Am I Bastard?

…yes I am. If there’s one thing I enjoy and hate at once, it’s tormenting users and let them face with their undisputed lack of knowledge when they try to enter my realm. My realm actually consists of five separated networks that has to be controlled, sniffed, fingered and spied. While being a kind of bored at work I did some research on one of all-time favourite tales – B.O.f.H.

B.O.f.H. stands for Bastard Operator from Hell and is a collection of tales of an operator, his pimply-faced youth and the struggle they have with their boss, the users and everything else a classical operator has to face with. For me these tales are more than just funny, they are something like a brutal mirror of truth of my own every day life at work. They also remind of a time where my “operator instructor” introduced me to these tales, that was a time where I was the pimply-faced youth, and he was truely one of the operator/administrator guys who really wanted to have the users suffer. Hell, those days were fun…

I’ve finally found the collection of books on a single server and they now make my day (mainly diverting). So if any one of you out, especially the younger generation, wants to know what a REAL operator/administrator is about and what kind of might he has, read these tales, learn and keep and honour our heritage.

The official website

The german website

R.I.P. Steve

I received one of these unpopular messages yesterday evening via ICQ. One of my best friends told me that our concerted friend who used to be with us on every party and every single event we went to was found dead in front of his house last weekend. He was only 28 years old.

Though he was one of these “cursory friends”, he was a good friend of mine and we shared a lot of interests. We had lots of funny and refreshing conversations about all kinds of things but mainly about the “good damn users” because he, like me, was a systems administrator too. He also was an awesome bass player gifted with talent and an open mind for all kinds of music.

Unfortunately do we had to find out by last years October that he was a psychotic too who was suffering from paranoia and schizophrenia. He had to spent several weeks in a sanitarium followed by a long treatment after freaking out. I don’t really know what exactly happened to him over the last few weeks but I personally guess it got something to do with his psychosis and the medicals he had to ingest. He was a party animal but medicals mixed with alcohol and too many cigarettes will not fit together for long. But this is only a guessing of mine.

Rest in peace Steve. We will miss you.