BOFH and the office security access upgrade

BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "So we just need you to open the app, and scan this QR code," I say, pointing at the Boss's screen. "OK, and from the dropdown list, under purpose of visit, select Work, then Normal Hours. No, you just selected Work, Overtime." "The letters are so small!" the Boss complains. "Not to …

[elsergiovolador]

Obsolescence

That reminds me when one organisation introduced an app for office "security".

The app would generate a single use, time limited 16 digit code that worker would have to enter to open the door.

Setting aside the silliness of such a long code, it didn't even group the digits to speed up keying in.

So first day there was quite a queue as people were making mistakes and by the time they thought they entered it correctly it would expire (without saying it "for security").

That wouldn't be the worst - the organisation didn't realise that many workers phones wouldn't run the app at all, because they were too old.

It was quite a conundrum for managers - should we buy those workers new phones? Won't other workers be upset they didn't get new phones? Do we need to buy phones for everyone?

They decided to scrap the system and returned to good old rfid cards and a receptionist who likes to watch people coming to work while simultaneously playing Solitaire.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Obsolescence

Don't the people coming to work simultaneously playing solitaire tend to bump into things?

All right, all right, the one with the pocket chess set in the pocket please -->

[BebopWeBop]

Re: Obsolescence

I am a billiards man myself.

[Montreal Sean]

Re: Obsolescence

Which pocket do you prefer?

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: Obsolescence

My company proudly develops all its apps in-house.

...and it shows,

[MachDiamond]

Re: Obsolescence

"My company proudly develops all its apps in-house.

...and it shows,"

I'm so glad I'm self-employed. BTW, if you set yourself up so you own a home and your car is paid off and you have a few quid in the bank, it's much easier to be self-employed. I'm just sayin.....

If I do go back to the Man for a "real" job, having to install and run a company app will eliminate that company from my choices.

[spuck]

Re: Obsolescence

<quote>I'm so glad I'm self-employed. BTW, if you set yourself up so you own a home and your car is paid off and you have a few quid in the bank, it's much easier to be self-employed. I'm just sayin.....</quote>

Oh, so if one owns a home, has no debt, and money in the bank, their options are more open and life seems to be easier for them?

Wow, it's a wonder more people don't try that.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Obsolescence

"Wow, it's a wonder more people don't try that."

Yeah, right?

Many people don't. They have more of a need to own a new shiny car every 5 years, an iPhone for everybody in the family from ages 7 on up and the cable package with all of the options and extra sports addons. Coupled with living in a big city to be able to have the high paying job and a store bought coffee addiction, they never have the chance.

Everybody I know that got a head start on owning a home and living within their means has outpaced me like stink. I'm happy I finally learned even if it was a little late and took a hard look at what's important and what's leading me down the path of having to work full time until I die.

[WolfFan]

Re: Obsolescence

We build apps for iOS and Android in-house. Most of them used to be for Windows Phone. The resulting mess took quite some time to sort out. As very few users use Android phones anymore, and zero use Android tablets, management was upset about the time wasted on creating Android versions, until I pointed out that several of the users still using Android were quite senior, including one who swears that he will never use any Crapple products. The complaints abruptly ceased. Imagine that.

[Blackjack]

Re: Obsolescence

[very few users use Android phones anymore]

Do you live in an alternate reality or something?

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/android-statistics/

[PhoenixKebab]

If only

I wish our company processes were as easy to use as that app.

[Jonathan Richards 1]

received signal SIGTERM

> you don't want the app marking you as potentially dead, as it feeds back into the payroll system.

...and of course you won't be able to correct that, as zombie processes have no access to HR.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: received signal SIGTERM

"zombie processes have no access to HR"

Not entirely true. They have access but no interest since zombies are only interested in BRAAAAAAAINS.

Alternately, the zombies may inadvertently find themselves rerouted to Residual Human Resources and assigned to the night shift as security guards.

[Lil Endian]

Re: received signal SIGTERM

Oh! Won't somebody think of the orphans?

[Martin an gof]

Re: received signal SIGTERM

Upvote for the Laundry Files reference, where - of course - another incarnation of the BOfH exists, namely Robert "Bob" Oliver Francis Howard.

M.

[HelpfulJohn]

Re: received signal SIGTERM

Wasn't there some man in Italy or somewhere like that who was legally defined as being dead and whom the courts wouldn't revive even when he turned up in person to show them their error?

