- May 27, 2002
- 12,653
- 205
- 106
BOFH and the Chemistry Lesson
By Simon Travaglia
Episode 19
"OK," The PFY says looking over the inside of The Boss's machine. "I'll take a quick look at it, but at this stage I'm fairly certain that it'll just need a new seal and a smoke recharge and be back up and running in no time."
"Sorry, did you say smoke recharge?"
"Yeah?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, obviously the smoke seal's gone which is why you saw it. If we replace the seal and recharge the smoke it'll probably be as good as new."
"What are you talking about?!"
"Your machine."
"I know you're talking about my machine but what's all this crap about smoke recharges!?" The Boss snaps irately.
"Okay, your machine gave out a bit of smoke and died - yes?"
"Yes."
"Which is why I suspect the smoke seal on one of the chips has gone, letting out the smoke and causing the machine to fail."
"Which smoke seal?"
"I don't know yet, I'll have to test the chips."
"Test them for what?!"
"To see if the smoke's got out."
"What the hell are you talking about, there's no smoke in chips!"
"What?" The PFY asks in jus the right tone to imply doubts as to The Boss' sanity.
"Computer chips - they don't have smoke in them!"
"Ah" I weigh in. "I think you might be a little mistaken - most microelectronic devices have smoke in them."
"Rubbish!"
"Course they do!"
"Ridiculous!"
"Well how do you think electronic devices work then?"
"They're collections of transistors.."
"And how do transistors work?"
"Silicon junctions?" The Boss responds, slightly unsettling me with his in-depth knowledge.
"Some are silicon, some are germanium. But they're not pure silicon, because it's not actually conductive."
"nyyeeess" The Boss says slowly, indicating that we're (thankfully) at the outer regions of his knowledge.
"So an impurity is introduced to the silicon to make it a partial conductor."
"Mmmm," The Boss says, verging on the mental depletion zone we call Dummy mode. All I need now is a little gate voltage to his mental mosfet and...
"And the addition of an impurity is called doping and the dope we're talking about in this case is managerium, a very very dopey compound"
*** DUMMY MODE ON! ***
"Managerium?" The Boss repeats doubtfully. "I've never heard of it."
"I'm not surprised," I respond, pullstarting the bullsh1t generator "Whilst it's extremely commonplace extraction of pure managerium is extremely rare. It is one of the last elements in the periodic table and with an atomic weight of 347, it's extremely dense."
"Uhh... huh..." The Boss mumbles, indicating that his mental "bag full" light is on, only I can't stop because I'm on a roll.
"So the silicon is doped with Managerium in a process known as superdoping to make the basic junctions required for microelectronics. Superdoping involves the fusion of managerium particles onto a silicon wafer in microscopic amounts."
"YES YES, I SEE, BUT WHAT THE HELL'S THIS GOT TO DO WITH SMOKE!?!!"
"AS I WAS ABOUT TO SAY," I continue. "The microscopic amounts are achieved by superheating managerium so that it changes from a solid directly into a gas - a process known as sublimation."
"Managerium being well known as a subliminal material," The PFY adds, stealing my in-joke.
"Yes."
"And so when the smoke seal in a chip breaks the Managerium is free to break it's covalent bond, resulting in a gas which looks - because of Managerium's denseness - like smoke."
"So when a computer has smoke coming out of it, it's really Managerium escaping?!" The Boss asks
"Exactly?"
"Is the gas harmful?!" The Boss gasps.
"Uhhh...." I say, haltingly.
"What is it?" he gasps again. "I may have inhaled some - I certainly smelt something!!!"
"Well the good news is that if you're affected by it you'd never know as it affects the mental system - although it IS a cumulative poison."
"Well what are the symptoms if it's bad?"
"I... I'm not sure. I know you get headaches."
"Headaches?!" The Boss blurts, grabbing his forehead.
"Increasing amounts of Amnesia is another symptom. It starts out with small things and just gets worse and worse." The PFY adds.
