Slashdot Mirror
Time to Say Thanks For the Uptime
DepecheModem writes: "MSNBC is running an article about System Administrator Appreciation Day. Ted Kekatos created this holiday three years after seeing a poster of a system administrator being bombarded with presents. Feeling somewhat underappreciated, he declared his "day" as the last Friday in July. I think we should all remind our employers that administrators are people too and proudly wear our buttons bearing "Have you hugged your geek lately?"."
Say thank you to the poor sysadmin by slashdoting his system.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
By getting drunk at 9am! Wait until they meet Drunken System Administrator. "You lost your password huh? That sucks. Keep guessing!"
Say hello and show your appreciation by paging your sysadmin with "07734" every hour or so.
They have the Internet on computers now?
Another stupid Soandso Day.
Blah.
I get paid, that's thanks enough.
World would be better with no appreciation days.
a Richard Stallman aprieciation day!
last Friday in July
... in half the world (EU and US) it is Wednesday. In the other half it is Thursday.
Errr
Or is this just a setup for the duplicate on Friday?
I only ask because:
;-)
2002-07-23 16:41:06 This Friday is System Administrator Appreciation Day! (articles,news) (rejected)
Not that I'm sore or anything
Great idea, actually, might even actually do something to improve professional relationships. I just hope Hallmark doesn't latch onto this like they have Mother and Father's Days... imagine commercials for cheesy cards and flower arrangements and chocolate baskets for SysAdmin Day, managers frantically calling 1-800-FLOWERS to avoid the manufactured faux pas of forgetting the date until the last minute...
System Technical Overseer, North Eastern Division ("STONED") would be more appropriate in our case...
I think we should all remind our employers that administrators are people too and proudly wear our buttons bearing "Have you hugged your geek lately?
Unfortunately, no one would ever see one of these buttons if I wore one, as my company never lets me leave my administrative cave.
Nick Burns...he'll fix your computer, then he's gonna make fun of you...
Oh, By the way, YOU'RE WELCOME!!
$cat
I would just like every developer that says "it is a server issue" to be forced to take the "perfect" code they have and submit it to a code review before he/she gets to me. That would be the best present of all. Just so I don't have to spend hours digging into it to prove it was that code, in the process fixing the error, and doing thier job. Wait! I just realized, this may be by design. I can hear my CIO now, "if you have a problem that you can't seem to fix, just upload it into production, blame the server, and force the Admin team to prove you wrong. This will narrow cast your problem, and you can work on something else while they figure it out."
Interesting.....DING!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Why is it that any person who can be remotely considered a member of a group has a day for them. I consider myself appreciated every day that the servers don't go down. Just 'cuz it's not said every day doesn't mean I don't "hear" it. Plus, I am shown appreciation every other Friday when money magically appears in my checking account.
But system administrators aren't all geeks. They're often Microsoft Certified professionals, which is an entirely different animal!
Wouldn't the shortest day of the year be more appropriate?
If you don't get the reference, you aren't getting enough User Friendly . Failure to get enough UF in your diet can lead to blindness, so head over there now for a dose.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Lets send him .......
well umm... nothing
i want to live more
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
All these posts are yours-- except FIRST.
Attempt no logged-in submits there.
...to humility?
Q: How do you know that you have more bandwidth than any human should ever be allowed to have? (Except for us /.ers)
\
A: When you are featured on /. and you don't see any difference in the performance of your connection.
/
Somehow places like MSNBC get /.ed and they never seem to be bogged down...
Gato
I'd like and appreciate the day a LOT more if it wasn't created by a system administrator. No offense, but it doesn't seem like a genuine thank-you if the the only other people that celebrate it are other administrative staff, or if they are only celebrating it because they found the website saying that they should.
Sysadmin day? Fine. I think that's great. But how about a day for all us helpdesk monkeys? We're the grunts on the front line, dealing with all the crap from the users.
Sysadmins are all safe in their bunkers, protected from the raw savagery that is support.
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on the page dedicated to the Sysadmin Day, there's a whole list of what qualifies as a Systems Administrator. MSCE is not on the list, though MS Exchange admins are.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Face it guys, the whole point of this day is to make us feel top shit for the day and to needlessly demand that ppl are lower than you. Lets all wank over dilbert comics.
Really, do we have a CEO appreciaton day for all their hard work? Do we have a janitor appreciation day for thanking the janitor for cleaning up after us? Do we have a dentist appreciation day for the dental work they do?
;)
You get paid a salary to provide a service, that should be enough compensation. Heck I'm an engineer, wheres the engineer appreciation day? No thanks for all the technology which was devleloped by scientists and engineers to provide sys-admins jobs?
this isn't really news-worthy, but i do find it funny.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Having worked with many over the years (and having a father who was one for a 20k+ user network for ~25 years) I know a little of the trouble that these people put up with. The devil-possessed clueless users hounding them about problems reading e-mail and how the printer is not working. The enverending department computer inventory cataloging project. The revolutionary updates to the system snuffed by the managers in the ivory tower who don't know what they're killing. The triple booked lab coverage at the same time someone infects the network with a few worms and the UPS on the server starts to whine.
