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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?
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.
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.
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
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.
Well it will be friday someday,... right then we will celebrate.... and you can always ask your sysadmin to change the system clock..simple
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
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>
It's so we all have time to go out and buy pretty hallmark cards that say "Happy ______ Day" and can fill in the blank and give it to them. (I can't imagine any 'Happy Admin Day' cards exist yet.)
What?
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
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
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.
Ehh, MineSweeper Certified Engineer vs. Microsoft Certified Solitare Engineer, what's the difference?
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.
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); }
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.
If you're into IT for the glory, you're going to be disappointed.
Then, what you're saying is that my guidance counselor was a lying sack of crap...
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
According to the website, MS Exchange Administrator is a valid job title to qualify for appreciation day. Of course there should be a requirement that the exchange server not be listed or ordb.org.
I was thinking a Mike's Hard Lemonade commercial instead.
...
You know, where the server says it's going to go bits-up in 10 minutes
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
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.
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.
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'm sure other schools/colleges/etc are in the
:)
> same position as mine (closed during July and
> August).
K-12 schools, maybe. Most colleges and universities in my experience run all year with two weeks or so downtime in December near the Christmas holidays.
At least I'm fairly certain that I was teaching a freshman chemistry class this morning until about 11:20.
-- Rick
I think the reason for this "holiday" and others like Secretaries Day are to recognize members of your organization who go "beyond the call of duty."
I am sure you all have stories about incompetent sys admins but what about the gurus that get asked all sorts of questions about things that may not fit into their job descriptions.
I can't tell you how many times I get calls about things that have nothing to do with my official job (what digital camera should I buy?, How do I network more than one computer to use my home internet connection? How do I create my own web site?)
I try to provide answers and even point the user to a place where they can do some more research on it even though I could easily say "That's not my job!"
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.
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!
Oddly enough the 26th is a friday everywhere that uses our calendar and days of the week. The website plainly referes to the 26th as being System Admin Day.
...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. : )
... 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.
Seems like a post on an "appreciation day" is an invitation for a little venting. I've had many a day where I've had a similar wish. (It gets answered about as well as my wish for cash instead of trinket rewards ;) ). Of course, there are also people who will go out of their way to work with you to figure out a problem, instead of just dump it on you with an e-mail that consist entirely of "the servers broken," without any other information.
Presumably, developers sit around and tell stories about awful sysadmins.
And the world turns on.
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).
Well, he did say that they did kill the inetd daemon.
While you are correct that this shouldn't kill the box, maybe he meant uptime as in being able to login and use the system, not uptime as we know it. If inetd was not running, that could certainly cause some problems.
Or, maybe he came from the Microsoft side and just decided to reboot instead of restarting inetd. You be the judge.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
My office celebrates System Admin Appreciation Day.
This week, I got layed off!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Actually, it was a HUP on the inet daemon, and it was a kernel panic that quickly followed.
It was bugid #4178455 "recursive mutex_enbter panic in TCP Streams device driver" which was found by the kernel engineer when I sent the core dump and explorer script output. This problem was fixed with patch number 105529-07.
Or a Southwest Airlines commercial...
Especially after the Sysadmin finishes cleaning up after the "Pink Slip" worm!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Boot the CD and go to recovery console.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
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?"
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
you could simply take pride in a job well done.
I had a door that did that once. Never stopped talking about it, in fact. I couldn't stand it. Sold it to a robot company. The rest is history.
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
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