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Sys-Admin Appreciation Day Tomorrow
nrmrvrk (ner-mer-verk) writes "Tomorrow, the last Friday of July, is Sysadmin Appreciation Day! A
special day, once a year, to acknowledge the worthiness and appreciation of the person occupying the role, especially as it is often this person who really keeps the wheels of your company turning." Thanks to Martin, BSD-Pat, Liz, CowboyNeal: the guys who get the thankless job of keeping our hardware running smoothly.
Because helpdesk operators get their appreciation every other friday, all $9/hr +pizza +Co.T-shirt worth of it.
BTW, 9 times out of ten that person who told you to reboot windows is outsourced, taking calls from 2-3 different companies, and has no reason left to live by the time he gets home from his loveless job. So if you want to show me your appreciation, just shoot me the next time you see me. (I'm the one in the t-shirt that reads "The Internet: 100million Lusers can't be wrong!"
Ò
A good sysadmin can change jobs in a day and usually come out ahead.
Whoring: Just don't do it!
{sigh} Some moderators have _no_ sense of humor. The poor slob.
when everyone else in the office is in pristine suit, shirt, tie because they know you can walk away today and have an equally (or better)well paying job *topmorrow*. :)
Deleted
I'm so happy to discover that I'm not alone '-)
I do all of this everyday...
-- "Life is easier since I have excluded JonKatz stories from my homepage"
Explain to me the logic of posting a link about Sysadmin Appreciation Day that you know full well will cause the server to bog down. Is this some type of cruel joke? :P
Sul
Tant
Get paid by the hour, and get compensated for "pager duty". And, if you work for somewhere like Taos (my employer) or Andersen Consulting, you get paid hourly, but you also get benefits, interesting work (at least mine is), and no unpaid "down time". oh, and paid vacation. and other things.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
any single hot secretaries might consider FUCKing the sysadmin on Sys-Admin Appreciation Day.
Married's no problem either..
YOW-za!!
Your Working Boy,
No, this isn't true either. I am a programmer by training but a sysadmin by profession. Sure, it takes me a bit to hack DNS, but all the programming theory comes in handy during upgrades.
LOL! Congratulations on the perfect reply to a troll. so much better than getting "gruff" with them.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Well, it's true. If you can't figure something like that out, you really shouldn't be taking an OS class.
My attitude has always been very simple, and I have tried to convey this to the ppl I work with. If you bother me with a question concerning computers then this implicitly means that I might know the answer that you don't know. In many cases, this means that you consider me to be the expert and you are not. If this is true, then it means another thing.
I also know if you are asking a stupid question. I know what effort that you would have to invest in order to answer that question on your own. If the question concerns a issue that previously took me a while to figure out, then I will help you. It also helps if you tell me what you did to try to answer your question. If you did nothing, then f*ck off. If the answer is easy and obvious, this means that you are a lazy bastard that didn't even bother to RTFM, or you are totally clueless. Clueless ppl I can better deal with. Lazy bastards are dog-meat.
Remember, when you ask a question to someone, that person may have a good understanding of how much work you did on your own to reach an answer.
I recently bought the RTFM coffee mug from ThinkGeek. It replaced my old Dilbert mug that said, "Let me drop everything to work on your problem." or something like that.
Sure, but how many hours do we geeks work again? 60? 80? Hmm.. so let's say we're making 60k per year. Not bad, huh? Now, divide that by two... 30k per year. Less than what the average joe who's slobbering all over himself about e-commerce and how much "'dem pooter nerds are makun'".
banner ad day.
kind of appropriate, really....
Do *you* want to be the one required to stay at work until everything's working perfectly again? I like my job. When the router blows up, I go home. The SAs are the ones who have to stick around until odd hours of the morning and fix it.
--
10Brett-T
10Brett-T
Oh, bother.
True, but most of us would still prefer to *have* a system administrator and someone else to fix the toilet, instead of eliminating those jobs and distributing the responsibilities amongst everyone else like the original poster suggested.
--
10Brett-T
10Brett-T
Oh, bother.
$7 / hr. (Grr)
What?
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, it basically makes it impossible to remove, modify, replace, any "protected" file unless certified to do so. (Product manufacturer for a driver, etc.).
What?
This is silly.
If you don't have Programming skills, you aren't a Sysadmin, you are a technician, stick to NT, you'll do well there.
Yes, I know of programmers that like to make things complex, but that's bad programmers. Scripts/Programs are supposed to make things EASIER, not harder. When I took over from someone with no programming skills everything was very simple, too bad there was no way to verify that everytime a new filesystem was added it was also added to the backups. Within the first week we found a lot of missing files/directories, and the backup procedures for the Oracle Databases didn't keep up with the DBAs either. Now there is a script system that collects the information about the Filesystems and Databases and creates the backup scripts, and if there are any problems with creating these scripts, the entire UNIX Admin team gets and E-mail.
I know of the guys you are talking about, I hate them too (We had the same problem with Web Developers deciding that they HAD to have 18 versions of the same software installed in 15 different locations on their workstations). But that is the result of bad programming skill, as well as bad sysadmin skill.
K.I.S.S is for both programming and sysadmin. We can rebuild from a crash in about 10mins more than it takes to reinstall the OS, by simply pushing our standard tools from a reference server.
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
No, they don't need anything. A monkey could get paid for clicking buttons all day. Chimps get paid to do that at NASA.
M$ Sysadmins don't need crap. Chimps get paid to click buttons at NASA. Maybe we should give the M$ sysadmins banannas.
