back to article BOFH: In distributed denial

"Is there... something wrong with the internet?" our user asks quietly. "No, no, pretty sure it's working fine," I say, looking over to the PFY's Bittorrent machine which is sucking up so much bandwidth it’s in danger of affecting the QoS of the phone system... "It's just that I can't seem to connect to my home email," the …

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  1. IglooDude
    Thumb Up

    Even by lofty BOFH standards...

    "I cannot BEGIN to outline the HOURS of enjoyment you can have with a simple wireless keyboard and mouse and a dongle plugged into the back of the Boss’ desktop. I heartily recommend it."

    ...this is brilliantly evil, or evilly brilliant.

    1. Alien8n
      Go

      Been there, done that

      Also the hours of fun that can be had dropping random text files onto the user's desktop, followed by the phone calls and blackmail down the pub to ensure deletion of the offending screengrab that has been taken of their machine...

      Amazed the user in question never realised that the only reason he was still allowed access to the internet was the fact he was saving the head of IT hours of downloading time every week when the latest episode of Star Trek Enterprise hit the file sharing sites...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      So much scope with wireless keyboards/mice

      Getting in early and moving around an entire team's wireless mice and keyboards is good fun too.

      It took until lunchtime before everyone had the right mouse and keyboard combo again!

      Anon to avoid recriminations. And because my current workplace only uses laptops. Boo.

      1. Chaosechoz
        Pint

        Taking control of a MD's PC

        Fun and games, but, taking control of our MD's pc and flashing messages like "perv alert" or "Naughty boy" and forcing his mouse and keyboard to move to unblocked smut sites while watching his reaction through my office was class :D

        He was not amused when I told him his pc was infected with a virus cos his 15 year old son had been browsing porn and showed him some cache logs (ok I admit they were the FD's personal laptop cache files, who incidentally was a raging queen in his spare time :D ).

        Ah all good fun tho, but perhaps a little childish

    3. JimC
      Flame

      You B*****d Travaglia

      That was my *own* keyboard I just sprayed coffee all over...

      1. PFY_in_training!
        Coffee/keyboard

        Own keyboard

        Any real person would have been using someone else's keyboard at the time, then swapped them back when the poor sod wasn't looking.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Wireless vs bluetooth

      You'll find the bluetooth versions have better range, and the dongle is equally tiny and un-noticeable.

      Failing that, the best way of all is remote desktoping with auto-allow permissions (works best on OS X). You don't even need to be in the same building...

      Of course, I've never *ever* tried it....

      1. John 62

        Wireless vs bluetooth?

        but isn't bluetooth wireless?

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Just in time for April 1

      All kinds of fun ideas for April Fools here.

      Anon for fairly obvious reasons I think.

  2. Dazzz

    yay

    Excellent stuff!

  3. theotherstephen

    Yummy

    Does anybody have the URL for the Ukrainian Peanut Butter Girls website?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      I tried googling for it.

      I got this article at #4 in the list of results.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Tell me, where do you hide it

      When I search at google for "Ukrainian Peanut Butter Girls" the only site that comes up is theregister. So how can we get access to this secret part of theregister website?

      I know it must be here because Google tells me so!

      1. The Unexpected Bill
        Go

        @AC 19th Mar 2011 12:55 GMT

        You're remiss on your BOFH history...it's likely something that is only available to Register Platinum level cookie users, as opposed to us normal "lead cookie" types, the same as one of the BOFH stories was.

        In case anyone thinks I'm serious, I'll have a bridge to sell on the eighth day of this week.

  4. mark 63 Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    “I’ve got a tiny wiener”

    the Boss emailing the news of the dismissal to us all under the subject “I’ve got a tiny wiener”…

    just sneaked that one in at the end . lmao

    1. ArmanX
      Paris Hilton

      ...that's what she said?

      Sorry, sorry... I couldn't resist.

  5. Jason 24
    Pint

    Back to his roots...

    Just when I thought this beautiful friday couldn't get any better we get a true classic BOFH, thank you kind sirs!

  6. Tasogare

    I'm a horsefucker.

    Priceless.

    Bit of a shame the helldesk guy caught their attention though. Those people are heroes.

    1. Chika
      WTF?

      Service Desk Heroes?

      Nah. We're just targets.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ahhh....

    Wireless laptop mouse... Fond fond memories... I never went to the extreme of full webcam backed remote operation, but I did have several minutes of fun inducing "parkinson's disease" on a work mate's mouse movement, which would always stop whenever I went to look at the problem for her :-)

    Lucky she's such a good sport... Such a good sport infact that she borrowed the wireless mouse and USB receiver and had days of fun with all the others on customer support. Probably not such a good idea though, they kept ringing me to get me to come and have a look!

    Being the helpful, approachable techie in the office is such a cross to bear sometimes!

  8. Fluffykins Silver badge

    I'm a horsefucker

    Playmobil or it isn't real.

  9. Isendel Steel
    Pint

    Another Friday - another BOFH

    Excellent !!

