BOFH: The Christmas spirit has run dry – time to show some chiller instinct

BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns 'Twas a few days after Christmas, and all through the workplace, not a creature was stirring, not even a... "What's that?!!!" the Boss whispers urgently, as the torch beam crosses something moving. "Oh, nothing. Probably just a rat," the PFY says. "A RAT!" the Boss gasps. "Yeah, the …

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Mai I be the first to wish everyone a happy Easter

[b0llchit]

Kwanzaabot is in full agreement and Robot Santa has you all on his naughty list.

[Dr. G. Freeman]

The local shop here in Culloden have their Easter eggs out- enjoying one just now (a fine creme egg)

[xyz123]

Shops in Sunderland literally changed their stock to easter eggs at 12:01am 26/12/2025.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Hot Cross Buns Here

"Shops in Sunderland literally changed their stock to easter eggs at 12:01am 26/12/2025."

I thought this lack of sensitivity was restricted to the godless antipodes.

I walked into the local supermarket on Boxing Day and just beside the turnstile were two pallets of Easter Buns—talk about cradle to grave.

It is not as though anyone craves hot sweet buns or sickenly sweet caramel chocolate eggs when the temperature is in the high 30s [°C] with an equally horrid relative humidity.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

I'm just waiting for the mince pies to halve in price

[Tim99]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

One of the mysteries of living in Western Australia is that Spiced Fruit Buns (complete with crosses) are available in ALDI all year round. Closer to the day, they have Fruit Hot Cross Buns 6 Pack; and, a particular favourite, Mini Fruit Hot Cross Buns 9 Pack. Strangely the (superior?) buttered/toasted teacake is unknown.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

Upvote for toasted teacakes!

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

Warburtrons make hot cross buns all the year round. All the local supermarkets have them and I doubt they bake them for one local area. Chatting to one of the Morrisons staff before Christmas (wondering why, in their wisdom, the buyers seem to have completely neglected to supply any panettone) he said one of the other supermarkets already had Easter eggs on sale so Sunderland are a bit slow off the mark.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

Should have mentioned that the chat partly arose from the Christmas Chocolate Reindeer bearing a remarkable resemblance to Chocolate Easter Bunnies.

[CountCadaver]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

Blech Warburton's....chemical laced crap that would outlast the heresy known to Americans as Twinkie bars.....

You can smell the calcium proprionate they use (a mould suppressant - I'll let you guess why a bakery might add Industrial quantities of a mould suppressant)

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

You Brits (or Aussies, sorry, not familiar with all stores everywhere) have something that will outlast twinkies? LOL! Next you'll be expecting us to believe you have something that will outlast a McDonalds hamburger. There will be leftover McBurgers around when the last proton decays in the heat death of the universe.

Not that I'm bragging about it. It's more a thing to be ashamed of than to brag about.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

Also, they have a history of making political donations to causes that are against my (and most people's) interests, so they don't get my business unless I absolutely cannot avoid it.

[short a sandwich]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

Maybe because the flour will contain some spores that rather like moist warm things that bakeries produce (more so once things are in plastic bags)

You don't want to know about the spec for permitted amounts of insect fragments in flour do you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

Ah, I think the pannettone must have been sent to our Morrisons, they had piles of them (the bog-standard ones) by the entrance - always a sign that the system has over-ordered/delivered something.

[Jon 84]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

Ah so you live in Brisbane too

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

Nah, they're on sale in Geelong, so I'm guessing everywhere in between too.

[UCAP]

Last BOFH for the year - roll on next year

[herman]

Urk...

Who's tie was in the shredder and eaten by rats?

[BOFH in Training]

Re: Urk...

If you got to know, you may be the next one whose tie gets caught in the shredder. Not to mention the rats .....

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: Urk...

I dont know, I dont want to know and I can supply an albi for £100 or a cast iron albi for £500.

Merry xmas

[Korev]

Re: Urk...

"Who's tie was in the shredder"

I bet the boss was tied down

(See icon)

[Neil of Qld]

Re: Urk...