"How much worse?!!!!"
"Well, advanced cases forget everyday things like the names of people they just met, license plates of cars they used to own, their dreams, the last thing they read before they put a book down at night - that sort of thing - but I mean that's only the really bad cases."
"Bloody Hell," The Boss gasps, rushing from the room gripping his head tightly.
The ambulance was overdoing it a little, but he did insist after I "remembered" that inability to concentrate was an indication of a near fatal dose of the material that had an atomic weight of 347 which was actually almost same as a combination and Uranium and Silver both noted for their relative paucity in conjunction with quartz deposits in the African subcon.....
"So do you think we should replace the faulty power supply?" The PFY asks, pointing past the fan to the huge scorch mark where a capacitor used to be
"Nah, chuck it in the bin. And if he asks - we never had this conversation and he never brought his machine in..."
How to get an upgrade, BOFH-style
By Simon Travaglia
Episode 1
BOFH 2004: Episode 1
It's upgrade time again - like it always is when there's money laying about the place not being used - so I scan down the long list of complaint frequencies and pick the HR database server performance problem from near the top of the pile. I love upgrades!
In a word, crap! A ZX-81 with tape drive could almost give better performance than the server concerned, and it's easy to see why - all the money was spent on the chassis, not the internals, to give "room for expansion" which never occurred. With a single processor, 128 megs of memory and a single hard drive, it's all rather depressing. Something should be done.
"But it doesn't NEED an upgrade!" the Boss burbles, trying to hide the executive edition of the mobile phone and accessory brochure he's been looking through. "Anyway, we don't have the money!"
"Well as luck would have it, the beancounters misaddressed the finance reporting output, and it appears that our cost centre is over twenty thousand quid underspent this quarter - due to under-spending in the last quarter."
"Really?" the Boss asks. "How did that occur?"
"We put it down to the fact as that your predecessor was on life support for so long that he didn't have time to fritter money away on 'tat' like cellphones, handsfree kits, etc", I respond.
"Ah. And how much do you expect this upgrade to cost?"
"The HR Database server - uuuh, I dunno, not a lot. Maybe five k in processors, a couple in memory and another couple for disk and RAID card. Under ten?"
"Which would leave the remaining ten thousand for..."
"Projects which you consider strategically important," I respond, playing his game for him.
"Well... I suppose it might be in our best interests to address this," he grudgingly admits, "so long as your budget figures are accurate and you obtain written quotes."
"No sooner said than done," I say.
A statement which turns out to be bollocks.
"And the serial number of the machine is?" the vendor's sales droid asks.
"373847201B."
"B's not a number," he comments.
"It's on the panel at the back, beside the 'S', stroke and 'N'," I reply.
"Well it must be an eight!" he snaps back, oozing condescension.
"Not unless your eights have flat sides."
"Ah, so it's flat both sides?" he asks, thinking digitally.
"No, just the left. ONE flat side, you know, like the letter 'B'."
"The configurator isn't going to like it - it only expects numbers," he warns.
"Tell you what, why don't you punch it in anyway to save me popping down there and punching something myself?" I ask, testily.
"I... uh... >clickety< Well look at that! It did work. So, it's a quad box, four processors and a gig of RAM."
"It's a quad capable box, one processor, 128 meg of memory."
"That's not what it says here."
"But it is what I'm looking at here - I have the box with the lid off in front of me."
"I think you'll find it's got four processors. The configurator is never wrong! Big things with heatsinks on them, and fans."
"Yes, there's one of those. And in the other three slots are some proprietary looking cards with some active components on them instead."
"With heatsinks on them?" he asks, not wanting to give up too soon. "Told you the configurator is never wrong!"
"No. Just small cards."
"Screw-in cards?" he asks.
"No, not PCI cards, just cards," I sigh, putting the cattleprod battery pack into the charger.
"Well let's just skip that. What would you like?"