The judgement was that nothing he said was actual proof of him *not* being dead or something equally legalistic and dumb.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.

[Rich 11]

Re: received signal SIGTERM

Then it'd be interesting to see how an Italian court would deal with the Second Coming. Can they deport a dead man as an illegal immigrant?

[Martin-R]

And now we know...

who wrote the online appointment booking system for my GP!

[My-Handle]

Re: And now we know...

Oh, no-one wrote that. It's a cut-down, re-skinned version of a video rental shop's hip new "online booking" system from the early 2000s. Committed by one of the doctors' nephews, I'd imagine. Bastard might have even got paid for it.

[TeeCee]

Re: And now we know...

Really? I just assumed it was from Capita, like everything else in the public sector that's a mind-numbingly godawful sack of shite where the UI looks like it was built by a five year old with a serious ADD problem following a spec from Josef Mengele.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Question

Why lock the boss in the stairwell?

Surely it would be better for the app to declare him dead in the lift and then since the lift is empty to turn the lift off to save electricity.

If he's in the stairwell, theres a chance in an emergency situation that somebody will use the stairwell and find him, however in an emergency, no one will want to use the lift.....

Anyways... merry xmas from my place of employment where I'm suppossed to be doing the annual cleandown.... but only after I finish running the backups(that were done yesterday so I can spend the rest of today before pub time sitting in the office browsing el-reg)

Cheers >>>>> icon

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Question

I think it has to do with the smell of a decaying body. Stairwell doors close better as they also tend to be part of a fire prevention structure.

[Lil Endian]

Re: Question

Stairwell gets my vote, as I've never known Otis to attend a stairwell in an emergency situation. Well, once in Redding.... [And that was the standard 3 days too late.]

Nice one Simon! Cheers all, and felicitations!

[TRT]

Re: Question

Not a surprise. Otis Reading is well known for just sitting on the dock in the bay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Question

I fear the younger ones won't get that.

Nice one :).

[Lil Endian]

Re: Question

Did you mean Otis Redding reading on the dock in the bay?

;)

[TRT]

Re: Question

I did, but as the post to which I replied had used the spelling of Redding, I felt I had to go the other way.

[Lil Endian]

Re: Question

Respect! I thought a Berk-sheered off these arms of mine with his Massive chew sets!

[Mine's the one with the apology note in the pocket from my PA....]

[MachDiamond]

Re: Question

"but only after I finish running the backups"

There are some nice animated gifs that look like a backup is running very very slowly with a correspondingly long estimated time of completion. I'm sure there are ones more clever 'novelty' programs that allow for a bit of customization and have more bits on screen doing things, countdowns, multiple bars moving at different speeds, all that.

[Lil Endian]

Re: Question

That reminds me of the screensaver with the beetle crawling across the screen - caught people out all the time, trying to brush it off!

[Will Godfrey]

Re: Question

Many moons ago on the Acorn Archimedes someone wrote a program simply call cockroach. When you ran it nothing happened ... until you closed or moved a window, at which point you'd see a handful of cockroaches scurrying to hide behind the nearest window.

[Lil Endian]

Re: Question

Archimedes, that was a good box. Like the other Acorns it never had the market share it deserved. (No joaks, m'kay!)

I remember those cockroaches on the Atari ST, funny stuff. (No, let's not start another 68K spin-off thread! Too soon, man, too soon!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Question

They finally did get the market share with the processor inside the archie though.

[TheMaskedMan]

Re: Question

I seem to recall a Windows 3.1 cousin called Winroach. And another that had sheep (I think) running along the top of each window's title bar, where they multiplied indefinitely. That caused much amusement to the students at my uni (well we were undergraduates, what do you expect) when one of the lectures became plagued by sheep that he couldn't shut down:)

[MachDiamond]

Re: Question

"caught people out all the time, trying to brush it off!"

My last cat would have lost her mind.

[jmch]

All I want for Christmas...

...is a brand new BOFH!

Cheers Simon & Merry Christmas to all.

[chivo243]

You had me at

it's tied to the payroll!

Thanks Simon,

Merry Christmas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, time management systems

We once had a time management system (developed in-house, of course) to allow people to book their time to different projects over the course of a day. One value was "Sick leave", booked as overhead. One person, off sick but bored, discovered that the system allowed him to subdivide any given task into arbitrary sub-tasks. He returned a worksheet in great detail; 30 minutes "throwing up", 20 minutes "running to bathroom", an hour "lying on the sofa" and other examples of too much info. HR were not entirely amused.

