and tell me, but since I have a good view of the door I managed to shut the laptop in time thus preventing him seeing I was surfing a site supplying bunting and party balloons....
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