And people accuse admins of being detached, stuffy people who treat their users with disdain.
APPRECIATE YOUR ADMIN. </rant>
Yes, but will they receive a Nintendo 64 console for their efforts to retain 24/7 uptime? The N64 has a plethora of great games...here I will name the top 3. The top 3 video games on the N64 in no particular order are: 1.) Mario 64 2.) Mario Kart 64 3.)Goldeneye 007. Purchase the N64 and 3 games and they will create an intellectualy stimulating atmosphere where you can let go of alll your worries and save the mushroom kingdom from Bowser!
After seeing a poster of a sysadm bombarded with WHAT?
/*" at the prompt and hovering the middle finger over the return key while looking at his employer and saying: "Won't you give me a pwesent, pwetty pwease?"
The only way for a sysadm to get a present is writing "rm -r
Ciao,
Foggy
"Say thank you to the poor sysadmin"... Think I'll have to buy my own cake on Friday, a big thank you to me ;-)
Having a day for SysAdmins is all well and good, but what about the underappreciated Lighthouse Keepers?
These heros of coastal safety never get thanked!
Let's start a movement to create a "day" for those lonely Lighthouse Keepers!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Are we included if we build controls systems for machinery? we run cat5, have offline-access installed, program, design controls systems, design hardware, install, debug, service, maintain, whatnot. would you count that as a Sys Admin?
Its called payday, happens every other friday...
Just what I need, another day for the system administrators here to claim all the glory, when I as a lowly telephone tech support person have to take all the angry calls when the paper MCSEs here screw up the email, web proxy and other servers.
... I'd say more but the phone's ringing and it's probably another corporate executive who can't find the "on" button again. :P
Blah
When is the Helpdesk Appreciation Day?
I'd like my users to buy me T-shirts from ThinkGeek.
Right! The one that says "SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0" would do nicely!
Or how about having the CEO buy you the one that says "I run this company".
That'd be swell!
zI'm pretty sure it's December 22. June 21 is the longest. We have this nice odd-numbered year, so things don't divide as nicely as they might. According to my calender and my other pagan friends and whatnot. I was born on midsummer. it's all very nice.
maybe there are stupid appreciation days for people whose jobs are being done perfectly when no one notices them, and failure otherwise. sales guys get to yell "i got the soandso account". sysadmins dont get to yell "hey another 16 hour day of cleaning up digicrap and no one noticed the massive changes i made". tech support people should have a day too, if they dont have one. actually i like the idea where there's no apprecation days. everyones got it right with the paycheck thing. but i'm just saying, maybe its for the people that only get spoken to when something broke, not when something went right. its grating on the soul when the only people that talk to you are angry.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
But what happens when all the sysadmins take the day off to celebrate their geekdom?
I can see the headlines now "World comes to a halt because no geek around to press control-alt-delete"
How else are we supposed to get laid?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I just told my wife about this and explained that I needed some recognition for the 6 machine LAN that I admin in our home. She laughed at me.
If my wife reacts like that, I'd hate to see your boss.
I can almost hear the Budweiser commercial for this one! :-)
you could simply take pride in a job well done.
---
Information wants...you to shut your pie hole.
Cash would be a nice gift. Is anyone listening?
My perfect gift would be the right to replace the users with shell scripts for the day. *nix is more reliable :)
We're Doomed
posted by apple lied yesterday:
.Mac service be more reliable? .mac member. .Mac membership and an active net connection?
Q: Will the new for-pay
A: No.
Q: Will there be a phone number to call for technical support?
A: No.
Q: Will there be an e-mail address to report outages?
A: No.
Q: Will there, in fact, be any support at all?
A: No.
Q: Will the 100MB of storage come with an increased bandwidth limit for web sites?
A: No.
Q: Will you be telling us what the bandwidth limits are?
A: No.
Q: Will you support CGI, PHP, SSI, SQL, servlets, JSP, WebObjects applications, or anything else beyond regular static HTML files?
A: No.
Q: Will I be able to get access to my web logs? Or any other realtime webspace access statistics?
A: No.
Q: What about backup--our files are safe if we back them up to iDisk, right?
A: No. Apple does not guarantee the integrity of any files on iDisk, even if placed there by the Apple Backup software.
Q: Well, we can at least use the Backup software to back up our computers to CD-R, right?
A: No, not if you have any files bigger than 650MB.
Q: What about using my external tape drive, DVD drive or Firewire hard drive?
A: No, Backup only works with Apple-supplied internal drives. And only if you're a
Q: So the backup software doesn't back up from my local hard disk to my local CD burner, unless I have a
A: Correct.
Q: OK. The service also includes anti-virus software. Are there any Mac OS X viruses at all?
A: No.
Q: If I don't use Microsoft Office, do I need to worry about macro viruses?
