BOFH: The true gravity of the Boss and the 3-coffee problem BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns It's earlyish in the morning and the Boss has a problem. His solution to the problem is the same as it normally is – to pass this problem onto the PFY and myself... "Hmmm," I say, reading through the email he has forwarded to me. "This could be a three-coffee problem." "What's a three- …
Drinking my third (or fourth?) mug of the day -and feeling my guts completely at peace- I can't help but wonder:
What in the unholy name of Nestle is sold as "coffee" over there ?
Coffee-shits is a well known internet meme, but it is something I have never experienced or heard about in the real world. And I say this as someone who literally[1] drinks coffee since Kindergarden
[1] and by "literally" I do mean it: my mother prepared me a little thermos with coffee for snack time
Let's just say that after nap time (the time it takes for the coffee to take effect), you must have been bouncing off the walls. I wouldn't want to be your teacher, that's for sure.
I'll need to ask my cousin, who was a Kindergarten teacher about this and get some comments. Could be intereting!
I was always the perfect teacher's pet, so not sure what, if anything, the coffee did to me back then
The concoction kids used to drink back then was the famed latinamerican Café con Leche (coffee with milk): half drip coffee (strong), half hot milk, and lots of sugar...
The third ingredient may make it an even more interesting topic for your cousin!
I can confirm that.
I've got ADHD and Monster/Red Bull/Rockstar etc cause me to become drowsy.
I can be wide awake, drink a Monster 300 (300mg caffeine) and within 20 minutes be struggling against the drowsiness.
Guru does not make me drowsy though, it actually gives me a boost the way Red Bull does for normal people. Best I can figure is the caffeine source for Guru is guarana which acts differently to caffeine from coffee beans.
It may not be quite that simple. Coffee does have that effect on me, clear head, relaxing, dozed off. I often have a coffee before bed. My wife thought I was ADHD, and insisted on me getting examined for it. Irony of ironies, though. It didn't find me to have ADHD, but I had insisted she take the same test, and she was the one with ADHD.
I like espresso from freshly ground beans (usually from my home coffee machine - I recently bought a portable machine that uses pods, just in case)! What worries me is that, after my first one of the morning, at breakfast, if I take my blood pressure I get readings around 115/75 at 50 bpm.
I haven't risked measuring my BP without a coffee as all the advice I read online says a reading that low is either from a super-fit athlete (unlikely for an OAP) or not to make any long term plans!
My brother in law is a perfect example of coffee-shits.
Each morning he has a cup of strong coffee upon waking. He then preps his breakfast and lunch for the day which takes just long enough, about 30 minutes, to bring him to the shitting part of the morning.
Regular as clockwork. Without the coffee, no shitting.
Yup, ours is a tech company and regular as clockwork 1-2 hours after start time (varies depending on job title) there's a queue at the loos, even more so since my 'hour gap' seems to nicely co-incide with the time the cleaners decide to do their run, can get quite close sometimes....
How strong is your coffee? (Instant has 1/2 to 1/3 the caffeine of ground)
I've had coffee in both Finland and the Netherlands which had me running for the karzi after one cup, subsequently experiencing the world falling out of my bottom
Delicious but the side effects are something one should be prepared for
I was at a presentation in the US, and the speaker started calm to the point of being almost boring - but he drank from his can of redbull between each slide. As time progressed, he got more energetic and enthusiastic. By the time he was halfway through his second can he was bouncing round with big gestures and over emphatic talking.
I cannot remember much about the presentation - but I remember the speaker
I once got dumped in one of those courses where HR send staff to get their intelligences insulted (The staff's intelligences, that is; HR would lap it up and come back for more). The presenter was obviously pre-loaded with caffeine or something stronger - one bad sign was that instead of the usual "talk to your neighbour and introduce them" gimmick he made it two neighbours. I made my excuses and left PDQ.
That used to be me, 6 pack a day, until it started making my teeth hurt. And I mean really hurt. Even after several years, if I try drinking a Dew I start getting a warning throb in my jaw. Other kinds of soda are fine, but something about the Dew makes them ache.
I switched to coffee and the aching problem went away. Funny thing though, too much coffee and my face goes shiny greasy. Wipe it off a few times and it stops, but it's a weird side effect. Luckily (I guess?) I have a heart condition that limits me to two cups now so the greaseball effect no longer happens.
Depending on the subject I totally do that, I'm teaching stats like I'm the Energizer Bunny. A habit that's hard to kick, so when I do some beyond the simple standard stuff analyses and have to explain them to others... I was told it's quite entertaining (and apparently the explanations work, too).
And coffee makes me relax, sometimes even sleepy. Just poured a cuppa (6pm), heart rate is a nice even 58.
Sadly, my contract of employment explicitly forbids me from drinking* during work hours, so there's little chance of me reaching the Ballmer Peak.
*as in alcohol, not as in "any fluids" at all.
