back to article BOFH: Resistance is futile - we're missing BEER O'CLOCK

"It's quite possibly the worst sound I've ever heard!" the Boss snaps. "So you've not heard duelling banjos played on the bagpipes?" I ask. "Or... anything.. on the piano accordion?" the PFY adds. "It's unprofessional!" he continues. "No it's not, having NOTHING would be unprofessional - this just implies a lack of …

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  1. Beamerboy

    An excellent start to a Friday! Love the use of the Kennedy

  2. DJ 2

    I think I've found my new Email signature

    "So you want to keep data which is local, only ever going to be local, only needed locally, never accessed remotely, not WANTED to be made available outside our building, which can only WEAKEN our security by being off site, hosted offsite." BOFH: Simon Travaglia

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I think I've found my new Email signature

      I'm keeping that as a note and using it the next time anyone mentions that C-word.

      Our last cloud disaster with migrating our email to the fog, our misty email provider decided we were a spam house due to automation test emails, and blocked our entire domain from sending for 2 days.

  3. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Very nice indeed

    Simon is on form. The long wait we had before this sudden burst of episodes has been spent well, methinks. Or maybe he had to recharge a battery (of the cattle prod, no doubt)

  4. theModge
    Thumb Up

    Would it be OK to do the same to people who suggest hadoop as the cure to all ills?

    Not that it isn't lovely for "big data", just that our database isn't a terrabyte in size...

    1. Primus Secundus Tertius

      Re: Would it be OK to do the same to people who suggest hadoop as the cure to all ills?

      I thought the NSA and other such people had the terrorbytes.

  5. Raphael
    Pint

    Brilliant Simon. Have a pint on me.

  6. Sir Runcible Spoon

    He dug it himself

    is redundant, just re-iterating the 'pitfalls' made that perfectly clear :)

    I had my Friday lunch-time drink last night, so I can't be late today.

  7. Nick Ryan Silver badge

    "So you want to keep data which is local, only ever going to be local, only needed locally, never accessed remotely, not WANTED to be made available outside our building, which can only WEAKEN our security by being off site, hosted offsite."

    I'm considering printing this off and taking it with me whenever I meet Yet Another Cloud Pusher.

  8. Asiren

    The barman knows too much!

    But I guess he's in on the whole thing. He is cashing in the pint and curry money, after all!

    1. Captain Scarlet
      WTF?

      Re: The barman knows too much!

      Curry in a pub, eat a Pastie Now!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The barman knows too much!

        Cornish pastie or Irish battered pastie?

  9. ShadowDragon8685

    Bwahahahaaaah.

    Laundering your ill-gotten gains through your local boozer has got to be a time-honored tradition, I imagine.

    Really, though, I almost wonder why The Bastard and his PFY don't just shop the agency for a boss who's smart enough not to suggest stupid things, dim enough not to think creatively, has enough fetishes to easily blackmail, and isn't criminal enough to fight back?

    Someone they can basically use as a rubber-stamp, in other words, the kind of arsejack who's happy to take credit for ideas and can, with some tutoring, speak intelligently enough about a topic to make the beancounters and upper executives go away when they poke their noses in to Mission Control Affairs. Someone who's kept in line for fear of the stick of his fetish for bigm hairy goats, or big, hairy Russians, or big, hairy russian goats being revealed to the world, and easily kept from going off the deep end by tossing him a meager carrot every now and then.

    1. SoaG

      Re: Bwahahahaaaah.

      "I almost wonder why The Bastard and his PFY don't just shop the agency"

      Then what would they do for fun?

  10. ElReg!comments!Pierre

    Ha, the pitfalls of the cloud-based strategy

    On a related note, the pitfalls of the NAS-as-a-backup strategy were made perfectly clear to some, when the mother of all power failures blew the power supply for their under-the-desk baby. I even managed to keep my "I told you so" smugness at a tolerable level, yay me.

    1. Gerhard Mack

      Re: Ha, the pitfalls of the cloud-based strategy

      He should have had a UPS but the data should be fine. Just pop the drives into a Linux machine and rebuild the raid.

      1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        Re: Ha, the pitfalls of the cloud-based strategy

        I changed the power supply instead, and they decided on a backup schedule without too much pressure. Apparently, brix were excreted for the whole 3 days it took me to source a replacement power supply. I just switched the thing back on 1/2 h ago; I officially achieved semi-god status (for the whole of 5 minutes).