A: No.
Q: Umm... OK. So how much for this invaluable service?
A: $99 for one year. Plus tax. In advance.
Q: Can I get two accounts, for me and my wife?
A: Sure, that'll be $198 plus tax. In advance.
Q: No, I mean can I get a second account at a discount because I've already bought one?
A: Oh, alright then, quit whining. You can get a second account for $10 a year if you buy one full account.
Q: And it'll have the backup, anti-virus, and web functionality?
A: No, only an e-mail address.
Q: Ah... but at least it'll be a full e-mail account, right?
A: No, you'll only get 5MB of space. But that's nearly enough to hold five days' spam.
Q: Can't my two accounts just share the same space for a nominal extra fee?
A: No.
Q: Is there a satisfaction guarantee?
A: Yes. Apple reserves the right to terminate your access to the online services and the software, without cause, without notice and without refunding your money, if it's not satisfied with your behavior.
Q: What kinds of things am I not allowed to post on my web site?
A: Anything "lewd" or "vulgar", anything "embarrassing" to anyone, or anything that counts as advertising for any product or service.
Q: So you want $99 a year for an e-mail address, useless backup software, anti-virus software I could buy for $50, and web space limited to inoffensive pictures of fluffy kittens? $99 even if I only want to keep the "lifetime e-mail address" that you previously said was free just for buying a Mac?
A: Yes. Pay up now, in three weeks we'll delete your files and bounce your mail.
Q: I have one more question... What exactly are you smoking out there in Cupertino?
A: We think it's crack. Think different.
Why would we 'apprciate' that greasy little dork? He hasn't changed the toner cartridge in the LJ4 up on third floor yet! Hop to it, 'admin' boy! Then Doris needs you to defrag her drive again and you can help Nancy get her machine back on the LAN.
If you get it all done by noon we'll pool our money and buy you a Hostess DingDong.
Couldn't they have placed that day sometime else? Right now, 90% of the people working here are on vacation. Just the sysadmin is at work, as usual. (Actually, I went on vacation before everybody else, so now when I'm back, it's more or less a couple of weeks of vacation-at-work.)
There are 010 kinds of people. Those who understand octal, those who don't, and 06 other kinds of morons.
This is just fabulous! It'd be really quite nice to get a "Thank you" every now and then. I just love it when people call and say "there's something wrong with my computer", I fix it while they do something else, and mention to the employee on my way out, "Oh, you'r computer's fixed now". All I ever get is "Oh, good". How about a bloody thank you once in a while?!
/me settles down
Just my typical luck that I'm on my vacation at the moment. If I'd been working, I would have sent out an e-mail saying "Ok, here's the deal, people. Either you thank me for doing such a fabulous work NOW, or I'll pull the plug on the ATM and lock the door".
Stupid vacation. I might even have had some fun.
You bring up some interesting points, but it really comes down to one question: does open source software "die"?
.02 and now 2.0 is looking pretty awesome. Then we have a conference and start to talk about direction. A huge debate breaks out and we end up with 4 or 5 cells of people who want to go off in their own direction. Now what?
Let's say that I'm a kernel developer for the OS foo. I've been with the project since ver
Here's the beauty of Open Source: they fork. 1/2 of the attendees have the same vision and start to develop the new 2.1 tree for foo. The other half is broken into 3 groups. My group goes off and starts a new project, and viola, we have a new OS, bar, to 1.0. In the process we've gained a few developers from another project and 1 from foo. Now, you have two robust OS's: foo and bar. Both do something well, and their strength is the other OS's weakness.
Now, here's the best part: the user HAS A CHOICE to run foo or bar. They download foo, mess with it, and decide that it's not right for them. They download bar, and while it's missing some neat features from foo, it looks to be an overall superior OS in the mind of THAT USER.
To simply say that an OS is going in a different direction does make it dead. Mike is free to do whatever he wants to. He mentions that it's not fun, that it's all politics. Well, fork the kernel and start MikeBSD. Nothing wrong with that! Make your OS work for YOU. That's what Open Source is all about. As for raving about this OS or that OS being dead, you're just taking up space.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
As a DBA, I don't depend upon thanks or respect or whatever. If I'm doing my job right, no one notices. As it should be. In other jobs, a lot of people work for little recognition and little money. So I'm not complaining. If you're into IT for the glory, you're going to be disappointed.
"Why should we leave America to go to America Junior?" - H. Simpson, on visiting Canada
It had a panic a month ago after another admin commented out some functions in the /etc/inetd.conf, and kill -HUP'd the inet daemon. Too bad. The little Sun E450's uptime was over 1000 days, which dates its last reboot as before Y2K. The firmare is still dated from 1997.
Bless its little kernel. We're finally getting a backup box for it. We couldn't patch it before because there wasn't a test/dev environment. And we didn't want to bring it down, because it served a critical production function. HA!
Having boxes that are caught up in politics really makes a sysadmin's job tough. Even worse is politics, and no money!
