Simon Travaglia
The Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH) is a fictional rogue system administrator who takes out his anger on users (often referred to as lusers), colleagues, bosses, and anyone else who pesters him with their computer problems. Several people have written stories about BOFHs, but the canonical one was created by Simon Travaglia. The BOFH stories were originally posted in 1992 to Usenet by Travaglia, with some being reprinted in Datamation. They were published weekly from 1995 to 1999 in Network Week[citation needed] and since 2000 they have been published regularly in The Register. Several books of the stories have also been released. By extension, the term is also used to refer to any system administrator who displays (or wishes he could get away with) the qualities of the original, becoming common Internet slang. The early editions of the BOFH took place in a university, later moving on to an office workplace over time. The stories of 2000 (BOFH 2k) began with the BOFH and his pimply-faced youth (PFY) assistant moving to a new company.