Bastard D.I.Y Excuse Board

Welcome to the BOFH Excuse board - your way into a support standard for the future. Please follow the steps below

Step Zero.Don't send me a scripted version of this. I have one, and one day I'll install it. Meantime, make do.

Step One.Compose the Excuse. Choose one word from the First, Second and Third Columns in the table below, concatenating them to describe the error, situation or problem you're saying has occurred. For particularly unintelligent users, adding the optional fourth parameter may help to clarify that this isn't a situation that should be celebrated...

Example:Inherent Software Corruption
Dumb Example:Inherent Software Corruption Error

Step Two.Compose a story to backup this Excuse. Remember, the more outrageous the story, the more likely the user is to NOT understand it - and therefore believe it.

Unbelievable Explanation (for above excuse) "Well it appears that part of our software is corrupted - possibly because of some hardware error"
Believable Explanation: "It seems that the Inherency of the Software is corrupt - not the actual software itself. We're looking at getting some artificial Inherency in to solve the problem..."
Step ThreeGet the user to become part of the problem.

Example "..But the Artificial Inherency costs about 50 bucks a user. If you could just send us the money, we'll get you sorted out"
Another Example "..But the Artificial Inherency isn't Right Hand User Compatible - I dunno, it's Welsh or something - so you're going to have to type with your left hand for the next 2 hours.."
Figure 1 - Bastard D.I.Y. Excuse Table
First Second Third Optional Fourth
Temporary
Intermittant
Partial
Redundant
Total
Multiplexed
Inherent
Duplicated
Dual-Homed
Synchronous
Bidirectional
Serial
Asynchronous
Multiple
Replicated
Non-Replicated
Unregistered
Non-Specific
Generic
Migrated
Localised
Resignalled
Dereferenced
Nullified
Aborted
Serious
Minor
Major
Extraneous
Illegal
Insufficient
Viral
Unsupported
Outmoded
Legacy
Permanent
Invalid
Deprecated
Virtual
Unreportable
Undetermined
Undiagnosable
Unfiltered
Static
Dynamic
Delayed
Immediate
Nonfatal
Fatal
Non-Valid
Unvalidated
Non-Static
Unreplicatable
Non-Serious
Array
Systems
Hardware
Software
Firmware
Backplane
Logic-Subsystem
Integrity
Subsystem
Memory
Comms
Integrity
Checksum
Protocol
Parity
Bus
Timing
Synchronisation
Topology
Transmission
Reception
Stack
Framing
Code
Programming
Peripheral
Environmental
Loading
Operation
Parameter
Syntax
Initialisation
Execution
Resource
Encryption
Decryption
File
Precondition
Authentication
Paging
Swapfile
Service
Gateway
Request
Proxy
Media
Registry
Configuration
Metadata
Streaming
Retrieval
Installation
Library
Handler
Interruption
Destabilisation
Destruction
Desynchronisation
Failure
Dereferencing
Overflow
Underflow
NMI
Interrupt
Corruption
Anomoly
Seizure
Override
Reclock
Rejection
Invalidation
Halt
Exhaustion
Infection
Incompatibility
Timeout
Expiry
Unavailability
Bug
Condition
Crash
Dump
Crashdump
Stackdump
Problem
Lockout
Error
Problem
Warning
Signal
Flag
Copyright 2001, Simon Travaglia