On life, the universe and everything

Following is part of a conversation I had a while ago with a friend of mine who’s now a network admin somewhere in Germany (hence bastard operator from hell).

BOFH = Bastard operator from hell

BOFH says: good IT = lazy IT
BOFH says: we’re 2 lazy to do it ourselves so we write a small program
BOFH says: or do some quick hack or something
BOFH says: or …. or …. just watch a youtube vid and maybe the problem goes away in the mean time
BOFH says: because, you see, the problem has to stand the test of time before somebody starts looking into  it
BOFH says: if it’s not urgent enough it can wait until it becomes urgent
BOFH says: for you see, we only deal with urgent matters
BOFH says: anything below urgent is also below our dignity as well
BOFH says: and another thing: whatever you do, never explain to anyone anything; if they can understand it, they don’t need you
BOFH says: you can also spice up the life of your qa department by adding snipets of code such as this one
to the prouction version of your app:

int remainder = DateTime.Now.Ticks % 666;
remainder = remainder % 7;
if (remainder == 0)
throw new RandomException(“This is a random exception. It just occurs.”);

BOFH says: Where 7 is a prime number that you can adjust if the code returns null more often than you like.  The higher the prime number the smaller number of occurences. I use 13 when I don’t really feel like working.