I'm the system administrator for a large school, and all the pupils and teaching staff are off in July and August.... that's 1300 users! The only ones in to celebrate my day with me are the 5 technicians and the caretakers!!!
:)
I'm sure other schools/colleges/etc are in the same position as mine (closed during July and August).
Can't we move System Administrator Appreciation Day forward two months?!!? Please?!!!!
I think we should all remind our employers that administrators are people too...
:)
Here is a way to do it fast:
Just redirected all http requests to your own intranet page with BIG FLASHING banner, asking to greet us with sysadmin day and add such line to every incoming email.. I'm sure that soon everyone will notice your existence
Otherwise unplug from network users who did not greet you well...
Yes, you too may now bow before me. :P
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
What you get during the morning sysadmin appreciation day cake and ice cream when you realize you forgot to reset the software dead man's switch for that day.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Moderate up if you agree that he is jealous. ;)
At midnight, the Great SysAdmin will rise from the server room and bring presents to all the good MCSE's and network jockeys.
I said no text
Really, do we have a CEO appreciaton day for all their hard work?
Yes. Every freaking day they climb into the company jet, or the stock goes up a tiny bit and they are worth millions more, all the catered lunches, just about every freaking moment.
I think, in fact, a CEO non-appreciation day would be quite the event, where a CEO is treated just like any other employee. He has to get his own coffee. Field his own calls. Make his own travel reservations and fly coach to his luxurious golf trip / business meetings.
Taking away access to the machine I use.
E-mailing useless information.
Patching my machine when I want to code.
The list really could go on forever.
Look who's alive!
Janitor day followed by intern day
All those old MCSE (Minesweeper Consultant & Solitaire Expert) people out there must be mighty pissed now that Microsoft have changed the qualification!
Yes, lets thank all those computers that make the harbours safe! They put so much effort into it. Countless hours of watching over the children of the sea coming back to dry land!
I think we need Anonymous Coward appreciation day. :)
I am really tired of hearing all these IT people whine about "I don't get no respect."
Speaking of "I don't get no respect"... anybody else dig that TV commercial where the computer network "characters" are sitting around the meeting table asking each other who left the firewall open... and when they ask Mr. Legacy -- then Rodney Dangerfield walks by with a snide expression on his face and disclaims, "You're not the boss of me."
What a great commercial targeted towards geeks, I love it.
Thanks for making Microsoft an empire in the name of making your jobs secure. :-(
I used to be president of a company a few years ago...I got my own coffee..I did all the crap I had to do myself...why? Because I was a regular employee once and am now. Head of a company does not mean you get to have servants around you....it's not royalty!
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
I don't understand your philosophy. If you're able to find someone to work who does just all that feet rubbing, how could it be considered royalty? Royalty is plundering everyone's money and hoarding it into chests never to be seen again. A luxurious CEO is actually good for the economy! (Trickle down system. =) )
It's human nature to take things like uptime for granted. The only time workers even realize they have a sysadmin is when the network goes down. Then he's "that f*cking idiot over in IT". Sysadmins are even hated for the things they do right, such as restricting dangerous practices on the network. I wouldn't be looking for any cakes or presents anytime soon.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Head of a company does not mean you get to have servants around you....it's not royalty!
Must have been a small company? Once you have 1,000 employees, you are royalty. At least, so it would seem.
I'll take appreciation as a systems administrator any day now...Cuz that means someone put my previous employer back in business and I have a job again...
Guess I'll have to wait for unemployed systems administrator appreciation day. I've got my button already:
"Have you hired your systems administrator today?"
Beyond that, I don't need any other appreciation, a paycheck would be fine by me.
No datacenter is secure if it has windows.
Yeah, sure, the people in your company are going to suddenly going to buy you lunch because you got their printer working or reset their password. Sure.
/dev/null
Maybe you'll get some half-dead flowers from the cheap florist on the corner or some inane computer-related doo-dad from Office Depot. ("Look! a mouse cover that looks like, get this: a MOUSE!")
Good God, I want a sysadmin day where users just LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE. It's bad enough that I eat my pathetic convenience store sandwich at my desk while trying to watch a downloaded divx of futurama, but some moron, seeing me with my headphones on and half a sandwich in my hand has got to come over and ask for me to print a document or fix her excel macros or update the company web page. ("Nobody's hit the Investor Relations page in a week, I *think* your updates can wait twenty goddamn minutes...")
But yet, if you send them away, you'll pay later...
The best thing to do is to take quiet revenge. Turn off the proxy server. Randomly delete mails with attached spreadsheets. Write perl scripts to rewrite outgoing mails (s/the/teh/g) and on incoming mails as well (s/Regards,/I find you strangely attractive,/g)
Send a company-wide notice that the router that handles internet browsing will be down from 2:00 to 4:00 pm for an "LRF Support Module" upgrade. (LRF = Little Rubber Feet.) Then take those two hours to download ISO after ISO of whatever the hell you like.
