This guy\'s a system manager now...?
... Did you happen to get this guy\'s name, or the company he is now the system manager of...?

The Bastard System Manager from Hell #1

I get into my office and it\'s my first day - I want to make a good impression, so I empty my IN tray into the bin. Now that\'s what I call efficient!

I get a call from the big boss - he\'s been getting complaints about the Trainee Bastard Operator from Hell. I ask him to forward all the complaints to me and that it would be best to let me deal with them. I ring the operator and get him to make an appointment with me.

Two weeks later, he does, and I show him the complaints that have accumulated so far.

\"Seventy Three complaints in your first three weeks!\" I shout \"It\'s good - but it\'s NOT Good Enough! You should be getting at least 10 complaints a day - AT LEAST! Now, let\'s see what you\'re doing wrong: You get a call from a user - what do you do?\"

\"Kill them off?\" The TBOFH replies

\"NO! How can you kill them off if you don\'t know their USERNAME? Your FIRST priority is to get their username. Then what would you do?\"

\"Kill them off?\"

\"NO! Get them to tell you what their problem is!\"

\"Why?\"

\"Because later I can say they didn\'t explain their problem to you properly! It\'s a great defence - works every time. A user rings me up to complain; I listen to their problem, then say \"OH, WHEN YOU SAID `MY PC DOESN\'T WORK\' HE MUST HAVE THOUGHT YOU MEANT `HOW CAN I MAKE MY PC NEVER WORK AGAIN AND DESTROY MY LIFE\'S WORK AT THE SAME TIME?\' - IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!\' then they tell me how implausible that is, I say how terribly sorry we are, then fake some connect and CPU time records so their monthly bill is about the same as the Uraguayan national debt... Understand? So, after you\'ve heard their problem, what do you do?\"

\"Kill them off?\"

\"NO! Then you make up some excuse. Have you got an excuse card calendar?\"

\"Uh. No..\"

\"And you said you were qualified to operate a computer! You\'d better have mine.\" I pass my computer card calendar over, flipping it to page one - \"ENTROPY\"....... ...I like it. \"Now, you give the cretin an excuse then what do you do?\"

\"Kill them off?\"

\"YES!\" (He certainly has a fixation) \"Then what?\"

\"Hang up?\"

\"NO! Then they\'ll call you back when the problem recurs. Your job is to make them FEAR calling you. How can you work when people are calling? So, you make them pay for calling in the first place. What would you do?\"

\"Delete their files?\"

\"Yeah, it\'s a start, but then they may call back when they get new files. You want them NEVER to call back. What could you do?\"

\"Swear at them?\"

\"No. I can see we\'ll have to demonstrate. Have you got a metal ballpoint?\"

\"Yes\"

\"See that wallsocket over there. Take the refill out of the pen and poke in into the wallsocket.\"

\"But it\'s live!\"

\"Would I really make you do it if it were live?\"

\"Oh\" >fiddle< >fiddle< >BZZZZZZZEEEEERT!< >THUD!<

Of course I would.

He was no good anyway. No killing instinct.

... He\'s still alive.

And even worse, there\'s more of them!

The BASTARD SYSTEM MANAGER FROM HELL #2

So I\'m interviewing for new Operators, and, as the Bastard System Manager from Hell, I have high standards. And as the Immediate Past Bastard Operator from Hell, I have even higher standards.

I get the first applicant in.

\"Ok\" I say \"I\'m just going to ask you some simple questions to guage your knowledge of Computing and Networking in relation to the Operations Field\"

\"Sure\"

\"Right. Question One. What\'s the best way to stop an individual posting nasty articles to news?\"

\"Close their account\"

\"Good - But can you elaborate?\"

\"Delete all their files, Change their password to `Knobhead\' and Erase any backups of their account\"

\"Excellent. What is a killfile?\"

\"Uh. It\'s a list of usernames/topics/news items etc that you wish the news- reader to automatically skip so you don\'t have to wade through rubbish\"

\"Uh No. Remember I said pertaining to Operations. A killfile is in fact a file with a list of names of people you are going to kill.\"

\"Oh. Of course.\"

\"Never mind. What is DCE?\"

\"Delete, Close and Erase\"

\"Good. DTR?\"

\"DON\'T TRY to RING. The Operator\'s watchword\"

\"Well done. DBMS?\"

\"Dont Bug My Supervisor. Probably the most important acronym around\"

\"You betcha. Ok. A user comes to you with a complaint about another user sending sexually explicit email messages to them. What do you do?\"

\"Take a copy of the messages, close the complainant\'s account (by accident) and extort money from the mailer by threatening to show their parents\"

\"Good. I think you\'ll do nicely. Hang onto this wire...\"

\"I don\'t think so.\"

\"Excellent. You passed the final test. You start tommorrow. Please leave by that door so as not to disturb the other applicants.\"

BZZZZZEEEERETTT!

Electrified Door Handle. Gets them every time. I think it\'s the \"Complaints Dept\" sign that draws them to it like moths to a globe...

I push the body out onto the fire escape.

\"NEXT!\"

Where did you find this stuff?

Long story on that one, Zero.

The Bastard Operator from Hell #14

Don\'t ask how I got back, I just did. Suffice to say that work frowns upon management material that uses electrodes to gain client information. Especially when you do it to the boss\'s in-laws. That\'s HIS entertainment.

So I\'m back in the saddle. Unfortunately, that means there\'s a surplus of operators in the computer room. One slam of the tape safe door later, the problem is solved. The knocking dies down in a couple of hours, so I guess the safes really *are* airtight.

To welcome myself back, I send a message out saying there\'s a shutdown in 10 minutes. 5 minutes later I shut the system down. I love doing that. I see the hard-disk activity lights flicker as the \"disk recovery\" phase of startup run through, globally deleting journal files. Funny how we always start up with lots of free disk..

I just get Wolfenstein started and the phone rings. What the hell, I almost missed it while I was away, so I answer it.

\"Computer Room\" I say

\"THAT WASN\'T TEN MINUTES!!!!\" the voice at the other end screams

\"What wasn\'t 10 minutes?\" I ask in a pleasant manner. I can see that things have deteriorated in my absence. Spare the rod and spoil the rm -r, that\'s what I always say.

\"THAT! You said it was going to be te... >pause<... Um, who is this?\"

\"This is the Operator; who did you expect it to be?\"

\"Darren? Is that Darren?\"

\"Uh, No. Darren.. Darren is... unavailable... at the moment.\"

\"Oh. Do you know when he\'ll be back in the control room?\"

\"Probably around the time of our next backup - the year 2007 or sometime thereabouts I should imagine\"

He\'s toying with asking me if he can recover their files or not. I let him dangle for a few moments.

\"Was that all?\", I say, nice as pie

\"Well.... NO, it doesn\'t matter\"

\"Of course it doesn\'t. Would you like me to check if your files are ok?\" I prompt

\"Would you? I\'m a bit new to this system and I\'m not too sure what to do\"

\"Sure. What was your username?\"

Everything inside him is screaming at him not to say it - People beside him are screaming at him not to say it.

He says it.

You just can\'t tell some people.

\"Ok. Well, it looks ok to me, all your files are in perfect condition!\" I say

\"THEY ARE!! GREAT!!\"

The relief in his voice is overwhelming

>clickety< >clickety<

\"Yep. Both your x-defaults and AND your newsrc file are ok\"

\"But.. But what about my site monitoring data?\"

\"Sorry?\"

\"There were about 10 files in my research subdirectory, data I\'d collected over the past year.\"

\"Oh. Well, I can\'t see anything. Perhaps you backed them up somewhere?\"

\"I put a copy in my girlfriend\'s account..\"

\"What was her username?\"

\"Uh.... >pause< ... \"

Is he going to do it? Is he?

He does.

Like running down a snail with a steamroller...

>clickety clickety<

\"Nope, nothing there either. OH! Hang on, there looks like some form of journal file in your account, it\'s quite large... I think maybe you should login there and try to recover with it...\"

I cat about 100 man files together and slop them in his girlfriends account under then name \"rsrch.j\"

\"How do I do that?\"

\"Ok; can you login yet?\"

\"Yeah, I think so..... Ok, I\'m logged in\"

\"Ok, You need to run the file thru the mailer to clear the eigth bit, other- wise the journal recovery will probably choke with an instruction error\"

>DUMMY MODE ON<

\"Oh... How do I do that?\"

\"Well, you have to type in `mail root < rsrch.j\'\"

\"Ok!\"

\"HANG ON! You have to type it with your nose.\"

\"WH..? WHY?\"

I flip the excuse card till something appropriate pops up. \"HARDWARE STRESS FRACTURES\"

\"Well, it\'s got to do with hardware stress fractures. You probably type too hard with your fingers which upsets the internals of the keyboard. It\'s got to do with dry joints and electromagnetic inductance\"

>DUMMY MODE IRREVOCABLY ON<

\"Oh. Ok\"

\"Now, you\'ve got to type it in 20 times\"

\"Sure, ok\"

He hangs up.

