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Sysadmin Day. Yay.
Izeickl writes "The BBC is running an article about sysadmin day. One admin is quoted saying, 'We are unappreciated and no-one knows what we do for 364 days of the year.' Apparently even the online greeting cards are getting in on the action check out 123Greetings.com and put a smile on that cranky admins face! The starter of this day also has a page here." Well, most competent sysadmins probably have electronic greeting cards blocked at the router, but I suppose it's the thought that counts... Jeremy Sieminski submits a Mouse Pad Couch as the appropriate place for a sysadmin to rest his weary, uh, wrists. And of course if you've never read the BOFH stories, you're missing out.
Sysadmin day?!?!?!
Something makes me think having a sysadmin's day isn't going to help fix that. :)
sig.
Obviously this is a (humorous?) attempt to change this, but as I am a fresh highschool graduate going into college, is this the kinda treatment I can look forward to(Being mostly ignored)?
You'll get a card when you unlock my account!
You bastard!
Great! Another Hallmark holiday.
a bad one, like the one i have to deal with, just makes life really difficult and frustrating.
Well, since my DNS, DHCP, wireless are still not working and I still haven't received my replacement laptop after the previous one broke, I indeed start to wonder WHAT they do 365 days a year.
Yesterday morning I had a presentation for a customer and of course the wireless was down and the sysadmin was nowhere to be seen.
I'll appreciate him when he does his job. Period.
Bless my Sys Admin, for she keeps me connected and happy. And I keep her employed and well-fed. :)
"I send you this electronic greeting card in order to have your advice."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this an old story? It's Deja Vue all again because I swear I read this one or a very similar one on /. ?
i know plenty of other sysadmins who don't know what they're doing those other 364 days of the year.
vodka, straight up, thank you!
..And now I can't get anyone out of my office! Thankfully this is only ONE day out of the year that I have to put up with these...people...and they're asking..questions...about what I do here...gRRRrrR!
Programmer: "Server's down!"
Sysadmin: "Thanks, server's down to you too!"
=== "Some people see the glass as half-empty. Others see it as half-full. I see the glass as too big." -G. Carlin.
The only true way to appreciate a good sysadmin is to leave them alone for one day. Don't talk to them, don't flood his mailbox with some stupid ass HTML email, don't try to hug them, don't ask them a stupid question, don't blame the network for your incompetence at clicking on links, stop opening spam, stop forwarding around 3meg powerpoint attachments comprised of dilbert comics, stop trying to pretend you get it (when it is anything computer or tech related), and for god's sake don't pretend you understand what it is like to be on call 24x7... in short:
GO AWAY
Now that is some serious appreciation.
--- I do not moderate.
another excuse to get drunk, party,and passout.
:D
LAZY ADMINS GET TO WORK.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/24/14272
Makes point D of this comment that I posted earlier all the more relevant.
Also, I recommend this link for the BOFH stories. This has more than the "official" site. The BOFH stories are hilarious. Will take you a couple of days to read it all, but it is SO worth it!
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
Hmm.. *clickity click* You've got plenty of disk space, now... Happy BOFH day!
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Puts on asbestos undies.. damn these things itch
What's the point? The story earlier this week suggested that the "holiday" was created by a SysAdmin. If that's the case, I should just create "Quality Analyst Day."
I guess I can at least be thankful that SysAdmin Day isn't Hallmark-ized yet. Christmas in July sales are on right now, and I fear the day that they merge with an extended shopping season.
Are you implying that you're downloading pr0n for only 0.25 days per year?
So unappreciated...
Sysadmin day, of course, assumes you've got one. I work at a Legal Aid office and we, like so many other small non-profits, haven't got any IT staff at all. So that leaves me, the lowly intern, as not only gopher, typist and receptionist, but de facto Sysadmin, even though I don't know shit about Netware, etc.
Yesterday was "meet with homeless schizophrenic man while battling with NT Forms and the LaserJet's new memory that, of course, I bought from Crucial.com with my own money because it was so damned slow I wanted to kill myself" day. Today is "write 22 angry letters to slum lords trying to evict single mothers for absolutely nothing, while teaching the attorney the joys of Mozilla" day.