Subscribe everyone in the company to bugtraq - for security's sake...
Find new and creative uses for
When you are asked to push back your vacation a few days, wait until after and let it slip to your boss know that you were supposed to be the Best Man at your brother's wedding, but instead spent that Saturday restoring the backup domain controller.
Nope, you ain't gonna get a day - even if you did, you wouldn't enjoy it. Make your own fun...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
You may have a point. Strikes me that Sysamin day is likely to be greeted with the same kind of appreciation that "Estate agent day" or "Tax collector day".
This would certainly be the case for any business that I have worked for, as the main role of the other company that the Sysadmin works for seems to be to deny services.
Things have moved on since the days of the punch card fed data center maybe. But looking at the syllabus for computer science courses it strikes me that things are starting badly when 50% of them are about security and just slightly more than a gnats whisker is about capture and analysis of user requirements.
Of course the value for money culture doesnt help, we dont know what they do so lets sack as many as possible and see if the lights go out.....
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
My sysadmin doesn't deserve any appreciation. He's an incompetent boob who should have been replaced years ago. Unfortunately, we can't replace him because he's got the network so screwed up that no one else could ever figure it out.
Mind you, I'm not the only one who feels this way. This isn't a personal grudge. All of my coworkers get the same defeated look whenever they are forced to deal with him. More projects and initiatives than I can count have been abandoned in midstream, because the sysadmin either put up too many roadblocks or broke an important bit of code or whatever.
The rest of the company has learned to work around him, but I am beligerant enough -- even after two and a half years here -- to really call him out. I've spent hours watching over his shoulder, pointing out his mistakes, whenever he tries to screw with my Web servers. He has finally come to understand that I am one of the few people here that he can't afford to cross, because he knows that I know just how bad he truly is and that when the real business decisions (priorities, budgets) get made, I now have far more pull than him.
a company wide email has just been sent to everyone in my company reminding them that Friday is SysAdmin day! (I'm sure they all remembered anyway)
I look forward to pulling into the parking lot Friday morning to see my new car waiting for me.
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
The majority of sysadmins that I've worked with have been almost carbon copies of "Nick, your company's computer guy": rude, arrogant, impatient, and unresponsive. Many forget that it is their job to fix computers and feel they should be begged and groveled upon.
The sysadmin is the mechanic of the 21st century. You are not a god because you spent 3 weeks getting your a+ certification. Your one year at a tech school does not compare to the 4-year degrees of the people you serve.
Try earning your appreciation, rather than declaring your own holiday.
This appreciation day includes many system administrators:
Computer Administrators
Network Administrators
Internet Administrators (webmaster)
Telephone (PBX) Administrators
Voice-Mail Administrators
Database Administrators (DBA)
UNIX ® Administrators
LINUX Administrators
Lotus Notes ® Administrators
Novell GroupWise ® Administrators
MS Exchange ® Administrators
IBM Mainframe Systems Programmers ("sysprogs")
What about us Tivoli Storage Manager/Veritas Netbackup Admins? where's our love? remember this next time you need your files/SAP/Oracle DB restored
r saso
I think I'll get mine a pager. :D
Not December 21! Any day but Dec 21! Oh please not Dec 21!!!!!
That's my mother in law's birthday!!!!!
--
Garett
As an employee of a 500+ user CO.
I am the only persone here for all network,server,telphone,PC, issues
i do all the hardware repaire work my self
becouse the cfo wont pay maintance agreements
I am the helpdesk
for a lowely $15 hr
sure Ive been aprooved a raise and a helper
but its been over a year and I havnt seen it yet
Would love to quit but hey gota have them bills paid
Maybee Its just me but its screwed up that im considering moving to the purchasing dep. becouse
the box crusher guy makes $20hr
/ end complaining
Wanna know what's fun when you're working in a cubicle environment? Unplug the DSL modem. Not only do you learn new words, but you can play with everybody's day at once!
Wish they appreciated me, I'm getting too creative when it comes to annoying people.
Either you are trolling or haven't a clue.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
OK..it only had 100..but I knew everyone by name...I appreciated EVERY single person there, and I even invited everyone to my house for a BBQ. As A president of a company, your employees are doing YOU a favor by working for you..You can't be CEO of a 1 man company.(Well, I guess the dot bomb era proved you can :))
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Every time you read a User Friendly strip, you should be reminded of the goofy daleks wheeling about and chanting "weeee are the superior beeeeings" and threatening everything with the only one tool they have. Tip one over and it's done for.
Taken to its extreme, the single ongoing punchline is: "Ha ha the people who actually do things with computers instead of fetish-fixating on the computers themselves are stupid! Ha ha we control the computers! Ha ha the people who actually do things are stupid again! Ha ha! We still control the computers!"
Being a sysadmin is cool and all. But generally speaking, you're one of the less valuable cogs in the machine which people are more eager to replace if you maintain that mindset.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
If you don't want to serve, what are you doing with the root-password anyway?