Someone else couldn't find a task to book some general admin stuff to, and after a frustrating back-and-forth of asking his boss and being eventually told "just book it to anything" he created "Pissing about" and booked against that. That one earned him an interview, but I don't think anyone ever fixed the tool.

[Andy A]

Re: Ah, time management systems

We had a system where everything had to be booked to various 6-digit codes, in units of 10ths of an hour.

Accuracy was obviously rubbish, since manglement demanded that the sheet for the week be completed by noon on Friday - to include Friday afternoon.

Codes randomly changed, or were expired, without anybody informing the people who used them.

True gold dust was a code for "Admin", to which we allocated the time spent filling in the timesheets - at least an hour per person each week. Once, on finding it expired, we received instruction that the time had to be booked to the Support code for the customer's account. We quietly showed the customer the email. An admin code was sent to us the following Monday morning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah, time management systems

We had to complete the time cards for this year by December 16th. Including time for the last two weeks of the year. And you can't report hours on dates in the future. I'm guessing a lot of us will show as having put in a 120-hour week that week. All CAPEX (except for the one hour of administrative tasks - for time reporting purposes), of course.

What really gets me with our system is that we have to report all our time on a project number and an activity code. And the activity code is always the same, for everyone - "General Work". Project numbers change seemingly every 17-26 days or so, but the activity code has always been the same. Year on year. What's the point of manually having to key it in every time?

[Mark 85]

Re: Ah, time management systems

What's the point of manually having to key it in every time?

Job security for a few people in HR. Power and control for management and also justifies having them.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Ah, time management systems

"I'm guessing a lot of us will show as having put in a 120-hour week that week."

That will look great if there is a PR audit and the company is fined for not paying everybody overtime (government knobs will just believe that somebody can work 120 hours in a single week without question). It also means that automated budgeting apps will have to come with a set of 3-ring binders to remind people of all of the manual corrections that have to be made.

[HelpfulJohn]

Re: Ah, time management systems

For most weeks, it is possible to work 168 hours, even if a tad unhealthy.

There have been exceptions. I have no idea what the bean-counting softwares would have made of 1752.

[rafff]

I have no idea what the bean-counting softwares would have made of 1752.

It is because of the bean counters that the financial year end moved from Lady Day (25 March) to 5 April. They insisted on having 365 days in their year even with the "loss" of 11 days.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Ah, time management systems

"For most weeks, it is possible to work 168 hours, even if a tad unhealthy."

Unhealthy doesn't even come close. The drugs to keep you awake would have a high probability of killing you over that period of time. You would also be completely useless after the first 48 hours at the most.

[Lil Endian]

Re: Ah, time management systems

Within the last month, I had a similar situation where I had to enter into a data system a future time period. Not knowing the future I got peeved with the BS, so decided to throw "them" an error, I logged a date range starting 2000. It only fekkin accepted it! Bloody skiddies!

[stiine]

Re: Ah, time management systems

You've got to let us know how big that automated deposit turns out to be!!!!!

[Lil Endian]

Re: Ah, time management systems

ROFL!

It's not even been questioned yet! Sadly it wasn't tied to my earnings, or it'd be a Caribbean cruise for us all!

[Icon: me missing what I won't get!]

[HelpfulJohn]

Re: Ah, time management systems

"What's the point of manually having to key it in every time?"

Are you new to this planet?

Tens to hundreds of millions of forms sent to people by mail with the first *empty* spaces being for the recipient to fill in their name and address.

Banks, government offices and several other groups firmly stuck in the Fourth Century or earlier *could* save many, many man-years of effort, and prevent the odd hundreds of thousands of typo's, by simply pre-filing in the information they already have - indeed *must* have to send the forms in the first place - but never will.

Humans are weird. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah, time management systems

I was an on-site contractor, and a few years ago, I had an email from the sales weasel / account manager wanting me to report back to him about the state of various projects (which I had nothing to do with) for sales opportunities. I wasn't too happy about spying on the customer like that, and as I had a customer supplied laptop with email, I just sort of casually put that laptop front of the customer to have a look at.....

[MachDiamond]

Re: Ah, time management systems

"I wasn't too happy about spying on the customer like that, and as I had a customer supplied laptop with email, I just sort of casually put that laptop front of the customer to have a look at....."

