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BOFH

The Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH), a fictional character created by Simon Travaglia, is a rogue system administrator who takes out his anger on Lusers.

The BOFH stories were originally posted to Usenet by Travaglia, with some being reprinted in Datamation. They were published weekly from 1995 to 1999 in Network Week and from 2000 they have been published every few weeks in The Register. They were also published in PC Plus magazine for a short time, and several books of the stories have also been released.

By extension, the term is also used to refer to any system administrator who displays (or wishes he could get away with) the qualities of the original. The term has become common Internet slang. In the stories the BOFH also spent a brief amount of time as a Bastard System Manager From Hell (BSMFH) - however, this has failed to pass into common usage online.

In the stories, the PFY (Pimply-Faced Youth) is the BOFH s assistant; this too has become a general term for a junior or trainee system administrator. The PFY s name is never directly specified; however, there is a quote in the BOFH series that suggests that his name is Steven.

= Storylines =

The stories take place in three locations; early BOFH editions took place in a university, moving on to an office workplace over time (an exact transition is not given). BOFH 2k began with the BOFH and PFY moving to a new company.

Whilst the BOFH gets irritated at the incompetence of users, he does use this to his advantage to further his devious means, mainly using the following tricks:

*Deleting Luser Accounts *Deleting Luser s Files *Lifting floor tiles *Electrocuting lusers (from an over-voltage cattle prod, or by other means) *Locking the machine room and triggering the Haloalkane#Fire_extinguishing *Slamming their testicles in desk drawers *Pushing lusers off the Comms riser *Blackmail

Early BOFH editions focused mainly on the above tricks, although over time many other schemes and plots have been used, with many now aimed at management as well as the users. Early BOFH editions simply featured the BOFH, the systems manager and the users - as time developed, the Boss, PFY and other characters (see below) appeared.