BOFH: How to innosplain your way through an audit

[ɪnəʊspleɪn] Verb. 1. The ability to prattle on in a condescending manner about technology that doesn't exist yet

BOFH logo telephone with devil's hornsEpisode 2 "Yes, well, as I innosplained just a moment ago, we can implement that change with the new technology we've just bought."

"Did you say ... 'innosplained'?"

"Yes – outlining the innovative applicability of a new technology in an overly verbose and condescending manner, highlighting obscure and nebulous technical terms which have little or no connection to the problem at hand, but which can (and will) be argued are crucial to the achievement of current goals."

"ALL without the administrative burden of actually knowing what those words mean," the PFY adds.

"Meaning?" asks the Boss.

"We've all been there," the PFY says. "At a meeting, when someone asks why some task we promised months ago hasn't been completed, and I'll say it's because the Hertzman algorithm specifically states that we'd need at least six more teraflops if we needed to implement that many variables."

"What's the Hertzman algorithm?"

"Something that just sounds vaguely familiar, so people think they've heard of it. Like Cole's law."

"Which is?" the Boss asks.

"Great with a steak sandwich," I chip in. "The point is that we pretend that we're technology visionaries and claim that all problems are just about to be solved with emerging technology."

"Like AI?" the Boss asks.

"Well, yes, AI has been good to us – and I'll admit that I have been singing the praises of a number of future solutions which are neither real nor deliverable, but the true power of innosplaining is the ability to prattle on in a condescending manner about technology that doesn't exist yet."

"I don't think that's enough to get us past the auditors," the Boss says, doubtfully.

... a day later ...

"... and just looking through your fixed asset register, I can see that you wrote off a number of pieces of equipment with an average book value of around ... 300 pounds."

"Yes, that sounds about right."

"And you ... recovered nothing for them through an IT equipment reseller?," says our shiny suited auditor.

"No, to sell them through a broker we have to triple erase, then test the hardware. It takes forever," I respond.

"OR," the PFY adds, "we use a tungsten drill and a club hammer to render the device unreadable and save three hours of work."

"If only the AI-guided repurposer was back online," I sigh.

"The what?" our auditor asks.

"The AI repurposer. The Boss got us to use some AI built by an industry group – and released at the beginning of the year – to automate the repurposing of old devices."

"Really, how's it supposed to work?"

"From what I understand, it uses a brayseen filter to scan your asset register for outdated devices, then a fixed-match algorithmic search on online sales and auction sites, apportioning value scores for hardware based on the current prices and the equipment's hardware configuration. If a device is deemed to be intrinsically repurposable, the repurposer will write a USB stick to automate the erasure, verification, and final diagnostics of the device based on tools stored in its hardware database. It then lists the item on an auction site, processes the sale transaction, and sends a packaging and shipping request to a local shipping agent."

"And this works?"

"After a fashion, yes," I say. "Though there were a few teething problems which led to it being taken offline when we'd only sold a couple of machines."

"Which machines?"

I rattle off the asset numbers of a couple of machines.

"Uh. They're not old machines," the auditor says, confused. "They were only bought in November last year."

"Yes, one of the teething problems was that the AI initially wasn't Y2K compliant, so it thought the servers were 100 years old."

"Surely you noticed this when you removed them?!" the auditor asks me.

"Unfortunately, my assistant installed them but I was the one to receive the deprecation note. I was unfamiliar with their pedigree."

"And what did the machines sell for?!"

"Seventeen quid."

"SEVENTEEN QUID!"

"Yes, that was another of the teething problems. Because the machines were so new, there was insufficient online data on their secondhand value, so the AI deferred to their possible precious metal content."

"So someone got a bargain," the auditor comments

"Yes, the PFY was delighted," I reply.

"Sorry, you sold the device to yourselves?"

"No, the PFY bought them."

"I'm always watching the auctions," the PFY says.

"So you sold a couple of high-value machines ... for 17 quid?"

"AI did," the PFY says. "But on the bright side we saved on the shipping costs!"

"The BUYER pays the shipping costs."

"Ah. Well, on the bright side, I saved on shipping costs."

... later, in Mission Control ...

"You don't honestly believe we'd sign off an audit with so many asset database anomalies?" the auditor asks the Boss.

I leave the Boss to stew in his own remorse for a few seconds.

"There are no asset database anomalies," I note.

"Or an asset database," the PFY chips in.

...

"Were the machines that you sold the ones that held your asset database?" the auditor sighs.

"Apparently so."

"So I'm the only one with a copy of your asset database?" he asks.

"No. The PFY has generously offered to sell us a couple of machines he owns which have been inadequately erased – because the hardware was so new the equipment tool database didn't know how to erase the disk array."

"And you have those machines on site?" the auditor asks.

"Sure. They're in the room next door."

... two minutes later in the server room ...

"There aren't any disks in these machines," our auditor observes.

"Yes, the PFY realized that they'd appreciated in value – being the only copy of the Company's asset database."

"Have you forgotten that I have a copy of the asset database?" our auditor muses.

"Have you forgotten that you left your laptop with the PFY in the room that he stores his tungsten drill and club hammer in?" I ask.

>whirrrrr< >thump< >thump< >thump!<

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