        1. Youngdog

          Re: Ha, the pitfalls of the cloud-based strategy

          With a bit of forethought you could have just timed moving the drives into the spare chassis you had in the equipment room smartly - quickly enough to be still seen as Superman with a screwdriver and but not too long as to become the person to blame for allowing it to happen in the first place. Remember kids - make it look too easy and you won't get thanked half as much as you should!

          1. earl grey
            Coat

            Re: Ha, the pitfalls of the cloud-based strategy

            With a bit of foreskin you could have been well ahead of the problem.

            Sorry, getting my coat now.

  11. Moffy
    Pint

    I have been looking forward to the latest episode all week

    Strangely one of our suppliers has recently changed their on hold from being a luscious voiced female to seemingly someone of standing in their management. Im sure they must have a BOFH as he seemed to be somewhat nervous and high pitched in voice, like someone with his nuts in a vice under duress.

    An excellent episode. Beer O'clock on POETS day. Doesnt get much better

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I have been looking forward to the latest episode all week

      I have to chip in here.

      At a previous employers I was in the IT team that had to setup a new phone system.

      "The Boardroom" decided the company wanted to record it's own "press one for sales" sound clips etc.

      Long story short a Lady with a lovely voice was promptly located and hired to complete the task. She was introduced to me and handed me a business card.

      On this business card she described herself as a "Voice Model"

      That's all, very good 'episode' and for some reason it reminded me of being utterly bewlidered the day I met my first and only Vocal Model.

  12. Alan Sharkey

    Irony

    As I was reading this, an advert from BT appeared at the side

    "Want to put your business on the Cloud? - Talk to us".

    Ummm - possibly not......

    1. Chad H.

      Re: Irony

      Problem with clouds is there's nothing holding them up .

      1. Peter Simpson 1

        Re: Irony

        ...and sometimes they rain...bits

      2. Robert E A Harvey

        @Chad H. Re: Irony

        I've nicked that for my .sig file

      3. Tim99 Silver badge

        Re: Irony

        Problem with clouds is there's nothing holding them up .

        Except hot air?

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Irony

        "Problem with clouds is there's nothing holding them up"

        Grabbity. Grabbity grabs 'em and holds 'em up

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Irony

      One of our companies forced through a move of their corporate website to the cloud ... it was taken out of our hands.

      A few days ago the site suddenly went down, and it was tasked to us to get it working again.

      Turns out it was paid for on an employees credit card, and he'd left a couple of months ago, his card was cancelled and his email wasn't forwarded/checked ... we managed to get it back, but it had been scheduled for deletion.

      We will not be doing cloud again, for obvious reasons ...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Irony

      They are mostly vapour, after all.

    4. Annihilator

      Re: Irony

      "As I was reading this, an advert from BT appeared at the side"

      Gotta love vaguely intelligent adverts that widely miss the mark!

  13. ukgnome

    Yesterday I met the director of the firm I work, and I mentioned that IT can be dangerous work. His words were thus, nice that I have a BOFH on site, just remember that I'm one too.

  14. TeeCee Gold badge
    Facepalm

    Music on hold.

    #1) One of our offices decided that its selection of music on hold wasn't quite riveting enough to keep customers on the line. To solve the problem, they did a deal with the local radio station to pipe their output over our phone system. Now this sounds like a simple and convenient solution, but it does rather rely on your local radio station not subsequently signing a massive advertising deal with one of your major competitors, whose adverts are then played to your more cheesed-off[1] customers ad nauseum.

    There was blood on the walls (and boxes of belongings in the street) when one of the board members called across and got put on hold about six months later.

    #2 This one I have only heard and may be apocryphal.

    SKY (yes, that one) had a call centre specifically for "difficult" calls, the idea being that when the customer threatens to cancel, this is where they get routed to in a last-ditch attempt to rescue the situation. Apparently one of the songs on the music-on-call loop at said call centre was the unexpurgated version of the then current hit; "Fuck it (I don't want you back)"......

    [1] i.e. The ones waiting on hold.....

    1. Matt Newton

      Re: Music on hold.