Damn. I wish I had a Sysadmin to appreciate.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
Every time I've walked past that room and the door is open, there are at least 2 people on the couch. (I work with Jeremy) (Hi Jeremy.)
I am so one thousand three hundred and thirty seven!
Admiration? Adoration? Acknowledgement? A sysadmin craves not these things.
If those are the things you want, J Crew Boy, you are in the *wrong* line of work.
The tradeoff of getting to do your thing with others that are like minded (or solo) in an enviornment that is very much your own and on one bothers you is that no one knows what you do (or cares..let's face it) until it's broken and they run at you like they are on fire in trade for a job where you get to do something you are good at, get paid for, and get to play with new toys all the time.
Appreciate me by not sending 100M email attachments to distribution lists. That'll do.
I fuck off online. Like right now, for instance.
I used to think the drug lifestyle was the greatest, until I discovered the BOFH lifestyle.
--
pants ahoy
Only has to work 1 day a year to make sure everything is still working from the year before. =] Of course, if they do their job too well, they'll be considered as not needed, since nobody will notice it.
The 1 day out of the year they are noticed is the day something beyond their control breaks (hardware failure, etc).
What?
Whenever I felt unappreciated as a sysadmin, I would set up my old rocking chair in the server room. After a peaceful afternoon spent in the gentle breeze of server fans, and with a few critical cables running underneath my chair as I eased back and forth, everyone in the building knew what I did...
We are unappreciated and no-one knows what we do.
Well, welcome to planet earth. And I hope you enjoy your stay. While on your visit to out beautiful planet please observe the 365 appreciation days we have, starting with Sys-admins. Tomorrow is Donut maker day, and after that it's the Dog bathers.
Hmm. Maybe this is the start of something good. Let's see for admin love day wish list:
BMW Z3 Roadster
2 weeks leave at the company owned condo in the Cayman's
Acknowledgement from that cute secretary I keep hitting on.
World Domination.
Well, most competent sysadmins probably have electronic greeting cards blocked at the router, but I suppose it's the thought that counts...
:)
Most competent sysadmins would know that routers are at the network layer and cannot, by default, block e-mails. Maybe you meant e-mail proxy?
People who have witty things here blow.
Because every Sysadmin I've ever worked with has had an intolorable Holier-than-thou attitude and talk down to everyone like children or worse. For that matter, computer people in general just have this grating attitude that makes me feel like smacking 'em! Giving them a celebratory day wouldonly worsen that ego.
Eveyone has to work to live, there are people who work WAY harder and more with a lot less thank you, PLUS they don't adopt that damned attitude! You want to give someone a celebratory day? Try the Firemen or Police!
Now if you're a bad sysadmin, you're always fixing things up and braking other things at the same time so you're always doing overtime so eventually your boss hire people to help you, you become those people manager's so you let them fix all the stuff you broke and read slashdot all day in the mean time, but with a hiher pay and job security.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
hall-eh-freakin'-lou-yuh!
Aside from my home system and a friend's system, I'm no longer one for a whole network of ungrateful users. Or bosses. Hooray for that alone! And the friend is getting smart about running his own system. So yay again.
-- haaz, who doesn't miss being a sysadmin one bit.
-- haaz.
I sent this link to both my supervisor and my boss two days ago. Both pretty much laughed at me. Now its here, and I'm hung over like hell (Slashdot meetup recovery), I kinda wish someone would atleast make this day a little better for me. :-( A simple 'thanks' would be more than enough.
Can all fish swim?
What about a Janitor Day? Surely they do more grunt work than us wee sys admins, and you know no one gives them the appreciation they deserve.
Your local sysadmin would love for you to ;-)
add their email addy to an online greeting card's
database!
Let's see a sysadmin do the work of a construction worker at the construction worker's wage and see just how appreciated the sysadmin feels when he returns to his air conditioned cave with net access and computer toys and a paycheck three to four times as large as the manual laborer.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
y days to get me a different computer, which doesn't display the color 'green'. then i can't install the hardware i need for a project, cause i don't have the rights. and i can't make a folder on a server to store important files. no access there either.
they get ripped on, but sometimes for a reason. i don't hate them, but having to deal with another department in a company is frustrating, no matter how good they are.
i'm not sure if there's anything in particular that warrants 'appreciation days' for any profession. farmer appreciation day, finish your food? garbage pick-up man appreciatoin day, double bag your trash? homeless guy appreciation day, leave aluminum cans out for him to steal and run away with (quite a humorous site, let me tell ya...). but, sysadmins have this power of information, and the only reason they have this day is because they can post to everyone to worship them for the day. if i were a radio broadcaster, i'd try to pull the same thing. and get strippers too (publicity only i tell ya!)