I ring campus security

\"Hey, we\'ve got another crazy in the lab. Apparently he\'s typing with his nose. He might be armed...\"

3 minutes later I hear the shots. I close his account, he won\'t be needing it any more..

The phone rings. It\'s my Mum.

\"Hi Ma, what can I do for you?\"

\"Simon, I\'ve got a problem at work, the floppy disk with all my personal stuff on it is failing I think\"

\"Oh. Ok. Well, have you got any nail polish remover and some cotton wool buds?\"

\"Yes\"

\"Ok, take your disk out, and clean that brown stuff off the inside of the disk. That\'s what gets the heads dirty. You should just have a nice clean plastic disk when you\'ve cleaned it completely\"

\"Oh, Ok Simon, Thanks\"

\"You\'re welcome. Oh; remember that time you wouldn\'t let me go over to Graeme\'s place to watch videos when I was 11?\"

\"Yeah, why?\"

\"Oh, No reason..\"

I notice this guy\'s killing a lot more people in these later episodes.

*cough*

THE Bastard Operator from Hell #15


It\'s a warm afternoon in the computer room. I dunno, maybe I should turn the chillers back on, but what the hell, I\'ve got a cold and I need to keep warm.

I flip today\'s excuse card. Magnetic Interferance from Money/Credit Cards. Hmmm, vague enough to be plausible. The phone rings

\"Hello, Computer Room\" I say \"Hi!\" the caller says \"I want to fit some RAM to my machine to upgrade the memory. I just bought some 8 meg chips off a guy in town and wanted to know if you guys would fit it.\"

\"Well,\" I say \"normally we would, but today the technicians are busy trying to gas axe open our tape safe to see why it smells - You could probably fit it yourself though..\"

\"Really? I thought that was dangerous?\" she says

\"Nah nah, it\'s safe as houses, just remember to get the chips out of those stupid plastic bags before they stuff them up altogether\"

\"Really?! How do they do that?\"

\"Well, you\'ve heard of static RAM right?\"

\"Yes...\"

\"Well, Why pack static RAM in an antistatic bag? Sounds really suspect if you ask me!!! Yours might even be stuffed already, so you\'d better remove them..\"

>D.M. ON<

\"Oh >crinkle crinkle< Ok. Now what do I do?\"

\"Ok, you\'ll need to get rid of the charge those bags have probably given your RAM, after all, you don\'t want to blow up your computer, do you? Get rid of any woolens that you\'re wearing and switch to nylon. Run round some cheap carpet, then comb your hair a couple of dozen times and then plug the chips into the comb to keep them steady. Turn your machine on, then plug the memory in and out about 10 times to get the slots warmed up. Then slop them back in, flick the power switch half a dozen times and that should do it!\"

\"Hey thanks!\"

\"Don\'t mention a thing, all part of the service\"

I leave for lunch - after all I have been here for 10 minutes solid - and walk past the student labs. I hear a mass of beeping and look round to see a user\'s screen full of garbage. They\'ve either typed an image file or fingered my account and got the core file I renamed as .plan. By the time he gets his terminal sorted out, his allocation of connect time will be all used up. A tragic shame.

I get back from lunch early a couple of hours later and slip into the Usenet news directory tree, slide on down to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica, then start deleting parts 3 or 4 of the really long gifs. (After taking a copies myself and overwriting them to the last user backup tape, of course).

Then I get ready to watch the videos I got out from the video shop by taking the printers offline and disconnecting the phone, and I notice that the frame -grabber video player is gone from the office. Someone has obviously moved it while I was away...

I make some discrete enquiries under the threat of rm -r, and find out that the secretary now has posession of it. So I mosey on down and ask to take it away. Only I can\'t because I\'ve got to sign *THE BOOK*, saying when it will be back, how many minutes of tape I\'m going to put thru it, if I\'m going to be watching PAL or NTSC etc. Then it\'s all fed into her *personal* computer (which I\'m not allowed to touch because it doesn\'t belong to us) so she can produce full colour plots about who\'s not working in the department.

I mention that it\'s not coming back - as I was the person that put the hammer through the frame grabber in the first place, I should be the one to hold the video. She then tells me that that\'s not acceptable, and I will have to find some other video to use, she needs access to get to the video 24 hours a day, in case someone needs it. And because she takes her PC home at night, I needn\'t think that I can fake any borrowing records. All this I see for what it really is - a thinly disguised attempt to gain access to the seat of power (The Operators Room) by the Bastard Secretary from Hell.

I decide to let it slide for once, after all she does get the snail mail into the correct distribution slots about 20% of the time, so that can\'t be so bad.

Next morning, I get in about 2pm and find that I have three departmental memos about the status of other stuff that is in the Computer Room that has been \"incorrectly inventorised\" as \"Awaiting Repair\" (The shithead technician has been leaking privileged information in an effort to score the secretary again - A tragic shame, I used to quite like him..) with a note from the Big Boss authorizing the secretary to investigate. Attached to all that is a note from the secretary herself stating that to action this she requires a 24 hour access key to the Computer Room.

ONCE AGAIN I realise that letting things slide never pays off. I look up the secretary\'s RS232, Ethernet, Appletalk and Phone port numbers and yank them from the comms rack. What the hell, I kick the circuit breakers to her power points and lighting too while I\'m at it. Then I strip off some mains cable & plug it in..

The phone rings a couple of minutes later.

\"WHAT\'S HAPPENED TO MY ROOM?!\" the secretary screeches at me.

\"Your room?\" I say, in a pleasant and innocent manner, using caller ID to track down the room she\'s in. Ah! Just down the corridor

\"Yes, MY ROOM! The power\'s gone off and everything is dead\"

\"Oh dear. What were you doing when the power went off? Perhaps you did something stupid?\"

\"I did NOT! I was working on *my* PC!\"

The way she says \"*my*\" is really getting to annoy me.

\"You were working on *your* PC?\" I say, reflectively.

\"Yes!\" She snarls

\"Not your *own* *very personal* computer?\"

\"Yes..\" She doesn\'t know what I\'m getting at yet.

And now I exercise the basic law of Bastard Operating which roughly says, Bastard Operators don\'t just win. Anyone can win. Bastard Operators win and totally DEMORALISE. That\'s *real* winning.

\"I hope you switched your machine off before you called\"

\"Why?\" she barks, a little uncertain.

\"Well, it\'s just that personal property isn\'t covered by the site insurance policy. Why, if there was a power surge, heaven knows WHAT could happen to an expensive peice of delicate *personal* machinery like...\"

I hear her place the receiver down *very* quietly and sprint on tippy toe to the door. As I repeatedly toggle her circuit breaker I start thinking about what I\'ll be watching on video this afternoon... Still on the phone, I hear a bang way in the background which probably means her pc has shit itself...

10 minutes later the phone in the control room. It\'s the secretary, and she sounds a little stressed. I manage to translater her sporadic outbursts into a request that her lines be connected to her terminal. I tell her they are, and has she got the technician to look at it. She hangs up.

No sense of humour.

10 minutes later still, the technician rings up and tells me all the secretaries lines are dead. I tell him I\'ll check them out, then plug her ethernet, phone and Appletalk back in. Which leaves RS232...

Another 10 minutes later I\'m startled out of my snooze by the phone. It\'s the technician still greasing the secretary by being super-efficient. He tells me the RS232 still isn\'t working. I make some excuse about dry joints on the plug etc, and ask him to put a new plug on the cable. I hear the >snip!< as he clips the old plug off, and the receiver rattle as he starts to strip the wire in a manly way with his teeth. Then I connect the mains cable to my end of the RS232.

As soon I hear the \">ERRRRRREEEERRKKK!<\" coming down the receiver at me, I know that the \"incorrect inventory\" problem won\'t be repeated.

Another problem solved by the Bastard Operator from Hell

It\'s a dirty, filthy, stinking dog-kill-dog job, but someone\'s got to enjoy it

\"He\'s back, and this time he\'s got a portable bulk-eraser!!!\"

It\'s...

It\'s...

IT\'S!!!!....

The Bastard Operator from Britain #1

......

\"...I\'d like to escalate this call please..\"

\"I\'m sorry?\" I can\'t help but be a little surprised at this guy\'s tone.

\"I\'d like to escalate the severity of this call. Surely a person in your situation is aware of the new International Standard regarding fault logging and tracking...\"

He\'s obviously insane. There\'s no other reason why he\'d call me this early on a monday afternoon, as soon as I\'ve got to work...

\"What was your username?\"

He tells me, and some all-too-familiar key clicking noises follow. I notice his account has the pervert flag set, and yet he has no gif files in his directory - which can only mean one thing....