While satisfying, not a great move is you want to stay employed with somebody and be able to get a good reference for future work. It could be better to spend a day visiting said plod in their office and very carefully explain to them about that customer supplied laptop, possible NDA's the company signed with that customer and how bad it might look to Corporate to have sales asking contractors/FSR's to spy on customers (more than normal, obviously).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah, time management systems

WascTUPE'd to customer, so it all ended well in the end!

As I was onsite, I was basically ignored by the company I worked for. The account manager will visit the client, first I would hear of it was when I the client would mentioned that he had been. In fact after one visit he made that weasel come into our office (there were two of us onsite) and talk to us. We could tell he did want to be there at all!

Also that's reminded me, the client wanted us to get training, weasel said no problem, money changed hands (added to contract at least, not brown envelope). When we came to choose training courses... what money?

It was company policy that any references would only confirm that I was employed there with start and end times.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah, time management systems

Anon here, since still employed by them as a contractor with variable hours per week..."as needed"

Yeah. Their time tracking system can't handle that. I'm supposed to work a set number of hours a week. And I get constant emails reminding me that I'm not.

Taking time off requires "approval" (even though it's without pay...I only get paid for the hours I work).

Ah! Bureaucracy. You gotta love it.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Ah, time management systems

"Ah! Bureaucracy. You gotta love it."

What? Really? I know there isn't a universal definition of what love is, but I don't think anything to do with bureaucracy can be described with that concept.

[TRT]

Re: Ah, time management systems

You've got to love IT.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Ah, time management systems

"What? Really? I know there isn't a universal definition of what love is, but I don't think anything to do with bureaucracy can be described with that concept."

Sale and Marketing have, for many, many years bastardised the meaning of "loved". How often have you seen sales or marketing literature telling you how much you are going to "love" their product? Feedback forms asking on a scale of 1 to 5 how much you "love" some product or website? Personally, I'm always 100% honest on those sorts of things. I don't "love" anything inanimate. Hopefully it screws with their metrics.

[Jemma]

Re: Ah, time management systems

On loving inanimate objects...

The bloke who really liked his Austin Metro, really really liked it and didn't realise the wife had just parked it up with a hot engine..

And did things... *brain bleach on*

And got Mr Happy welded into a standard bore A+ engine exhaust... A very hot, quite narrow exhaust...

[rototype]

Re: Ah, time management systems

Last 2 lines unnecessary, this was implied by the first 2. Just tell me - was the Fire Brigade involved at some point?

[Lil Endian]

Re: Ah, time management systems

In the 90s, before emails were everywhere (dial-up was only just coming in mainstream) and time management was still paper-based, I had a long term project with a client. We agreed that it'd be a good idea for me to work on-site. They set me up in an office, next to the Operations Director, who was my SPOC for the project. I got along very well with Mark[1], but I'll admit I didn't get along well with my time management - I was focussed too intently on the project, of course! After a few weeks of my poor "HR administration", one Friday, and every following Friday, I find a post-it stuck to my screen, from Mark "Put your bloody invoice in!".

[1] Hello Mark! Merry Chrimbo to you and yours!

[Terry 6]

Re: Ah, time management systems

Ach.

We had to do paper mileage claims each week, for travel between school visits and our office base. Because we were "casual users"

The top brass in the council didn't have to do this. They were essential users and got a lump sum payment each month and could claim anything above that simply by saying where they'd been over and above the (not defined) normal travel even though they didn't have to travel for the job like we did

Our claim form needed a list of each trip for each day, then column for milometer reading at the start of each trip and another for the end, and anther for the number of miles. For each and every trip, often 4 or more per day, each day, week in week out with only small variations in journey and nominal variation in distance, it was all within the same borough). So in theory, before driving away from the office we were meant to write down the reading. Then again when we got to our assigned school - and then again at the next one and so on...As if battling the traffic and fighting for parking didn't waste enough time when we were already trying to fit too many visits in in a day, Inevitably most of the form was a fiction ( the actual visit list and mileage totals were correct - because we knew the distances). We just made up the numbers, in the office.

[pardo_bsso]

Nice music selection :)

All I can say is that besides being quite thankful for this episode, you have a very good music taste.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Sheer absolute genius!

Lovely, lovely, lovely! The true BOFH Xmas spirit. I'll raise my glass to that.

