That poor active whiteboard could have been saved if only they knew the secret..

...draw solidly over the permanent pen with a normal whiteboard marker, leave a few minutes, then rub off. You may need to do it a few times. Always works for me.

Must've been one hell of a big skip though!

'his encounter with the dentist from Marathon Man'

"Is it safe?"

I Presume Be Prepared seems a Good Motto, Kemo Sabe. Right Pukka Royal to IT ITself ....... for Progression of Programming at Virtual Levels with AI Pragmatic Operation of Reality Networks.

Mother Feeds/Virgin Source...... which appears to Be an Amalgamated Effort in AI ControlLed Psychotic Episode.

A Touch of Best of Class Turing Magic?

Does the Man/Machine Interface Taunt or dDaunt You or does IT Simply Pass By as an XXXXPerience never Savoured?

Skip diplomacy, install meritocracy?

lol having all done "extra fun" ITIL training this week in our office, I can truly appreciate the reference to ITIL manuals lol And most of us struggling to stay awake in the training really drives it home =)

Well done with how you dealt with the PFY's reprogramming.

And camaraderie is highly overated.

That took me back to the collapse of the Accident Group.

Remember them? The "where there's blame, there's a claim" crowd. Aye, and where's there was a claim there was a thieving gitbag looting his company while crying poverty to avoid paying our National Insurance contributions.

When the crash came, the IT department was looted in a manner that made the US entry into Baghdad look like a couple of kids nicking sweets from the corner shop. Laptops, mobile phones, desktops, flat screen monitors, you name it. It all went. In about twenty minutes. Security stood sternly at the front desk, clipboards poised, ready to nab any tea leaves, while the loading bay saw a steady exodus of soon-to-be ex-staff all carrying bulging swag bags.

We had a pretty fair library as well. Just before we were finally kicked out of the building, I had a scout round. Apart from the usual suspects - One Minute Manager and the like - guess what remained on the shelves? Yup, loads of ITIL material. No-one even wanted to use it as ammo to throw at the directors.

'Nuff Said

how on earth did you find _that_ out!?

please tell me you got that from Anthea Turner's 'Perfect Housewife' TV show and not trial and error! :-)

I gotta say another outstanding episode for the BOFH!

To be honest, I can think of most of the companies I support having to use the 'Skip' mentality when it comes to their IT kit, especially printers, as I have to deal with them day-today!

When it comes to camaraderie, most of my 'colleagues' are worthy of my having some fun with their eye-lashes, a tube of super glue, a wheelie chair and a multi-story car park!!!

I think I may have to start siem radical re-programming of my own - Keep 'em coming Simon!!!

"And camaraderie is highly overated." ... high love rated? Nice, although comrades all know that themselves.

Yes, I'm sure it is and can be in a passing instructional phase/encounter. AI Fond of Memory Driving Source.

Real Heavy MetAI, Mr Shiels. Titan Rain and Venus Shower Reining at their Reigns? A Change of Drivers will Change Focus and Direction. The Same Driver will Bond them though in Future Immaculate Services Hosting too.

I can confirm that technique, been using it for years, very effective.

I want to know where that skip is, I could make a fortune flogging that rubbish on E-Bay.

Phwoarrrr!!! Look at the icons on that!

Hey El Reg, Nice Icons you've got going here....

I'm torn now though, should I get my coat or iHate (To start a flame war?)

It's Friday, I'll play nice.

So many times I could have used a skip like that. Like every time my boss got on me to clean up my 'office' (which was actually spares storage and hardware repair).

My wife claims that 'I' need a skip fro all the stuff that i savage from the office...

Well if I did, I miight be able to get our cars in the garage

Why bother just do an office move and it all gets lost. Lots of fun buying new stuff.

Me: "New 386SXs? Wow! So what are we doing with the old 286s then?"

Mate: "Bunging them in a skip."

Me: "What skip? When?"

Mate: "Oh, I see. How does at the back of Union House tonight at, ooh, 5:55pm sound?"

Me: "See you later".