So, do we have to give EXTRA appreciation to the poor bastards administrating the server this story is on? It's been Slashdotted.
/usr/home/)What's your user name?
Luser: HI! I thought your Sysadmin Appriciation day was such a great thing, I submitted it to Slashdot? Isn't that great? Now everyone will know waht a great job you guys do!!!
Sysadmin: Slashdot? SLASHDOT! Ohhhhhh, OK, yeah. Thanks. Thanks A LOT. (types rm -r
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
after all, who needs stock options and company picnics when you have hot secretaries ready to pork 6-digit+ earning geeks?
oh, wait...bill gates. *shrug*
Exactly, but atleast their calls make for funny stories most of the time.
For instance, this week a lady in our accounting deptartment called our help desk every day because she forgot her password, sometimes multiple times per day. It got to the point where we wrote down her password and gave it to her manager so she'd stop calling us, heh.
--
Dude, your obviously not a real sysadmin if you can't figure out how to deal with that. Forward the call to another fax machine. Then let them sort out the mess.
Take a closer look, it's not me.
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Interesingly enough, the site is blocked by my company's firewall. Kinda funny...
:)
Time to download HTTPort!
-brain
other "protected" files
IE 5.x
Windows Media Player
Microsoft Frontpage
some links in browsers
these are automatically "fixed" if you "accidentally" remove them.
Win2K - 'cause there's nothing like being an administrator when "you don't have the authority to stop this process."
--
+&x
and in the mountains, too. Rocky mountain high, pacific ocean low.
--
+&x
I would like to say a special thanks to my sysadmin, Sam. He's a really great guy -- but don't get me wrong, he's a great guy in the BOFH sort of way.
The reason I'm singling him out for a tip of the hat is because he has taken the last few days remarkably well. Last Friday, we got hit by the Fwd:Joke variant of ILoveYou. After wiping out half a gig of images on our server, he dutifully restored them from backups and went around to each individual workstation (some seventy in our office) to personally chastise each user to NEVER OPEN FWD:JOKE EMAILS EVER EVER AGAIN. So what happened this morning? Yup. Several someones opened up fwd:joke emails. So he gets on the office PA and announces "Don't open any emails that say Fwd:Joke." So what happens? Yup again, half the office launches Lookout and opens the message to see what the problem is.
So now it's the end of the day and we're almost restored back to normal. It took him a couple of hours, but he finally got the mailserver back up and running. And he didn't even kill anyone. Although several people seem to be missing...
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
Their users have never been spoiled by quality, so they don't expect quality from administrators. They just expect to be told that that's how it is, and it's time to reboot.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
The sysadmin in the CS department where I go to school is a real asshole. Intro to operating systems, he says to the class:
"If you can't figure out how to kill a process, maybe you shouldn't be in this class!"
Our professor didn't take kindly to that. Most of the students where working in a unix environment for the first time.
If you got a day to celebrate, and then you'd lose your motivation to get out of the rage-inducing soul destroying position.
My name is George, I used to work on a hotline. I've been hotline free for about a year now. Every once in a while I get the desire to take a few tech support calls, but I call my sponsor and he helps me get past that desire.
George
Close - more like commuters without traffic cops. Wanna guess where that'll end up?
Ah, sweet entropy...
and all programmers.
Sorry, but I think you missed my point - Simon Trevaglia is still writing the BOFH for the Register at the moment - hence BOFH 2K. The most recent BOFH as of this posting is 25 July 2000 3:43pm.
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
Wow! Karma Whoring can be FUN!
Well, from that post, I'd assume that you don't have much respect for anybody
You don't know me, Bob, Dick, or Harry and what our jobs are about to us, so hey - shut up.
Ha ha ha ha ha - sigh. I wish... :(
<wiping tear from eye> *sniff*Thanks for:
Playing XBoing all day
Telling everyone "I'll get to it in my *spare* time".
etc....
What was your username again? clickety-click
Not only not work, but not fix anything if it breaks.
I think if we all had a day off and all the black hats knew it, we'd be appreciated a whole heck of a lot. . . .
-- Of course I'm paranoid. I'm a sysadmin.
It's a called a punchline. Get over it.
Dan
My users better thank me every time they even think about using the machines, or bad things will happen (due to, um, solar flares. Yeah, that's what deleted their account).
:)
Hehe, I like being a BOFH.
You wrote:
I want to know what the guy who invented beer is working on now.
Very little. Since beer was invented hundreds of years ago, I suspect the guy's dead. *G*
Rafe
V^^^^V
Rafe
Opinions expressed by the author may not actually exist in the wild.
It's loading up now, but very, _very_ slowly...I want to give it a look over before I send the url to my boss...
Heh - I don't forward the line because *all* my calls come in on two lines, one internal and one external. I am a network admin, not telecom and don't even have access to the (Rolm) phone system. Now if you would like to ask a question about computers I think I can oblige you :)
Y'know what would show some appreciation? A phone that doesn't ring every 30 seconds (especially when it is a fax machine that calls four times because someone forgot to dial 9). How about something useful - like a certificate to a book store - left on one's chair? Nah - now I know I'm dreaming...
Dr. Kevorkian can only be in one place at a time, so there's no use trying to do something for us tech support folks. Although if you'd like to do a tech rep a good deed when you call, try to remember that we can't see your screen or what's installed on the computer, know your usage habits or recognize that "thingy" that you keep pointing at. Not that I don't enjoy talking to myself, just not when the boss is listening and recording the call to pick it apart in a meeting later.