[TekGuruNull]

Thanks and Merry Christmas, Simon. Wishing you a Defenestrating New Year!

[Version 1.0]

Merry Christmas Simon, I have loved the BOFH stories for years since they first appeared - you are the greatest feature of El Reg. Everyone can tell that by looking at all the comments and votes to your stories! And Merry Christmas to everyone - all the comments always make me happy.

[Lil Endian]

Yarp!

Move BOFH to the main hamburger, all else goes to Offbeat!

[Will Godfrey]

So Simon once worked at one of my old employers!

We had job cards that were supposed to be filled in at the end of the day, but as we were building quite complex A/V racks each job would last several weeks, and as the cards were only collected monthly, we just quickly filled them in just before they were wanted.

Until... HR decided they wanted more detail and had this computer system installed that demanded entry of every start and stop before you left at the end of the day. It was the most clunky and user unfriendly thing any of us have ever seen. This went of for a couple of months, then suddenly we reverted to the cards again with no explanation. We found out later that one of the most senior engineers, put in a massive overtime claim for the time spent filling the thing in.

[MachDiamond]

Re: So Simon once worked at one of my old employers!

"We had job cards that were supposed to be filled in at the end of the day, but as we were building quite complex A/V racks each job would last several weeks, and as the cards were only collected monthly, we just quickly filled them in just before they were wanted."

I think every company goes through phases of wanting detailed time reports but doesn't stop to make an estimates of how much time it will cost. When I was at a small aerospace company and we had that happen. I tagged one of the interns to follow me for a week to act as my scribe. I was already keeping a journal but manglement wanted finer timing. One of the other engineers and I submitted not only our time on particular tasks, but the time it took to keep track. Since we were a small company and would work on many different things during the course of a day and the problem was compounded by ever changing priorities coming down from on high, the time tracking they thought would be useful added about 30% overhead. If we were spending entire days on one task, it wouldn't be a problem, but those days were rare. There was also confusion about if we needed to clock in and out of things if a process took some time. If I were to set up parts for Oxygen cleaning and did some sweeping up and organizing while the parts were in-process, do I clock out of the project the parts are for and into shop maintenance or do I just stay logged into the other one? More time spent, excuse me, wasted on accounting. We were already keeping track to about the 1/2 hour or hour resolution and sometimes days if a task was most of a day.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So Simon once worked at one of my old employers!

I don't know if they still use it, but the NHS had such a "record every moment" time system. It was a mulit-disciplinary team and an awful lot of the base/admin time was doing "stuff". Stuff that couldn't be precisely defined, let alone defined as a clinical task. How do you record the half an hour spent working alongside a teacher colleague or a psychologist, trying to work out whether the educational or emotional need of a child should be prioritised over the therapy- so it just goes down as "admin" And then they get told they're spending too much time on admin and they aren't doing enough therapy. And of course they also spent a chunk of actual admin time filling out the stupid sheet. And for what? They had a case load, they were working in schools on that case load. They got through their case load. If they hadn't the screams from the various schools, parents, etc. would have been heard, loudly.

[peter_dtm]

Re: So Simon once worked at one of my old employers!

Previous employer; around the early 2000's - dictate from on high - we were not to fill in time sheets during work hours on a customer site; but since that described 95% of the team's normal work pattern this meant we had to do it at some other time i.e. when at home.

Then another dictate - the 3 minute daily (mobile) phone calls allowed when away from home must be extracted from the company mobile phone bill and itemised in our expenses.

I managed to get both instructions written in an email as being part of our normal duties.

A couple of months later; my very good manager had to haul me over the coals for excessive Sunday overtime claims. He happily joined me in escalating this up 2 or 3 layers of management.

Why was I doing the mobile phone and time keeping on overtime ? Answer : because you have explicitly instructed us to fill the time sheets in weekly and we are not to do them on site. See this email trail. As a company imposed duty I am entitled to claim overtime.

Why am I always doing that on a Sunday ? Because since I have to do it on my own time I get to decide when it is convenient to do so.

HR (by now involved) started to speak; then stopped; thought it all through; the senior management person started to shout; HR stopped him; and suggested to management that they either put up with the overtime claims being done at the engineer's convenience; or allow us to do the timesheets during normal working hours; and as for the average £10 per month mobile bill just forget it; the cost of processing the paper work far exceeded any possible benefit especially as local management already had the costs under good control.