\"Now, this escalation business, you want me to increase the priority with which I\'ll handle this call?\"

\"Yes!\"

\"Tell you what, I\'ll double it\" I say, in gentle, soothing tones

\"Good\" he mutters

\"...Now, twice nothing is nothing, and because it\'s an ESCALATED priority call, it goes into the RED rubbish bin instead of the brown one.\"

\"WHAT!\" he screams \"DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU\'RE TALKING TO?!?!\"

\"Well, I could look up your username and find out, but we deal with so many people here. Your name wouldn\'t mean anything. Not unless we\'d seen you doing something *really* depraved on one of our hidden security cameras - you know the sort that were destined to be put in the computing labs to stop piracy, but actually got put in toilet cubicles after the installation order got corrupted somewhere between the purchasing office and the maintenance department. A freak electrical storm maybe... Anyway, unless you\'d done something really disgusting that got caught on film...

...like..

(I look him up in the blackmail book)

.. like dressing up in women\'s underthings and dancing what looked (to the untrained observer) like the lead from \"Mary Poppins\", I\'m afraid that your name wouldn\'t mean anything to us....\"

I\'ve heard the sharp intake of breath - he knows I\'ve heard it, for him it\'s all over.

\"Of course, if you were one of THOSE people, well, I\'d remember you immediately, especially when reminiscing to the promotions board, all of whom are squarer than a Rubik\'s Cube. But I\'m in a forgetful mood at the moment. I hope you don\'t mind if I forget that you called...\"

\"Yes, of course\" he says, the last vestages of self-respect vanishing.

\"Goodbye now!\" I cry cheerfully \"But before you go, if you could be so kind as to send some money to the Operators Benevolent fund, I\'d be so grateful - in fact my gratitude might make me careless with the bulk eraser, if you see what I mean.. .. .. Mary..\"

He makes some wild promise of a large amount, and I keep my side of the deal by being careless with the bulk eraser. His account backups are a mere memory... Then I look thru the exabyte rack for the video tape in question, (Labelled Archive-26/5/90) and throw it in the \"Post awaiting cheque clearance\" bag, addressed to his boss..

It\'s for the best really, he was under a *lot* of pressure.

The next call of the day is from the User-Union, a pressure group that sprung up because some users thought they were getting a rough deal.

There\'s no pleasing some people!

Anyway, to get them off my back, I invite them in to see just how hectic an operator\'s life really is, and have prepared lots of flashing lights and alert sounds to keep the mindless cretins fooled...

They all file into the control room, about 10 of them in all, the dweebish types who hang out in groups like this as a social event. Things are going well, I\'m answering calls and reseting \"alarms\" when some sour-faced old lard jockey ruins everything.

\"These bells and lights don\'t fool me you know. I was an engineer on these babies when they first came out. This alarm sequence is invalid. There\'s no such alarm as 00-10-03-15-E. That just can\'t happen. You\'ve probably just programmed the status display to say that! This is all a sham!!\"

Trust there to be some re-education loser in the audience to totally stuff up my day. That just leaves plan B, although it\'s risky...

\"Yes, it\'s true\" I admit, cowering like Joan Crawford on a bender \"It\'s all fake. I just didn\'t want you seeing what\'s in the computer room...\"

They can\'t resist the bait. As soon as it looks like I\'m hiding something they\'re in for the kill like Piranha.

\"WHAT\'S IN THE COMPUTER ROOM?!!??\" they demand, chomping at the bit

\"Well,\" I say in my best \'this-is-it\' voice, \"you\'d best see for yourself..\"

........ ... ..

Later that day, I help the police try and piece the shocking scenario together...

\"It\'s shocking!\" I say, voice oozing with the horror of it all, \"just terrible!\"

\"Yes yes\" the officer mumbles, irritated \"Let\'s just go over this one more time. You left them in the computer room to go and change some paper and they inadvertantly triggered the Halon fire extinguishers...\"

\"Yes, yes, it\'s awful isn\'t it officer?!\"

\"..and even though there\'s a 30 second warning, they didn\'t manage to make it out the door...\"

\"Yes, it\'s such a tragedy\"

\"..even though two of the people who are supposed to have been smoking and set off the extinguishers in the room are dedicated non-smokers..

\"Yes, what an unfortunate time to take up the habit!\"

\"..and even though it looks, judging by the scratch marks that the door was in some way locked or jammed...\"

\"..probably jammed officer, It\'s a matter of public record that I voiced some concern over this very topic although no-one could find any problem with the lock in question...\"

\"And even though someone outside at the viewing window could have sworn that they saw you pressing the manual release button on the Halon panel..\"

\"YES, to try and reset the system and save those poor, innocent people..\"

\"After ALL that, you still expect me to believe it was an accident?\"

\"...Well officer, I don\'t really know what I expect you to do, but your face looks vaguely familiar. You haven\'t used the toilets around here in the past have you?\"

\"Well, I may have once or twice - we get a lot of calls over here since you\'ve been here - suicides mainly...\"

\"Yes yes officer, well how about we go into the control room and look at a copy of a video I have, with someone who looks awfully like you, and what they do to a loaf of bread....\"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Now they even come from Britain! ARGH!

But this is getting more \'BASTARD-ish\' than ever!

(For the record, it\'s the same Bastard. He just moved to Britain)

...

...

Things are looking up!

He\'s back from the beerfest, and he\'s hungover and annoyed. It\'s....

The Bastard Operator from Britain #2

\"Ah Simon, thank you for coming, please sit down\"

The promotions committee is strangely quiet today. Normally they\'re far more boisterous and sure of themselves. This has to be good news.

\"Now Simon, as you know there\'s a vacancy for a Senior Operator in the Computer Centre following the tragic accident in the staff showers.\"

\"Yes\" I utter, \"tragic\"

\"How the hell a toaster got in there in the first place is beyond the scope of this committee, as our main interest is to find a replacement as soon as possible. Ordinarily, we would appoint such a senior position externally, but following that awful business with the lift controller failure and the shortlisted candidates..\"

\"Awful\" I sigh, my heart pity at the tragedy of three Senior Operator applicants plunging down a lift shaft to their deaths... Completely accidental you understand...

\"..It still seems very strange; apparently the accident inspector stated that the lift appeared to be accelerating *faster* than the speed of gravity when it fell. But I guess we\'ll never know now that the lift control room had that big electrical fire...\"

I could be oversensitive on this issue, but I\'m feeling a little bit of dissent in the room around me. Some members of the promotions committee appear to be having problems making the decision of whether they should support the University\'s interests by appointing me senior operator or becoming involved in the next fatal campus accident. I decide to cut through the red tape and get to the point.

\"So essentially, all supposition aside, you wish me to take over the role of Senior Operator..\"

\"Ah...\" the chairman utters, looking around the room for backup, \"..Yes\"

\"Ok, fine. I\'ll need a couple of K extra for the increased responsibility, say another K for relocation..\"

\"BUT YOU\'RE ONLY TWO OFFICES AWAY!!\"

\"Good point - another *TWO* K for relocation, and new office furniture. Leather Armchairs would be good. Oh, and an expresso machine.\"

I get up.

\"Well, that should be all I think, so I\'ll just get off back to work\"

While they mutter amongst themselves, I make my exit back to the control room. As it\'s getting towards the end of my working day (3pm) I write protect the userdisk and start a shutdown for 1 minute. The phone rings.

\"I can\'t save my work\" a voice sobs from the phone

\"You really should try..\"

\"But the system won\'t let me\" he wimpers, \"can you halt the shutdown?\"

\"Well, I\'d like to, but it\'s irrevocably committed to shutdown - there\'s no telling what might happen - we could lose all your work, there\'s no telling....\"

\"Um...\" - You can almost hear the wheels turning - \"...Uh..\"

I hang up - they\'re obviously not committed.

The shutdown completes and I reboot, then decide to introduce a little fun to the network by pulling out random staff terminal lines and repatching them to the student areas and vice versa. Just like the big breakin of \'91.

Next I choose a letter at random from the complaints box to use as this week\'s \"External Penetration\" victim, then delete all their files.

I decide to get into something new. I break out the telephone serviceman\'s handset and wander into the comms room and start eavesdropping on people\'s conversations.

Most of it is crap, but it gives me an idea. Pipe it all through voice recognition and look for words including my name (for security purposes), a sexual encounter, or live chickens. Definite possibilities...

A user rings.

\"Oh, Hi - can you tell me what my password is please?\" they ask

\"I\'m sorry\" I say for the 1 billionth time \"passwords are encrypted on the system, and it\'s far easier for me to change your password than to find out what it is.\" (Which is crap; I know what it is, the password changing routine does have a slight in-house modification which the implementers probably weren\'t counting on.)

\"Oh, ok - could you change it to \'desert\' please - that was my old password\"

\"I\'m sorry, but we can\'t change user\'s passwords to ones that they supply - that would compromise site security\"

\"Oh, then could you just give me a new password?\"

\"Sure. What about desert?\"

\"Huh? .. .. Oh, Ok, that would be fine\"

I hang up, they hang up. 10 minutes later they call back.

