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System Administrator Appreciation Day
rmadmin writes "Yes, it's that time of year again! Today is the 5th annual Systems Administrator Appreciation Day! Show us admin's how much you love us. (Otherwise we may just walk out, It's been a long day) Happy Systems Administrator Day!" If any of the OSTG netops staff are reading this, thanks again for all your help in recent weeks.
Go to http://www.ampcast.com/music/22488/artist.php and get the Sys Admin song by Wes Borg (also known for his Internet Helpdesk skit) We're eating pizza for lunch today in celebration, and I'm being taken to see Napoleon Dynamite tonight for the same reason.
I've had this in my calendar as July 23rd for years. When did it change?
I really loved last year's UserFriendly for SysAd day. I actually printed two copies and gave it to my two SysAds (love you guys!)
Yeah, so I'm not a sys admin.
And I'm not a damn secretary.
Hell I'm not even a father (or a mother for that matter).
Yeah congrats everyone else for doing your %^&*$in' job.
When the @#%^*& is my day!?
Yep, I've had most of that happen to me when I used to do support.
"9. When the photocopier doesn't work, call computer support. There's electronics in it. Ditto for the microwave, timeclock, and coffee maker. Hell, if it plugs in, we're probably in charge of it anyway."
I was actually called by a user because her kettle wasn't working! I had to go looking for a fuse in the stores and change it for her.
Another time, there was some work going on and they planned to switch off the power to the whole site over the weekend. On Monday morning no-one could understand why they couldn't login to the VAX and RS6000. Of course they didn't tell us that the power would be going off! We just found out when we saw the console screens.
Another time there was a hardware failure and we had spent hours getting everything working again. I overheard a user moaning that we always cause things to stop working. I felt like just randomly swapping the patch leads in the cabinet, going home and letting them sort it out.
As a lifelong sysadmin who actually enjoys helping people (for the most part) I actually had my IT group come in and buy me a can of coke! Man, what a treat!
It really hit the spot too!
A Job Offer.
I actually got my current SysAdmin job on SysAdmin Appreciation day two years ago. I had been unemployed for 4 months, which was not bad considering the Boston regional economy.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Yeah, SA day!
I get to work only 10 hours today, and my boss left already! Too bad I have too much work to do I can't screw off more then a quick post on Slashdot...
From a SA/DBA that got a 2% raise for being on call 24/7 and keeping the whole damn business operating, let's hear it for the employees that work overtime on a salary! Yeah for us suckers!!
Coders, please join in!
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Not to mention that as soon as there is a *hint* of something broken (network lag, application crash, PC freeze, ...) It's immediatly "the computer guy's" fault. No matter that duffus two cubicles down the isle is trying to send a 50Mb attachement to the entire directory, but this suddently sluggish network is all IT's fault!!
What sets IT appart is that it doesn't matter who broke it or why, but you can bet that a computer or some IT guy is going to get blamed for it and will have to fix it pronto (of course that report it was due out yesterday!). I don't mind the fixing part, that's part of what i signed up for, but taking the blame for everything that goes *poof* in the building i could do without!
-- If you actually say LOL instead of laughing, maybe it's time to go outside! --
Actually saw a guy do "rm -fr /" on a live server once. What a moron. What he was trying to do was "rm -fr /backup" but he hit the space bar and the 'b' key at the same time, and then hit return without checking for even an instant, so what he got was "rm -fr / backup". I was screaming at him for almost a minute before he realized what he'd done. A weeks work down the drain.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I work a helpdesk providing first line support to around 4500 users, I can tell you from experience that the problem is usually at the users end whether they be admin assistant or director. Of course while I talk you through checking the mail settings I'm simultaneously remoting onto your mailserver and pinging your machine but you don't see that. All you will see is that I ask you to do some stuff and (barring a completely stuffed server) within 5 minutes you're back up and running. I don't have time to wase explaining everything I'm doing at my end and you aren't interested and don't have the time to listen to me. You ring, I fix quickly and efficiently. Everyone's happy. Most of the "email" problems I get are nothing to do with the mail server, it's just that being unable to access email is the first thing users notice and the most common cause is a laptop user with an improperly seated network cable.
You reset the netport while I restart the spooler (the NT server spooler is notorious but not half as much as netports are). Again, 5 minutes max and you're good to go.
If a project manager needs it yesterday then he's not managing his project very well. Give us even a days notice and we can probably do it, ask for it today and you're probably dreaming unless it's a config change. Ask for domain admin rights and you're in cloud cuckoo land, you can probably get local admin but never domain admin. No way, not never. I don't need root on your projects development boxes, you don't need domain admin rights. Oh, and when you ask for permissions we get you to complete and sign a form for a reason, we're not being awkward. It takes 2 minutes to complete, get it signed, and fax it. No we won't do it without one.
And you can be replaced by any idiot with an MBA, doesn't mean they'd be any good though. I love my job, I provide a high level of customer focused service. I help people get things done. Sometimes I have to say no in order to protect the integrity of the network or because of some policy but every day I help my users be more productive. Most of the time when users make a request where the answer is "No" it's because they don't know the proper way of doing it. I'll outline the alternative and do that for them instead.