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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.
It's about time we see appreciation other than the shrines to bad users and other system sacrifices.
End the FUD
Thinkgeek has a special section just for SysAdmins as well as an interest store for it too.
Check it out.
You guys rock! Hats off to you!
btw, can i have root access now?
In honor of today
Does this mean I'm allowed to drink on the job today?
Yeahhhh, Hi there, so uh, SysAdmin Appreciation Day, huh? That's just great. Great... Yeah. Listen, the VP of Finance just called me, and his daughter's laptop is giving her some weird message, could you get that fixed today at lunch? Yeah.. that would be great, thanks.
Don't forget that!!!
For a couple years now I've been one of two de-facto sysadmins in a small operation, and I've definitely come to appreciate sysadmins much more than I did before.
It's hard work and the vast majority of it is tedious. Of course a really good sysadmin doesn't have to do much of anything on a day-to-day basis (having scripted everything up nicely), but when something tricky needs doing it's soooo much better to have a real admin on hand to spend the day doing it.
Next time I have a sysadmin who's not me, I'm definitely buying him/her a t-shirt and a beer on S.A.A.D.
(...though it would be nice to have a happier acronym)
This Like That - fun with words!
A holiday for the rest-iv-us! Yay!
Method of processing duck feet
Thanking your admin is nice and all, but baking cookies won't take away from training your underpaid Indian replacement.
Admin Appreciation Day is a pat on the shoulder while someone is getting ready to put a knife in your back.
The required list for today:
Getting the most from your IT department
1. When you call us to have your computer moved or fixed, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.
2. Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from here.
3. When an IT person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to remember 300 user passwords.
4. When you call the help desk, state what you want, not what's keeping you from getting it. We don't need to know that you can't get into your mail because your computer won't power on at all.
6. When IT support sends you an e-mail with high importance, delete it at once. We're just testing.
7. When an IT person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.
8. Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.
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.
10. When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can fix your telephone line from here.
11. When you have a dozen old computer screens to get rid of, call computer support. We're collectors.
12. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an IT person's chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We love a puzzle.
13. When an IT person tells you that computer screens don't have cartridges in them, argue. We love a good argument.
14. When an IT person tells you that he'll be there shortly, reply in a scathing tone of voice: "And just how many weeks do you mean by shortly?". That motivates us.
15. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.
16. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.
17. Don't learn the proper name for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by "my thingy blew up".
18. Don't use on-line help. On-line help is for wimps.
19. If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 40lb of computer sitting on top of them.
20. If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame it on the mail upgrade. Keyboards are actually very happy with half a pound of muffin crumbs and nail clippings in them.
21. When you get a message saying "Are you sure?" click on that Yes button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure, you wouldn't be doing it, would you?
22. When you find an IT person on the phone with his bank, sit uninvited on the corner of his desk and stare at him until he hangs up. We don't have any money to speak of anyway.
23. Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about that computer crap". We don't mind at all hearing our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.
24. When you need to change the toner cartridge in a printer, call IT support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a master's degree in nuclear physics.
25. When you can't find someone in the government directory, call IT Support.
26. When you have a lock to pick on an old file cabinet, call IT Support. We love to hack.
27. When something's the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of h
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Signed: your colleagues from the US office you administer.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Guinness? ;)
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Sysadmins are Internet plumbers!
oh dear god, please never let me see any sysadmin's buttcrack.
The system administrator at my school banned me from the computer system for a year because I crashed his server. I don't feel like honoring him.
Why am I now expecting to see a string of, "what's your number?" posts?
Best way to show your appreciation to your Sys Admins is making sure their websites get /.ed
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.
Under the guise of appreciating my sysadmin, I emailed him this morning to notify him that our Exchange server had crashed again.
Fortunately, he's taken his own appreciation to heart and is on vacation until the 9th of August. I guess hearing back from my new Nigerian friend will have to wait a few weeks!
God bless you!!
Sys Admins. Bunch of overweight, bespectacled idiots. All they do is waste time and money. A monkey could do their job. Honestly, everyday, talking about new distro-this, Farscape-that, get a damn life. No, get a treadmill. You've got no power over me. What a-+|... NO CARRIER
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
"The printers aren't working!" ."
"I went searching on the internet and I'm getting popups!"
"Why can't you convert that scanned image to text?"
"I spilled water on my keyboard"
"I spilled Pepsi all over my $300 phone"
"My mouse isn't working... (replace it three times, notice water on the keyboard). That shouldn't have broken it."
"My computer that sits in a telnet shell all day isn't fast enough for me to look for new houses
"Why can't I spend all day on Pogo games?"
"I don't care how important that server install or network install is, my mouse is dirty, and it's not rolling smoothly!"
"I still can't print!"
"The laser printer is always jammed in the corner and covered with paper, thereby not allowing it to breathe and frying every six months because I like to put my newspaper on this side of my desk. Why do you ask?"
Why can't I use Wordperfect anymore. I don't like Word."
Ad Nausea....
I'll appreciate the /. admins much more, but I can forgive for now and say thanks
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
How about:
1. "Sewage Workers Appreciation Day" - the fine men and women who recycle our shit surely deserve a special day of their own.
2. "Road Kill Removers Appreciation Day" - Ditto
3. "Crime and Accident Scene Cleaners Appreciation Day" - Double ditto.
4. "Proctologists and Gynecologists for the Morbidly Obese Appreciation Day" - Triple ditto.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Because you project your desperation onto other slashdotters?