Deo
-Legion
Nice idea and all, but really how many sysadmins like banners?
They have 8 of them there right now.
Fake and cheap site.
How about 3 days later on October 31? That way we could kill two birds with one stone, by dressing up as Bill to appreciate him, then stay in costume for halloween :).
I wonder what certified means. I'd be happy if they put in unix like file protection, but worry that they will create root privalages for themselves that sysadmins won't get. "Oh that file, only central services can change that file...use smart update." More power is better, less is the MS direction.
I'd really appreciate it if my sysadmin would get his lazy angry ass in here and fix my box.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Here at my work I have an NT PC at my desk I run X on and connect to a room full of RS6000s to do 99% of my work. We have 2 sets of sysadmins - one for the NT machines and one for the AIX machines.
The NT admins can only be reached through the special IT email address, which has a turn around time from 1 week to over a month. They are good for typing in the administrator password and installing software. They always look pissed off - hell, I'd be disgruntled too, if I had to go to sleep every night worrying about the next melissa script and what buttons I might have to click to fix it.
And now the other guys - the AIX admins can be reached directly any time, even at home. They are an invaluable source of information, be it UNIX related, network related, or even Windows related. Access to these guys is mission critical when I'm on site somewhere installing a system. There is almost never an "I don't know" or "I'm not sure" or "I'll have to call [software comapny X's] support line". Even though they are extremely busy, they find time to talk about geeky stuff. Its that computer passion - if you love cars and are a great mechanic, why would you drive the same crappy vehicle that everyone else does?
So I guess my point is help at midnight when an HACMP failover script isn't working 1,000 miles away is definitely in a different league than fixing my mouse a week after it stopped working.
Funny offtopic story about the new mouse I got - eventually one of the NT tech support minions replaced my intellipoint mouse with an older style and very dirty 2 button mouse. He said they had a shortage and he had to give me the mouse off his own desk. I think he just wanted the new intellipoint replacement for himself. He couldn't use a computer without a mouse... Anyway, the bad part of this story comes from when I was at my 9:00 appointment in the downstairs bathroom about a week later and this guy sits down in the stall next to me. He does his business and leaves the crapper without washing his hands. Thats pretty @!#$%! disgusting. I've learned many keyboard shortcuts since.
What will people at do tomorrow? Stop by and give a quick thanks for the work I do, or complain that the machine they granted me two hours to get out of the box and fully into production isn't ready yet?
"Special days" like this one don't mean much when the only time people pay attention to you is when something is broken.
(I've been permitted by my doctor one cynical post per year; glad I saved up for this one)
I mean really, what is with all this crap. Christmas and Birthdays fine. Mothers day and Valentines just to keep on the good side of the people concerned but all these other made up excuses for wasting money on crap? Bits of folded thick paper with pseudo-cute pictures on the front for $5? Bath salts, golf tee holders, novelty clocks which will go in the cupboard for the rest of the recipients' natural lives?
I say let's dump all this insincere crap and show people that we care by our actions. At least save it up for Cristmas/birthdays and get them something decent. But it just seems everything's guilt driven these days. We're guilted into buying presents for people that never expected them in the past, guilted into giving money to charities (which are usually run as businesses with appropriately fat salaried bosses), guilted into tipping 5% for lousy service, guilted into buying our kids that toy this christmas that will be out of fashion in six months.
Heck, you do a job, you get paid, if you help someone they say "thank you". Isn't that enough? Get over yourselves.
Rich
$7.40 an hour.
J
...or I'm still in college, I work for a non-profit, I live in a city where prices and wages are extremely low compared with the rest of the US, and I was flat broke when I got hired.
And yeah, I know my employer's getting the best deal on the planet. They did take a gamble by hiring a second-year CS undergrad with so-so grades, no formal experience, and no certs, and they hedged that bet with a low low wage. Lucky for us both I turned out to be brilliant... come the end of the year, I'm in line for a big ole fat stinkin raise. *grin*
J
Or is the common response of "My shizzat is running smooth, it's the telco - I'll call them immediately" decrease your popularity as sysadmin.
AND..
All our male system admins are married with spawned processes....
UPS Sucks
Why are the above 2 parent posts +5 and +3 ?
They are frickin' one liners, Signal 11 is funnier than that. Really.
Lars -
Shush. What's more important is that tomorrow (July 28th), is MY BIRTHDAY.
Slashdot accepts silly things about "Sys-admin day," but nothing about my birthday. I feel so rejected..
--
Beer! Hah! If those Oregonian folks only knew my birthday was tomorrow, they'd give up drinking for sure!
--
Does this mean I can find a sysadmin and give him/her punches? Or is that only birthdays?
-You're wearing...A bag? I have misplaced my pants.
You have to remeber the simple fact that too many cooks spoil the soup. Sure, it would be very nice to take back the network, but can you honestly imagine a reality where users control themselves? If that were true there would be no need for vaults, police, laws, or any of the other modern wonders you and I hold so dear. It's a good thought, yet impractical and damn-fool-idealistic.
There is no spoon.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
In particular at any company involved in software development, the sysadmin is really the digital equivalent of the janitor.
The worst part of this is that you spend all day covering "digital puke" with kitty litter. But then, telling Sr. Developers that they cannot under any circumstance have the root password makes it all worthwhile. It's the little things in life...
"Citrix remote administrator and PCAnywhere - keeping sysadmins stuck on their fat asses since 1989".
These comments and opinions are mine and mine alone, although they shouldn't be.
Ya know, it's really a shame.