Maybe one of the rats was wearing a tie

Met a few tie wearing rats in my time

[CorwinX]

Merry Chistmas Mr Travaglia

Long may the BOFH and PFY continue to wreak havoc on the PHB's.

[Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward]

If all else fails, a random fire will sort things out soon enough.

[Pickle Rick]

"It's worth a crack."

Cheeky!

Thanks Simon, keep 'em rolling! Good luck for '26 :)

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Nice come back of the non-drinkable alcohol

I suspected it would come in useful

[Bebu sa Ware]

44 gallon drums

I was always puzzled by the peculiar capacity — 44 imperial gallon ~ 55 US gallons. They appear to have started life as 200 litre containers used by the Axis and like the Jerry can, later appropriated by the Allies.

Ironic that the seemingly most un·metric container in widespread use is essentially metric.

Still 43 imperial gallons (195L) of flammable, denser·than·air iso·propanol vaporizing might be an inducement to exit the building… posthaste even in the absence of fire alarms.

I don't understand why Simon and the PFI didn't serve the surplus isopropanol to the hangry mob - I am sure they could have passed it off as "vintaged^†" scrumpy.

Isopropanol isn't all that toxic at least when compared with methanol or ethandiol (ethylene glycol) and doubtless actual scrumpy.

_{† flavouring the liquor with the buildings accumulated dead rats.}

[Pickle Rick]

Re: 44 gallon drums

I wouldn't say bona fide scrumpy was toxic - well, any more than copious amounts of any alcohol would be. Now the white "ciders" such as <redacted for legal reasons> are pure chemical toxic slosh - closest they've been to an apple is passing an orchard on the motorway. Not that I haven't imbibed such at times!

*** WARNING: Don't try this at home kids ***

I've never tried drinking isopropyl alcohol (I guess I do have limits!), but I reckon with a splash of Blue Label Smirnoff to calm it down it wouldn't be far off Stroh 80!

[rafff]

Re: 44 gallon drums

"it wouldn't be far off Stroh 80!"

Now that brings back memories. It did help me down the ski slopes at speeds I would not otherwise have attempted.

[chivo243]

Re: 44 gallon drums

† flavouring the liquor with the buildings accumulated dead rats. Like Chicago's claim to fame.

Malört, a bitter liqueur with deep roots in Chicago, is widely recognized as the city's iconic liquor shot.

Known for its extremely bitter taste, often described as "like swallowing a burnt condom filled with gasoline" or "like baby aspirin wrapped in grapefruit peel tied up with rubber bands," Malört has become a rite of passage for both residents and visitors

[IceC0ld]

Re: 44 gallon drums

OK, I tend to want to try regional fare, lived, worked in Brazil, found Pinga, NO idea what it was, what was in it, but even brought a few bottles back with me :o)

but - Malört, a bitter liqueur with deep roots in Chicago

somehow, the final description has sort of put me off, maybe I'm getting fussy in me old age, or maybe I know the old drinking tube and associated appendages have only got so many gags left in them :o)

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: 44 gallon drums

Google tells me that Pinga is a brand of Cachaça, made from sugarcane, you should try Aguardente de Medronho, which is widely available (not entirely legally) from roadside vendors in Portugal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 44 gallon drums

"Do not enjoy. Responsibly"

Their website is mildly amusing.

[CountCadaver]

Re: 44 gallon drums

So not far off Spirytus then.....(95%+ alcohol)

[Slow Joe Crow]

Re: 44 gallon drums

A bartender once described Malört as tasting like disappointment. Fortunately I live in Oregon where the signature drinks are more palatable, fresh hopped IPA and Pinot Noir

[tyrfing]

Re: 44 gallon drums

I note that the inch is now exactly 2.5400 cm.

Pretty sure it didn't used to be.

And I recently learned that the so-called "45 pound" plates that I use in the gym for lifting are really just re-labelled 20kg plates. I guess it's easier to make one set.

[Eric 9001]

Re: 44 gallon drums

The US inch used to be thousands of a mm longer than the british inch - but in the 1950s to 1960s, the inch was finally defined to be exactly 25.4mm (slightly shortening the US and slightly lengthening the British inch).

