BOFH: The case of the Boss's hidden USB inkjet printer BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns >beep!< … "There he is!" the PFY says cheerfully. >beep!< "?" "How are you doing?" I ask, ooooooooozing concern. >beep!< "?" "I'm Simon, this is Stephen, remember?" >beep!< "?" "You had an accident," the PFY explains loudly and slowly. "A fall. Don't you remember?" >beep …
..... an MI moment where it was suddenly revealed that the saleman and PHB are actually in a fake hospital room in the basement. And that when they reveal where the contract is hidden they're then quickly drugged, transported to a local hotel, and left in a compromising position for the hotel staff to find! Photographic evidence would of course be obtained for future .... err .... contract negotiations.
Icon: For the burning MI fuse!
It would seem that some new shiny surveillance gear should\would be under the tree for Simon and Stephen. These cold war antics of putting radioactive material in the printer toner, then tracing it with a geiger counter could have been done from the comfort of mission control. Besides, as much as it's a danger to the 'Boss' it is also a danger to our heroes, and that is just not acceptable, now is it!
Here's one for the New Year! Thanks!!
I am mildly active all the time.
Mostly my first two fingers and either thumb.
I'm mildly radioactive, too, for reasons of existing in this cosmos. I once watched the whizzies coming off of me and exciting a cloud chamber in the Science Museum. A lovely illustration of the universality of matter.
There was a case back in my old alma mater, after I'd finally left where a jilted lover allegedly injected a radioactive substance into her former paramour and boss's office chair. He was subsequently diagnosed with a groinal cancer (can't remember which one), an investigation was launched and she was arraigned on charges. But despite motive and opportunity she could not be totally fingered for it.
I was once rather painfully injected in a foot vein with a radioactive tracer substance by a clearly over nervous young medic seemingly scared of the lead encased syringe. I had been inducted into the mysteries of the lab hot room and had a personal finger monitor turned in regularly for counting.
I don't think the tracer would have borked it subsequently. Designed to be cleared quickly. It was a bone scan and functioned to rule out a generalised problem.
It doesn't; that's Jane from accounting comming back from the Christmas party, but she is dating the PFY and decided to play along after two years in a row of having to do "last minute accounting" at the end of the year.
Don't worry, she is actually a certified nurse, you can get certified on anything doing online courses nowadays!
Sadly after the end of work party, Jane from accounting had to be rushed to hospital as well. Nothing the bofh did, she just necked the boss' £15,000 bottle of super rare whiskey and had to go get her stomach pumped.
Fortunately, Marge the cleaner was only too happy to step into the vacant role, eager to show her appreciation after yet another cleaning company had taken over the contract and re-hired her at an even lower salary. She even took the time to look up how to say 'scrotal defibrillation technique' in convincing Latin.
Chances of BOFH or PFY not finding out about the printer within an hour of it being on premises: if it's wifi, then happily announces itself to all local networks, and honeypots. If it's not wifi, because the lusers think they're being clever, then the driver download request gets picked up by the network traffic sniffer. All this assuming that the Boss can setup a wireless printer or plug a USB device in correctly, other than an official IT department keylogger USB stick, without the help of the ITdepartment. Yeah, right.
In which case, I'm surprised the skunk works printer hasn't already been adapted to give unsuspecting users the cattle prod treatment. Presumably this is for a future episode when the brave fools return from hostiple with a cunning plan…
And even when the luser installs the printer drivers from the provided DVD to stay below the radar, the several GB crapware abomination will a) phone home to register, and report another successful installation to help evaluate customer satisfaction, b) update itself as several components of that crapware are now at least weeks out of date, and finally c) enable printer sharing while also opening a few printer management ports with really crap default passwords.
A horrible fact about Christmas is how many sets of tree lights have tiny electrical faults that can ignite the oily, resinous needles on a Christmas tree causing a conflagration out of all proportion to the size of the tree.
I am sure the BOFH knows that an air bubble in the saline drip line has to be avoided at all costs because of the danger it could present to the patient.
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