BOFH: Dawn raid on Fort BOFH
bofh_pic You know, sometimes I wish someone just had the balls to say they want a new iPad cos it looks cool. That they have no clue of what the f$*# they’d use it for, but their kids think they’re great and they can’t be stuffed forking out the money themselves for one so they figure the company should just get one and save …
This topic is closed for new posts.
"Makes you look cool in front of clients" is a valid business use in my book.
Re: not...
So you're a small-minded parochial IT manager only interested in their own departmental budget, not the company's bottom line?
Re: not...
No, he's a responsible manager who understands that if the primary use for the device is for relationship management (i.e, sales) then it's a sales expense and should be charged back to the sales department.
If the primary purpose of the device were for managing information flow and security, then it could be an IT expense. But since you've already admitted that the purpose is to look good to clients, it's a sales expense.
"Makes you look like a shallow dick" would be more accurate.
Re: not...
If it's to make you look cool, get marketing or sales to pay for it. Or perhaps marketing and/or sales only care about their departmental budget, rather than the company bottom line....
@Steve Knox - Re: not...
I only regret that I have but one upvote to give to you.
Shiny stuff isn't IT
So it should come out of the Sales or HR budget. "Looking good" isn't IT-related.
Re: not...
@JDX I really like the original line: satirical but true. Why go an spoil it by attacking someone who is obviously lacking a sense of humour.
Re: not...
@Charlie Clark The follow-up goes to show that the original statement was meant seriously, with a distinct lack of sarcasm...
'"Looking good" isn't IT-related.'
Love to hear what Dominic Connor would say about that...
Re: Where's the...
Keep up at the back there!
It's implied re the bus - they _could_ walk the two miles, or they could take the bus, which is a BOFH youth-anism for finding someone to inspect the underside of the bus before they take early retirement.
ttfn
Re: Where's the...
you may want to reread the 8th paragraph again. The one about friendly IT staff helping their superiors into dealing with public transportation the right way.
Err
I though this was supposed to be satire? The first half is pretty much exactly what happened to us last year with the iPad2...
Currently about 25% of them are back in the server room, gathering dust.
Re: Err
"Currently about 25% of them are back in the server room, gathering dust."
That's whay eBay was born for
Re: Err
This whole thing pretty much sums up my view of the IT world after this week.
Satire
is based in reality. You start with the facts, highlight the more egregious violations of basic decency, of which we're all guilty in some way or another, and we all have a good laugh.
Re: Err
You can send a few to me if you don't want them. Is 10 cents on the dollar OK?
Re: Err
Very true, but with one proviso, which my ex-bosses ex-boss found out to his cost.
Apparently this numty had been replacing 'out of date' or 'terminal hardware fault' equipment slightly more often than he should have been. The company of course, noticed nothing, and assumed all was hunky dory with this, despite a failure rate that would put the first generation SA80 to shame...
It all came to a head and the Police got involved when this nerk sold a laptop on ebay, that was supposed to be dead and gone without wiping any of the confidential company data and the buyer did the honorable thing (aka the stupid thing, whats the betting the average cop would have had them for receiving) and contacted said Police...
My boss then turned up for work to see his boss being escorted into a squad car and the rest is history.
I think they call that a salutory tale - tale of two idiots is more like it.
You forgot the box usually contains a canon notejet. That was exec candy 20 years ago.
No, no, no!
It will be an (broken) Epson dot matrix printer.
I nominate
SCSI external zip drive, complete with little plastic box of five multicolour zip-disks, only one of which is used, and one of which has the little springy-bit broken.
Re: I nominate
There's gotta be at least one USB memory stick with a capacity of 512Mb or less.
If the user's been around any length of time there will be one of those plastic framed antiglare wossanames that used to dangle craply on the front of CRT monitors too.
Re: I nominate
Not to mention half a dozen floppies with crusty labels, all of which are unreadable except for one that reads "DO NOT OVERWRITE".
And possibly a USB floppy drive with something jammed in the slot.
Re: I nominate
The USB stick will be supplier branded too. I have a ton of 256Mb Johnson Diversy branded ones in a box somewhere.