Do yr SYS ADMIN a good turn, delete all of your old junk files (or at least compress them!) in your home dir and in any public dirs you use.
/home is 98% full.
especially if
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Great idea, but their animated gifs don't seem to work in Mozilla and since all the sysadmins I know are smart guys, so they use Mozilla and will probably just find this annoying.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
told you so!
Give him a riase, :)
Dont bug him/her,
Get him/her laid (odds are he's single and lonely)
Buy them some potatochips
Give them a free copy of Warcraft 3
Buy them an Xbox.
Geekculture has a tribute to the hot but evil 'Sissy' the Sysadmin from after Y2K (AY2K) at:y 2k/af tery2kmain.html
http://www.geekculture.com/geekycomics/After
We tell users to read BOFH so they appreciate how helpful their current sysadmin is! Great idea...
[o]_O
Or when other people saw the office with the mouse pad couch did they think it looked like a 3rd-world prison cell as well?
I stole this Sig
The sysadmin here rips DVDs all day. He's useless, but he was in the Marines with the management or some such nonsense. The users here know who's ass to kiss. Desktop support, boyeeee!!
And keep up the good work. And I appreciate the fact that you read slashdot and still works with lawyers :)
Rapid Nirvana
(To the tune of "Its the Muppet Show. Yay." - Kermit the frog)
Underappreciated? WE ALL (meaning other occupations) ARE (or at least have people whining about it).
Do you get a paycheck? That's why you get one.
Don't like your job? FIND ANOTHER ONE THAT YOU DO LIKE.
Honestly, very few people deserve their own "day" (like veterans that lost their lives at war, etc...), but sysadmins don't fall into this category.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Call me cynical, but most Appreciation Days are, IMO, like tipping:
The DOS for Dummies suggests similar gifts as bribes to get free help from freaky nerds like Nick Burns.
Everyone likes to be appreciated, not everyone deserves bribes.
I would send our sysadmin a card but we're having network problems *yet again*. Which idiot is responsible for that stuff anyway?
My life is one big siesta in which I'm dreaming I wished my life was one big siesta.
Th
..and I'm damn proud of it! I'm 29 years old and this was my dream when I was just 11 years old and my uncle who was working in Nokia told me that they were running Unix on their computers.
all the pr0n we serve
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" -- George Orwell
- Been the emotional punching bag for angry corporate users calling the technical support center here when they screwed up the MS Exchange server because their MCSE courses apparently didn't cover making it able to go a month without corrupting it's database.
- Been the person people complain about the MS Proxy server setup which routinely times out when going to any site outside the company thanks to the fact that the server admins keep fighting over who knows how to set it up properly.
- Been the person who gets all the fallout telephone calls from angry remote Citrix dial-up users, all because the network admin decided one night to change everything over to DHCP, versus the old static IPs, along with moving to a different IP class, causing every remote user to need their network settings changed.
- Been the person who has all the system administrator's personal telephones forwarded to him when they feel "overburdoned" because I'm just lowly tech support, and can therefore answer all their calls for them.
NoIronic that our company's horrible sysadmin who's head is on the chopping block and couldn't keep a system up if his life depended on it, called in sick today. Understandably anonymous
I run to the flames when others flee.
I slay Cisco, RAID and PowerPoint enemies.
I retreat in darkness until called again.
You need not know my name, for I am legion...
Does that mean I get the new cisco router i've been asking for all year? ;)
Nah.. that'd be too for my FreeBSD box; they'd never give it to me..
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Here. Here's a song for you. Now quit whining!
1 .h tml
http://artists.mp3s.com/artist_song/2625/262591
wes
"Immature artists borrow. Mature artists steal."
Wes Borg
'We are unappreciated and no-one knows what we do for 364 days of the year.'
:)
Apparently you don't spend much time looking at calendars during those 364 days or you'd notice an extra day stuffed in there somewhere. Unless you meant to say "what we do for the other 364 days a year."