      Ha, when I used to work at a credit card company I was in the late payments department. One of our pieces was "GOLD" by Spandau Ballet and another was Money Money Money by ABBA.

      I'm sure someone was trolling the customers, they couldn't have picked those two by accident.

    2. Andrew Harwood
      FAIL

      Re: Music on hold.

      When cancelling my Vodafone account a few years back I was treated to an on hold loop of Rick Astley's never gonna give you up.

      I was upset enough already and no, being rick rolled didn't convince me to stay

    3. The Corner of Möron
      Facepalm

      Re: Music on hold.

      I came across the radio station hold "music" for the first time this very week.

      My advice to any company thinking of doing the same is to check their output first.

      Sometimes they play music, but sometimes they also play adverts for breast augmentation!

  15. BenBell

    Plot Tiwst..

    Plot Twist, BOFH and PFY change the hold music to something they wrote and invoice the company for royalties... after stacking up every line in the building to call theam.

  16. Killraven

    I beg to differ!

    Dueling Banjos played on bagpipes is bloody brilliant!

    1. Bill Gould

      Re: I beg to differ!

      If you hate people. But who doesn't? People. What a bunch of bastards.

    2. Jedit Silver badge

      "Dueling Banjos played on bagpipes is bloody brilliant!"

      Like the BOFH, I believe that the definition of perfect pitch is when you throw a bagpiper off a cliff and he lands on an accordionist. The only exceptions to this are Orbital's Bigpipe Style and the Reel and Soul Society's accordion version of Green Onions. I am not downvoting your post, but only because it would be churlish to do so in addition to hurling you to your death on the rocks 200 feet below.

      I do, however, have "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana (AKA "the Old Spice music") played on a banjo. Now THAT'S good.

      1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

        Re: "Dueling Banjos played on bagpipes is bloody brilliant!"

        The Ride of the Valkyries played on banjos - now that was scary!

      2. Frumious Bandersnatch

        Re: "Dueling Banjos played on bagpipes is bloody brilliant!"

        I do, however, have "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana (AKA "the Old Spice music") played on a banjo. Now THAT'S good.

        Hey! I've got that one too (off Uncut: Strange Currencies). It's pretty good.

        Toy Doll's Beethoven Song is good too.

        1. Robert Helpmann??
          Childcatcher

          Re: "Dueling Banjos played on bagpipes is bloody brilliant!"

          Why not have the best... er... the worst ...um... something from both worlds?

    3. dak
      Thumb Up

      Re: I beg to differ!

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amNF_F6oeRU

      Or even...

      http://youtu.be/1_VBnCwi0jc

      1. Tweetiepooh
        Thumb Up

        Re: I beg to differ!

        Great stuff

  17. Tom7
    Thumb Up

    "Vinyl tax"

    Gold.

  18. OGShakes

    Cloudy Minds

    Well there was the time that a client of mine could not understand why it would take 5 days for his server to be restored from the 'cloud backup' after a fire. Or they would send him a disk next day for £150.

    The other client who made everyone work from the office, who was amazed that they all just sat there doing nothing after their internet went and they could not get at all their cloud services.

  19. ammabamma
    Meh

    Cloudy truth

    All advantages and drawbacks of "the Cloud" can be concisely explained simply by replacing "the Cloud" with "someone else's computer".

    As for "IT pitfalls", I imagine those comms risers and elevator shafts provide quite a drop...

    1. Blitheringeejit
      Thumb Up

      Re: Cloudy truth

      >>All advantages and drawbacks of "the Cloud" can be concisely explained simply by replacing "the Cloud" with "someone else's computer".

      That's the one going in my sig - upvote!

  20. Herby

    Of voice "models"

    In my earlier days (the early 80's) I worked for a company that provided computers for answering services. Yes, they DID exist.

    With almost true regularity the nicest "voices" were the people (barely describes them) who were the most ugly people you would see. Usually VERY overweight and sometimes proud of it.

    When me and my co-worker were out in the field, we would mention in passing "there goes another answering service lady broad". This continued for quite some time, as we observed the installations we worked on.

    As for Friday. Simon is making them very enjoyful more and more these days. Wonderful to have BOFH weeks in a row!

  21. earl grey
    Pint

    very nicely done

    Go ahead, you deserve one (or more),

    I need a new keyboard now.

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