Unhappy senior manglement - happy engineers (well apart from losing a couple of hours Sunday overtime a month) - manager's manager couldn't hid his grin but did control his urge to laugh !

Sometimes HR can be sensible and a good manager is worth his weight in gold

[herman]

Cost optimized Stairwell

That must be the stairwell with no stairs below the ground floor to the 6 level basement car park - a cost optimization.

[Hazmoid]

Re: Cost optimized Stairwell

Is that the stairwell with the timed lights that go out just after the door closes to save energy costs? With no natural lighting?

[herman]

In fond memory of Jimmy

There was a time system with readers in the passage where you had to swipe your card and enter a code whenever you started to work on something different (which I fortunately missed out on due to a foreign assignment). It had a nice printed sticker on it: “This plague was erected in fond memory of Limmy Jishman.” The previous IT manager.

[RyokuMas]

About time...

It's been a while since someone's been trapped in a lift or stairwell over an extended break... let's hope the boss has got socks for filtration and a container to catch the results in!

[MachDiamond]

The spyware is golden

It illustrates the problem of privacy being swapped out for convenience and nobody stopping to think if that's wise or even legal. Hey, it can count coughs. Can it determine who coughed? Does it have enough smarts to sort out that it's a group of people coughing because the heating has been turned on for the first time that season and there was a load of dust in the ducts? I expect if lots of people were coughing it would signal the health service of a plague outbreak. Maybe it's better if spying on people was left to the spies, excuse me, agents.

[Bebu]

Re: The spyware is golden

Maybe it's better if spying on people was left to the spies, excuse me, agents. - Yes you want your cockups done competently.

[MachDiamond]

Re: The spyware is golden

"Yes you want your cockups done competently."

And with refinement and taste. Tuxedos and cocktail dresses optional (we won't mention that third nipple).

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the principles of Lumbering Design..."

Ah yes.

[TRT]

Re: "...the principles of Lumbering Design..."

Also known as FRAGILE.

[BebopWeBop]

There had to be a benefit (for someone)of infectious diseases. Trust the BIOFH.,

[Il Midga di Macaroni]

Is BOFH trying to keep people away?

The more inconvenient it is for the great unwashed to work from the office, the more likely they are to work from home. The more they work from home, the less likely they are to disturb the peace and quiet by trying to barge into mission control.

They might ring, but a deft >clickety< to remotely drop their connection will soon sort that out.

[Anonymous Coward]

All I want for Christmas is...

the word 'metre' spelt unambiguously and correctly for both Simon's home country (en-NZ) and the country the stories are based in (en-GB).

Also,

**** BRING BACK DABBSY! ****

[Nick Ryan]

Re: All I want for Christmas is...

Unfortunately a large proportion of Americans seems to be under the impression that America is the only place in the world and American is the only language and locale in use.

Which explains why my fucking computer, alongside Microsoft's total lack of testing anymore, despite having the American locale removed and only having English remaining has randomly decided that my keyboard is American. Again. There is no option to change this because the only keyboard input locale enabled is English...

[Terry 6]

Re: All I want for Christmas is...

Yeah. I've noticed on Mastodon so many posts that only make sense if you are an American, or at least have a basic knowledge of Americana. They don't seem to realise that anyone else is on there. Because so much is written with that assumption. Temperatures being the most obvious one. They never put degrees F. But they'll complain that the temperature is 26. And we're meant to know that means cold .

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All I want for Christmas is...

Actually, it was 10° here yesterday morning. And the high today was 35°.

Until you convert to useing metric time, we'll continue to not use metric anything. Besides with Google deciding that leap seconds are too hard that they've had to resort to smearing, it just means that they now have to keep track of leap seconds....AND...smeared seconds. Stupid Mother-F*****s, they can't see the forrest for the trees.

[MachDiamond]

Re: All I want for Christmas is...

"Besides with Google deciding that leap seconds are too hard that they've had to resort to smearing..........."

Are you just now figuring out that they will be the first ones with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes?

[stiine]

Classic Simon......

You have me laughing out loud well before the desk drawer.

Now my familiy know that I'm deranged.

[Curtis]

Infection Alert

I might have used "Toxic" by Brattney Spears

[Blackjack]

Locked in the stairwell?

So... the office has no emergency exits?

Is the BOFH planing to set it on fire?