These boxes/bags quite frequently get slung through my door with along with 'recycle this please' and there ia AWLAYS without fail, phone leads in there.
Re: I nominate
Wrong way around.... all of the floppy disks readable except the one marked "Rainy Day Plan - keep safe"
The Media that you dont need or want to work ever again always works... the stuff with juicy photos or blackmail matierial always dies :(
Re: I nominate
Quite a few sticks of once-expensive RAM that are good for precisely nothing any more.
Re: I nominate
You could put Puppy Linux on those sticks (~128Mb) and share them out for use in case of emergency (i.e. laptop hard disk crash) or security (connecting to public wifi hotspots without exposing HD contents).
Re: I nominate
Half a dozen power cables. Still perfectly OK, except that the EU has legislated that every piece of new equipment must be shipped with a new power flex. It's cheaper to recycle the old ones and to bin the new ones, because the old ones already have inventory and test record stickers attached and have already passed their PAT test.
Half a dozen Ethernet cables mangled and tangled to such an extent that the nearest bin beckons.
A pair of fetid trainers and/or socks
A Windows ME "Upgrade" kit
A charger with a wierd connector, possibly for a long-defunct mobile.
A dead mouse (the sort with a ball. Less often, the sort with two).
Windows recovery
Reminds me of the Tomsrtbt floppy I used to have lying around. Labelled "Windows Recovery Disk" of course.
Retirement plan
Hey, have you seen the prices of PC133 RAM - that's not made any more? Worth a BOFH's ransom to those companies still running critical business processes on a massive 128MB RAM server.
Re: I nominate
Or if they are 512Mb try Lightweight Portable Security? LPS is a linux distro intended for booting off a USB stick and comes with a windows script to write to a stick. The 'fat' version has OpenOffice and Firefox.
Looks quite impressive with the USAF logos and all the military jargon on the default Web browser page. One colleague at work thought I was moonlighting.
I will nominate a
slightly used Hayes 1200 external modem without wall wart.
For good measure, I will throw in a couple of full sized 360K 5-1/4 floppy drives.
Failing to distinguish...
between pointless gadgets and obsolete items.
Most of my junk boxes are filled with things which saw plenty of use at the time, but have either been replaced by something better (eg a bigger memory stick) or are no longer needed because things have changed (I used my KVM switch every day in my old job because I worked from home. Now things have changed it is no use at all to me).
But we all make mistakes. Can't imagine why I bought a PDA - and worse still the docking station is still on my desk, plugged in. No idea where the PDA itself is.
Re: I nominate
@Nigel 11
"A dead mouse (the sort with a ball. Less often, the sort with two)."
You mean the sort which *should* have a ball, but no longer does.
Pointing-device castration: just say no!
Anyone got a spare Ipad sitting in a cupboard?
I'll give it a home and promise not to put it in a cupboard.
Swap it for a beer?
Re: (good use for a) spare Ipad
Screw it to your refrigerator door, and use it as a message board.
Cynical; moi?
Just too damned depressed for words.
I think that someone recorded a conversation I had earlier in the week, and has changed the names to protect the innocent, then put it out as fiction.
BTW, the box referred to was sat on the corner of the IT workbench this morning; it also contained 2 PS2 extension cables, an HP scanjet scanner missing its power lead, and a couple of floppy disks.
Re: Cynical; moi?
Mine had floppies in as well. Not your modern 5.25" jobbies, but your original 8.5" floppies. Just wish I had something to read them with - just for curiosities sake.
Re: Cynical; moi?
' your modern 5.25" jobbies'
LOL , nice one
Re: Cynical; moi?
"...but your original 8.5" floppies."
Hard or soft sectored.....?
Re: Cynical; moi?
Sounds like the box under the bed in the spare bedroom at home. Which also features some hard drives that have been kept "just in case". A couple of old and non-functional USB sticks that the wife won't let me throw out as we "might need them", a selection of unmarked (but tatty looking) floppy disks, CD's. A collection of very old power cables that no one knows what they were ever connected to.
.....and one iomega zip drive, and a lone of phone cables :)
......hmm I sense a trip to the Recycling Centre this weekend hehe :D
This topic is closed for new posts.