'Same speed C but faster'
Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie have recorded The System Administrator Song as a tribute for SysAdmin day. If you haven't heard of Three Dead Trolls yet, check out the rest of their music when you're done with this one for Every OS Sucks, The Internet Helpdesk Song and others.
Screw SysAdmins...I've never met one who wasn't an overgrown geek with a pathetic god complex.
Appreciation day? They oughta shower management with gifts that they still have jobs. Soon enough we will be replacing our firm's syssyadmins with minimum wage recruits from Malaysia.
Those bastards are easy, they'll work for some stale bread and rotten fruit.
Fuck you! I hate Friday!
No, wait, no I don't.
and that's good enough for this sysadmin. Skip the cards, and buy me a pint instead ;)
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
We are different, we only need money, got it? MORE MONEY, got it?
From the .plan of a great sysadmin I once knew ...
"Being a System Administrator is like being the phone company. Nobody ever calls up to say 'you know, this thing works great. Thanks!'"
Thanks, Gabe.
Thanks, Vadim.
Thanks, csoft.net guys.
Thanks, Jonathan.
Thanks, root.
by slashdotting www.sysadminday.com
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
or does that mouse pad couch seem to be in a room that looks just like a jail cell? I wonder how much money we could save if we strung a DSL connection to the state prison...hmmmm....Our expensive sysadmins days are numbered.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
She bugged me about half an hour later to tell me her sound card stopped working. Fortunately, it's easy to act like I'm working on something more important when using a prop like 'Event Viewer'. So I blew her off. About 45 minutes later she comes in and says "Never mind, the plug 'fell out'." Heh.
Just imagine: you go to 123greetings.com, send a card to your sysadmin, and he starts getting even *more* spam!
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
If your son is a student in computer science, have him come in on the weekends and do his projects on your office computer. Ted will be there for you when your son's illegal copy of Visual Basic 6.0 makes the Access database keel over and die.
I thought they came that way. Dead that is.?!
This chain letter is being sent around so that everyone can say thank you to their system administrator. Simply add your name to the bottom of the list and send it to everyone you know... when your name is the 100th name on the list, forward the message to your system administrator!
here:
More Harken Documents Here
Thank you and have a marijuana induced weekend!!
When is Developer's Day??
-Kz-
Over 50% of any issues I have at work involve the sysadmins being asses. You're not heroes, you're not special, you just have a job.
It's so l33t. For Systems Administrators Day my sister baked a bunch of cookies, and gave me a 2L bottle of Mountain Dew. Not to mention, the cute
girl in the office sent me a HAPPY ADMINISTRATORS DAY greeting in 72pt red font. Can it get any better?
-R
True appreciation would be all users bringing you some overpriced coffee drink coated with sugar and dairy products, setting them on your desk, not say a word, not expecting you to smile or even look up, and then every one of them would turn off their computers and leave for the day. Truly bliss. :)
will someone tell me what clueless mod put this as flamebait? At most it's offtopic.
And of course if you've never read the BOFH stories, you're missing out.
You're welcome.
Preen, preen...
I had taped a small note on my office window noting that July 26th was sysadmin appreciation day. I was expecting possibly some cookies or a card or something (or nothing). But when I arrived this morning, my office was covered in streamers and copies of my note. Along with that I have found tons of candy, two chocolate cakes, and a vase with flowers in it. And I was under the assumption that I was just the groveling computer dork that fixed everything. Aparently people actually like and respect me. Odd...
-inno
I want to hear if someone fowarded a Sysadmin day story to his boss to bring some awareness and got a positive or negative reply/feedback in return or no answers at all? :)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
ya got the tool lyric wrong, boi
System Administrator Appreciation Day
Also, the Russian version
Yeah, make LOTS of friends in the sysadmin community - post their email address to a spam address harvester like 123Greeting, and make sure they get as much spam as possible! After all, what better way to show you admin you care than by causing his mail queue to fill up with crap so he cannot see the important stuff.
/dev/null, his chair wired to the 440V plant feed, his car's gas tank full of polystyrene, and graffitti with his home phone number scrawled on the bathrooms of the local bars.
