T-shirt orders closed

The order has gone to the printers. I have ordered some extra L and XL shirts and these will be available to order on the shop, but when they're gone they're gone.

I have stock of vinyl and paper stickers, and 3d-printed key fobs can be made as needed..

See the T-shirts page for the nitty-gritty.

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).