Simon's Bastard Pre-history

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Simon's Bastard Pre-history

BOFH © 1990-1995 by "Simon Travaglia" and Datamation. All rights reserved.

The Prehistory of BOFH

Where it came from, How and Why

I get people asking from time to time, so I may as well tell...

Where it came from:

So I was writing the Striped Irregular Bucket and I was in much the same situation as the poor operator I was writing about. I was bored shitless. So I thought I'd bash out a couple of lines about something, and where better to start than a place I knew. So I chunked out Striped Irregular Bucket, which was far less offensive than some of my previous posts. Unlike most of my other posts, I knew the area I was talking about. (Being bored in a Computer Room that is). Then I started getting mail from people, which was unusual in itself, and it didn't say that my library books were overdue and it wasn't from story-tellers who wanted to tell you why they needed more disk, connect time etc. I ignored most of this and went on with other writing, resurrecting BOFH (who was as yet pretty much unnamed) in Striped Irregular Bucket #5. Then I got more mail, so I thought I'd bash out a couple of BOFH articles. So I did, then ran out of material briefly, so I stopped. Then got some material, and started then stopped again. That was about BOFH #15, after a brief splurge into BSMFH. Etc etc. Then I went to Britian for a year and worked for Enterprise Oil PLC (good place, say Hi!) in London, bricking out 2 articles in that time. Along the way, Waikato kept my old account open, so I'd get maybe one mail message a week from someone who'd just read it for the first time. I still do, strangely enough. Anyway, so I got back home, took up a job as Analyst Programmer, kissed the Computer Room goodbye, and thought that would make a fitting end to the BOFH.

To all the people who mailed me over 1993 or so and got no reply, sorry, but had to login from a Sun Sparc SLC via a modem to a machine which connected to a machine which let me login via a weird version of telnet to home in New Zealand.

Anyway, that's the very end of it. I know I've said that a couple of times, but there you go, you can't trust an Operator. But you can trust an A/P - Trust me.

---------------------------------------------------------

21-Mar-1994.
Okay, so I lied.

18-Nov-94
Lied again..

May-Jun-1995
Still lying...

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Have you found errors nontrivial or marginal, factual, analytical and illogical, arithmetical, temporal, or even typographical? Please let me know; drop me email. Thanks!
 

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