Any lusr on one of my systems that did this would find his entire account sent to
Then I would get mean....
www.eFax.com are spammers
bunch of overpaid, underworked sissies .. i'm .. appreciation my ass.
a sysadmin, i should know
y'all should be grateful someone Pays you to do
what you do.
punks.
we route, therefore you are.
------
Subject: System Admin appreciation day
Just a quick note to say how much I appreciate all the great
things you all do!!!
You make it a pleasure to work here and are extremely talented at what
you do!
My hats off to you!!! THANK YOU!!!!!
In fact, why don't you take tomorrow off!!
------
Remind me to shoot the guy who scheduled SysAdmin day on a Friday.
I would say I get as much grief from users as I did from other admins.. you get huge egos, incompetence, laziness, and flat out arrogance.
A number of idiot SAs I haved worked with complains when any kind of work is required because it
distracts them from working on:
1. the mp3 server they're setting up on the new server hardware they hijacked that's supposed to
replace the database server that's running on 4 year old hardware.
2. spend most of the day trolling slashdot rather than doing proactive work to make sure
things don't fail. In fact, some of them are more like firefighters that starts fires so
they can swoop in and appear as the hero for the day.
3. spending hours flirting with some woman trying to impress the gal with his technical "prowess",
while trying to fix her "broken link" while critical application server is down.
4. spending time CYA'ing since something they were supposed to be doing werent done, and so
they try to shift responsibility to somebody else.
5. spending the entire day arguing with another dept on how something "isn't their problem"
instead of doing the 5 minutes of work to fix it.
6. installing the latest and greatest bullshit software that cripples the existing backup program that works. The kicker is how they justify the server being down for most of the day because
it's installed on the production server and how he should be appreciated for being "proactive"
and doing the necessary "research"
7. spend the entire day griping to each other about not being paid their "worth"
the time had been good to us system administrators during the dotcom bubble. The last two years have
really brought perspective back to being a system administrator. I pride myself on being a system administrator and working like a craftsman. I bring credit on myself for the quality of my work, instead of hotdogging or sabotaging so I can appear important. some admins should be spending their day reflecting the lessons learned in the last two years...
-- I have enough stupid gadgets to know that I can do without -- http://www.modestneeds.org
To the tune of "Don't Fear the Reaper" by the Blue Oyster Cult
All backups are done
Here but now they're gone
Servers don't fear the admin
Nor do the disks, CAT-5 or LAN... we can be like they are
Come on baby... don't fear the admin
Baby take my resume... don't fear the admin
We'll be able to work... don't fear the admin
Baby I'm your geek...
Linux is gone
Windows is on the run
Network geeks and sysadmins
Are so underappreciated... network geeks and sysadmins
40,000 men and women everyday... like network geeks and sysadmins
40,000 men and women everyday... recompiling kernels
Another 40,000 coming everyday, we can be like they are
Come on baby... don't fear the admin
Baby take my resume... don't fear the admin
We'll be able to work... don't fear the admin
Baby I'm your geek...
Love the Net as one
Sendmail is so fun [NOT!]
Came the last night of budget
And it was clear we couldn't work on
Then the door was open and the jobs appeared
The UPS blinked then disappeared
The GUI flickered and then appeared... saying don't be afraid
Come on geekoid... and she had no fear
And she ran to it... then they started to code
They looked backward and in passive mode... she had become like they are
She sent her resume... she had become like they are
Come on baby... don't fear the admin!
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Some guy named Mike posted:
Its just an internal support job and no different or important to that of finance, human resources, etc. Or the post man for that matter. In my experience (and I have been one) they tend to be full of self importance and generally reluctant to help "idiot" users.
Mike, UK
I posted:
To Mike, UK:
The difference between a postman and sysadmin is that the postman doesn't wear a pager to come in at 3 am when someone didn't get their post delivered five minutes after it was sent.
One admin is quoted saying, 'We are unappreciated and no-one knows what we do for 364 days of the year.'
And the answer is:
SLASHDOT.ORG
A job offer. It arrived via Fed-Ex this morning after 4 months of unemployment.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Don't have a sense of humor do ya?
Ah such a wonderful day when a 'prank' is twisted to mean sabotage.
...and while we have your ear, you should probably know that your job/profession is very likely going to be replaced with self-aware, self-monitoring, self-repairing computer systems/networks within the next five years. The good news is that the job market shows great growth for lawn care technicians and entry level meat packing plant chicken corpse scrubbers.
