The BOFH
Not everyone has probably heard of the BOFH. BOFH stands for “Bastard Operator From Hell” and it’s a series of stories about, well, a bastard operator from hell. Think of it like this: you have a one heck of a sys ad that he’s not only good, but he’s scary too. You don’t want to mess with him. Seriously.
Scared? Well, don’t be! It’s not like that in real life. At least, not all sys ads I’ve encountered are like that. Some might be quirky but not to the point of getting people very scared. And if you want a sample from the series, here’s a snippet:
It’s a thursday, and I’m in a good mood. It’s payday. I think I’ll take some calls. I put the phone back on the hook. It rings.
“I’ve been trying to get you for hours!” the voice at the other end screams
“Not, it can’t be hours” I say, putting “Blade Runner” back into it’s cover and looking at the back, “it was more like 114 minutes. I was on a long phone call with the big boss, trying to get you users some better facilities”
Hook; Line; and Sinker…
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“That’s ok, I’m a tolerant person” I make a mental note to change his password to something nasty in the next couple of days.
“Um, I need to know how to rename a file” he says.
Oh dear… Hang on, it’s payday isn’t it?! I’m in a good mood.
“Sure. You just go ‘rm’ and the filename”
“Thanks”
“No worries” (Now I’m in a *REALLY* good mood. I think I just might write that script to make saving impossible on rogue at random times like I’ve been thinking about)
That’s from Chapter 4 of the series. This one takes advantage of the user’s ignorance of the command line. But we know better than that, right? One, there’s probably other ways we could manage files. There’s the graphical file manager of your choice, and well, the command line. And there’s also file management tools in some software, like GNU Emacs’ dired. ;) So yeah, you’ve got to have a sense of humor to appreciate the BOFH series. Otherwise, you might come to hate him too much. :P
That said, I leave it up to you. Whether or not you read the BOFH series or not, and what you think of it.
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2 opinions for The BOFH
Al Sparks
Aug 10, 2008 at 11:12 am
BOFH is old stuff. You even had to translate “operator” to “sys ad”.
BOFH came out when mainframes with hundreds of user accounts were the norm. Also BOFH was probably indicative of a medium to large academic institution, where they might be more tolerant of such antics.
An operator was someone that staffed a machine room (they weren’t called data centers then) and who also might provide help to users (no help desk then). He (and it was usually a he) often had sysadmin privs on whatever mainframe he was responsible for, and also was responsible for mundane tasks like changing reel to reel tapes, not only for backups, but for users who were storing their data to tape because disk space was so expensive, they were severely limited in its use.
Heck, even CPU time was metered and limited. The result was that a SYSOP, had a lot of power over people who’s professional life depended on those machines.
Because many of those operators were so young, you would see isolated examples of the kind of arrogance displayed in BOFH.
You don’t see the arrogance as often anymore, but its still out there.
Red Five
Aug 10, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I’ve been reading the BOFH for years. There are current episodes on The Register’s website, under category Odds & Sods.
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