\"Have you changed that password yet?\" they ask

\"CHANGED the password?\" I say \"You just asked me to give you a new password, you said nothing about changing it\"

\"But... Oh. Well, could you change it to desert for me please?\"

\"I\'m sorry, but I can\'t do that, because of the security compromise, as I told you before. If I knew your password, I could possibly log into your account without you knowing, couldn\'t I?\"

\"Well yes...\"

\"And if that happened, your data would be compromised, wouldn\'t it?\"

\"Uhh, yes, I suppose it would\"

\"So in other words, if two people have the password to an account, the security of it is at least halved, isn\'t it?\"

\"Yes, I suppose you\'re right\"

\"Of course I am, I\'m the *OPERATOR*. I\'m not only right, I\'m wrong if I want to be as well..\"

\"Uh..\"

He doesn\'t know whether to agree or not. Wimp.

\"Now,\" I say, breaking the tension \"I\'ll change your password for you\"

\"Ok, thanks\"

\"No worries. Bye now\"

\"B. >click<\"

They ring back

\"You didn\'t tell me my password!\"

\"Of course I didn\'t. We already agreed that two people knowing the password is less secure than one, didn\'t we?\"

\"Well, yes, but...\"

\"No buts, security is security, off you go...\"

That\'s the problem with this job, it doesn\'t come naturally - you have to *WORK* on it.

Well, yes, I thought that he just moved. But Britain? Why God, why?

But this story... ooh, keeps getting more evil... by the second!

The LAST Bastard Operator from Hell!

I get back from Britian and return to my old stomping grounds to take up a post as an Analyst/Programmer... As an A/P I\'m expected to work weird hours so I start putting in some 9 to 5 shifts to see what it\'s like.

It\'s weird all right. I don\'t like it.

I go to the computer room to check out my machine, only I\'m not the Operator any more, so I\'ve got no access. I call the Operator. He answers.

Bad sign.

\"Can I get access to the Computer Room?\" I ask, respectfully

\"Well...\" he pauses \".. what do you want to do?\"

Indecisive. It gets worse! He should\'ve come straight out and said that the day a user gets access to HIS computer room is the day he\'ll be crated up and freighted to the big Computer Room in the sky to meet the Chief Operator!

\"Just look at my machines\" I say..

\"Um, well, we\'re not supposed to let programmers in here unless it\'s an emergency\" he blubs.

Dear oh dear. It\'s almost as if he\'s apologising! I can\'t take any more of it so I just wander off. He calls after me in apology and it turns my stomach. Watching something you\'ve carefully built up with neglect and mindless acts of violence just crumble away in front of your eyes!

I can\'t let it end this way! There must be something I can do...

I go back to my room and open the sealed envelope that I was saving for my retirement nest-egg.

I shuffle through the signed bits of paper, photographs and dictaphone tapes till I find what I want. The photo\'s a bit faded and blurred, but the people in the picture can still be made out. I get on the phone.

\"HELLO?\". The Big Boss himself answers

\"Hi there, Simon from the Computer Centre. I think I found something of yours\"

\"WHAT?\"

\"A photo. One in a series of 24\"

\"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT! I\'M A BUSY MAN - DON\'T WASTE MY TIME!\"

\"Well, it\'s a photo of you, a couple of female friends, and something that looks like it has some agricultural purpose\"

\"oh...\" ... ___ ... \"...yes, I was wondering where that got to. If you could just drop in in an envelope and send it to me personally...\"

\"*I* *think* *not*...\"

\"Well, it\'s obviously a fake. Where would you get such a thing?\"

\"Your office. You left the door open one night\"

\"That\'s ridiculous, my door\'s electronically locked every night\"

\"By computer?..\"

\"Oh! .... What do you want?\"

\"The New Operators\"

\"Ok, I\'ll have them fired..\"

\"NO! Then you\'ll get some more and they\'ll be just as bad!\"

\"Then what do you want?\"

\"TO TRAIN THEM!\"

. . . . . . . .

. . . . .

. .

A couple of days later the training session begins. Unfortunately, I only get one operator to train as the other one resigned when he heard I wanted to talk to him. Still one\'s better than none.

We start from the very beginning..

\"Ok, let\'s just go into this. How do you feel about users?\"

\"They\'re ok, I suppose\" he answers

\"OK?\"

\"Well, they can be a pain at times\"

\"at times?\"

\"Well, a lot of the time?\"

\"A lot?\"

\"OK, ALL THE TIME! I HATE THEM, I HATE THEM! ALWAYS RINGING ME UP WANTING TO GET MORE DISK OR CONNECT TIME, WHINING AT ME IN THEIR PATHETIC VOICES, COMPLAINING ABOUT RESPONSE TIME. I HATE THEM!\"

\"Right. There. You see, you did know the answer after all. Second question, What do we do for users?\"

\"What they want?\"

\"No\"

\"What we think they want?\"

\"No\"

\"What WE want?\"

\"No\"

\"I DON\'T KNOW!\"

\"I see. 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. Now, what do we do TO users?\"

\"What we want?\"

\"Exactly. And WHY do we do it?\"

\"Because they deserve it?\"

\"No...\"

\"To convince users not to call?\"

\"No again. We do what we do because we ENJOY it. And because we can get away with it.\"

\"Oh! I suppose you\'re right\"

\"I KNOW I\'m right. And if I\'m not, I\'m STILL right, because I\'m the *OPERATOR*. It\'s that simple! If you remember that phrase, there\'s nothing you can\'t do. Now the last question. What exactly do we do to users?\"

\"Delete their files, scrap their backups, invade their privacy...\"

\"No no Agent Starling. That is a mere bagatelle. That is simply the method. We want to know the result. What we do is BREAK them. What\'s the point of deleting their files if they never use them? What\'s the point in reading someone\'s private correspondence if you\'re not going to let the user know you did it, then tell their friends or parents? Why scrap someone\'s backups unless they need them? You have to break the user\'s will so that they realise that they\'re the simple-minded sheep we know they are!\"

\"I see\"

\"Of course. I\'ll be off now, don\'t ever let me catch me in the Computer Room again!\"

\"Thank you sir\"

\"Sir?\"

\"Oh. Get out of my Computer Room!\"

\"That\'s more like it!\"

The mantle is passed.

\"Oh\" my new operator calls as I leave, \"I can\'t remember what your backup tape looked like. Is this it here on the Bulk Eraser?\"

>HMMMMMMMMM<

AAAAAGH!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
* * It\'s: \"SPLAT - MY CAT!\"
-//-//-_
+>\\ --__ Slower than a speeding DATSUN 180B. Much slower.
+>/ _------__ Mortally slower, one might say. Rest in Peices.
-\\\\-\\\\--
* * University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, NZ
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

It\'s a stinking hot day in my non-air conditioned office and I\'m annoyed. The sort of annoyed that\'s described, mistakenly, as red hot. The correct colour choice, is, of course white.

I login to my account and there\'s three helpdesk mail requests, all ticking away to expiration, then escalation, then further escalation, then followup mail message, then even further escalation, then 2nd followup mail message and casual phone call, then still further escalation, then non-casual phone call, then threats, then, ultimately, and sadly, violence. But not so sadly that I won\'t resort to it. And they know I will too...

Because I used to be...

T H E B A S T A R D O P E R A T O R F R O M H E L L ! ! !

...and sometimes, late at night I get these twitches. Like dead people get. (Or, as I prefer to call them, perfect computer users)

In the mornings I get them too. Like when the phone rings. And when I get email. And when people talk to me. AND when people are hogging the expresso machine to make fluffy milk. But apart from that I\'m cured. A new man.

I smile at the thought and look, in reminiscence, at some reminders of my past. A couple of backup 8mm tapes with cartoons on them. The thank-you cards for my attendance at 23 seperate funerals of computer center staff. The mains plug with the thinwire ethernet plug at the end. I didn\'t ever get round to trying that one either, so I don\'t even know what it would\'ve done.

I\'m bored.

That\'s it alright. I am *absolutely*, *stinking*, *UNCONTROLLABLY* bored. I get up and slip a fingerprint free magnet on top of the reed switch that the Boss had installed in my display cabinet while I was on holiday, then pry the glass door open with a screwdriver. As far as I can figure, the switch is supposed to ring an alarm if the door is opened.

If I\'ve said it once, I\'ve said it a thousand times - \"Inexpensive means Inefficient\".

I open the door to the clamour of... silence. Well, silence and John Lee Hooker\'s \"Mr Lucky\" from my CD. I grab my aforementioned etherkiller and wander down the hallway to the switchboard, applying another magnet and opening that to silence as well.

That\'s what\'s missing in society today - trust.

I pull the 15 amp breaker for the meeting room, then wander on round and plug the etherkiller into a cheap 24hour timer set to 5 minutes from now. On the way back to the the switchboard I hear the first few murmurs about excessive collisions. I plug in my unpatented nail \"fuse\" (estimated fault current 200-300 amps) with a set of heavily insulated pliers and wander off to the tea-room to start my expresso brew. Halfway through the make, the machine stops. Now *THAT\'S* what I call a collision.