"Sorry kiddo, I hate giving good people bad news." the oracle, from The Matrix
Note to the humor impaired: This is not a joke.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
re: subject
'nuff said.
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
Every 2 weeks your boss gives you a thank you note that has a check attached. Usually he forgets the note, though, and just sends you the check.
Our boss just bought us 14" steak burritos. Thanks Scott! Now about going home early..... =)
How does it stay together? Why does it not succumb to entropy?
[o]_O
- Fzz
The parent post has some good points but its tone reminds me of some unfortunate tendancy in the IT world: the beliefs that technical prowess does exempts you from offering good customer service, and that anyone who doesn't understand computers must be stupid. While I'd like to indulge the day and let venting occur - I have to deal with self righteous IT folks every day.
Regarding "Stupid questions": A huge ammount of time is wasted at my company because not enough people are asking stupid questions. They just keep doing stupid things. If you don't like to answer stupid questions, make sure that your company has a help desk (or person, depending on the scale) who's job it is answer stupid questions. Stupid questions are the oil in the corporate machine. I consider it my job to turn stupid questions into smart ones.
Arrogance: - keywords incompetence, etc: yes, a lot of people with valuable skills grew up without computers. I know a lot of IT people who think that because they understand discreet mathematics, they understand business rules better than the managers who work with them. We've lost a lot of money that way. More frequently than a lay person not understanding the network, is the problem that the guy coding business logic into the mainframes, didn't understand the point made by the non-technical manager.
If you have problems with misuse of resources on your network - you have to deal with the human element and work with trainers / managers. Where training fails, quotas. It's a simple management issue. Every job has them. Don't whine, solve it.
Sorry, geeks. You can't isolate yourself from the humans you work with. I actually consider it one of the pleasures of the job to work both with humans and their problems, and machines and theirs.
Note: I've worked on various sides of the system administration fence. I've been soley responsible for a small (50 device) network, and user in a large one. Currently an informal part of my job is to act as buffer/liason/interpreter between IT and business process. I appreciate my current sys-admin specifically because he makes his knowledge available, has a system to handle stupid questions, and recognizes that there are skills of value not learnt in the CS department. I think I'll give a basket of fresh fruit and a hug.
My motto: "A cat is no trade for integrity."
OK, I will.
One simple rule that would make EVERYBODY happy:
Don't give out somebody's (email|phone/pager number|address) without their EXPRESS permission.
If you think George needs my email address, then YOU ask GEORGE for his address and (with George's permission) mail me, asking me to please send George my address. Same thing with phone numbers - get George's number & permission, then phone me!
Just think what would happen if people followed this simple rule:
1) Companies would no longer sell your email to spammers - instead, if Company A thought you might want to hear from Company B, they would send you a mail asking you to contact B if you wanted to.
2) No junk like 123Greetings.
3) No telemarketers.
Of course, this is little more than a specialization of the Golden Rule, and look how many people follow that....
www.eFax.com are spammers
... which I read somewhere....
"What comes up must come down - just ask any sysadmin"
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
Granted, Sysadmins do a hell of a lot, and deservingly should have their own day. But most of you guys are in the background, making sure everything runs smoothly (and when they don't, my sympathies.) However, no one appreciates the Help Desk guy. NO ONE. Users only call because something is wrong. If it's not something that we can solve (and believe me, we handle a ton of issues that you'll never see), we have to go to the next level (Sysadmins in my company.) Sysadmins don't appreciate us because we've always bothering them with problems. We wouldn't be bothering you if they weren't legitimate!
We are expected to always answer the phone with a smile since we're the "happy shiny face of IT." We're also the first ones that employees (execs to mail boys) scream at when something isn't working. Whether it's an ID10T error or a legitimate system problem. We're the ones who have to answer the phones from half the company when one person opens a virus.
We are universally loathed. We are paid crap.
Come to think of it, I don't want a Help Desk Appreciation Day, I just want a hug.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe...
http://www.geekculture.com/geekycomics/Aftery2k/af tery2kmain.html
Although, I've never seen one like that...
