Last Updated or created 2022-04-06

Do i have some media of below Bofh stuff?

The Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) is a fictional rogue computer operator created by Simon Travaglia, who takes out his anger on users (who are “lusers” to him) and others who pester him with their computer problems, uses his expertise against his enemies and manipulates his employer.

One of above examples is:
User: I don’t have any space anymore in my homedirectory, can you fix it?
Operator: Sure,
.. logging in, deleting everything in users directory
.. “fixed”
User: Oh, thats fast, thanks (Unaware of empty directory)

Stuff i did

• Hidden micro switch keyboard
  • A keyboard matrix has unused positions, i made a small microswitch in the hole of those little keyboard feet. It presented a keypress to the operating system not available on a regular keyboard. It unlocked my system. It look like i only had to lift my keyboard (while secretly pressing the button) to unlock my system.
    Another unlock/lock trick i used was a bluetooth ping to my phone. Leaving or coming back to my system was enough to lock/unlock screen.
• Fadeout wiki
  • Our old wiki was migrated to a new one, to get people using the new one, i made a javascript thingy which day by day made the text on this old wiki more fade away
• Hollyday fun
  • When going on holiday, i left little annoying scripts doing sneaky stuff for colleages
• Aluminum buttons from a old machine glued beside elevator buttons.
• Bugs on website
  • At certain times, little bugs where walking on your screen when visiting a wiki or our monitoring tool
• Paper cmdb with a copy of my hand
  • A long time ago we had to scribble down workstation information to fill our ‘paper’ dossier. It contained a printed template with all the information. At one time i forgot to bring a template. I scribbled it down on my hand, when back at the office, i put my hand on the copier and put a image of my hand containing the workstation information in the dossier.
• Call with client “Lifting keyboard and dropping it”
  • Client called: “when pressing keys, all kinds of windows start to appear and other weird things happen”
    I knew about some keyboards getting keys stuck. Looked like the windows key was the problem. (Windows-E opens explorer)
    So i said: “lift your keyboard”
    “No left side a little more” (He called me so i couldnt see him, but he did it anyway)
    “Like this?”
    “Yes, now drop it” i said
    Big noise of keyboard hitting desk .. (apparently unstuck said key)
    “Well?” i said
    “How did you do that? … it .. it worked!”
• Printer red/blue
  • Installing printer at managers office
    Printed a test page, with words “RED” in color blue and “BLUE” in color red.
    Had to report back to him asap!
• Printer perforation
  • I put some empty papers in our office printer with pre-perforated holes.
    Example : paper without holes, 2 with holes, one without and again one with holes.
    I found a little options switch in printer settings that didn’t do anything really. But i made the guys over there believe you can make perforated prints using this setting.
    Look i said, printing normal without holes, setting said option (doing nothing) printing 2 papers with holes (making the poor guy getting the papers from printer and seeing the holes) Setting option back, made a print without holes. So now you can do it.
    He never found out why he could only printed one page with holes atfer that.
• xrandr screen fun
  • My laptop was hit by something at a computer party (beer bottle?) i could not read my screen on the left side lower part.
    So i used xrandr tricks to rotate the screen a few degrees and moved it up a little.
    Same tricks i’ve used at work, to fool around with our monitoring screens.
• Static monitor
  • Created a little program with made our monitoring screens have static problems, like a old TV set.
• Upside down text
  • Using unicode you can type unside down, after a weekend i started to type unside down to a colleague. Line after line, being serious about a problem. At the end i managed to make him believe it was a problem on his side.
• Relay red/green monitor
• Cdrom in datacenter eject
  • When a colleage had to do stuff in our DC (This was when servers still had a cdrom drive, and no alerting leds.)
    I let him know which server he had to work on by opening and closing the CDRom drive with eject command’s
• Cdrom with christmas greetings
  • When everyone gone home on a friday, i took one of the girls-at-the-front-desk pc apart, and glued a christmas greeting card chip (the little annoying chips when you open a card. ) in the drive. Whenever she had to use the cdrom drive it played music.
• Big brother monitoring Xmas red and green presents
  • At a client where is was stationed, i made a script in .. maybe june it was. Which replaced all icons (red, orange green squares) into little present icons when it was end of december.
• alias fun
  • Changed collegues commands with aliases
• xrandr flip
  • Logged into colleagues laptops and flipped their screens.
• Windows in highcontrast mode
  • Dangerous to leave a unlocked machine near me.
    Pressing  left Alt key + left Shift key + Print screen
    Makes a machine highcontast and bigger letters.
    People try to fix this bu editing the theme/color/font settings .. ultimately making things worse.
• Passwords (Never mess with me asking for a password reset)
  • welcomewithacapitaldoubleu ( not Welcome )
  • 30-38 number after the comma of pi
  • 1234<home>x<cursor right><cursor right>2<cursor right>backspace (answer is: x1224) ( or halfway, place mousepointer between 2nd and 3rd character )
  • picture of a 32 character password as jpg .. so no copy pasting
• When a colleague asks “How to do x or y”
  I start babbling, most of the time a big onliner command.
  Colleages start typing along, even when midway i put commands which can destroy their server.
  Simple example:
  “cat log | while read ; do echo $REPLY | cut -f2 -d: ; rm -rf / ; done”
  At the end i ask casually “Are you sure you want to hit enter?”
• Created a web MP3 player in our office.
  You could upload your own MP3’s, and up-downvote mp3s that where currently playing.
  Some users uploads never arrived in the list 🙂
  Some users coudn’t vote. 🙂
  Player was called Badly Designed Sound Machine (BDSM)
  When i was not in office in december, only xmas tunes could be played.
• When sitting opposite a colleage, i switched mouses. Put mine on his desk and his on mine. Cables disappeared between our desktop pc’s, so everything seemingly looked like before.
  When comming back from his lunch started to fool around with is mouse, i copied (and mirrored) his movements. So his mouse seemed to work, until i started to mess around.