/. spend tons of theor time talking about how $hitty MS products are, and how NT doesn't work. Do you really think that would be the case if all there was to being an NT sysadmin was "clicking buttons?"
Many people on
Honest to God, sometimes I think it's harder. Like an earlier post said, the good sysadmins don't have anything to do all day. That happens a whole lot less for NT admins, since you never know where you're going to get screwed.
I have my MCSE, and admin a mixed Linux/NT network. I have everything about as stable as it's going to be, but NT will still ruin my day on a regular basis. My Linux boxes just sit there and do their jobs. THe reason I know so much more about NT than *NIX is that I have to. It's really messed up.
Believe me, given the choice I'd pick being a *NIX admin over an NT admin any day. They really have a lot less to do.
So yes, I think you ought to include the NT admins. The good ones have a much harder job than the good *NIX admins.
-------------------------------
Is this supposed to be funny as in "the page is down because the sysadmin is not doing his job" or is it just slashdotted?
Hahah, I sat here and read most of the BOFH stories tonight and they were a very entertaining read. Thanks for pointing me into my fun for the night! ;)
------- What exactly is real?
Some IT managers do also read /.
(some of us are ex-sysadmins)
Most of the sysadmins I have known make half to one third of what most of the developers I have known make. Sysadmins are often considered support staff, and therefore often get less money. The DBA's and MIS manager types are the few exceptions.
this of course applies ALL along the west coast (aka. the GREEN belt) ;)
By shutting down napster for the weekend!
witty sig goes here
Ok, so we have this sysadmin appreciation day-thingy (for all those people who aren't appreciation-dayed out for all those OTHER appreciation days out there). But this is posted on slashdot--so I'll be the only one in my organization to read it. I'm the sysadmin, I guess I'll go appreciate myself. No one will understand when I want the day off, though...
"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes
"Tomorrow we'll seize the day and throttle it!" -Calvin
HAHAHA... I just read the entire BOFH series last night... what a riot...
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
Free Beer Tommorow?
Take back the network?? Hell U can have it...there's enuff problems out there to worry about then to consider if the user wants to take back "their computer". I have always had one rule at my work place. "U want access...U got it..but I'm not responsible for your computer anymore...PERIOD"...U screw it up...U MUST BE SMART ENUFF TO DEAL WITH IT!....ONe or two people do it..and they end up being fine...then they realize that I expect them to update their own darn computers, deal with any hardware problems..etc...and realize that they GOT A LOT MORE then they bargained for. EXACTLY why we manage it...the goal of the sysadmin is to make things simpler for the user, not the other way around. When users come to us for help, I make arrangements to purchase what they need and help set it up with them. If they don't come to me then they have assumed responsibility and I won't worry about it. The truth is People DONT want to deal with the computers ALL THE TIME. A person may drive a car every day of their adult life but that doesn't qualify him as a mechanic. If he screws around with the engine...does he blame the mechanic? Only if he's an idiot...On the other hand, I've been working as a sysadmin for years and I've seen every stupid thing done in the world...I've done a few and I've seen other sysadmin do it as well...but any mistake is ALWAYS the fault of the sysadmin....I can't begin to list the number of times...I've heard.."Oh the system is down..you gotta do something!" in which case I go upstairs and immediately turn back on the UPS because they kicked it off with their feet...Seriously though...what you say would have merit..but only in the sense that a good driver should also be a good mechanic, and frankly most drivers are too busy driving to be the mechanic as well.... As for the comment about "arcane knowledge of networking", what's so arcane about it? How many thousands of textbooks document IPX, Appletalk, TCP/IP, NETBEUI,EIGRP, to death? How many FAQS, RTFM's, PDF files, are on the net discussing these topics? Make it easier? In what sense? Don't people realize that making things easier only makes things more complicated? U may understand how a CPU works, but can you build one? Can any human build one? Why? Because it's too complicated! But it's simple right? Basic principle of physics: The more complicated a system is, the greater the entropy. Meaning: More complicated systems break down more often!
I geuss this means I have to stay in the office instead of going to play golf/go grocery shopping/take the hubcabs of the CEO's car/take a 3 hours lunch break. If they ever figure out that I just send all their personal mail from the send list to /dev/null, deny outgoing traffic to every site except hamsterdance, leave an overly technical note on my desk so they think I'm off on business, and then leave for the day (always by 10:32) I'll probably have to work for a living... A little to honest for me :)
====
Crudely Drawn Games
...we weren't too busy keeping everything running during the start-of-weekend network activity on friday to appreciate being appreciated. :-P
---
Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
Darn site seems to be slashdotted, it won't load for me.
Damned sysadmins.
This happens to be one of my fav episodes..
.........................
"Yes?" I say, pausing the picture.
"I seem to have accidentally deleted my C.V!" the voice at the other end of the line says.
"You have? What was your username?"
He tells me. What the hell, I AM bored.
"Ah no, you didn't delete it - I did."
"What?"
"I deleted it. It was full of shit! You didn't ever get more than a B- in any of your subjects!"
"Huh?"
"And that crap about being a foreign exchange student, that was your girlfriend and we both know it!"
"Huh?!!"
"Your academic records. I checked them, you were lying.. Besides which, you forgot to include your criminal record.."
"How did y.." He clicks. "It's you isn't it? THE BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL!"
"In the flesh, on the phone and in your account.... You shouldn't have called you know. You especially shouldn't have given me your username.." >clicketyclickclicketyclickclickedy click "..change my username back, and..."
