back to article BOFH: Step into my office. Now take a deep breath

"Oh this takes me back to the early days of ST225s!" the Boss burbles. I am getting a personally tailored lesson in being careful what I wish for. On one hand, the PFY and myself wanted a new Boss who at least knew which end of a keyboard he could shove up his arse when he asked for the ability to type Norwegian potato …

  1. Lionel Baden

    teeheehee

    Nice to see them kept on their toes !

  2. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Custard
      Thumb Up

      Re: Superb

      Amen to that - too late for a cuppa and just slightly too early for a beer (although it is a nice sunny day outside, so maybe...).

      Filled that awkward Friday afternoon gap nicely :)

  3. AbelSoul
    Pint

    Re: less likely to cause waves than an anorexic high diver with a parachute

    Now there's an image to take to the pub with you.

    Bravo, sir!

    Nearly beer-o-clock!

  4. ZSn

    oh dear!

    I feel that I might be that boss!

  5. earl grey
    Pint

    absence of bum pain

    you've not been at it long enough. somehow i missed what happened to the old boss.

    anyway, it's proper to offer one.

  6. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    Interesting

    I rather suspect the BOFH will actually enjoy having a boss that's actually a bit of a challenge - although he'd never admit it. Like the time when...

  7. Chris Miller

    Halon?

    I can remember when we used to have Halon in our fire suppression systems. Now, stop me if I've told you this before ...

  8. BongoJoe

    I remember when...

    Seriously I was visiting the computer room (they didn't have IT in those days) at the top of a chemical factory's stack somewhere in Teesside when an alarm went off after a particular vigorous shaking of whatever it was that they they were brewing under my feet when the Halon Dump went off.

    It was like trying to breathe a brick wall.

    Health and Safety evacuation procedures in those days involved thwacking me around the back of the head to get my attention and then shoving me out of the nearest door roughly.

    All in all, an interesting day that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It was like trying to breathe a brick wall.

      You're lucky. When our system went off one night, due to a major lightning strike on the roof, the overpressure from the gas injection shifted the internal walls. Had anyone been in the room I think it would have been more like trying to catch a brick wall dropped from a great height.

  9. Admiral Grace Hopper

    Oh dear

    I have a grim sense of self-awareness gathering around me.

  10. Borg.King
    Thumb Up

    Thank you Simon

    Many, many, gentle chuckles without the required trip to the Gents to wash the coffee out of my keyboard. ST225's are a bit modern though.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "someone who lives in the shadow of their former glories"

    So, pretty much every boss I've ever had, except that their "former glories" usually total a big, fat zero.

    1. chivo243 Silver badge

      Re: "someone who lives in the shadow of their former glories"

      wait until you are reliving them... I live in the "in my previous job" universe... even though no names are mentioned and no company is named, I know where he is coming from... scary\boring\inevitable?

  12. Tom Maddox Silver badge
    Trollface

    Fess up

    Which Reg commentard is the new Boss? My money's on jake, but there are so many possibilities.

  13. Chozo

    Old age and cunning trumps youth and enthusiasm every time but is something more twisted afoot?

  14. JimboSER

    Problem boss

    "Someone whose career is so far behind him he needs the Hubble telescope to look back on it."

    Classic Simon, I will definitely need to steel that.

    Speaking of classic, love the return of halon to the plot line. This boss is a crafty one, in an Inspector Clouseau sort of way. I expect that he may survive a few more attempts at being shown the exit. I'd suggest an extended junket for the boss while they use his access to go on a shopping spree and otherwise pad their coffers.

  15. Johndoe888
    Paris Hilton

    Gina

    What happened to her ?

  16. Herby

    Looking back isn't that bad...

    I for one look back fondly to the 80's 70's 60's when I started this career path. Drives in those days barely held megabytes and you could actually see the spinning rust (don't wear a tie when servicing!). Oh, the platters were 14 inches across as well.

    And today I'm picking my KSR33 from the repair shop just to seal the deal.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Looking back isn't that bad...

      "Oh, the platters were 14 inches across as well."

      Those were only the exchangeable disks. When the University's 1907 got a fixed disk it had a building all of its own. I always envisaged it as something Brunel might have built.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Looking back isn't that bad...

      And today I'm picking my KSR33 from the repair shop just to seal the deal.

      You can't fix it yourself? What sort of a wimp are you?

    3. Dave 32

      Re: Looking back isn't that bad...

      Platters? PLATTERS!?! Real computers used magnetic drums, not disk platters. Consider, for example, the IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Calculator, or the IBM 701 computer with its 732 Magnetic Drum unit:

      https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_PH5-19.html

      http://www.cedmagic.com/history/ibm-650-drum.html

      Then, there was the Univac FASTRAND drum:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_FASTRAND

      The gyroscopic effects those things produced was amazing.

      Now, I have told you about core memory and vacuum tubes....

      Dave

      1. Andy A

        Re: Looking back isn't that bad...

        I remember a ZEBRA computer which used a drum as MAIN STORE. You used a strobe to adjust the speed before it could boot. None of your new-fangled magnetic cores.

        None either in the Ferranti Sirius - ours had 4K words of delay line store.

      2. NucWorker
        Black Helicopters

        Re: Looking back isn't that bad...