"A quote for three more processors the same as the original, two gig of memory in 512s, a high performance Ultra SCSI 3 Raid card, and four 15k RPM 36 gig Ultra SCSI 3 disks."
>clickety< "OK, you can't get processors for it, because it's full."
"It's got one processor."
"Yes, but the configurator says it's full."
"Tell it it's not."
"We can't. But we could do a field uninstall, but then it would automatically charge you three hours' engineer time for the uninstall."
"Tell it that the client will do it."
"But you'll void your warranty."
"It's not ON warranty. Besides, I've got the cover off and I'm not certified, so I think we've already crossed that bridge."
"Oh. Well >clickety< it'll only remove ALL four processors, unless we trade the processors in."
"Do that then."
"But you haven't got processors!" he blurts.
"Yes, we have, the configurator says so!"
"But you told me you didn't."
"Yes, when you mentioned the trade-in option, I just realised that they were."
"They can't be, they don't have heatsinks on them!"
"They will by the time your engineer gets here..."
"He'll never accept them - he'll know they're processor bypass cards!"
"Would this be the same engineer we normally get whose specialist technical field is lifting?"
"I..."
"So, we'll trade the four PROCESSORS in on four faster ones. And we'll trade the gig of RAM in on two gig."
"You said you had 128."
"No, no, it was a gig, I'm sure of it now!" I cry.
"He'll count it."
"I'm sure he will, and will not find me lacking. In fact, he can take as many SIMMs as he likes from the big bag under my desk."
"I think you mean DIMMs," he responds.
"Like your engineer is going to know."
>sob<</p>
"Is that all then?"
"No, I'd like to buy a Raid card and four disks."
>clickety< "We can only give you three - that's all that will fit into the machine."
"With ten slots in the front? Oh, how many disks have we currently got?"
"One."
"I think you're lying. And while you can lie to me, I don't think you want to lie to the configurator..."
"I.... seven disks," he sniffs.
"Lets trade them in on four new ones. And a Raid card. Now, what's all that going to cost me?"
"Well, with... trade-in allowance... one thousand three hundred and forty quid."
"Really. It seems a little steep. Can I trade in anything else from my box?"
"That's all you have!"
"So of the eight PCI slots, there's nothing I can cash in on?"
"No."
"I think you're lying. Tell you what, configure me up the cheapest ten meg PCI NIC card."
"OK." >click<</p>
"What's the total?"
>clickety< "1380."
"Givvus another."
>tap tap< "1420."
"And another..."
>clickety< "1460."
"And another..."
>click< >click-click< "You can't, the configurator won't let you."
"Why?"
"Because the bus is full," he sighs, knowing he's trapped.
"What's in the box?" I ask.
"Five high-spec graphic cards with 256 meg."
"AGP Cards?" I ask.
"AGP 8s, yes."
"And how many AGP slots does the machine come with?"
"One."
"And so the configurator tells you that I have another four in there somewhere, taking up PCI slots?"
"Yes," he gabbles. "It's because the AGP Connector's right near the first PCI slot, so if you have a AGP card, you lose a PCI slot."
"Ah, and because I have five cards, I lose five slots."
"Yes," he sighs.
"OK, so I'll trade in the five cards and use the on-board video, drop the NIC cards, now what's the total."
"Minus 53 quid."
"Better. Have the cheque sent to me personally would you?"
"You'll never get away with it," he sneers. "They'll find out."
"Course they won't. It's all in the Configurator. And the Configurator's never wrong! Gosh, wouldn't it be awful if the we asked specifically for YOU to do the install and you returned to work with a box of old parts - and they started to suspect that you'd rigged the whole thing?"
"Make the cheque out to cash then?"
"That'll do nicely. And put an expedited delivery on those parts will you - I'd like to get this sorted out quickly so we don't have to upgrade another of your servers to cope with the load. We've got an eight-way in the computer room!"
>click<</p>
Now to forge a second quote and get the company cheque made out to Computing Access Support and Hardware (or its acronym) too...
