Grrr... It's people like this that make advance exchange hardware tougher to get. Vendors lose their shirt enough times and they end up making it that much harder on the honest guy with a funky router or dying RAID controller (or dodgy kit for my friends on the Reg side of the pond) to get a replacement in time to be useful.

@Herby: I think you hit it right on the head, he's a "former BOFH" just like prisons are filled with "former drug dealers".

...speaking of BOFH, what the hell, where's he been? At least at the start of last year we had the plausible excuse of the BOFH being trapped in a lift for an extended period of time to explain any prolonged silence. Is the missing BOFH connected to the unexplained disappearance of AmanFromMars? Are mysterious black helicopters involved?

Perhaps "Failed BOFH" is more accurate. He broke the first rule: Do Not Get Caught. In any case, he might still have the calling, but it isn't his current occupation.

Mine's the one with the Monopoly card in the pocket.

So if he'd paid the tax on it it would have been OK then?

Shuffles off to check Cisco account and self assessment form....

Paris, I don't feel well and I want her to be my nurse.

Where is the BOFH this year??? No appearances all of January so far... Please El Reg, we want news!

"The scam defrauded Cisco of nearly $4.2m, according to prosecutors."

I take it they didn't have such a thing a stock control.

"Here Dave, we sent out a abc to this guy and he's returned a xyz".

"Oh well. Random part out, Check! Random part in, Check.! Jobs a good un"

I got all excited that finally a new BOFH saga (first of '09) was up when the email came in from the register with a BOFH match. But no not yet. Come on Simon!

Bought Nortel gear, then it would have been worthless by now :-)

> When the FBI nabbed Kyereme in 2007, he had a lot of Nortel components stashed in his home and car now with a market value of three bob and a bag of plums

Greed is one thing; greed sombined with stupidy will get you nowhere - this fool got what he deserved.

A decent BOFH would have locked any witnesses in the disk safe long since.

So, speaking of the BoFH, where's he at?

It's gone awfully quiet at the moment!

Or is a month long holiday a reward for a year of hard work?

Or has the PFY done him over and locked him in a tape safe?

Bring back BoFH!

You mean I could "accidently" kill someone and do less time?

Once again, money talks and BS....

Certain techs will also try to rip off customers when OEM computers are bought and then they arrive the tech rips out the sound card then resells them on ebay.

Also the IT manager was fire thinking that for ever 10 laptops he buys for the company they get 1 free and he though he could keep that 1 freebie for himself.

WRONG!!!!!!!

stupid contractors.

I was speaking to a sysadmin who said he ordered some network cards for some cisco gear and when he unwrapped the huge expensive gold plated packaging it was just a pair of ordinary network cards. So he sent them back for a refund and bought cards for £5 each instead.