        Platters? PLATTERS? Real computers used 2K ferrite core hard cards (that had to be rebuilt when the wires broke)!!! <<<grin>>>

        1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

          Re: Looking back isn't that bad...

          I was at Bletchley Park a few weeks back and they had some very nice examples of delay line memory. I'm pretty sure that predates any sort of your new-fangled magnetic storage.

  17. thx1138v2

    "...assemble bytes by hand from a box of 1s and 0s and then hammer them into a 150-baud serial cable with a mallet." Young whipper snappers have it so easy.

    Try figuring out the EBCDIC code in hex to hand punch a stack of hollerith cards to get the Univac 9300 RPG compiler to add a couple of cards to the program stack to get the silly machine to automatically load the next program card stack instead of having to manually do it.

    It was worth it though. Just stack the programs to run one after another and off to the icehouse for a couple of brews.

    BTW, I see the spell checker doesn't even recognize EBCDIC, hollerith, Univac, RPG, or icehouse. What the hell is the world coming to?

  18. Montreal Sean

    Well crap.

    I think I may have the disease, and I'm not even 40 yet.

  19. swm

    Retired

    Ah! The good old days (before bytes and Microsoft) when I would insert code form the switches (remember when computers had control panels?). The old Diablo model 31 disks were great - I would give one to my son with a screw driver and it would keep him busy for an hour as he disassembled it into its component parts. My first computer had vacuum tubes (valves) in it ... oh oh I guess I'm "someone who lives in the shadow of their former glories" ... but it was fun "touching the bits" before everything got so formal and remote.

  20. Will Godfrey Silver badge

    Huh. Kids today

    My mum ruined her eyesight working every night by candle light sewing pockets into inch wide hessian belts so dad could slot the little magnets in for the '0's and '1's.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    the odds are in and the book is open for how the boss issue is resolved !!!

    Ok so place your bets!!

    5-1 the boss falls down a lift shaft.

    10-1 boss falls down stairs.

    15-1 boss has an air-conditioning unit fall on him in the street outside the office.

    7-1 the boss gets found with inappropriate images on his computer.

    favourites. the boss gets run over in the car park by someone from accounts that has been set up by the BOFH but thinks its all the bosses fault.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: the odds

      That's it? how about:

      - boss prefers a CRT so PFY disables the X-ray protection

      - boss finds sildenafil in his coffee, the hard way

      - boss falls up the stairs

    2. craigb

      Re: the odds are in and the book is open for how the boss issue is resolved !!!

      the boss falls down a lift shaft - you know, that reminds me of the time when a lift was malfunctioning at a previous employer - the doors opened and a colleague fell 13 floors to his rather sudden death. I tell you, after seeing that splat mark I always check thrice before entering.

      boss falls down stairs - did I tell you the story of my last medical checkup. The doctor told me, and I'm being dead serious, that more of his patients die taking the stairs than the elevator.

      boss has an air-conditioning unit fall on him in the street outside the office - outside? as in real life outside? I must share this story of the last time I went outside, it was just before that lady took over, what was her name again, Marge something or another...

      I'll put a tenner on the boss gets found with inappropriate images on his computer, another tenner says it doesn't stick.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: the odds are in and the book is open for how the boss issue is resolved !!!

      What about the Murder-Bot going on an unscheduled rampage? I think they got it back and it is somewhat broken and perhaps it is time to fix it and upgrade it with new hardware?

      ... Because, its wrong to let a poor robot languish in the basement just because of a slight programming error.

  22. Unicornpiss
    Pint

    You had me at...

    "Norwegian potato language" --classic!

  23. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Scary?

    In my first venture from the world of science into IT the shop was mostly VAX/VMS. The machine room was occupied by two operators sitting side by side watching two terminals. The terminals were displaying apparently identical streams of VMS messages. Both operators were called Simon. Looking back, that seems scary.

    1. DJV Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Scary?

      You sure it wasn't one bloke, one terminal and a large mirror?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Scary?

      I got this broadcast message:

      """

      MSG from SYSTEM: I have upped my priority, now up yours!

      """

  24. Philip Storry

    It's the damnedest thing, but I have this strong suspicion that Simon's recently been at an El Reg staff do and found himself sat next to Dabbsy...

    Am I alone in this?

  25. Hazmoid

    I'll admit the first computer I worked on was a BBC

    but I did have the joy of working with the mainframes at the WARCC (Western Australian Regional Computing Centre while studying Engineering. Punch cards, and green and black terminal screens, along with line printers

    Ohoh think I'm turning into that boss! Time to check the subfloor, halon system and make sure there is a lift there before stepping in.

    1. magpie67

      Re: I'll admit the first computer I worked on was a BBC

      Wow, I thought I was the only one who remembered WARCC :}, still have some of their equipment in the shed :}

      http://www.alex-reid.com/Personal/WARCC.html

  26. eJ2095

    The Boss

    Meets the CattleProd...

  27. ShadowDragon8685

    Perhaps this boss, like one of the ones they previously attempted to do away with, will find himself "accidentally" locked in the backup storage safe?

  28. Douchus McBagg

    I would love to see a Brunel hard disk. reminds me of the boxed in flywheels on the cotton mill steam engines so they didn't produce howling gales. Never mind losses to aerodynamics, just shovel in some more coal!

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