"b-b-b.." he blubs, like a stood-up date
"Goodbye now" I say pleasantly, "you've got bags to pack and a life to start over..."
I hang up.
Two seconds later the red phone goes. I pick it up, it's the boss. He mumbles the username of the person I was just talking to, mentions something about a nasty mail message, and utters the words "You know what to do...", with the dots and everything.
Later, inside the Municipal Energy Authority Computer, as I'm modifying the poor pleb's Energy Bill by several zeros, I can't help but think about what lapse of judgement - what act of heinous stupidity - causes them to call. Then, even later, when I'm adding the poor pleb's photo image over the top of the FBI's online "MOST Wanted Armed and Dangerous, SHOOT ON SIGHT" offenders list, I realise I'll probably never know; but then life goes on.
A couple of hours later, as I see the SWAT vehicle roll up outside the poor pleb's apartment I realise that for some, it just doesn't.
But tommorrow is another day.
.......................
I love these guys. SysAdmins have been some of my best friends. But that doesnt mean I call them up and tell them what my username is...heh heh...
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Rapid Nirvana
I hereby declare that BOFH day is the last Saturday in July of every year. Activities for BOFH day should include:
Never on Sysadmin Appreciation Day, though.
It's just a domain squatter that is putting the site into a frame so they can spam you with banner ads at the bottom. The real site that they are ruining is http://www.kekatos.net/sysadmin.
These are the same creeps who are squatting on all the slashdot.org misspellings and putting our beloved News For Nerds site into frames.
http://www.sysadminday.com/ gets me a site, while http://www.kekatos.net/sysadmin doesn't (404). An error, maybe?
Hey!! Mike. You're the best sys-admin I've ever met, and I've met a lot of them. I know that you are reading this article, we all love /.. Keep up the good work, and who knows, maybe soon you'll be helping CmdrTaco and the crew... or maybe not
People! Send an e-mail to mike@estation.com
To all of you Sys-Admins out there, BIG THANK YOU!!!
http://dtum.livejournal.com
Man i wanted the day off...
Got shack?
ShackCentral Network
Worlds best gaming network!!!
I know, man i thought it was only at my job... sheesh..
Got shack?
ShackCentral Network
Worlds best gaming network!!!
Look, you get paid to do a job, we all do. If you don't like your job, or you feel frustrated because things don't go your way, quit and go try and work in a thankless job like a janitor or housekeeper.
Believe me, I have a LOT more respect for those people than I do for you.
Now get back to work.
Let's face it, M$ needs it a lot more than all sysadmins put together... I propose October 28.
--
sig is gone.
I don't know about you, but I don't know want some "Big Brother" sysadmin staring over my shoulder. I don't want to have to rely on anyone else to protect my computer.
The Open Source movement has been trying to "take back" users' computers. We've been helping to ensure that users determine what runs on our computer, not some monolithic company like Microsoft or Red Hat. We want people to know how their computer runs and what makes it tick.
So doesn't that whole ideal conflict with the idea of sysadmins? Users should be able to be their own sysadmin; to take care of everything on a network without any outside assistance. If it's not easy enough for the masses to do it yet, we need to make it more accessible. Sure, sysadminning may seem boring and frustrating to someone who just writes e-mail notes to their friends -- but that's just because we've failed to make it easy and fun. Instead of using complicated CLI commands, we need a sysadmin GUI; maybe even a "Sammy the Sysadmin Seal" mascot to help guide novice users.
Sysadmins rely on their arcane knowledge of networking and operating systems to guarantee themselves a job. Let's not make everyone else suffer as a result. We should push to simplify networking and computing so that everyone can be their own sysadmin. I'm tired of having my abilities compromised so that Joe Linux Geek can have a job.
Let's not stop at taking back the computer. Let's take back the network.
More or less it was for the memories of being in High School, running a BBS, and thinking about how awesome it would be to be in charge of a system... Now that I am, I guess it's kind of lost a big appeal like it used to have. It's more or less reminding me of what I'd actaully like to do ;)
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
boy i'd much rather have an ice mocha from Spider House, but i guess thats just cuz i live next door to Mojo's and i get tired of them. woohoo austin.
"They think its sexist"
"They think its sexist"
"Well, whats wrong with being sexy?"
It looks like they are running weblogic - Maybe they need to switch to apache?
yeah.. and we should get thinkgeek to make "sysadmins suck" t-shirts
just kiddin' ;)
Sysadmin Appreciation day my ass! In my country, Malaysia to be exact, and most Asian countries, SysAdmin is a non-glamorous job, the pay sucks, you get blamed for everything, the only thing that other ppl think you're doing (your colleague) is to keep their fucking internet connection UP, and the fucking developers won't heed your advice when you tell them to document their codes... Yes I'm a system admin. I'm 23 years old, and nobody appreciates me, and nobody knows what I do, eventhough I solve developer's programming problems, fix their linux box, install ICQ for them so that they can chat on the Net (this includes me opening port 4000 on the firewall). Sorry to be whiny. --sfork
Feels the need to get to know and talk to everybody since he's so familar with all your files, email, etc.
Trust me, we don't want to get to know you. We'd rather you didn't exist at all. We don't care what's in your files, what kind of mail you get, or what porn sites turn you on. We mostly just wish you wouldn't call up telling us about either a) Problems we were fixing when you interrupted us, or b) Problems that are actually ID 10T related. And believe me, we don't feel the need to talk to you. Leave us alone.
Have I made my point yet? Sysadmin is just a high tech janitor. He creates... nothing.