Every luser want's to be a winner - but only the true, unselfish sysadmin can become enlightened.
Hence start behaving like a REAL SYSADMIN:
Use this day to bake a cake for the user who had his password reset most often, hhhmmm? And give away some prices (from bottle of Champaigne to a sixpack of root-beer) for those geniuses who managed to reach you on the phone between 2 and 4 am. Ok?
That is a real shame that you have had those kind of experiences. Whenever I have seen an admin that is like that, that is the reason that I will not deal with being one myself. I am fully aware of how a user feels when they are frustrated, and have someone to help them with their problems, I am doing support for a job, and get asked a lot of questions from my family about how to get their computers to function. Although I am still with you as to saying that it is a dumb idea to have a holiday to celebrate the sysadmin, just like I think it is dumb to celebrate for any other occupation. because it is the job of those people to do their function, with or without extra recognition. I actually help people with computers, because I actually love to see them pick up on how these things work, and then if it is broken, I like the challenge of fixing the thing. I would have to say that there are others like me, but since the .com bubble, there are a lot of the admins that you describe because they are in it for the money, which is not the right idea in the first place. Those type of people shouldn't be admins in the first place because they usually lack the kind of pragmatism that is required to fix a true computer problem, oh, I have been trained to use x tools, so if it is a problem with y, it is because y is defective type of crap. I would say that you should show more appreciation for people as they help you, if they truely are an asset to what you do on a daily basis.
I'd care not so much about the appreciation part, but this day is needed more so for the awareness of humanity.
Yes, I can communicate (I'm not an asocial slob).
I work nights and weekends, but I have a life too.
Yes, I do fix things - the problems you have when you see me are not (usually!) caused by me.
And the stupid rules I make you follow (you're not allowed to load that, I can't give it to you because it's not standard, you have to go to the other department to get that, you only have 50 Mb of space on the server, I can't do it before next month, etc. etc.)? I don't make them up - they are the generated and expected excrement of this inefficient bureacracy.
I do the best I can with the environment I'm dealt with to serve you and with the rules I am told to follow; please don't blame me for trying to make your infrastructure better.
In fact, not only don't blame me, but recognize that I am really trying here.
Yah, like that.
I kinda see a techno-geek manifesto coming...
Or is it "rent" a hooker? Hmmm, employ? Anyway, nothing like a quickie in the server room to make my year. I'll be testing the pipeline burst in the backup route on the last Friday of JUUUUULLYY! We've all done it...
'Nuff said.
That attitude has obviously paid off - since you are now again a lowly employee. But it doesn't sound like you enjoyed the benefits of being the boss, anyway.
...that with the exception of the Janator, system administrators are the only people who get no appreciation for a job well done.
Keep the network running flawlessly for a year. Deal with all the stupid questions (bet your CEO doesn't have to do that,) and generally do your job perfectly...
Then the first day that the PDC goes down, everyones bitching at you.
CEOs and dentists get the occational pat on the back... Administrators are generally critical to a company but still get walked over.
I think we could use a little appreciation. : )
(Note: IANAA)
... leaving out any adminitrators and the computer itself. Try to reboot, and ... fail.
... This was just an hour ago - I won't be mentioning sysAdmin day around here anyway, lest it be misinterpreted as "nail-the-sysAdmin-to-the-wall-day".
... ? ... meh, I'm just the programmer)
Just now my co-worker came up to me with a tale of grief:
He came across a website with the iFrame-showing-the-local-disk trick. It was a new one on him (he's more on the business side of things), and he expressed outrage towards our sysAdmin. Unfortunately, the iFrame trick was a new one on our sysAdmin, too, and he (apparently) doesn't have a clue about permissions across frames in the browser. So instead of simply checking for the newest security patches and applying some soothing words, he feigns competence and resets all the permissions on all the local drives
This leaves the poor sod of a co-worker with an un-bootable box, and two days worth of lost data.
(Heck, I'm not sure if the above is accurate, IANAA, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm jus' tellin' it how I hear it)
(PS: Anyone have a neat trick for recovering a Win2k box with SNAFU'd permissions? Bootdisk, and
yes, we have no bananas
... when I was a SysAdmin back when jobs were plentiful.
:).
I enjoyed coming in and completely fixing the last "sysadmin's" handy work.
I enjoyed migrating all servers from Windows to Linux (funny how you can get your way when you do not have to spend thousands of dollars) while all the users can still use the os's that they are familiar with (Windows, Unix, Macintosh) and still be able share the same files and printers.
I enjoyed uptimes of months (only downtime was due to upgrading the UPS... funny you have to actually unplug the server to utilize the UPS... sheesh
I enjoyed rebuilding all workstations to MY SPECIFICATIONS so that I get no more than one call a day from a user having issues with whatever.
I certainly did not mind helping my fellow employees making their home computers that much better. Actually kind of flattering because they see that I can take a low-end workstation (similar specs to their home pc) and make it run for weeks without problems. I wouldn't blame them for wanting the same thing at home.
