<title>The Bastard Operator From Hell</title>
<alt="The Bastard Operator From Hell"><p>

<B>THE BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL <br>
- WHERE IT CAME FROM </B>
<hr>
I get people asking from time to time, so I may as well tell... <p>

So I was writing the Striped Irregular Bucket and I was in much the same
situation as the poor operator I was writing about.  I was bored shitless. So
I thought I'd bash out a couple of lines about something, and where better to
start than a place I knew.   So I chunked out Striped Irregular Bucket, which
was far less offensive than  some  of  my  previous posts.  Unlike most of my
other posts, I knew the area I was talking about.  (Being bored in a Computer
Room  that  is).   Then I started getting mail from people, which was unusual
in itself, and it didn't say that my library books were overdue and it wasn't
from story-tellers who wanted to tell you why they needed more disk,  connect
time  etc.   I  ignored  most  of  this  and  went  on  with  other  writing,
resurrecting  BOFH  (who was as yet pretty much unnamed) in Striped Irregular
Bucket #5.   Then I got more mail, so I thought I'd bash out a couple of BOFH
articles.   So  I did,  then ran out of material briefly, so I stopped.  Then
got some  material, and started then stopped again.  Etc etc.  Then I went to
Britian and worked for Enterprise Oil PLC (good place, say hi!) in London for
a year, bricking out about 2 articles in that time.  Along  the way,  Waikato
kept  my  old  account  open,  so  I'd get maybe one mail message a week from
someone who'd just read it for the first time.  I still do, it's weird!
Anyway, so I got back home, took up a job as Analyst Programmer,  kissed the
Computer Room goodbye, and thought that would make a fitting end to the BOFH.
To all the people who mailed over the last 13 months or so and got no reply,
sorry,  but had to login from a Sun Sparc SLC via a modem to a machine which
connected  to  a machine which let me login via a weird version of telnet to
home.  
Anyway, that's the very end of it.  I know I've said that a couple of times,
but there you go,  you can't trust an Operator.  But you can trust an A/P
<br>
trust me.<p>
- SimonT
--  <p>

<hr>
<PRE><br>
   ,----.         
  / The  \  <- You are here  
 | World  | I am here ->University of Waikato Computer Centre
  \      /              Priv. Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand
   `----'  Let's do lunch!

Simon Travaglia
<address>spt@waikato.ac.nz</address>
</PRE>
<hr>
Nothing makes a man and wife feel closer, these days, than a joint tax return. <p>