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?
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
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
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.
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.
Its called payday, happens every other friday...
Really? Personally, I find myself far more appreciated every time the servers *do* go down in flames due to a massive (vendor, contractor or intern-caused) issue that nobody else has a clue about. I can feel the appreciatation radiating off my boss when I tell him that I've used my years of experience and contacts in this-or-that organization to save not only the data of the developers, but also his private image collection.
Weirdly, these problems seem to crop up just before quarterly reviews. That's when I really feel appreciated.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
...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
My office celebrates System Admin Appreciation Day.
This week, I got layed off!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
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