I look around in a bewildered manner as panic erupts on all sides, half-made expresso in my hand. I step out into the hallway and behold pandemonium. Two programmers are fighting over a CO2 fire extinguisher in an effort to put their terminals out. I wander down to my room just as my X terminal, the unreliable peice of excretia it is, flames it\'s last and lapses into a dull smoulder.

\"My cabinet!\" I cry in \'horror\' and hear the extinguisher struggle end abruptly. In a flash the two programmers concerned are behind me staring into my room. Shortly thereafter the boss runs up as well.

\"What\'s this magnet for?\" I ask, picking it up and hearing a bell start chiming in the distance.

\"You bastard!\" one of the programmers utters

\"I\'m sorry?\" I ask, turning.

\"YOU did it didn\'t you?\"

\"What? Break into my own cabinet? But I\'ve got a key..\"

That\'s the terrible burden of proof really - in this day and age, you need some to make an accusation.

The late-breaking news comes in that one of the consultants had a set of head- phones plugged into a CDROM drive hanging off their networked PC. But not anymore. Now there\'s an unexpected vacany in the department. I blame the Ethernet Isolation specs. 3KV my backside!

Quicker than you can say \"Help us with our enquiries\" I\'m \"helping the police with their enquiries\".

\"What is this, can you tell me?\" a burly officer asks, right up in my face. He holds up a magnet.

\"It\'s a magnet. There was one on my cabinet!\" I cry

\"Yes. And where did you get them?\" he asks, seizing control..

..and losing it. \"On my cabinet! I just said!\"

\"No not this one. The others. Where did you get them?\"

\"Others? What others? You mean there were more on my cabinet! Why?!?\" (I can play the \"stupid game\" forever, having had years of education at the hands of computer lusers.) He tries a different tack.

\"What would you say this was off?\" he asks

\"My cabinet! It was on my cabinet, I told you! I pulled it off... and I think I heard a bell ringing\"...

.... .. .

A couple of hours later I\'m back at my desk with Mr Lucky, no charges pressed. I close my cabinet, satisfaction mine for the first time in a long while.

Then the phone rings...

-

The BASTARD IS BACK!

Programming is dull at the moment since the only \"bug\" in my software is now repaired. (The swipe-card door-access machine had some logic \"glitch\" that unfortunately no-one knew about until a particularly annoying Sales Consultant got accidentally locked in the secure area over the holiday weekend. The poor guy was a drooling wreck when they found him - apparently the sirens and sprinklers were playing up in there too, every 10 minutes. It all goes to show that you can\'t be too careful when stealing an ex-operators car park.

Ooh... that was long...

PLEASE don\'t tell me that\'s where the series is dropping off. I\'m never going to be able to use my computer safely until I know that guy\'s dead somewhere.

This was the only chapter my brain hasn\'t been able to comprehend. My restricted knowledge of the profession is to blame... so I couldn\'t exactly tell what happened to the new operator.

Now now Heat, how many times was this series supposed to end by now? I believe this would be the 4th. Of course there\'s more!

THE BASTARD GOES TO THE TRADE SHOW!

I decide to kill some time by dropping into a Computer Trade show to \"sense the new direction of the market and Investigate emerging trends\", i.e. I\'ll spend a shitload of the company\'s cash on food and drink and give a couple of salespeople a hard time they won\'t forget.

Well, that\'s how the normal bastard would do it, but not me. I really get remembered. All I need now is an acronym.... Hmmm...

I get there and two stalls promptly close when they see me coming, (poor losers), but theres 4 or 5 newbies that look like easy meat. I centre on a vendor that\'s trying to push their unix compliance with every ISO standard except hygene and start talking 7-figure site upgrades. Ignoring his panting, I continue to talk, harping on about our requirement for complance with currently emerging standards till he takes the ball and runs with it.

\"Ah well, you see, we\'re THE foremost company in compliant systems\" (turd) \"In fact, our projected market share is.... blah blah blah..\"

I let him dig his hole nice and deep. He\'s sure that 2 years at University has prepared him for the hardball arena of BIG $ales.

\"Yes\" I cut in \"But all this is irrelevant without a Dynamically Allocated Heap and some Transient Intuitive Hardware System. Are you D.A.E.H.T.I.H.S compliant?\"

\"Sorry?\"

\"Dynamic Allocation of Extra Heap and the Transient Intuitive Hardware Standard, D.A.E.H.T.I.H.S. It\'s THE most important thing to come out of ISO this DECADE! I guess you don\'t have an implementation path yet then?\"

\"Tell you what\" he says, smelling a deal \"The Regional Manager is on the Showroom floor somewhere. I\'ll track him down and get an answer for you?\"

\"Well, that would be great!\" I say, trying to enthuse him and keep him from staring at the acronym for too long. \"But I\'m a bit pressed for time, I\'ve got a flight in...\"

He runs off. The Regional Manager is no dummy. They\'re trained to recognise \"SHITHEAD\" spelt backwards. And upside down. And reverse. And lipread.

One stall down, 4 to go. I troll up to the next..

\"Hi there, what form of hardware solution are you looking for?\" Mr Smiles says (In other words, how can I tuck you for an extra grand)

\"Well I don\'t really know. I need a fast and expandable machine that\'s top of the line but also capable of talking to my old luggable laptop.\"

Mr Smiles likes the words \"Fast\", \"Top of the Line\" and \"Expandable\". He runs over to a machine surrounded in glitter and advertising and gestures at it. \"This is probably what you want then. The latest thing. There\'s only two in the country and luckily we have one here today\"

\"Yes yes, but will it talk to my laptop?\"

\"THIS baby will talk to ANYTHING. What\'s the interface, ethernet?\"

\"No, a SCSI-1 Interface. My machine pretends to be a disk, ID 3. But lots of machines kill my machine\'s powersupply with inductive transience backflow due to a non-standard SCSI interface...

>DUMMY MODE ONE<

He practically BEGS me to try the new machine out. Which I\'ve been waiting for. I drag out my luggable, which is, admittedly, a bit of a beast.

\"Wow! That IS old!! And >ungh!<.. quite heavy too. I guess you\'re quite attached to it?\"

I mumble about legacy data, only use it at home, sentimental value and irreplaceable software while he plugs it in and starts the host machine.

\"Okay, let\'s see what we can see\" he says, and presses the power-on switch on my \"portable\" The 31 hefty nicad batteries that make up almost the entire inside of my \"laptop\" pour grunt into a tripling inverter which in turn supplies RICH, CHUNKY VOLTS to alternate pins on the \"SCSI\" bus, whilst emitting a dull \"uuurk\" sound.

\"My Laptop!\" I cry, reaching for it, just as smoke starts pouring out the back of the display machine. Mr Smiles dives for the demo machine weeping, while I exit, in \"anguish\"....

...resetting the circuit breaker in my machine as I go...

..to the next stall...

\"Hi there, you look like someone who needs an upgrade!\" the salesman chirps

\"Well I don\'t really know. Is any of your stuff capable of talking to my luggable laptop?\"

\"HELL YES!\"

One born every minute.

THE BASTARD\'S STILL ABOUT!

It\'s a warm afternoon as I roll into work after a heavy night at an my favourite bar.

I\'m in such a run-down mood I almost don\'t notice the smell of deodorant in the air. Deodorant can only mean one thing - an outsider. No-one here cares if their smell offends anyone. The smell is pretty thick which means the bearer must have been here a while.

As these thoughts steam sluggishly through my brain, I trundle through to the expresso machine and fill my tankard with the syruppy dark roast Italian.

Barely have I time to turn off logins than I meet today\'s visitor.

\"Simon?\" the boss chirps from the doorway \"Ah.. I\'d like to meet John Stern, he\'s the speaker from \"MOTIVATION 2000\" that we mentioned in the departmental newsgroup last week...\"

\"HI!\" John gushes, powerdressed to the max.

\"Oh, Do we have a departmental newsgroup?\" I ask the boss, toying with him.

\"..and sent you email about..\"

\"Well, you know I don\'t read my email, it\'s just a load of mealy mouthed whining from malcontents\" I counter

\"But I send you mail all the time..\"

\"Like I said, it\'s just a load...\"

\"AH SIMON, John\'s here to talk to us about improving our department\'s morale\"

\"Morale? What\'s wrong with our Morale? Hell, I laughed THREE times yesterday\"

\"Yes, I heard the ambulance... Simon, this is a compulsory meeting. All the department will be there...\" the boss urges, fingers crossed

\"Ah yes, how is the flock?\" I ask, disinterestedly

\"I\'m sorry? Simon, the whole department is going. It would be good..\"

\"Yes. Well, I don\'t think it would be *good* `morally\' for me to attend\"

\"Simon >PREGNANT PAUSE< I\'m not *asking* you to attend..\"

Now THIS is a turn-up for the books! The boss, against all popular rumours, appears to have a spine. True, he\'s sweating profusely and has picked up a tremor, but he does appear to be holding his ground. I re-evaluate the potential threat of John, and decide to attend.