This is the worst idea possible. The only way sysadmins survive is to be ignored. We are the ones who stand between people and their fear of technology. If we stand out for ANY REASON we suffer the wrath of their fear, WHETHER OR NOT THERE IS AN ACTUAL PROBLEM.
For the abuse this job brings, it's worse than being a janitor. It's like being a WHORE. We get paid to be demeaned and take abuse. Why would we want to be noticed on any day of the year. So we can bend over and say: Thank you sir! May I have another?!?!?
FYI: Sysadmins used to be HIGH PRIESTS back in the days of mainframes. Thank your lucky stars for the microchip! It put the power of GOD into the hands of the unwashed masses (i.e. you). If it weren't for that you'd be submitting your data to be BATCH PROCESSED on PUNCH CARDS!
Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy (SNL) "He'll fix your computer, then he's gonna make fun of you..."
Hell I'm wondering too, and I'm the guy that posted it. I just think it's a neat saying and I hope it catches on. (meanwhile, I hope VAY-KAY dies a hard miserable death.)
" Have you ever used a commerical power tool, like a nail gun?"
:-)
for a second, I thought you said 'rail gun'
s/364/365/
today has been no different for me.
-f
www.blackant.net
For sysadmin appriciation day, my sysadmin got laid off. Murphy has a sick sense of humor.
Well, most competent sysadmins probably have electronic greeting cards blocked at the router,
and probably slashdot as well.
I asked my boss why there wasn't a Sysadmin's Day, and he said, "every day is Sysadmin's Day."
kiss my ass, troll
Shouldn't the day be Feb 25th?
Travis
I am a Chief Engineer of a major market radio station. This job used to be fun, but now it's a drag...and I work for one of the better stations! I'm responsible for IT, Audio, RF and even janitorial stuff. The Production Director comes to me to have me buy HIM CD-R's! Salespeople have to be the most computer illerate people going. I'm constantly being berated because obsolete equipment is being used in ways it was never designed for..and when it (frequently) doesn't work, guess whose fault it is? I mean, 166 MMX computers with 32 megs of RAM just don't open 25 page color Powerpoint presentations well. My requests for newer, better, more reliable equipment fall on deaf ears. As CE, I'm responsible for a transmitter plant that's 30 years old and 20 miles away from the studio. I swear that when I say: "I'm going to the transmitter", management hears: "I'm screwing off for the rest of the day". Last week, I got a really bitchy phone call because the 'net was down (for 10 minutes by the way). I was 25 miles away running a remote broadcast. Next day I got a nasty email from the General Manager insisting that I be in the building during normal business hours. I replied "Okay...but don't expect any remote broadcasts to get on the air then". He called me up and asked why. "Because I set them up, run them and break them down" was my reply. Two days ago I was scouting a remote location. I got called that the 'net was down again. When I came back two hours later I got bitched out by a salesperson that he couldn't email presentations, and it was MY fault! Turns out that HE was screwing around with the FAX machine (god knows why) and somehow managed to unplug the DSL modem from the wall jack! It felt good.. REAL good...for a few minutes at least.... Thanks for putting up with my rant...it feels good to get it out.. PS: mIssed the meet last night...Guess why? A remote broadcast that lasted until 9 PM!
Nothing like saying thanks to a sysadmin, by sending him a 123 card :-)
- that is not visible in his browser
- and subscribing his email address to spam houses (how do you think the greetings site make money? they sell emails to their 'partners')
The previous URL had an embedded space as a test for the more sleepy admins.
Most sysadmins won't be able to click through to read any of these greeting cards.
Sysadmins are basically incompetent, because the good ones up and became programmers a few years ago.
Working on NT machines with your MSCE doesn't make you a sysadmin, it makes you a monkey.
Howz it feel, monkey boy?
"a lot of people with valuable skills grew up without computers"
Other than hookers, name one.
i'm still unappreciated today!
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
When I mentioned SysAdmin Day to my co-workers, they didn't believe me. Until I had to show them the web page for it, they thought I was joking.
Well, our sysadmin came into the staff meeting this morning with an expectant look on his face and bit of an uppity attitude. He looked around the room like he was expecting something.
I asked him what was the matter and he said that it was SysAdmin day and that he was expecting a party or card or something. I never heard of it and asked him where he heard about it. He showed me this website and I read all about this silly crap.