All US and British units are now SI units with extra steps (otherwise no measurements would be accurately reproducible).

It is critical that Britain and the US stop playing silly games that causes mistakes that waste a massive amount of time, hardware (for example spacecraft) and money and just use SI units directly - but of course they wont.

[swm]

Re: 44 gallon drums

A meter used to be exactly 39.37 inches. It was redefined so 2.54 cm was exactly one inch shrinking the inch a bit.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: 44 gallon drums

All engineering in Britain has been metric for a while and I think much of the US airspace industry is as well.

[KarMann]

Re: 44 gallon drums

The US inch used to be thousands of a mm longer than the british inch…

I'm pretty sure someone would have noticed if the inch were metres shorter than it used to be, or if it used to be metres longer than it is, whichever way you want to look at it.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: 44 gallon drums

Don't drag us Brits into this, nobody here measures anything in inches any more, for any serious purpose, as far as I am aware, except possibly measuring the height of people, but most people do that in centimetres now.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: 44 gallon drums

I think people still tend to weigh themselves in that most cumbersome of units: stones and pounds. Having grown up with this, I can sort of understand having this "human" sized units for convenience in comparison: twelve stone, x pounds: parts of an inch as opposed to fractions of a yard. Though most engineers adjusted smoothly enough from "x sixteenths" to "x mills". And, of course, we've get sexagesimal time for much the same reason. Just wish we'd have standard length months, and maybe New Year on the solstice… But I'd settle for a non-insane Easter!

[KarMann]

Re: 44 gallon drums

I very much memorised 2.54000504 cm back in secondary school, enough so that *mumble* years later, I'm not even going to double-check. That's what the old inch was.

[frankvw]

Re: 44 gallon drums

"Isopropanol isn't all that toxic at least when compared with methanol or ethandiol (ethylene glycol) and doubtless actual scrumpy."

Brewer / distiller here... ^*

I can't speak for the scrumpy, but as far as the comparison between ethanol, methanol and isopropanol is concerned, you are both right and wrong. Different alcohols are metabolized differently, which makes it so dangerous. It's the type of toxicity that makes the difference here.

Methanol is metabolized into toxic compounds (starting with formic acid) which causes permanent nervous system and organ damage.

Ethanol and isopropanol essentially have the same type of toxicity (all alcohol is technically toxic, hence the term "intoxication") but the effect of isopropanol on the body is about three times stronger. That means that the really serious effects of alcohol intoxication, such as central nervous system disruption and depression, nausea, a plunging blood sugar level, and eventually unconsciousness or even coma) occur three times sooner.

Apart from that, isopropanol is metabolized into acetone, which is very good in making you extremely sick. So while head cleaning alcohol is three times stronger, the hangover is about thirty times as monumental.

Higher alcohols (typically butyl, propyl and their isomers) also taste sharp, "hot" and can have generally unpleasant aromas reminiscent of pain thinners and other solvents with a petrochemical base.

^* When I semi-retired from IT I needed another profession. Since IT had essentially driven me to drink and I already had a basic background in chemistry it was an easy choice. Let thet be a lesson unto you all.

[Blackjack]

Around here we are lucky is Summer time so Easter stuff gets delayed until it won't melt, so around March.

[Blakey]

Two weeks straight?

A Christmas miracle!

[Doctor Syntax]

With 43 gallons of isopropanol on fire the halon must be about to be released. The questions is, is this Boss's standing with BOFH good enough to survive that?

[Korev]

Or is it time for boss "renewal"?

[blu3b3rry]

Given they put him in the hospital as of last episode, I think his standing is already on very shaky ground..The other option is of course sending an extra drum off for waste disposal, containing the boss.

[Doctor Syntax]

I don't think last week's Boss will be coming back so we must already be on (yet) another Boss.

[FeRDNYC]

Cubicles roasting by an open fire,

Beancounters auditing your life.

And in his domain, the BOFH

Will be LARTing you, too.