I enjoyed sharing my enthusiasm about whatever was leet going on in technology with other people and seeing them started to get interested in that same technology.
I enjoyed supporting and helping people without making them feel stupid because they asked a question about computers.
I don't care for an appreciation day. I just want to be a sysadmin again.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
Bless your souls for keeping those sites up late at night.
it's not another creation of the card companies.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
Give a Geek a Hug article.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
My office celebrates System Admin Appreciation Day.
This week, I got layed off!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
...why not get another job.
When you're twenty years into sysadminning and finally start to realize that the sysadmin is not the 'God of Computers' that you figured him to be, when it dawns on you Finance has stronger claims on the E10K Sun machine than IT, when you spend half your day complaining about how 'politics' is preventing you from doing your job, maybe that's the wrong time to discover you would have rather been doing management.
Choose wisely grasshoppers.
Want to get appreciated even more Skyshadow?
/*;
1. Backup all critical data and hide backup somewhere.
2. Cause data catastrophe: rm -rf
3. Cry to boss, "Oh no! Critical hardware failure! Your pictures..err..data is lost sir! CVS codebase gone!"
4. Mess up your hair, throw water on your face looking like madly trying to recover the data.
5. Wait until everyone panics, and starts running around like mad! And you hear screams, "Oh no! My new algorithm I worked since yesterday...all gone!"
6. While everyone is in a state of frenzy, restore all data.
7. Boss will be very,very happy.
8. Ask for raise the next day for your superior risk-analysis and data-recovery skills.
9. Repeat 1-7 twice a year, and you'll recieve a bonus too!
Actually, you need to have a named CEO when you incorporate, so you (at least in California, I don't know about other states) could be a CEO (and president, treasurer, and secretary) of a one-person company.
Very well put IMHO.
Keep Austin Weird!
At least where I work the sys admins have plenty of appreciation...from themselves. They seem to forget that the engineers are making the products that keep them employeed. Yes they serve a vital function but instead of putting roadblock after roadblock up they should think about how they can help get products out the door.
It took me months just to get the sys admins to let me put a Linux box on the network even though simulations on the box where 2-4 times faster than a Sun...geeesh.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
Can I spray him with disinfectant first?
"Have you hugged your geek lately?"
I take offense to that. In all my years of computer career (which has been very long) and system administration never once have I felt anything but despise for geeks.
When things get thick and shit busts, I'm the one who logs in and fixes it after someone else left a mess. I'm the one that sets up servers that have 339 day uptime. And I'm the one that can fix anything from a hot girl to a cocktail to a gas pipe and not blink thinking about it.
I am root, not a geek. And nobody dares give me any shit because they know I'll pull Mr. 9mm on their forehead. I pity the poor lot that gets a hard on for doing `su -`. Any idiot can do that, but how many really understand what being root is all about, not just on a UNIX server but in real life as well?
You geeks are supposed to have big brains, churn on what I wrote.
This holiday was made up by clever marketing people to get you to go out and send a free personalized internet greeting message.
Time to Say Thanks For the Uptime
If the purpose of this holiday is to thank the sysadmins for our fabulous uptime, I think I can safely skip it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Thanks for calling attention to this event and providing the official-sounding links. I convinced my boss that this is an important national day, and the company agreed to spring for a pizza party with ice cream and soda on company time for the whole IS department on Friday.
"Come on everybody!" (clap clap) "There's cake in the conference room!"
"So, what are we celebrating?"
"It's System Administrator Appreciation Day! Look, we've got 'Have you hugged your geek today?' buttons and everything!"
"Uhhh, we fired all the IT people six months ago."
"Oh. That's a shame. More cake?"
Holy faecal post, Batman! Someone's studying the WIPO Troll.
So now the Sys Admins have a day along with the secretaries and the bosses. But what about all the rest of us??? I'm tired of buying presents for the rest of the staff. I know I'm whining, but really. Many, many people work hard in their positions. Why do we honor just a few solely by what their title happens to be?
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
that has to be the worst cable management I have ever seen in my entire career.
This communication is secured using Rot-26 Encryption Algorithm, Unauthorized decryption will be subject to laughter.
It should be hump your sysadmin day! I work in an office full of women and no guys... this would be much more appreciated, especially by a couple of them who are knockouts. Course, my wife might mind, but then I can point her at the SAAD website and tell her that it's a holiday tradition!
"Thanks for the downtime and difficult to use software that no one understands but we adopted to satisfy your geek mentality and cheap ass budget"
that would be much more appropriate, especially in my office where our IT 'professional staff' are trying to convince management that we should all be using open source. *ugh*. Can you imagine 120 older ladies like myself who can only surf and do email and type letters trying to use Linux! My damned husband foisted this on me at home and I immediately ran out and bought a nice new Compaq so I could have something to use that made sense and wasn't crashing all the time.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
I am not celebrating sys admin day. Frankly, I find it ridiculous. Enough with the self-martyring. For a profession paid an average of $60,5000 (well above national average), I think your take home pay should be sufficent enough.