Since he has been wasting company time reading this site, and due to his poor attitude this morning, I canned his ass.
Hehehe, thanks Slashdot! You made my friday!
Gee, you KNOW when you've been doing your job, because they LAY YOU OFF! I love it, I'm looking forward to trying to find and fit in to another job. All the potential of a dead end job, whoopee!
I love working for Verio, they make my life complete.
S c
r sm
a
a
This sysadmin is getting the boot and it's not because we are losing money...it's THEM!
People are laughing at you not with you?
God sysadmins are so pitiful. Yay for you, you have the root passwords. You can 0wn my workstation. You can play Quake at work. How nice. Luckily those of us who actually do the work contribute to the profitability of the company, rather than the overhead.
Oh, and take that sign on your door saying I can't talk to you directly and shove it up your ass. Call the help desk? Yeah, nothing I like better than explaining to those monkeys how to do their job.
Now admittedly, there are some very professional sysadmins out there who can save your ass. But most of the ones I work with are self-important jag-offs of dubious usefulness.
God that felt good, burning karma is almost as stress relieving as drinking.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
And yes, I'm serious.
If it weren't for the fact that I expected it, and it's incredibly ironic, I would be livid.
Karma: 0 (But I wield a mean +10 Vorpal Apathy)
*clickety-click* :-)
Will work for bandwidth
But then for Sysadmins.
Oh yeah !
Toon Moene.
some guy comes up with the bright idea of calling the day sysadmin day, now everything is going wrong. any good sysadmin knows not to tempt Murphy by creating a day with dependencies on his/her existence.
I think I am not therefore...
You've been on both sides of the sys admin fence? Not bloody likely.
The fact that you even wrote this post shows that you assume the only person on their worst behavior is the admin. You are absolutely clueless. Grouchy admins are made, not born.
I like toast!
Ok, so I sent one of the other admins a card from the link posted along with the story....
Not only did I give him my kind works, but a life-long subscription to a SPAM list. Now I'm sure he has a zillion offers for "hot teen girls" and pills offering to "increase your size and stamina"...
just what every sysadmin needs on this fine Jul 26th...more hot teen girls....
Just a note to wish you all a happy sysadmin appreciation day!
I know that I, like so many, make lots of random demands on your time and patience, and so frequently don't think about what you go through to keep our systems-- servers, workstations, labs, infrastructure, everything-- running smoothly.
So, for all the times I've forgotten, thank you.
Best,
joelh
If you don't know what a sysadmin goes through for you, look at:
Adminspotting
A Day in the Life of a Sysadmin
Sysadmin's voicemail
-JDF
what real programmers do. They are the users.
I wouldn't call a sysadmin incompetent for not stopping greeting cards at the router. That's the netadmin's job. Even then, I wouldn't discredit someone for not blocking them at the router. It could be a very tedious task to track down all the netblocks owned by the greeting card companies to add to the incoming access list. You'd have to be one hard core net nazi to limit email usage that much!
stop whining you fucking pussies. is their accountant day? no. mechanic day? no. what makes you so fucking special. because you're socially inept virgins?
I just woke up after working until 2:30 a.m. rebuilding some critical application servers. You know how my company celebrates System Admin Day? By laying my ass off! Wednesday is my last day. So be it. In these, final days, I will do the best job I can, document what I can to make it easier for the next guys and make DAMN sure that they miss me! To paraphase, Oscar Wilde, "Working well is the best revenge!" But, AARRRRRRRGGGGGGG! Well, it is marketing time.
When I saw the story about SysAdmin Day, I forwarded it up the food chain to the Development Manager, and made the case that our Admin works like a dog, and we'd all be dead in a week without him. Furthermore, Engineering and Sales get tons of kudos every time they do their fucking jobs, but he sits quietly in his cube (and the lab, and the other lab, and all our cubes) solving our problems and making sure nothing ever crashes. And it doesn't.
Now, this is a Silly Valley startup in the midst of Stockalypse Now. We don't have the money to buy him an Xbox, a DVD player, or PDA. What we DID do, was call an all-hands Friday afternoon, to publicly thank him for all the hard work he does for us. With cake and ice cream. It's not much, but we made the effort, and hopefully, we were able to show him that he really is valued and appreciated.
Interociter
-=What do I want? I'm an American. I want more.