The Bastard Operator from Hell (1999)
To whom it may concern, the TN state "BOFH" license plate should be available now. I've had it for 30 years, but i'm not able to drive anymore and the truck died, so I didn't renew it last month.
BOFH is still a periodic fixture on TheRegister: https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/
I had BOFH as a vanity plate on my car and I never met one person that understood the reference outside of work. Yes I'm old. lol
If anyone wants to ROTFL, then this is a good place to start.
I've been following Simon Travaglia since the 1980s.
I don't know if he still has his old site up, but he also had a bunch of amusing views on Kiwi culture.
Back when computer expertise was hard to come by, so admins could lord over users. The Internet has made these people extinct. SNL parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25J3u3P-HHg
Related. Others?
The Bastard Operator from Hell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37881524 - Oct 2023 (2 comments)
The Bastard Operator from Hell (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29590667 - Dec 2021 (98 comments)
The Bastard Operator From Hell (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21903668 - Dec 2019 (94 comments)
I had a run-in with the BOFH in real life many years ago as a university student where he was working. I'd messed up something network-related on a lab PC, and noticed that the NIC was now in promiscuous mode for some reason. I did a bit of idle poking around and pinged a few interesting hostnames I found. I was called into the the BOFH's office the next day and interrogated. He glared at me as I explained, and eventually let me off with a stern warning, though the PC was snatched from the lab before I made it back there and never seen again.
If you like bofh and don’t know the ancient lore of tae the paramedic, you’ll enjoy reading it since it is similar in flavor.
Probably a better archive somewhere besides Reddit, but this is another Usenet classic
Https://www.reddit.com/r/ems/comments/1pnao9/the_collected_magical_world_of_tae_the_paramedic/
Still have the three BOFH Omnibus volumes in my Kindle app, bought originally from Simon, who has since discontinued their sale on Amazon for some reason, IIRC Amazon fees/taxes/something like that which would actually lose him money from having it for sale there.
I've reread all three volumes quite a few times over the years, currently on Volume I, year 2000 #24 again, since I mainly read a few stories every time I'm on my 30 minute (lunch) break at work.
If Simon reads this, thank you for your work amusing your readers, me among them.
Simon has since updated his website—a couple of different times I think?—but I only feel right reading the pre-El Reg archives the way I read them in 2007, which happily is still on the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20070811042222fw_/http://bofh.nt...
(Open an episode in a new tab/window to escape the IFRAME viewport.)
BOFH, BileBlog, The Daily WTF;
No wonder we all turned cynical.
This got me a job because I told my now boss, after he described the dutys, "You're looking for a PFY".
Been there 10 years.
Was suddenly reminded of this while trying to fix my laptop. Thought other people might also enjoy it on lazy Saturday afternoon.
Love it, this seems very similar to https://www.actsofgord.com/
Another funny one is the Twitter account of that guy from Kazakhstan. I forget his name.
oh yeah got it.
@DEVOPS_BORAT.
check him out. hilarious.
last i checked, a while ago, he had stopped tweeting, but there are many previous tweets of his anyway, which should still be accessible.
Edit:
In the context of this current hn thread, this is a gem of a tweet from him:
@DEVOPS_BORAT · Mar 30, 2011 Confuse of Dev or Ops? Simple rule: if you are praise for Web site success, you are Dev; if you are blame when Web site down, you are Ops.
having been on both sides of the fence, I can resonate with that.
“If that bothers you, don’t read it”
Ah, refreshing.
Whenever I hear the word level 1 technician I think about waffle irons
The tales continue at El Reg:
This made me joining systems administration back in the 90s
The BOFH is soon to be replaced by the BAIFH.
Also, bofhcam https://bofhcam.org
To this day, I still occasionally imply that perhaps someone needs to power surge their drivers.
Love it!
Not because I would, or think anyone should, just because it's funny as hell.
Wow does the BOFH kill the user in all of them. That's so dark lol
I remember finding this funny back in the 90s but it’s just kind of sad to me now. Today he just seems like a very unhappy, psychopathic character.
now we call them devops
Richard Lewis coined 'the blank from hell'
Classic. Remember, the BOFH is no longer the "operator" of some systems at a university. Now he's your ISP, your search engine, your social media services, and many other important things you rely on.
"Well, the answer is, we do nothing FOR users. We do things TO users. It's a fine distinction, but an important one all the same."
https://www.chinet.com/html/bofh/lastbofh.html