BOFH: The Christmas party was so good, an independent inquiry is required BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "Mistakes were made," I admit, feigning remorse. "You're bloody right mistakes were made," the Boss snaps. "I was insulted, I had my office vandalized ..." "Let's not get tied up in details about who got called a poorly shaved orangutan or who set whose desk on fire, and take some …
Naw.
Looking at the way most people (at least those around my life) use Excel, it's a glorified column-oriented word processor.
Or a record-limited in-memory database.
I don't recall the last time I saw a spreadsheet with math formula in it (yeah, I know, some people really do use it for math...but not what I see where I sit).
Honestly, I think there would be purpose for a spreadsheet with no math functions, just row and column oriented formatting, especially if it could be a lot smaller and faster than the math+programming language equipped spreadsheets.
Something like the old desk top publishing programs which seem to have bloated themselves out of existence.
Seems a common thread, something really useful gets more and more functions added until it's too cumbersome to use and then it either dies or gets bought out and merged into a suite and after a few years is never seen again.
"Or a record-limited in-memory database."
This biggest elephant in the room is the gaping hole in MSOffice where a small, easy to use database form designer should be, to make it easy for the average user to create a database and a front end for it. And no, I don't mean Access :-)
Back in the DOS days, most database packages came with a forms designer and a report generator. Maybe it's because I'm not in that part of the IT business any more, but it seems like there are many database engines out there, and everything else is left to the devs to create with whatever tools they happen to have laying around.
There used to be simple database programmes in the 80s and 90s that came on the front of computer magazines, or could be bought for a few quid. These did pretty much all that an ordinary office worker or business owner in a small company would need to store and sort simple information, like the details of a few hundred customers. Something like; Company Name>>Address>>Phone number>>Contact name>> main area of business>>Purchases. With just enough data management tools to be able to, say, sort out which customers were in the local postcode area, or which ones had previously bought a Mk 3 widget polisher. And even which customers in a given postcode area had already bought a Mk 3 widget polisher!
Relational databases take far too much time and complexity to even learn how to use, or to set up. And no small business can afford to buy in an expert to create something far too big and clunky for their needs, if it can be made to work at all. So of course they use Excel. Can't blame them either.
"Relational databases take far too much time and complexity to even learn how to use, or to set up. And no small business can afford to buy in an expert to create something far too big and clunky for their needs, if it can be made to work at all. So of course they use Excel. Can't blame them either."
Or even something like Delta, a relatively simple that could be made complex, transactional database. Perfect for the scenario above :-)
I do, or it's LibreOffice equivalent.
As examples;
A mileage form and timesheet. Both were issued as paper forms.
I recreated both into spreadsheets as templates, but then they did all the repeated maths for me. i.e. One added up all the short distances I had to travel and the other counted all the half days by my ticking a box next to the date ( 3.5hrs am 3.0hrs pm) + odd hours I worked, to give a daily and running/final total. With the added bonus of filling in most of the dates. At the end I can just save ( as a PDF these days) and email it in without bothering my scanner.
Or a simple exam time calculator with spaces for Start Time and Duration, then formulae that calculated the end time and additional 25% extra time - which I then sent to my mobile phone. Saves effort doing time calculations and making errors.
LOL Great BOFH story which reminds me of my old Christmas memories ... I would post a joke warning but this icon is for Simon ---->
It was Christmas Eve BOFH. In the drunk tank an old man said to me, you won't see another reboot. And then he sang a song - The Rare Old Windows version ... And the boys of the The Register choir were singing Windows Eight ... and the bells were ringing out for Christmas day!
...no one can remember anything clearly and no names will be named...
Well, at least the incompetent arseholehonourable gentleman Cummings did remember that he had abused others with worse profanity than he did MacNamara. And that, according to his three brain cells, everyone else still is an idiot.
Meritocracy was originally proposed as a dystopia and it turns out that people don't like being told what's good for them: I think this applies to us all to differing degrees and it also assumes the scientists can agree. Personally, I think it's best when politicians and technocrats work together and the politicisation of the bureaucracy must be fought against.
"three brain cells,"
Still 50% smarter than his former colleagues and their successors even on total aggregate brain cells.
He is wrong about the idiots which have a precise definition
"Idiots. —Those so defective that the mental development never exceeds that or a normal child of about two years. "
I think we are more in the range of acephalic (and acardiac) monsters with the best (?) verging on decorticate.