Agreed. We don't create much (though sometimes we get to set up a new shop, which is great fun), but rather we maintain existing investments.
And certainly not deserrving[sic] of much higher pay.
Agreed. Sysadmins should be paid maybe 20-30% more than regular janitors (simply because of the experience/education required). What that really means is that janitors are underpaid.
And here's one more:
8) Not having a good one makes it hard to get any work done (because nothing works).
8a) Not having a good one makes it hard to get nay work done (because of the stink and clutter).
-- Your Friendly Janitor
I'm sorry I'm so far behind in handling user requests. I like you though, so I've taken care of this particular request for you right away.
I'm happy to delete your home directory for you. You did back it up, right?
Uhmmm...root == responsibility. Shouldn't they be the ones doing the complete reinstall? I'd hand them the media and the instruction book and tell them to have at it. Such is the price of root. You can't have it both ways.
I'm a geek. I sysadmin a network, and rare is the day that goes by that I don't write some code. Other people have made profit off my code, and so have I. My code is running in production situations, and a lot of it gets used 20,000 times a day.
And yet, I don't see the point of a sysadmin appreciation day. There is nothing unsung about being a geek, anymore. Ever since Open Source became a coined trademark, geeks have been the trendy thing to be. Ever see any of those banner ads on slashdot? They are marketing to an image that I accredit ESR for hyping. Certainly, geeks were around before that image, and they will be around after everyone gets as tired as I am with it.
But sysadmins are NOT unsung. Anyone willing to disclose the amount of money they make as a sysadmin?
We can be more than what "our" culture defines us to be.
Programmers who become sysadmins tend to write code to do things.
They write a bit of code to do this.
They write a bit of code to do that.
They write a bit of code to make this do that.
Bit by bit the entropy sets in. They never seem to see the whole picture. 1 year down the line and you have to hire 3 sysadmins just to handle the reboot dependencies.
Good reading for all (potential) sysadmins:
http://www.infrastructures.org/
Deleted
Several years ago, one of our clients called up to say that their system wouldn't come back up after a reboot. It turned out that the user was running out of disk space, so they removed that /unix file that was taking up so much space...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Minus the rest of your post, I'll agree with the topic; any single hot secretaries might consider FUCKing the sysadmin on Sys-Admin Appreciation Day. Trust me, it'll brighten him up a little... and you never know... maybe you'll make one person whose homedirs he won't accidentally delete! :^)
the real at&t mix
Tommorrow is also the first day of the Oregon Brewers Festival. 72 Microbrews by the riverside. Starts at noon - I just took the whole day off for my sysadmin appreciation.
There's more to it than this.
Anyone got a mirror of the site?
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
yea, I leveled 3 times in d2 during our last "outage."
:-)
Worked all night, I did.
--
+&x
Isn't this inherently an anti-BOFH's thing? Don't true BOFH's loath and hate from the quiet solitude of their server rooms? They don't allow anyone in there anyway, so how could we honor them? :)
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Don't know if any of you noticed, but only the advertising banner shows up... the rest of the page? Network Problems. But works hard to load www.do-not-sleep.com. Funny.
I cannot confirm nor deny the allegation or allegations you may or may not have just made
All righty, let's see what I can do after 70 hours of overtime in the past two weeks (my PFY is on vacation) and 2:00 am page.
10 Easy steps Every User Should Know on 'How to Please Your Auto Mechanic':
1. When you bring your car in to have work done, leave your seat all the way up and your radio on the local rap/country/classic rock station at 20. We really love your music and would rather listen to it than work on your car. Don't forget to leave the dirty diaper in the back seat and the food wrappers on the floor.
2. Ignore the idiot lights. They are there to tell you that you have oil or that your car is hot. Don't bother to tell us, we'll figure it out from the smell.
3. When the tow truck driver says he's coming right over, go into your house and wait for him. We know where you live and will knock on your door when we get there.
4. When the Mechanic says that your AC is a little low on freon, tell him that you'll catch it next time. The AC will operate just fine while low on lubricant.
5. When the Mechanic is elbow deep in your engine and whacks his knuckles on the power steering pump, say "ouch, that must have hurt". He appreciates your sympathy.
6. Stop by every 10 minutes and ask how it's going. He appreciates the interruptions and loves to stop what he's doing to tell you what he's doing.
7. When your car is experiencing problems, drop your keys off in the night slot with nothing but your garbled phone number and feeble description of your car. We like going to each car in the lot trying the key and testing the security systems.
10. Don't learn the proper term for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by "My thingy blew up."
That'll be $935.34.
Shit better not happen!
I hope that it would be possible to turn protected filesystem off, to give you access to stuff. Otherwise, ugh, its getting proprietary past closed source! What happens if a trojan gets installed as a protected file? The user has to wait till a patch program comes out before they can disable the trojan. Dumb idea if it cant be turned off.
It's even better when they start with: "I learned this on my Advanced Word|Excel|Powerpoint course. Why doesn't it work?"
Usually, I walk to their machine, pull up the online lack-of-help and get the answer. Of course they didn't see the secret code I used so they're back the next day. (And of course they checked the help before calling.)
Oh well, I'll resign myself to being the custodian of the secret knowledge of F1.
Does this include the sys-admins whose machines were used for K5 DDOS attacks?
----------
AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
Check out AbiWord.
I totally agree with this. How many times has an "upgrade" caused users to lose productivity just to keep up with MS's newest release? Managers don't always figure in the cost of the upgrade learning curve.
. RTFM? What FM?