At 5:55pm Mate puts an ICL PWS in the skip. I immediately remove it and put it in the boot of my car. Voila! Early recycling!

It turned out I was the last of the team (I had 8 staff) to "obtain" a home PC in this way. I later found out my boss got the first one.

(Hmm. Maybe I'll post anonymously for once.)

I've been using that trick for years too. Independent discovery: bloody obvious, looked at whiteboard, thought, "I'll need some solvent to get that off, what's the nearest thing with solvent in it?"

Yet another fantastic BOFH angle and I'm sure an experience many of us have had, secretly dumping piles of kit into a skip late at night.

Another pen-related tip that always works for me:

If you pick up a ballpoint pen and it won't write, despite obviously having plenty of ink in it, don't waste time making random scribbles. Just write a swear-word.

For some reason, that gets them working every time.

The broadcast industry has enjoyed extensive skip fishing for decades, many a spare room of broadcast engineers is filled with old and fascinating kit.

Pay for mains distribution units for my home setup? No way!

In fact I worked at a college where the phrase we said to our broadcast contacts was "well, if your throwing that out, remember there is a skip called <insert college name>". Some accounts departments get really fussy about it and WEEEEEE (however it is spelt) has really had an effect on donations.

As for the smart boards, I've had them and they do suffer, even from real wipeboard pens.

can also confirm the whiteboard marker trick

for a bit of a chuckle I used to swap the whiteboard markers for permanents before morning meetings somedays.

Written on with an Indelible sharpie! Loved that story, had to be about one of my middle management cookie cutter hose heads.

In addition to the whiteboard marker trick, which may take several applications in the face of an excessively zealous board cleaning crew (we had one board that was cleaned so well it virtually glowed white), there's another trick that'll work. Actually, 'trick' is the wrong word to use, because this is the real way to fix it...

Whiteboard reconditioner is actually made to do this job. Now, it works best if it's used on a clean board, and if it's a really improperly cleaned board (such as our phosphorescent board mentioned above), it could take two coats. But it's generally a lot easier to use it than to use the marker trick, if you have an entire whiteboard which has a problem.

Note that if it's just old whiteboard marks or indelible marks, whiteboard cleaner (basically, bottles of the solvent used in the whiteboard markers) tends to work much better than whiteboard reconditioner (which seems somewhat similar to the solvent used in the whiteboard markers with a fair amount of silicone liquid added.) Of course, this isn't a particularly bofhish solution.

The bofhish solution is replacing all of the whiteboard markers with indelible markers, and relying on my secret stash of whiteboard cleaner and reconditioner to use the boards as intended...

So you guys regularly accidentally damage an important communal resource in a fit of carelessness then manage to repair it with clever thinking / quick tricks before most people notice....

Do you work in IT?

...someone kill it... please!!!

Just use a can of deodorant, spray some on and the alcohol in it dissolves the ink, works on all materials not just whiteboards

I recall, when I was working for a newspaper, that some pleb had written on a whiteboard with a permanent marker. Another member of staff came up with a solution that was truly ingenious; he took the board down, turned it over and used the other side. Be warned you can only do this once!

Does anybody here still remember SSA arrays? I'll give you £5 apiece!

Oh the skip for IT equipment. A few times cleared out the supply cupboard of out of date gear. First time we sent them to schools and they returned them asking us to make them work and install the the correct software onto them???....the second time we didn't make this mistake and threw all the old monitors, PC s and servers in a skip but to stop people jumping the fence and nicking them i was given a pair of goggles and a hammer...I spent all afternoon smashing all the gear up in the skip, the feelling of a hammer through a monitor is fun..

"and no you can't have a go cause if you hurt yourself i'll get in trouble" was the response to the whole office as they slowly came out and asked to have a go at the demolition...

I don't just remember them, I still work with them on a regular basis. Several older IBM RS/6000s with SSA arrays. I actually decommissioned several recently. Took them out to the country and shot them up with shotguns for "Data Protection". Waiting to see the look on the IT Director's face when asked to approve my ammo purchase as a business expense.