Johnson was one of the few who submitted all his WhatsApp messages to the enquiry, even when Sunak &co tried to stop him. He was also right about adopting the Swedish attitude to lockdown, until Vallance and his pals browbeat him into a U turn.
His main problem was not being a good leader, but he was certainly aiming in the right direction.
Bravo, Simon, for another fine mess we can relate to and bask in .... and forget to learn lessons from for the next times it is going to happen ..... with the New Year celebrations now pending with all sorts of fantastical resolutions being proposed to be serially ignored and dismissed later by reason of the fact that most were promised whilst seriously pished.
But I digress, and come here to reply to and ask a few questions of ....
Sounds like Simon has been taking notes from the UK's COVID inquiry where no one can remember anything clearly and no names will be named. So, the BOFH is obviously learning from the best*. .... Charlie Clark
Are we/you to be led to believe that Great British intelligence services played/play no part in running the UKGBNI and never have had indisputable evidence and definitive proof for the historical record of proposed plans for government takeover and makeover by wannabe Cabinet Office Minister led Parliamentarians upon which they can act and hold those responsible for national and international failure to account?
That would surely be proof positive and indisputable evidence that Great British intelligence services do not presently currently exist other than as just a myth and vapid vapourware.
And that buck stops right at the top of the administrative tree, being as it surely most definitely is, the result of a lack of competent comprehensive universal leadership.
What say yous? And/Or would you be able to recognise and name others worthy of the blame for the dim naked flame of that national and international and internetional shame?
I got the thing with the wine but wondered where he went wrong with the beer. Anyway, he also missed out on the liqueurs and spirits. Christmas without port and sherry? We must be fucking joking. Just picked up a bottle or marsala to go with the madeira so that we can have the holy trinity. 150 ml of port? Now you're talking!
But I'll need something to go with the coffee to help those mince pies* down, cognac will do nicely. 20 people need 20 cl each, ten bottles ought to do it.
* Stollenkonfekt actually here
"3 pints - 60 pints or approx 50% * keg"
Imperial or US?
20 floz v 16 floz - Why isn't being diddled out of 20% my beer in the US surprise me?
In very post imperial Australia the servings are in standard glass sizes but at least in the warmer parts the pint isn't that common - gets too warm to quickly - the schooner is more usual. Warm Australian beer is pretty disgusting (cat's pee by most accounts.)
If anybody's in work before 10.30 the next day, then that was nothing like a proper xmas party.
If you want to do it properly, you don't have the office party at the actual office - my favourite was at a rather swish historic venue, which several co-workers decorated with puke late on in the evening. Tended to roll in around lunchtime the next day, when we'd try to collectively piece together what happened the night before, then go out for a hair of the dog, and then head home early once we'd decided it was probably too risky to attempt any actual work that day. Personally, I'm glad it is many years since I went to this type of do.
Venues vary. When I joined the company I work for there were just a couple of dozen employees so the Christmas do was a coach trip to a really good restaurant with an open bar. When the company grew to about 50 that was scrapped and we used the large meeting room for a catered buffet with good quality booze including champagne. Now with well over a 100 that's not possible so it's off to function halls somewhere for some bulk catered food and 2 or 3 free drinks including a glass of crappy Prosecco.
I suppose this is inevitable, when a company is small everybody knows everybody else so nobody is going to make a total tit of themselves but in a large company when most people are just anonymous faces to most other people the opportunities for a few people to screw up increase greatly.
The first paid job I ever had - working for a small electronics company near Hereford during a sandwich year for my degree - the company's founder / owner / CEO had made a policy to be on first name terms with every employee. There were about 50 in those days. He reckoned he could cope with about 70 and if the company grew larger than that it was his policy to split the company into smaller divisions.
There was also a free drinks machine in the staff room which made passable tea, non-poisonous coffee, decent chocolate, hot & cold water, fizzy drinks and soup. When the service engineer came there was an informal staff poll to decide which two flavours of soup should be restocked.
Slightly different at my first proper job after graduating where management struggled to remember the names of their 'star' employees - y'know, the people who were the public face of the company and brought in all the business.
M.
just when you think BOfH is running out of steam, along comes a copious supply of booze, and all is well in the world, well, BOfH's world at least, as for the boss, not so much :o)
and from me to all you glorious regetards a very Merry Christmas, and a most Happy New Year :o)
I'm in work all over the holidays, my choice, but I will have ElReg to peruse throughout the LONG shifts :o)
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