Here I disagree. These people are not just key-punchers - they really use these apps. A lot more than I do. If they have a problem with the software not performing a function correctly I will spend all the time necessary to remedy the situation, but if they need training, that is not my job. There are plenty of good books in the bookstore for which my company will reimburse whomever wants to further their education. They ought to use that resource. That said, point taken about the talking paperclip LOL.
Your job might be easier if all your users were not superusers.
God, how I wish my users were all superusers. Power users have taught me more by showing me freakish problems. I love power users - at least if they break it it is interesting to fix. Not like "I didn't know what OLEAUT32.DLL was so I deleted it" which kills me. :)
If your company runs vantive, file a 'Happy Sysadmin's Day' vantive and forward it to your support team's inbox. Sure, it's unprofessional, but perhaps you'll get some extra RAM out of it. ;)
Weapons of Mass Analysis
How I hate shit like this. MS users are clueless because MS likes them that way. Most just want their God damned word processor to not second guess them, and help them do their JOB. MS help files have gotten better, but are still not all that helpful because the underlying application is flawed/limited and painful to use. Half the pain is all the stuff that gets hidden and can only be revealed with some secret handshake, like hold the shift key while opening that database. RTFM? What FM? That talking paperclip? Don't be so smug, the user is generally frustrated by the inferior MS app that replaced the app that worked better and was more familliar.
Yes, the average user will blame IT for the software on their desk. Who else makes such decisions?
I can forgive IT at my company for being forced to use NT and office. They are generally nice about things. I enjoy making smug ones feel small.
Your job might be easier if all your users were not superusers. Dump MS, please!
Does anyone really care?
Nonono, don't get me wrong here. There are a lot of people who care, I'm sure, but a good portion of the world has no clue that it is Sys-admin's day. Hell, a good portion of the world has no clue what a sys-admin even is, what they do, why they're needed, etc. etc. Everyone's just happy that everything works, they don't care how.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
This is so obvious, why not have a telephone-tech-support day? What would the world do without someone telling us to reboot windows?! There is no spoon.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
Damn you, I was going to mention the BOFH first. :) Normally that wouldn't warrant a reply, BUT...
Here's a useful snippet. This is the address to the *complete* BOFH archives.. I don't think this can be disputed as it's the author's own page, and has material as recent as 1999!
I've been reading this for about three weeks now off and on... damn good reading.
We should have a help desk appreciation day. They are the one that have to deal with these idiots. "How do I view the ads at www.adcritic.com?" "why cant I go in chat rooms?" This is all I hear all day. At least the sysadmin get to do fun things with their computers, i just get to fix other idiots problems.
-Grant
|grant.henninger.name|
If that is observed, I'd like to request a Programmer Appreciation Day, too :)
Now sysadmins are just as appreciated as secretaries. I can hardly contain myself.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
The average idiot is far too stupid to appreciate their sys admin... We just barely got people to recognize their Secrataries, and they have to look at those people every day. No one understands what a sys admin does, and no one will appreciate them.
Let me add my appreciation for Kuro5hin's sysadmins to the appreciation that Slashdot's SA's deserve.
And we thank you for:
Printing 500 page accounting reports on the photo-proof printer
"This will only take a second"
Five-hundred-meg pst files.
Politics. Stop telling us why you hate XYZ and how they are a b*tch.
Telling us how to do our job ("When are you going to linux? It's a better fileserver than NetWare")
Using things like napster and gnutella, then complaining about how the internet connection is soooooooooo slow.
"Why use the manual when we can ask the admin? Not like they are doing anything else."
Right before scheduled downtime, the inevitable "Wait, no, the finanicals have to go out today!" "It's 5pm, you couldn't do it *before* now?"
Eating our M&M supply. (We get a 2 lbs bag of M&Ms for every $400 worth of kit purchased)
Wondering why the mail server is slow, then proceeding to forward a five meg movie of a monkey peeing into it's mouth to your coworkers. You know, there's a reason why it takes seven hours to backup the mail server.
Dear Users,
Today is National SysAdmin appreciation day. Yes, a day devoted to the countless geeks like me, who help you work better on our computers.
We do your backups, chmod those fules, and even fix the DB2 server for you.. All the while, slowly but surely losing our sanity.
If you wish to show your appreciation by contributing a "gift" I have crafted a list of recommended items below:
-Copy of Diablo 2
-Any Nerf Weapon
-Iced Mocha from Mojo's coffee in Austin Tx.
-Mt. Dew
-Palm Pilot (Palm V or VII only please.)
-Geforce 2 video card
-22" LCD monitor
Please feel free to deposit all gifts, in the "syadmin appreciation gift basket" Located inside my cubicle.
Thank you.
(Yes, my weary attempt at humour)
http://thepoliticalgeek.com/blog/ Politics for Geeks.
Oh what memories
Memories ? The BOFH is still alive and well and on The Register - BOFH 2K: Kit and Caboodle.
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
Users ask me all the time about things like that. Not that I couldn't figure it out in a couple of minutes, but I am not really interested and take the attitude RTFM.
Perhaps that is why I make it a point to eat a large bag of garlic and vinegar flavored potato chips in the afternoons to cut down on nonsensical calls. Then again maybe it's just cause those chips are so good ;)
Sysadmins don't want to be apreciated, we want to be left alone!
Now please excuse me while I take these disks to the bulk era....er..bulk virus scanner...
NightHawk
Tyranny =Gov. choosing how much power to give the People.
Hmm. I'd have to say we should appreciate the Windows administrators tomorrow - they have such a difficult and frustrating job compared with unix administrators. Let's hear it for those who are in the worst areas of the front line trenches!
