NEW! Stickers! I've had some stickers made. Buy some if you like. Details are here. In the beginning... In January 1997, while working as a Systems Administrator for the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, I came up with the idea of doing a spoof of the monologue from the start of the film Trainspotting, with the words changed to have a BOFHish theme. Knowing this, Bethany, my then grillfiend, bought me a copy of the Trainspotting poster, and so on 28th January 1997, Adminspotting was born. Post and be damned Newsgroups: alt.sysadmin.recovery Subject: ADMINSPOTTING Message-ID: <5cl3le$q24@infoserv.aber.ac.uk> From: gkb@aber.ac.uk (Gary Barnes) Date: 28 Jan 1997 14:49:18 -0000 Organization: Ripoffs R Us X-No-Archive: Yes Choose no life. Choose sysadminning. Choose no career. ***** Choose no family. Choose a fucking big computer, choose hard * * disks the size of washing machines, old cars, CD ROM writers * A * and electrical coffee makers. Choose no sleep, high caffeine * D * and mental insurance. Choose fixed interest car loans. Choose * M * a rented shoebox. Choose no friends. Choose black jeans and * I * matching combat boots. Choose a swivel chair for your office * N * in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose NNTP and wondering why * S * the fuck you're logged on on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting * P * in that chair looking at mind-numbing, spirit-crushing web * O * sites, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose * T * rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last on some * T * miserable newsgroup, nothing more than an embarrassment to * I * the selfish, fucked up lusers Gates spawned to replace the * N * computer-literate. * G * Choose your future. * * Choose sysadmining[1]. ***** Gaz [1] It might fuck you up a little less than heroin[2]. [2] ObFootnote. -- /\./\ gkb@aber.ac.uk (Gary "Wolf" Barnes) ( - - ) "Do not ask any lady to take wine, until you \ " / see she has finished her fish or soup." ~~~ - Hints on Etiquette and the Usages of Society BTDTGTTS Within a couple of weeks Jonathan H N Chin, with help from peeps on the ASRLon mailing list, improved the wording somewhat, mainly by removing my admining/sysadminning clumsiness, and offered it as a T-shirt design. More jpegs are available, or there are better quality PNG files, or the original Postscript source (Change "false" to "true" to get black-background version. The T-shirt proved a major success, becoming the must-have item of clothing for the Busy BOFH. The spoof was redistributed widely, even at one point appearing in a sanitised version (whoever wrote that really missed the fucking point). Sitrep: T-shirts and baseball caps Orders are not currently being taken, and there doesn't seem to be enough interest at present, unfortunately, to envisage another print run in the near future. Updated: 28th July 2020 gkb@adminspotting.org © Gary Barnes 2020