\"Oh. Oh, Ok then\" I mutter in a defeated manner

The relief on the boss\'s face is phenomenal. He immediately ceases radiating nervous heat and his bowels get a new lease on life. He smiles nervously and starts his exit to a new world of respect and authority...

We all have our dreams...

\"GLAD TO HAVE YOU ON THE TEAM SIMON! YOU WERE MAYBE A LITTLE HESITANT TO START OUT WITH, BUT I\'M SURE WE\'LL GET TO BE GREAT FRIENDS!!!\" John blurts

\"Yes\" I say, concentrating on remembering where I put my coffee

\"YES. NOW COME ON, BUCK UP!!!\"

\"I\'m sorry?\" I whisper, instantly in attack mode - the boss freezes in terror

\"BUCK UP!, YOU KNOW, MOTIVATION!!\"

\"Oh, `BUCK\' up..\" I relax

The boss giggles nervously and resumes his exit waddle.

\"YOU KNOW SIMON WHENEVER I HAVE MOTIVATION PROBLEMS I SAY TO MYSELF `IT\'S A DAY TO CELEBRATE, \'CAUSE TO DAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE!\'\"

\"I see. So it\'ll be a double celebration for you today then?\"

\"I\'M SORRY, I DON\'T GET...\"

The boss `GET\'s allright, and hurriedly drags him from the room. I decide its time to get some real work done, and call an ex-operator trainee of mine who works at the National Security Information Centre. A good trainee too, passed with flying colours. You can tell, he\'s still alive.

\"HELLO!\" he shouts \"WADDAYA WANT!\"

Old habits do die hard

\"SIMON HERE\" I shout back

\"SO?\"

I compliment myself on a job well done.

\"I want some information on a John Stern\"

\"Stern. Isn\'t he that Motivation guy?\"

\"The very same.\"

\"Yeah, I don\'t have to look him up, but I will anyway. He came here three weeks ago for a motivation retreat. I got a non-specific disease those days\"

\"Tragic. But what did I tell you about problems? CONFRONT THEM HEAD ON! DON\'T AVOID THEM!! It\'s bad for your rep.\"

\"Yeah, you\'re right. He\'s coming back in a couple of weeks for a refresher and I can\'t back out those days because we\'re updating vetting info on some national politicians and I\'ll want a copy for... backup purposes\"

\"I\'m sure you do. Well, what can you tell me?\"

\"Well, I\'m afraid I can\'t tell you anything Simon. As you know all our information is carefully monitored for compliance with the Data Security and Privacy Laws, and there\'s no way to extract information without it being monitored\"

We laugh, and he emails everything to me. I look through the data and find that Stern is cleaner than the Watergate filing cabinet. A great shame.

Motivation O\'Clock arrives and I wander to the seminar room. John\'s setting up some display on his laptop, no doubt with lots of cartoon characters depicting co-operation and unity. Nothing turns my stomach more...

\"SIMON! GOOD TO SEE YOU!!\" John spurts. He slips his hand into mine with a non-threatening orientation. I grab it in such a manner that his ends up on top of mine in the classic repressive Body-Language manner. He immediately notes this, loosens his grip and starts to remove his hand, all according to plan. A squeeze and twist later and John\'s morale is a little less than 100% with two dislocated fingers.

\"Oh! I\'m sorry!\" I gush, helping John back to the nearest available seat.. ..which unforunately has his laptop with it\'s fragile liquid crystal display.

Tragic.

>Whumph!< The room is plunged into darkness, the cause of which I can only guess at. Today\'s guess is the campus climate control computer started every heater and fan at the same time instead of one by one, resulting in a massive load on the campus power supply, popping all breakers. Just a guess of course.

\"Nobody Move!\" I call \"It\'s dark and we don\'t want any accidents!!\"

Everyone in the department freezes, knowing what this means. The god of computing wants a sacrifice, and volunteers are being called for.

\"HOLD ON EVERYONE, I HAVE A TORCH IN MY BRIEFCASE!\" John calls

If John were telekinetic, he would be reeling back from the mental shouts of \"DON\'T DO IT!\". However, he obviously, and sadly, is not.

>WHOP< >WHOP< >WHOP<

Or should I say, WAS not.

Two minutes later the lights come on and the tragedy is revealed. The police are called.

\"...apparently, fell forwards, head first into his briefcase, the spring-loaded lid of which slammed down upon his neck three times, snapping it like a twig\"

I nod. The boss nods. The flock nods. One big happy family once more.

...The Bastard Celebrates Christmas 95...

It\'s a slow day on the systems front following a network outage that\'s chopped the site in half. No-one seems to know exactly what\'s happened to the backbone except that it\'s completely dead.

In fact the whole day has been rather slow. So slow I passed some time earlier in the morning helping one of our buildings people hang the annual executives portrait photo in a place designed to inspire confidence and team spirit in the workers. Sure, using a nailgun just to hang a photo was a little excessive, but the was some obstruction in the wall which was difficult to nail through. An obstruction which was concidentally thickwire ethernet shaped. Anyway I hope they find that outage soon..

Meantime I kill a little time by trolling the offices of the Network Team for Xmas pressies. You know the sort of thing, \"Thank You\" bottles of Wine, Xmas Food Parcels, etc, from grateful suppliers. It\'s not like they\'ll report them missing, for to do so would be tantamount to admitting that you hadn\'t handed them over to the boss for him to \"reapportion\" as he see fit.

So I\'m in the department Brown-Nose\'s office when the phone rings. What the hell, Xmas Spirit and all that, time to bury the hatchet.

\"Hello\"

\"Hi, how long will the network be down\"

\"Should only be a couple of days\"

\"But I have to get these invoices rectified by the end of tomorrow!!\'

\"No Chance. I\'m sorry, you should have thought about that before now. Honestly, we can\'t be expected to make allowances for your personal shortcomings\"

\"B..\"

\"No Buts, Maybes or What-ifs. It\'s your own fault.\"

\"Do you know who you\'re talking to?\"

\"Well, my Caller-Id tells me that you\'re Charleston, Head of Accounts - and I would have to admit that you do have that whiney, beancounter telephone voice that denotes a white collar worker desperately in need of a good ten minutes alone with me and a staple-gun\"

\"WHAT?!\"

\"Oh, you\'re a DEAF whiney beancounter?!?\"

\"I. I..\" he splutters

Hatchet FIRMLY buried, I hang up. I\'m about to leave when I notice that he\'s left a privileged session open to the router. A quick >clickety click< later and the router reboot he\'d forgotten he\'d scheduled takes place. A quick >scrawly scrawly< later and a note appears in his handwriting in his desk diary mentioning this was going to happen.

Five minutes later I\'m back in the computer room, stashing my spoils inside the covers of some old-style 12\" removable disk packs. Leaving the disks laying around would only draw undue attention and suspicion, so I dump them in the bin where they should\'ve been put years ago, except that they have valuable corperate data on them.

I hear the Operator\'s phone ringing and feel obligated by the past to answer it. Besides, the operators had heard a rumour that there was a 48 disk software install happening in the basement and had rushed off with the portable bulk eraser. If I taught them well (and I think I did) they\'ll only buzz floppy number 47 under the pretence of analysing it for magnetic anomolies...

\"Is this the operator?\" I hear

\"Yes\" (A little white lie that won\'t do much harm.)

\"I\'m in a little bit of a bind. My supervisor has gone away he\'s still running some licensed software on his machine, so I\'m locked out of it.\"

\"Yes?\"

\"Well, is there anything you can do?\"

\"What sort of machine is it?\"

\"A Macintosh\"

\"Well, a lot of that licencing is network based..\"

\"So if I disconnect it from the net mine will work?\"

\"That would cause Defunct License Child Reflection on the net. You don\'t want that do you?\"

>Dummy Mode On<

\"Duh. No, I guess not\"

\"Right. What you need to do is to go into your supervisor\'s office, drag the documents they\'re working on into the trash can, which will relinquish the license they\'re working on. Then quit the application. Then EMPTY TRASH from the menu to force the license to be removed, then start the application up again\"

\"But won\'t that..\"

\"Delete the files? Of course not. Do files get deleted when you drag a floppy into the trash? No!\"

\"Oh. Ok, thanks\"

\"Hang on. Remember to leave a note on your supervisors desk to tell them what you did in case they have licensing problems too\"

\"Oh. Ok\"

Mission Accomplished, I go to the smoko room and check out the Xmas tree. Sure enough, the lights are the cheap, in series AC kind. I drop a bit of coffee and some water in the bottom of the boss\'s mug then fill the sink up with hot soapy water.

Bare minutes later the boss rolls in to get a coffee. Noticing the dirty mug, he proceeds to the sink of hot soapy water. Seconds later the Xmas tree, precariously balanced on it\'s fibreboard base, lurches sideways into the bench area, dropping a few of the colourful bulbs into the water.

A promotion to a vacant position looks imminent...