Did I mention how much I love upgrades? ®
By Simon Travaglia
Episode 19
"OK," The PFY says looking over the inside of The Boss's machine. "I'll take a quick look at it, but at this stage I'm fairly certain that it'll just need a new seal and a smoke recharge and be back up and running in no time."
"Sorry, did you say smoke recharge?"
"Yeah?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, obviously the smoke seal's gone which is why you saw it. If we replace the seal and recharge the smoke it'll probably be as good as new."
"What are you talking about?!"
"Your machine."
"I know you're talking about my machine but what's all this crap about smoke recharges!?" The Boss snaps irately.
"Okay, your machine gave out a bit of smoke and died - yes?"
"Yes."
"Which is why I suspect the smoke seal on one of the chips has gone, letting out the smoke and causing the machine to fail."
"Which smoke seal?"
"I don't know yet, I'll have to test the chips."
"Test them for what?!"
"To see if the smoke's got out."
"What the hell are you talking about, there's no smoke in chips!"
"What?" The PFY asks in jus the right tone to imply doubts as to The Boss' sanity.
"Computer chips - they don't have smoke in them!"
"Ah" I weigh in. "I think you might be a little mistaken - most microelectronic devices have smoke in them."
"Rubbish!"
"Course they do!"
"Ridiculous!"
"Well how do you think electronic devices work then?"
"They're collections of transistors.."
"And how do transistors work?"
"Silicon junctions?" The Boss responds, slightly unsettling me with his in-depth knowledge.
"Some are silicon, some are germanium. But they're not pure silicon, because it's not actually conductive."
"nyyeeess" The Boss says slowly, indicating that we're (thankfully) at the outer regions of his knowledge.
"So an impurity is introduced to the silicon to make it a partial conductor."
"Mmmm," The Boss says, verging on the mental depletion zone we call Dummy mode. All I need now is a little gate voltage to his mental mosfet and...
"And the addition of an impurity is called doping and the dope we're talking about in this case is managerium, a very very dopey compound"
*** DUMMY MODE ON! ***
"Managerium?" The Boss repeats doubtfully. "I've never heard of it."
"I'm not surprised," I respond, pullstarting the bullsh1t generator "Whilst it's extremely commonplace extraction of pure managerium is extremely rare. It is one of the last elements in the periodic table and with an atomic weight of 347, it's extremely dense."
"Uhh... huh..." The Boss mumbles, indicating that his mental "bag full" light is on, only I can't stop because I'm on a roll.
"So the silicon is doped with Managerium in a process known as superdoping to make the basic junctions required for microelectronics. Superdoping involves the fusion of managerium particles onto a silicon wafer in microscopic amounts."
"YES YES, I SEE, BUT WHAT THE HELL'S THIS GOT TO DO WITH SMOKE!?!!"
"AS I WAS ABOUT TO SAY," I continue. "The microscopic amounts are achieved by superheating managerium so that it changes from a solid directly into a gas - a process known as sublimation."
"Managerium being well known as a subliminal material," The PFY adds, stealing my in-joke.
"Yes."
"And so when the smoke seal in a chip breaks the Managerium is free to break it's covalent bond, resulting in a gas which looks - because of Managerium's denseness - like smoke."
"So when a computer has smoke coming out of it, it's really Managerium escaping?!" The Boss asks
"Exactly?"
"Is the gas harmful?!" The Boss gasps.
"Uhhh...." I say, haltingly.
"What is it?" he gasps again. "I may have inhaled some - I certainly smelt something!!!"
"Well the good news is that if you're affected by it you'd never know as it affects the mental system - although it IS a cumulative poison."
"Well what are the symptoms if it's bad?"
"I... I'm not sure. I know you get headaches."
"Headaches?!" The Boss blurts, grabbing his forehead.
"Increasing amounts of Amnesia is another symptom. It starts out with small things and just gets worse and worse." The PFY adds.
"How much worse?!!!!"