Yes, there can be the occasional developer that makes your life hell. Guess what? There's the occasional BOFH who does the same for developers. By large both groups are good people, but every profession has their share of assholes.
Yes, you work overtime. YOU KNEW THAT BEFORE YOU GOT INTO IT. And damn it, so does everyone else in IT: Developers, CTO's, QA. And speaking of QA, talk about people who get no respect for what they have to put into it. It's the nature of the beast.
You do your job. You do your best. You take pride in it. That should be enough.
My two cents,
-Bill
And no, I don't want a developer's thank you day either.
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
Even the shitty sub-standard wiring job by AT&T* I spent the last two weeks repairing looked better than that.
* The only details I'll give is whoever did it had to have been color-blind.
Wow,
This is a great thread. Here's the problem, for all of you people who are complaining about your sysadmin:
1) Someone who can barely type in a password of more than 3 characters hired your sysadmin.
2) That same person waffled at paying a REAL sysadmin what they were worth to your company, and in this world, you get what you pay for.
3) Because you complain about things you know nothing about (and yes, that includes developer cowboys who like to screw things up for everyone else to get what they want), you are probably going to get a little bit of that treatment in return. Try this little test: Go to a nice restaurant, without a reservation. Grab the first waiter you see by the arm (if you're lucky, the waiter will have just walked in the door), and tell them that you want to order the steak and lobster, and you needed it 2 hours ago, and it is for a big, important client (who is generating revenue, not costing your company money). You will be sitting over at that open table, which hasn't been wiped off yet, and complain to the waiter about not having wiped the table clean in preparation for your unannounced arrival. Wear a suit to make yourself look important, because, well, you are, aren't you? Then, when your steak and lobster doesn't show up in fewer than 5 minutes, call over the manager, who will then tell the waiter to do what you ask them to do. A good waiter will give you excellent service, smile, and accommodate your every whim (interruptions, you explaining to him how he should work on the steak and lobster, constant bitching about not having water, wine, bread, 4 other tables). Any other waiter will be, oh, just like YOUR sysadmin...and will treat you the way you deserve.
4) Having an MCSE doesn't mean the sysadmin your Office Manager hired will know dick about computers.
5) You probably know less than your sysadmin about computer systems. If you know more about computer systems, you should be a mentor, not a whining prick.
6) Nobody notices a good sysadmin. Shit just works. If you constantly have computer downtime at work, see #'s 1 and 2.
Oh, and my Internet is just fine, I was only kidding...how's yours?
man rtfm
"They seem to forget that the engineers are making the products that keep them employeed."
And managing the systems for not only the sniveling Engineers, but also the CEO, CFO, Marketing cronies, Accountants, HR staff...I love to hear how people should recognize their lot in life, especially from Dilbert.
"roadblock after roadblock"
Definition. No, you can't hose your system to install that program that hasn't been licensed by the Company. No, you can't have Administrative privileges which would allow you to hose the server that is used by more than just you. Yes, you do have to wait your turn. Yes, you do have to use that little-known skill called "planning." No, you can't have the $3,000 Linux box you want for a project that will net the Company $1,000 in increased productivity.
"they should think about how they can help get products out the door."
I've seen some of the stuff Engineers have churned out the door. It takes a sysadmin who knows how to troubleshoot the problem to wind up getting your shoddy product to work in the first place.
"It took me months just to get the sys admins to let me put a Linux box on the network even though simulations on the box where 2-4 times faster than a Sun...geeesh."
Months? You are obviously either a jerk or a moron...I have a recommendation, try asking nicely, and even better, justify your request sans the holier than thou attitude. I don't know of any manager that would let a project extend itself for months due to a sysadmin, unless the Engineer making the request was either completely disrespected or clueless about business.
Is it me? Or does the site sux0r? I guess Sys admins don't have too much time to spend on web site designs
How about a day for the people who are actually doing the work, rather than a day for people who merely keep the tools clean.
Yes, then you'd also be the CFO, the CTO and the Janitor :)
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
lets explain one thing.... a ceo works soo hard, that he doesnt have time to field is own calls. What is your problem? Maybe if you spent less time on slashdot and more time on working... maybe you would be treated like a ceo. PS... im not a ceo
My job is service. I fix problems. I don't feel my job is particularly more stressful or thankless then, say, director of customer support, or a Tier 1 tech. If I'm doing my job well, I'm invisible. I'm paid well for being invisible.
let's not go down this track - official appreciation days really suck - mother's and father's days are bad enough - but over th last coupla decades seems every lobby group been claimin a day for self-congratulatory purposes - in my opininion this is only demeaning to th ppl concerned
ppl who appreciate what you do and know not to take other ppl for granted will always show unprompted gratitude - others who don't or are more self-centered will only resent it and any gratitude they express will be false