  10. Mark York 3 Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    I'm a horsefucker

    Thats another fucking keyboard gone to tea incursion.

  11. Colin Brett
    Happy

    RE: "It's working fine for me"

    Ah yes. The standard, sub-standard user support answer. "Works for me, guv." Usually followed by "So. What have you changed then?"

    Colin

  12. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    Beautiful

    What more can I say?

  13. Simon 6
    Thumb Up

    One of the best

    I haven't laughed like that for ages. Well done!

  14. AndrueC Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    The funny thing is..

    ..I'm currently locking horns and doing battle with our ISP. Polite battle, mind, but still. Damn' office connection has been more crappy than normal for a couple of months now. Up and down like a whore's knickers. One probable culprit is BT shifting our 54db ADSL lines to ADSL2+. But I'm still determined to find out where the missing 1Mb/s has gone to. We only had 4Mb/s to start off with.

    Now of course if our multi-billion dollar company could spend £10k on us we could prolly have a nice fibre connection - we're only just outside a large town.

    Barstads the lot of 'em.

    Oh well. Off home soon and I've got 11Mb/s of throughput there :)

  15. The Beer Monster
    Coat

    I'm a horsefucker

    And so's my wife...

    Oh, sorry - thought this was the HBGary thread.

  16. Stumpy
    Pint

    Well done Simon

    The best BOFH for a long, long time. I take my hat off to you sir.

    P.s. I'm a horsefucker

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

    Thanks Simon!!!!!!! Made my Friday!!!

  18. The Unexpected Bill
    Coffee/keyboard

    Absolutely Hilarious!

    Everyone will just have to keep wondering why I'm laughing like I am. My keyboard was very definitely in danger at several points in this story. The fact that I've done the whole surreptitious wireless keyboard and mouse installation only makes it funnier.

  19. Chris Hainey
    Coffee/keyboard

    Bloody fantastic

    Back on form Simon. Where have you been?

  20. Trygve Henriksen
    Coat

    Never done the wireless keyboard gag, but...

    Once I installed OS/2 for Windows on the PC of a colleague...

    (Yeah, it was wayyyy back when... )

    He worked in IT and still wasted half a day 'fixing' his computer.

    Mine's the one with the eCS CDs...

  21. Robert E A Harvey

    I recall

    One disaffected youth dripping superglue into ball-style mouses on the management floor, and another doing neat tricks with the photocopier paper. screen printing rude words into a whole stack with lemonade. Once dried the copies were fine, but if you stuck them back in to make secondary copies the rude words fluoresced and came out vivid black. Nowadays you can use a stencil and a security aerosol.

    Then there was the autocorrect gag - an autocorrect file on the secretaries computer that changed the letters after the director's name - MBE became MZM and it was months before anyone noticed.

  22. Jean-Luc
    Happy

    old + new skool

    Old skool on Win 3.1 Take screenshot of user's desktop folder. Set it as wallpaper. Then minimize the actual desktop folder. User clicks and clicks... Could probably do that yet, on desktop centric folk.

    New skool, for Apple Fanbois. Turn buddy loose on my iTunes (he _always_ wants to choose) which drives the stereo from the laptop. Meanwhile, use iTunes Remote on the iPhone to mess with his selection. Starts, stops, restarts, song changes.

    (sure you could do this with the appropriate Android app + scriptable Amarok/Rhythmbox)

  23. Carnifex
    Coat

    Old School fun

    I had an incident once, many years ago. A co-worker took it upon himself to change my screensaver to Marquee, and set the text to something scatological. I responded by changing a line in his .INI files to SHELL=SOL.EXE. Just incase he was clever, I also added TASKMAN.EXE=WINMINE.EXE.

    Mine's the tatty one on the end there, thanks.

  24. J. Cook Silver badge
    Go

    Ah, office pranks...

    I am generally not the target of office pranks, primarily because no one likes it when their machines suddenly reboots and re-loads it's OS and applications in the middle of the day. :)

    1. Chaosechoz
      Happy

      @ J.Cook

      Ah, you subscribe to the same traditions as most of my team then our motto is:

      "He who dares (to piss about with our systems) loses harshly"

  25. rototype
    Happy

    Who needs wireless..

    I did the same on a 'colleague' using nothing more elabourate than a long thin USB lead (my desk was adjacent to his).

    Started with USB mouse 'drifting' (anyone who'se used the early MS optical mice knows they tend to drift) - he changed the mouse 5 times.

    Bored, attached a mini USB Hub and a keyboard. (by this time I'd let the rest of the office in on the secret..) random keys, screens appearing mysteriously... It was only when he unplugged it ready to do a full rebuild and I heard 'You Bastard!' I knew I'd been rumbled.

    Mind you, I'd had him going for nearly 6 weeks....

    Happy daze.....

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    no need to prank...

    I had a couple of staff who were not the most IT literate.

    I had taught them to take a screen shot and dump it into Paint then save it, as evidence of info entered on the web...

    The number of times they tried to close the windows in the picture... {shrug}

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