"Well, advanced cases forget everyday things like the names of people they just met, license plates of cars they used to own, their dreams, the last thing they read before they put a book down at night - that sort of thing - but I mean that's only the really bad cases."
"Bloody Hell," The Boss gasps, rushing from the room gripping his head tightly.
The ambulance was overdoing it a little, but he did insist after I "remembered" that inability to concentrate was an indication of a near fatal dose of the material that had an atomic weight of 347 which was actually almost same as a combination and Uranium and Silver both noted for their relative paucity in conjunction with quartz deposits in the African subcon.....
"So do you think we should replace the faulty power supply?" The PFY asks, pointing past the fan to the huge scorch mark where a capacitor used to be
"Nah, chuck it in the bin. And if he asks - we never had this conversation and he never brought his machine in..."
How to get an upgrade, BOFH-style
By Simon Travaglia
Episode 1
BOFH 2004: Episode 1
It's upgrade time again - like it always is when there's money laying about the place not being used - so I scan down the long list of complaint frequencies and pick the HR database server performance problem from near the top of the pile. I love upgrades!
In a word, crap! A ZX-81 with tape drive could almost give better performance than the server concerned, and it's easy to see why - all the money was spent on the chassis, not the internals, to give "room for expansion" which never occurred. With a single processor, 128 megs of memory and a single hard drive, it's all rather depressing. Something should be done.
"But it doesn't NEED an upgrade!" the Boss burbles, trying to hide the executive edition of the mobile phone and accessory brochure he's been looking through. "Anyway, we don't have the money!"
"Well as luck would have it, the beancounters misaddressed the finance reporting output, and it appears that our cost centre is over twenty thousand quid underspent this quarter - due to under-spending in the last quarter."
"Really?" the Boss asks. "How did that occur?"
"We put it down to the fact as that your predecessor was on life support for so long that he didn't have time to fritter money away on 'tat' like cellphones, handsfree kits, etc", I respond.
"Ah. And how much do you expect this upgrade to cost?"
"The HR Database server - uuuh, I dunno, not a lot. Maybe five k in processors, a couple in memory and another couple for disk and RAID card. Under ten?"
"Which would leave the remaining ten thousand for..."
"Projects which you consider strategically important," I respond, playing his game for him.
"Well... I suppose it might be in our best interests to address this," he grudgingly admits, "so long as your budget figures are accurate and you obtain written quotes."
"No sooner said than done," I say.
A statement which turns out to be bollocks.
"And the serial number of the machine is?" the vendor's sales droid asks.
"373847201B."
"B's not a number," he comments.
"It's on the panel at the back, beside the 'S', stroke and 'N'," I reply.
"Well it must be an eight!" he snaps back, oozing condescension.
"Not unless your eights have flat sides."
"Ah, so it's flat both sides?" he asks, thinking digitally.
"No, just the left. ONE flat side, you know, like the letter 'B'."
"The configurator isn't going to like it - it only expects numbers," he warns.
"Tell you what, why don't you punch it in anyway to save me popping down there and punching something myself?" I ask, testily.
"I... uh... >clickety< Well look at that! It did work. So, it's a quad box, four processors and a gig of RAM."
"It's a quad capable box, one processor, 128 meg of memory."
"That's not what it says here."
"But it is what I'm looking at here - I have the box with the lid off in front of me."
"I think you'll find it's got four processors. The configurator is never wrong! Big things with heatsinks on them, and fans."
"Yes, there's one of those. And in the other three slots are some proprietary looking cards with some active components on them instead."
"With heatsinks on them?" he asks, not wanting to give up too soon. "Told you the configurator is never wrong!"
"No. Just small cards."
"Screw-in cards?" he asks.
"No, not PCI cards, just cards," I sigh, putting the cattleprod battery pack into the charger.
"Well let's just skip that. What would you like?"
"A quote for three more processors the same as the original, two gig of memory in 512s, a high performance Ultra SCSI 3 Raid card, and four 15k RPM 36 gig Ultra SCSI 3 disks."