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Yeah, lets celebrate by slashdotting the site, make the poor sysadmin at "www.sysadminday.com" work his ass off!!
witty sig goes here
Oh what memories... :~(
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
Why Santa is a System Administrator
- Santa is bearded, corpulent, and dresses funny. (KM)
- When you ask Santa for something, the odds of receiving what you wanted are infinitesimal. (KM)
- Santa seldom answers your mail. (KM)
- When you ask Santa where he gets all the stuff he's got, he says, "Elves make it for me." (KM)
- Santa doesn't care about your deadlines. (KM)
- Your parents ascribed supernatural powers to Santa, but did all the work themselves. (KM)
- Nobody knows who Santa has to answer to for his actions. (KM)
- Santa laughs entirely too much. (KM)
- Santa thinks nothing of breaking into your $HOME. (KM)
- Only a lunatic says bad things about Santa in his presence. (KM)
- Santa is forced to do all his work when his users are in down time. (TS)
- He's forced to work even on observed holidays. (TS)
- He claims he's unique, but you see people just like him at the mall. (TS)
- Users make an incredible number of unreasonable demands, but in the end, the only thing that really interests them are new toys. (TS)
- Somehow, somewhere, by some unknown process, he found a wife just like him. (TS)
- Where people don't believe in him, inevitably there are other people who do the same job, just with a different title. (TS)
- Users aren't happy enough to see the results of his work. They keep asking perstering questions about how he manages to do it. They can't accept that it's just some sort of "magic". (TS)
- Even the non-religious pray for him to arrive. (TS)
- He's the only one who laughs at his message of the day. (TS)
- He'll never get another job; his resume is too specific to the job he currently has. (TS)
- Some of the users who make requests are kind of sophisticated, but most of them are having a good day when they avoid peeing their pants in his presence. (TS)
- He's forced to crawl into unreasonably small, dirty spaces to do his job... even when he's wearing a nice suit. (TS)
- Even if his work is really mostly spiritual, the world is a better place because of his existence!!! (TS)
- People expect everything from him, within 24 hours, and at no cost. (SS)
Credits:KM = Keith Meidling
TS = Tony Shepps
SS = Steve Simmons
--
Any computer system of any size needs a sysadmin for one obvious reason, at least: it frees up the users to use the computer, and not have to worry about keeping the thing running. If there are 10 users on a system and each is spending 10 percent of their time keeping the system running, then they are already devoting a full person's time keeping the system going. Better to let one person do that and let the others spend their full time using the computer.
It's common in any large group: people specialize in what they're best at. It's been going on since the beginning of time: towns didn't have everyone dabbling as a blacksmith, or a preacher, or a mortician, even though anyone could do those things. Generally even very small towns usually had one of each. The same applies with sysadmins.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
They are really celebrating over at Napster. Tomorrow the sysadmins will get the day off!
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Does this go for the fine folks who got their MCSE or whatever, and click on buttons to administer their NT servers?
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
At best it should be treated as additional duties assigned to one of the programmers or other tech staff member, or even outsorce the job as needed to a temp service.
*sigh* You are completely clueless. There's nothing worse than a system run by a non-sysadmin. Programmers make the worst sysadmins on the planet. A monkey could do a better job of it. Honestly, you're better off with no sysadmin at all than with someone who really does something else but got forced into the job because nobody else wanted it.
Yet in some ways your analysis is correct: the really good sysadmins really don't have anything to do all day. They've already spent twelve 100-hour weeks setting everything up so perfectly that it runs itself, never needs fixing, and will last till the day the machines burn out. The programmer-sysadmins, on the other hand, seem to spend an awful lot of time fixing problems with the systems. Funny how that is. The fact that everything is working really is attributable to the admins. I've seen shops where things usually don't work right. Trust me, it's plenty possible to be a sufficiently lousy sysadmin that nothing ever works right. Of course, invariably those people are programmers or managers or brownnosing idiots or CIS/MIS fuckwits who are stuck doing sysadmin work until they can get back to their real jobs.
Go thank your admins for the fact you you never see them and the fact that they never do anything. That's the way it should be.
I think there should be system user hate day
That only happens on days that end in 'y'
10 Easy steps Every User Should Know on 'How to Please Your IT Department':
1. When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it
buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals,
dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life,
and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.
2. Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages
from here.
3. When an I.T. person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That
way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to
remember 700 screen saver passwords.
4. When I.T. support sends you an E-Mail with high importance, delete it
at once. We're just testing.
5. When an I.T. person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and
spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.
6. Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and
flags it as a rush delivery.
7. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an I.T. person's
chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We
love a puzzle.
8. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print
jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.
9. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all
68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.
10. Don't learn the proper term for anything technical. We know exactly
what you mean by "My thingy blew up".
These are the same creeps who are squatting on all the slashdot.org misspellings and putting our beloved News For Nerds site into frames.
Moderators please jack this up so people get the right site. (either way, it's still slashdotted right now)
Screw Micro$oft.
Thanks for:
Playing XBoing all day
Telling everyone "I'll get to it in my *spare* time".
Insulting the boss and getting away with it.
That *interesting* oder..
Deleting my home directory then blaming me for not backing it up!(ass munch)
Never explaining ANYTHING!
Getting paid more for doing less.
Knowing *everything* and never being wrong.
Your incredible lack of patience.
And all the other little things that make you soooo invaluable.
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
I think there should be system user hate day
Sometimes you by Force overwhelmed are.