WTF? X-mas? *checks calendar*
Aren\'t you just a little early with this one? Just a little? :conf:
You should\'ve started putting those episodes on this site two and a half months later! That way you would\'ve been on time!

At long last, the Bastard Operator from Hell 1995 Vintage is ready for it\'s public. Aged in French Oak, and turned lovingly by the hands of nubile young nuns - their firm bodies straining against the rough hession of their habits...

- I\'m sorry, where was I? Nuns. Yes. Nuns. Mmmm. Anyway, back to the Bastard Operator from Hell 1995 Vintage - A lovely year for Bastards. A little pretentious, but then aren\'t we all? - I know I am. But back to the aging bit. French oak, with a hint of fermentation which gives it that something extra you look for in something to waste your time on when you should be working.
Bold, yet unassuming, these episodes are the ideal compliment to red meat or pasta, and will probably have a shelf life similar to that of those nasty pickled chillis with dust all over them that have been on your supermarket shelf since the place was built. Best served at room temperature on a hot day with a case of chilled beer, the conni-sewer will swear by them.
Meantime, Bon Appetite!

The Bastard Operator from Hell is back ...

So I\'m in my office again, reconfiguring the router when the phone rings. Somehow I knew this was going to happen. I\'m obviously going to have to change my number (and Operator) YET AGAIN.

I pick it up.

\"Start talking.\"

\"Is this the network engineer?\"

Sigh.

\"Yes it is,\" I say, resigned to my fate.

I check the phone - there\'s no corresponding name on caller ID, which can only mean one thing.

\"You\'re new here aren\'t you?\" I ask.

\"Yeah, how did you know?\"

\"Lucky guess. Tell me, how did you get my number?\"

\"Oh, I just called the helpdesk.\"

How helpful of them..

\"Anyway, I was just ringing to tell you that you\'ve got a problem with the network.\"

\"No,\" I answer, \"no problems here.\"

\"You do have a problem - I can\'t get my PC to work.\"

\"Let\'s just look at this logically,\" I say. \"You can\'t get your PC to work, so I have a problem.\"

\"With the network, yes. It\'s probably a loose connector somewhere.\"

Of all the things that REALLY piss me off, the \'loose connector\' and \'loose wire\' theories TOP the queue. He obviously thinks that my day consists of sitting in a comms room somewhere \'wiggling loose wires\' to improve network services. Or that I designed the network by calling up a cable supplier and ordering several drums of CAT-5 and asking for it to be \"scattered about the building in a spider web shape\".

Next thing I know he\'ll be telling me that maybe one of the \'bulbs\' burnt out on my FDDI ring.

\"Hey, maybe one of the bulbs..\"

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

\"No, it\'s not that! You\'ve kicked out your patch cable,\" I say.

\"I can\'t have!\" he backpeddles.

\"You\'ve kicked out your patch cable.\"

\"No, all the wires are securely plugged into the back of my PC...\"

\"You\'ve kicked out your patch cable.\"

\"...and they all go to the box in the flo.. Oh, hey! I kicked out the patch cable!\"

\"Of course you did. It happens all the time. It\'s because the twisted pairs in your cable get tangled, shortening the effective length of the cable. It\'s just like the telephone cord when it gets tangled.\"

\"Oh right! I think I read something about that..\" he burbles. What a plonker.

\"Is there anything I can do to stop it?\"

\"Well, all you need to do is unplug it from the floor socket and give the cable a really really hard yank. Then all the twisted pairs come into line.\"

\"But won\'t that damage my machine?\"

\"Heck no! The connector at the other end is made to pop out when the strain might damage the cable!\"

\"OK, here goes...\"

CRASH!!

\"HEY! I PULLED MY MACHINE ONTO THE FLOOR AND A BOARD\'S RIPPED OUT OF THE BACK OF IT!\"

\"Oh well, you obviously pulled too hard,\" I say calmly.

\"WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? IT\'S MY FIRST DAY!\"

\"I don\'t know,\" I reply. \"It sounds to me like a hardware problem. I\'m just a network engineer..\"

\"But...\"

I hang up. It\'s time to have stern words with the helpdesk. First step, into the comms room to \'wiggle their wires around\' and drop out their network. Step two, set their call-forwarding so all their calls go through to the boss.

I pick a floor at random and remote boot both the main and redundant routers.

REQUEST LINES ARE NOW OPEN!

Scant seconds later I hear the boss\'s phone ringing. I\'ll give the boss about 10 minutes of irate users, then wander round and suggest the helpdesk staff need a lesson on what\'s funny and what\'s not. Forwarding your phone to the boss at network failure ISN\'T funny. Helpdesk personnel investigating the job market IS.

My thoughts are interrupted by a call on the Red \'Bat\' Phone. It\'s obviously the boss.

\"Is this the network engineer?\"

\"It certainly is, how can I be of help?\" I crawl.

\"Ah, you\'ve got a problem with your network.\"

\"Have we?\" (grease grease).

\"Yeah, I guess it\'s probably a loose wire somewhere..\"

Sigh.

He\'ll have to go..

The Bastard trips up ...


\"So what you\'re saying is that the network is wide open to hackers?\" the boss asks.

The department Brown-Nose nods. I, however, shake my head.

Guess who he believes?

\"Well, what have you been doing about these security holes?\" asks the boss, now more than a little concerned.

\"Ah...\"

I consider the topic carefully for almost a nano-second prior to providing my answer.

\"Not a thing.\"

\"But our network is wide open. The security implications are horrendous!\"

\"That is correct,\" I say. \"My much maligned co-\'worker\' has hit the nail right on the side with his diagnosis of our situation, which I will now attempt to summarise.

\"In the unlikely even that someone manages to pick both the seven-pin tumbler locks on one of the comms room doors, bypass the alarm systems and security cameras, then open the locked FDDI cage, or alternatively, smash their way through six inches of reinforced concrete piping buried four feet under a busy suburban road, then tap into our fibre-optic cable without us knowing...then yes, we are wide open.

\"However, if as I surmise this is a thinly disguised ploy by the departmental Brown-Nose to edge his way one rung up the perk ladder into a trip to look at new security software, then I believe that our exposure to danger is somewhat overstated.\"

\"Did you say trip?\" the boss asks, eyes gleaming.

EVERY TIME A COCONUT!

\"Yes,\" Brown-Nose chips in innocently. \"Just to a manufacturer in the US who has some software to quadrupally encrypt data streams while retaining data integrity and not impacting bandwidth.\"

Of course, as soon as the word \'US\' pops up the boss has visions of himself overseeing the \'evaluation\' procedure at a convenient beach, staying at the nearest resort because of its central placing.

Right.

Brown-Nose smirks as his dreams of a holiday on the company come to full fruition.

It seems almost a crime to take his dreams and strike them with the iron bar of reality, but network engineering is a dirty job...

\"Well, that really does sound like a good idea. However, I believe that there is some quintupally encrypting software with a manufacturer who is presently on a six-week tour of the States that I\'d already lined-up a meeting with.\"

To add to the impact of my statement, I flash a sheet of paper with impressive writing and letterhead as proof. They are not to know that it is in fact from my lawyer who is attempting to defend me from some libellous allegations of an illegal wiretap at my previous workplace (a sordid blackmail allegation completely fabricated by some other employees who were jealous of my six figure salary and my five minute working day).

Flashing the paper at this stage is of course unnecessary, as the boss wants to believe this...

I tip him the \'junket-nod\' with:

\"Hopefully we\'ll be able to catch up with them as they had booking problems and had to review their venues and dates.\"

Now the boss has carte blanche at junket level. His two options are either he goes with Brown-Nose to the States for a brief holiday with a small amount of technical content, or he goes to the States with me, expenses-paid for five weeks, never quite catching the manufacturer, returning home empty handed and still needing to find some encryption software (in other words, up for another junket), no technical content, with the minor danger of alcoholic poisoning.

Choose the first option and Brown-Nose will wilt under their respective inspections.

The Boss smiles. I smile. We both smile.

Brown-Nose sobs - he knows what\'s on the cards.

\"Of course,\" I say \"we don\'t really want to muddy the waters of purchasing and spread ourselves too thinly in researching this. A small team to concentrate on the hardware should do.\"

Engage cover-up plan.

\"Yes,\" the boss concurs knowingly, \".. too many cooks and all that. Some technical reshuffle seems called for... I hear there\'s an opening for a technical consultant in our site maintenance division in Hartlepool.\"

Tears well up in Brown-Nose\'s eyes as he contemplates his next five years of gardening and rubbish bin emptying...

\"That will do nicely sir. Book the tickets now?\"

I try not to think of it as spite, just seeing the job through to completion.

The Bastard gives advice ...

I\'m preparing for a six-week US junket on the company with the boss to look at new comms gear. This means I\'m going to have to take on someone to do my job while I\'m away.

