💾 Archived View for clemat.is › saccophore › library › ebooks › bofh › newbofh › bofh2apr97.txt captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38.
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TThhee BBaassttaarrdd OOppeerraattoorr FFrroomm HHeellll
TThhee BBOOFFHH wwiinnss aann aawwaarrdd ffrroomm hhiiss ppeeeerr ggrroouupp ......
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It's a calm Monday morning when the Boss strolls into the office with
the air of the cat with the proverbial cream.
"How did that router sale go off then?" he asks, unable to disguise his
smugness at managing to sell off a piece of kit that was so crap that it
wouldn't even pass the self-tests needed to become a boat anchor.
"They came and got it" I reply, referring to the poor bastards who
bought the kit from us and who are no doubt now in the process of trying
to extinguish the fire, "but I still think it was a little on the nose
selling it to them".
"Sounds to me like a case of Caveat Emptor" the boss chuckles smugly.
"Really?" I respond, "I thought it was a router! Mind you, I don't trust
those foreign wines - After Chernobyl you never know if they're going to
be radioactive ..."
The boss looks at me as if I've been mentally demoted to the using
classes, but the PFY knows the big plan and keeps quiet.
"How DID you manage to convince them?" I ask appealing to the boss' s
need to gloat.
"Oh, just told them that it was one of the original units and still as
good at the day we bought it," he sniggers, mentally convincing himself
that he's the brains of the outfit ...
And that's one thought that I'm not going to challenge because today is
April 1st - Bastard Boss Day - and I have my eyes on a certain prize
that has eluded me for many years.
This year I've decided to sell the boss on using the network as a
storage medium. I casually drop a couple of remarks until the boss
decides to channel his massive intelligence away from tying his
shoelaces and onto the matter at hand.
"It's simplicity itself!" I cry "We've got these Gigabit Ethernet
switches all around the place that we just aren't using! Instead of
letting them go to waste we could be sending data continuously around
them until it's needed which would actually cut down on the amount of
physical disk storage we would need! And just think of the time we would
save with read and write latency when the data's already on the net!"
"It would never work," the PFY counters, all according to plan. "Our
networks are too short - the data would be back before it had finished
leaving the machine."
"Not," I add, "if we were to make the network longer to add a short
delay. Why, 10 drums of Cat-5 wired together would be sufficient".
"Hey!" the PFY smiles. "That's right - I never thought of that."
Our interplay has been enough to sell the Boss. Had I put forward the
idea and the PFY agreed, the Boss would have trodden with caution,
fearing the worst. With the PFY "on his side" he now knows that the idea
is a sure thing.
Like lambs to the slaughter ...
"Excellent, I'm sure that the head of department will approve!"
"Would you be sure to mention that I thought of it?" I ask, placing the
last two nails in the Boss's coffin. Now he's sure that it's the real
thing and there is no way on earth he's going to let me take credit for
it.
He toddles off to the Head of Dept while the PFY and I try to stroll
nonchalantly back to the office. I fire up the CCTV recorder on the
microcamera in the Big Boss's office.
This little recording is sure to earn me the Trophy I have desired for
so long - the coveted "IT Idiot" Award for Least Intelligent Supervisor
- at the Bastard Boss Competitions at a Central London pub later on
tonight ...
We get the recorder going just in time ...
"Anyway... " the boss burbles in simulated intelligence mode, "I was
just wandering through the department today and a thought struck me.
What with the rising cost of disk it might be an interesting plan to use
our networks as a storage medium ..."
He goes on to paraphase the food-waste-product that we fed him, while
commenting that he's fired off an order for 20 drums of Cat-5.
The explosion is inevitable. The head of department, whilst in practical
terms about as useful as loopback plug for an electric type-writer, did
spend about six years teaching networking fundamentals to first year
university students.
The PFY and I capture everything in case there's some question of
'doping' ...
Later that night as I guzzle a pint or two from my latest acquisition, I
can't help but feel a twinge of remorse. Maybe I should have convinced
him to use lift cables as emergency UPS power distribution wiring
instead.
Ah well, there's always next year ...
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