Plenty of caffeine in tea and less in espresso than most people think. As with booze, it's often the other chemicals that cause the weirdest effects: the sugar in energy drinks is likely to give the fastest (but briefest) rush, which is why we talk about sugar highs. Not sure about taurine…
Fact is, there is often much more caffeine in one teabag than in the equivalent (drink making) quantity of ground coffee. That's why I always have 2 pints of tea every morning before starting "work". At least, that (work) is what I THINK I am doing. As with coffee, the gastrointestinal consequences should be carefully considered re proximity to toilet facilities.....
P.S. Were you aware that most toxicologists regard caffeine as a potential carcinogen? Look up the Ames Test results.
Must be about time for another cuppa.
If the DSO has an infinite sample rate, the BOFH's flywheel is probably spinning at relativistic speeds with a bit of frame dragging thrown in, time and space are seriously distorted although unlikely discernable from the migraine that reality has where the Boss and the BOFH are in the same room.
Have to wonder what the Boss' particular problem was. Forgotten which was his office, or worse, what was the purpose of the tissues dispensed from rolls on the wall beside the pedestals in the little boys' room.
Most people's livers can take a lot more punishment than you might think, which is why I am always pleasantly surprised when my liver function tests come back normal.
You have to drink a hell of a lot to give yourself cirrhosis, but there are plenty of other things that can cause damage to it, such as being very overweight, being a smoker, having type 2 diabetes, or infections such as hepatitis A/B/C. Obviously drinking heavily in conjunction with those things isn't going to help, so if you're a 20 stone diabetic heavy smoker with a lot of back-street tattoos, well... you're probably fucked anyway.
I'm right with ya! I've had more coffee in Tiramisu than in a cup. I've had exactly 2 cups of coffee in my live, and only drank half of one... Both of my folks smoked and drank coffee, not a great combo for kids first thing in the morning, but on the plus side, I don't smoke cigs or drink coffee! Imagine the money I've saved, and spent on Beer! --->
True story, half my family can't process caffeine properly, hypersensitive lacking CYP1A2. The other half seem to be fine or even hyposensitive. But don't cry for me, Argentina, when I do consume it, a regular coffee is exquisite. I can hardly describe how good it tastes and how quick the effects. I swear I can feel the caffeine with my gums. The effects, nearly immediate high, lasting hours, obnoxious blabbermouth syndrome for a few hours, then insomnia that night. From one cup of coffee in the morning. The insomnia can be diverted with a sleep aid around 1900 for sleep around 2300. Totally worth it about three times a year. More than that starts heart burn, heart palpitations, the sleep aids stop working, dreamless sleep, etc. But for that one moment, I shine like a homely sun, but a sun nonetheless.
I fall into the category where caffeine seems to have almost no effect. I used to drink stupid amounts of diet Coke (multiple litres per day) but now just drink coffee. I have a bean to cup system and have at least 10 cups per day at max strength per shot and I go through at least a kilo of beans per month. I drink it for the taste now and going without for a few days causes no withdrawal type issues hence my opening to the comment
Generally speaking, vertebrates hydrolyse toxins first then oxidise, and invertebrates do the thing the other way around. There's an insecticide, malathion, which exploits this effect. Malathion isn't particularly toxic but when oxidised to maloxon if becomes very toxic to most life forms. Thing is, vertebrates either excrete it or hydrolyse it, so never see maloxon. Invertebrates like insects, on the other hand, synthesise their own toxin-induced deaths in a trick known as lethal synthesis.
inverse of the BoFH
You see at 0 coffees in the morning my first instinct at being annoyed by some trivial problem and its messenger is to reach for said chainsaw to solve the problem(or at least its messenger).
But the boss does listen out for the sounds of it starting, the screams of terror from the messenger, the howls of rage from me and stops the slaughter of the not so innocents....
He did confess as to why he stops me
"Listen Boris... its hard enough to recruit people into this business as is without them asking what happened to the previous holder of the position and why there seem to be large red stains across your office....."
Icon..... because thats what I'm like at 8am
Big smile on her face
Walking about as if on cloud nine
Any comments are taken as double entendres about the newly married.
A request to weld a chainsaw mounting plate and powered wheels to the soon to be scrapped robot from cell #7 (I've hidden a remote kill switch inside it just in case she has ideas above her station.. )
Yes, that would be caffeine. It is the basic fuel to many of those in IT. Until RedBull (and the like), the most caffeinated soft drink was Mountain Dew. The nice thing is that it comes in a 12 oz can, unlike the silly RedBull which comes in skinny cans (and is much more expensive).
I can't remember the original source : ( even if there's an obvious reference )
-----------------
It is by Caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.
By the Beans of Java, my thoughts acquire speed.
The hands acquire the shakes, the shakes become a warning.
It is by Caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion . .
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I know the way out.
"...a 5,000-page manual which was translated from its original esperanto into Klingon"
No Klingon would ever learn Esperanto. It is too easy. A true warrior would not study a language that is four times easier than other languages. Unless all of the rules were duplicated six-fold with irregular and irrelevant changes to challenge the mind of the true warrior.
English is a pretty good challenge for a true warrior, though.
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