The ex-office brown-nose applied for the position, but unfortunately he was late for his interview when the lift in which he was a passenger mysteriously blew a control breaker. A pity they didn\'t discover him till after the weekend, by which time he was a drooling vegetable. It all adds fuel to my argument that I require a larger \'miscellaneous\' budget to employ part-time staff to check things like lift emergency telephones and alarm switches.

As far as the job went, within a couple of days I have a \'green and keen\' contractor occupying the spare desk. Now to teach him the ropes...

\"OK quick outline, we look after every communications entity in the building. And they all belong to me. Not the user. Me. Remember that, it\'s important!\"

\"They belong to you.\" he repeats

\"No, never say that. Always say, they belong to \'ME\'. You don\'t want to give the users the idea that comms is something they should get involved in.\"

\"They belong to me. So we look after phones as well?\"

\"Phones, fire and intruder alarms, intercoms, networks, microwave link, miscellaneous control systems; hell, if they bought semaphore flags we\'d probably be looking after them,\" I say, pointing out the respective chapters in my site management bible.

\"How do you get away with it?\" he asks.

\"Simple. I apply the basic rule of standardisation. Everything gets done in a standard way, and no-one but me knows anything about it.\"

\"It\'s all in your head?...\"

\"No, no. It\'s all copiously documented in that safe over there,\" I reply, indicating a large armageddon-proof box in the corner.

\"Who has access to it?\"

\"Me.\"

\"And your boss..?\"

\"He has a key that he likes to think will open it. In actual fact, it\'s a duplicate of the key to the CEO\'s wine safe in the basement.\"

\"Does the boss know?\"

\"How could he. He\'s not allowed in either area.\"

\"He\'s not allowed in here?\"

\"Of course not. He\'s management and this is a sensitive area. Standardisation, remember. Just mention to the CEO that we have phone-tap equipment and you get a fat security budget to play with.\"

\"Aren\'t you worried the boss will find out about the key?\" my employee asks.

\"Not as worried as he\'d be when I mention informing the CEO about it. There\'s been a surprising amount of pilfering going on. It wouldn\'t look good on his permanent record when he went looking for his next job...\"

\"What a tragedy. Okay, I\'ve got all that, what do I do?\"

\"Nothing, I\'ve done it all. Familiarise yourself with the site management bible. It\'ll tell you all the major problems that could befall us, what to do and who to contact. See that phone on your desk - don\'t ever answer it, it\'ll just be some user who\'s moved his machine and expects the data-sockets to be live.\"

\"That\'s it?\"

\"Like I said, it\'s mostly in the site bible. Oh, remember to put the voice recorder tapes into the fireproof back-up safe!\"

\"That\'s in case we have a verbal contract disagreement?\"

\"No, that\'s so I can listen to the boss\'s personal phone calls. Honestly, it\'s better than \'Days of Our Lives\'. Also, never mention the name \'Pooky\' or he\'ll know I\'m onto him.\"

\"OK, what if the helpdesk corners me?\"

\"Hmmm. Well, as I haven\'t introduced you to them, you\'ve got a week\'s grace. After that, use the excuse that you can\'t accept helpdesk calls until you have a username to receive the email so that the process can be tracked by me when I return. That\'ll buy you another couple of days. Add two more days for documentation on paper and then you might squeeze yet another week or two out if you use the old routine \'log a fault call\' - preferably on some ancient noticeboard using the tried and trusted postcard method. Remember to make some number up and write it on the incident board as \'proof\'. When you can\'t delay any more, use the network monitor to drop the CEO\'s data ports. He has priority and you can kill at least a day \'isolating the failure\'.\"

\"What happens if the CEO corners me?\"

\"Play it safe and brown-nose. Get him a coffee and take him on a tour of the central comms room. When he\'s mesmerised by the flashing lights, nudge his arm when you open a cabinet door so that the coffee spills through the floor tiles. The master breaker will pop so fast he won\'t even have time to say \'woopsy\'. After that, no-one\'s going to complain about anything. Got all that?\"

\"Sorted!\"

\"Right, get to work.\"

The Bastard gets non-PC

So I\'m in the States with Sharon, the ex-boss\'s secretary, to check out some new networking hardware and software. The boss couldn\'t make it after unfortunately having a disagreement with the CEO when the CEO somehow got \'listen-only conferenced\' into a telephone call between the boss and the CEO\'s wife. (The bit about the boardroom table got to him apparently). Being the only other person familiar with the whole deal, Sharon, a young, part-time aerobics instructor and non-subscriber to the motto \"Don\'t screw the crew\", was obliged to accompany me.

What a tragedy.

Strangely, it couldn\'t have worked out better if it were planned. (You know, someone telling Sharon to familiarise herself with only 10 of the 1000 or so documents that pass over her desk every month; someone accidentally tampering with the exchange configuration to allow listen-only conference calls; someone tampering with the exchange to make it auto conference calls to the CEO\'s home number back to the CEO\'s private phone that no-one but his secretary has the number to...) But of course, that\'s ridiculous.

Of course I blame myself. If I hadn\'t taken the boss for a \'working lunch\', bought him 10 pints and mentioned the CEO\'s wife had a fixation on him, perhaps none of this would have happened.

Sigh. Oh well, at least I did my duty by the firm and made the most of it; difficult though it was. I must remember that at contract renegotiation time.

We book in at a modestly priced hotel - (modest by the standards of the Royal Family that is) and suffer an upgrade in rooms when it is discovered that due to some computing glitch a Mr Babbage and a Mr Pascal have been double-booked in our economy rooms. It\'s funny the number of times that has happened to me...

I ring my temp to see how he\'s doing in my absence. The phone rings about 50 times before finally being diverted to talking clock. At least I know he\'s read my Site Management Bible...

I then ring the boss\'s temporary replacement from the bar.

\"How\'s it going?\" he asks keenly, disguising the fact that he\'s annoyed at not being here.

\"Well, we\'re having some trouble tracking down the supplier\'s tour dates, but we figure we\'ll track them down through computing magazines. Speaking of which, can you wire me another thousand quid for...miscellaneous expenses - the computing magazines, phone calls etc.\"

\"I sure can,\" he replies amiably. \"Of course, you\'ll be bringing these magazines back with you when you return so our accountant can rectify all this with the bean counters upstairs?\"

Sneaky bastard - he\'s just upset that he didn\'t get to go and is obviously going to cause problems. Best to nip this in the bud right now.

\"No problem - could you make that three thousand quid, the air freight costs are likely to be quite high for the 250 odd magazines...\"

\"Perhaps that IS unnecessary,\" he says, thinking about his plummeting operations budget.

\"OK. Well I\'ll get back to you in a couple of days,\" I reply.

He hangs up and immediately I whip back to my room and dial through to my private modem pool at work.

I wait 10 minutes for the temp-boss to type and print the expense memo, then ethersniff his text and digitised signature on its way to the printer. I quickly bash up another expense report for a couple of hundred quid requesting some \'photographic\' magazines from a dealer in Amsterdam appending his home address as the delivery point. I \'accidentally\' queue it to print at Bean-Counting-Brown-Nose-Central then logout.

Knowing the religious background of the CEO I expect to find yet another empty desk on my return. Just applying the first law of networking - loose ends are bad, termination is good.

To enhance my job security, I make another phone call to a number that\'s permanently etched into my memory. In a darkened comms cupboard on the 5th floor, the call is answered by a \'Home Security Dialup Unit\' and I type in my pin number. Then type a three-digit code and hang up. The clock starts now.

Six minutes and twelve seconds later the phone rings. The helpdesk has found me which can only mean that the temp-boss has given out my contact number, which in turn must mean the CEO is displeased.

\"Something\'s wrong with the network!\" the operator cries.

\"I see. Put me on hands-free and tell me what\'s going on,\" I reply in a business-like manner.

The earpiece tells me I\'m on hands-free, speaking to, if my calculations are correct, the helpdesk operator, the temp boss and the CEO (who likes to be around when major panics are in session to get firsthand knowledge of what the problem really is).

\"What\'s the problem?\" I repeat.

\"The network appears to be bridged out somewhere in the computer room.\"

\"OK, have you looked at the network topology in the documentation cabinet?\" I ask, playing the knowledgeable and helpful network-person to the hilt.

\"Your temp\'s trying to get into his office but there appears to be a lockout on the comms room swipe-card lock.\"

\"Really? It sounds suspiciously like we\'ve dropped a breaker in the distributed UPS Unit.\"

No-one has a clue what I\'m talking about at this stage, but they also don\'t want to appear ignorant.

\"Uh huh,\" the help desk operator says (probably accompanied by en-masse nodding in the room).

\"OK, call the operations room, tell them to open the third UPS cabinet from the left, and they\'ll find a breaker, number 15 or 16, has tripped. If they reset that, the computer room repeater should come back to life and the door access system should start communicating with the office again...\"

Five minutes later I\'m back in the bar, with one of the safest contracts since Al Capone was alive. The CEO thinks I know each circuit breaker personally, and that my temp will have to go as soon as I get back. Situation Under Control.

Good networking depends on good planning.