Bastard Operator From Hell
Encyclopedia : B : BA : BAS : Bastard Operator From Hell
The Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH), a fictional character created by Simon Travaglia, is a rogue system administrator who takes out his anger on lusers (his colleagues, bosses and anyone who gets in his way).
The BOFH stories were originally posted in 1992 to Usenet by Travaglia, with some being reprinted in Datamation. They were published weekly from 1995 to 1999 in Network Week and from 2000 they have been published every few weeks in The Register. They were also published in PC Plus magazine for a short time, and several books of the stories have also been released.
By extension, the term is also used to refer to any system administrator who displays (or wishes he could get away with) the qualities of the original. The term has become common Internet slang. In the stories the BOFH also spent a brief amount of time as a Bastard System Manager From Hell (BSMFH) - however, this has failed to pass into common usage online.
In the stories, the PFY (Pimply-Faced Youth) is the BOFH's assistant; this too has become a general term for a junior or trainee system administrator.
Storylines
The stories take place in three locations; early BOFH editions took place in a university, moving on to an office workplace over time (an exact transition is not given). BOFH 2k began with the BOFH and PFY moving to a new company.
Whilst the BOFH gets irritated at the incompetence of users, he does use this to his advantage to further his devious means, mainly using the following tricks:
- Deleting luser accounts
- Deleting luser's files
- Lifting floor tiles so lusers (or engineers, or the Boss) fall down them
- Electrocuting lusers (from an over-voltage cattle prod, using nails as fuses, or by other means)
- Locking the machine room and triggering the Halon release
- Trapping them in the lift
- Slamming their testicles in desk drawers
- Pushing lusers off the comms riser
- Blackmail
- Putting the luser on the FBI's top ten most wanted list
- Destroying systems with etherkillers (power cables spliced onto a piece of coax cable)
Characters
The following characters appear regularly :
- The BOFH, actual name of Simon
- The PFY (BOFH's assistant, 1996-), actual name of Steven
- The Boss (changes throughout the stories as successive bosses are sacked, leave or have nasty "accidents")
- Beancounters from Accounting (disposable, interchangeable, faceless)
- The CEO
- The Head of IT
- Helldesk Operators (disposable, interchangeable, faceless)
- The Boss's Secretary, Sharon
- Security (tape Emmerdale over CCTV video tapes, useless with computers)
- George, the cleaner (invaluable source of information)
Books
- The Bastard Operator From Hell (Plan Nine, ISBN 1-929462-17-4)
- Bastard Operator From Hell II: Son of the Bastard (Plan Nine, ISBN 1-929462-40-9)
- Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell (Plan Nine, ISBN 1-929462-48-4)
- Dummy Mode Is Forever (Plan Nine, ISBN 1-929462-63-8)
- Dial "B" For Bastard (Plan Nine, ISBN 1-929462-94-8)
See also
External links
- [BOFH stories, 1988-1999]
- *Note: As of June 2006, the root page of the site has been replaced with an obituary to the author's father, "Dominic (Don) Alfonsis Travaglia, 17-November-1922 - 2-June-2006". However, the stories can still be reached by going directly to the [old index page]
- [BOFH stories, 2000- from The Register]
- [BOFH books from Plan Nine Publishing]
- [BOFH official FAQ]
- [BOFH official history]
- [BOFH Excuse Server]
- [The BOFH Text Adventure Game]
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.