>clickety< "OK, you can't get processors for it, because it's full."
"It's got one processor."
"Yes, but the configurator says it's full."
"Tell it it's not."
"We can't. But we could do a field uninstall, but then it would automatically charge you three hours' engineer time for the uninstall."
"Tell it that the client will do it."
"But you'll void your warranty."
"It's not ON warranty. Besides, I've got the cover off and I'm not certified, so I think we've already crossed that bridge."
"Oh. Well >clickety< it'll only remove ALL four processors, unless we trade the processors in."
"Do that then."
"But you haven't got processors!" he blurts.
"Yes, we have, the configurator says so!"
"But you told me you didn't."
"Yes, when you mentioned the trade-in option, I just realised that they were."
"They can't be, they don't have heatsinks on them!"
"They will by the time your engineer gets here..."
"He'll never accept them - he'll know they're processor bypass cards!"
"Would this be the same engineer we normally get whose specialist technical field is lifting?"
"I..."
"So, we'll trade the four PROCESSORS in on four faster ones. And we'll trade the gig of RAM in on two gig."
"You said you had 128."
"No, no, it was a gig, I'm sure of it now!" I cry.
"He'll count it."
"I'm sure he will, and will not find me lacking. In fact, he can take as many SIMMs as he likes from the big bag under my desk."
"I think you mean DIMMs," he responds.
"Like your engineer is going to know."
>sob<</p>
"Is that all then?"
"No, I'd like to buy a Raid card and four disks."
>clickety< "We can only give you three - that's all that will fit into the machine."
"With ten slots in the front? Oh, how many disks have we currently got?"
"One."
"I think you're lying. And while you can lie to me, I don't think you want to lie to the configurator..."
"I.... seven disks," he sniffs.
"Lets trade them in on four new ones. And a Raid card. Now, what's all that going to cost me?"
"Well, with... trade-in allowance... one thousand three hundred and forty quid."
"Really. It seems a little steep. Can I trade in anything else from my box?"
"That's all you have!"
"So of the eight PCI slots, there's nothing I can cash in on?"
"No."
"I think you're lying. Tell you what, configure me up the cheapest ten meg PCI NIC card."
"OK." >click<</p>
"What's the total?"
>clickety< "1380."
"Givvus another."
>tap tap< "1420."
"And another..."
>clickety< "1460."
"And another..."
>click< >click-click< "You can't, the configurator won't let you."
"Why?"
"Because the bus is full," he sighs, knowing he's trapped.
"What's in the box?" I ask.
"Five high-spec graphic cards with 256 meg."
"AGP Cards?" I ask.
"AGP 8s, yes."
"And how many AGP slots does the machine come with?"
"One."
"And so the configurator tells you that I have another four in there somewhere, taking up PCI slots?"
"Yes," he gabbles. "It's because the AGP Connector's right near the first PCI slot, so if you have a AGP card, you lose a PCI slot."
"Ah, and because I have five cards, I lose five slots."
"Yes," he sighs.
"OK, so I'll trade in the five cards and use the on-board video, drop the NIC cards, now what's the total."
"Minus 53 quid."
"Better. Have the cheque sent to me personally would you?"
"You'll never get away with it," he sneers. "They'll find out."
"Course they won't. It's all in the Configurator. And the Configurator's never wrong! Gosh, wouldn't it be awful if the we asked specifically for YOU to do the install and you returned to work with a box of old parts - and they started to suspect that you'd rigged the whole thing?"
"Make the cheque out to cash then?"
"That'll do nicely. And put an expedited delivery on those parts will you - I'd like to get this sorted out quickly so we don't have to upgrade another of your servers to cope with the load. We've got an eight-way in the computer room!"
>click<</p>
Now to forge a second quote and get the company cheque made out to Computing Access Support and Hardware (or its acronym) too...
Did I mention how much I love upgrades? ®
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