I've had this in my calendar as July 23rd for years. When did it change?
The content you are trying to request is not available.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Why am I now expecting to see a string of, "what's your number?" posts?
733967, of course. Can't you read?
KFG
Romulan Ale or Aldeberan Whiskey
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
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!)
Just like "Administrator's Day", "Bring your daughter to work day", "Bring your son to work day".
Someone is just coming up with stupid holidays so people buy stupid things. Where's the calendar that points out every day of the year as "Something special day". I'm sure tomorrow is "Good User Day" where sys admins give prizes to the best users, and then it will be "Taxi Cab Driver Day" where you should give the cab drivers extra tip.
Why do we have the need to create these stupid "fake holidays?"
There used to be a reson for these days. I think it used to be awareness, but when every day became another thing you should be aware of, it got tedious, and then all these stupid ones came about.
How about people just do their job and stop thinking that they are the saviour of the world. The fact that you are getting paid is your appreciation.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
My brain hurts ...
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
We just slashdotted your site.
Happy System Administrator Day! from the gang at slashdot.
So remember to have everyone sign a nice card and send it off to India.
Thanks... for confusing the fact that you have full access to my PC for having some kind of authority over me. Thanks... for treating my software development team with the same disdain and condescension as you treat the temp secretary who asks where the 'Any' key is. Thanks... for copping a major attitude... it's probably justified, I mean, I only have a BS and MS in CompSci and 12 years experience and you have some MSSTFU certification that probably took about 12 weeks.
Thanks.
Dear Self, Happy SysAdmin Day. Love, Self.
He was cranky, wasn't overweght, and he never wanted to help. He was a contractor, making about $70/hour +/-. Anyway, the joke was, "if you needed help, get out your knee pads and KJ". Really! It wasn't frivolous shit either! It was access rights and things like that. We got to the point where we were trying to hack the system so that we wouldn't have to deal with him!
Hey bud, I installed Linux as a present for you. No more worms! Great, huh?
[1 day later]
Hey bud, how do I set up dual monitors?
[1 hour later]
Hey bud, how do I change the refresh rate? They're stuck at 60.
[30 minutes later]
Hey bud, how do I get Quake running on this thing? I know, I know.. I just need to make sure my 3D card is working even though nothing during my work day even touches the 3D card.
[10 minutes later]
Hey bud, on Windows I could change my mouse cursor to a Tweety Bird, how do I do that on Linux?
[another 10 minutes later]
Hey bud, OpenOffice doesn't support this ActiveX control I need for my presentation, how do I fix this?
[1 minute later]
Whaddya mean you're putting Windows back on it? I switched just for you, man!
"Derp de derp."
This kind of once a year on the calendar day for appreciation is not an appropriate way of recognition.
This day is now just like other obligatory days like: Mother's day, then Father's day (why is he left out), and even the other ones like the Office Admin day.
If it does not come sincere from the person doing it, then it is not that great. The only advantage I see is that it reminds those who are nice and appreciative, but forgetful.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
The Poor Underpaid Intern Who Fixes All The System Administrator's Mistakes Appreciation Day
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Yeah, so I'm not a sys admin.
And I'm not a damn secretary.
Hell I'm not even a father (or a mother for that matter).
Yeah congrats everyone else for doing your %^&*$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.
You forgot a biggie: 36. When a supplier, be it of bandwidth, hardware, printer paper, etc. screws up, please get mad at us personally. We need the inspiration of your berating in order to effectively berate said supplier, and they need our berating because they love it when customers who 50% of the time ask for the wrong thing and get it, get even more upset the other 50% of the time when they're given what they actually needed in the first place.
You can have Guinness any day. Today is a special day...
Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters for all!
"Only unimportant jobs such as secretaries and the like get their own "appreciation days".
If I were a sysadmin, I'd be insulted."
Actually, secretaries and sys admins fall into a line of work that requires them to work their asses off and receive little to no recognition for hard work when their users/bosses become successful.
I'd actually feel that appreciating them one day out of the year is a step in the right direction. Now for the other 364 days...
Sigs are for losers
The difference is, with Windows, you spend most of your time supporting the computer. With Linux, you spend most of your time supporting the user. Linux isn't a magic bullet which will melt away all your support problems! The user must be knowledgeable, or else you'll just waste even more time than Windows was already wasting.
"If any of the OSTG netops staff are reading this, thanks again for all your help in recent weeks."
Don't you mean:
"If any of the OSTG netops staff are reading this, GET BACK TO WORK YOU LAZY BASTARDS!"
Kidding of course... nice work fellas.
While I understand your complaint against so-called "Hallmark Holidays" (so named because they are just an excuse to buy a Hallmark brand card) I think sysadmins really do deserve a day like this. By and large, most people's interaction with syadmins is to complain that something isn't working. No one ever walks up to a sysadmin and says "Hey, everything is working great today! Thanks for all you do!" (unless things have recently NOT been good). In this respect, sysadmins are very much like doctors or psychotherapists in that they have to deal with fixing things when the chips are down. These health workers, however, usually get lots of vacation time and very generous salaries to compensate for their stressful jobs -- something sysadmins typically do not enjoy.
Not only are sysadmins taken for granted but unlike others in that situation (e.g., secretaries) their job is one where people are constantly complaining to them. This makes them very unique and very underappreciated. I don't think it's too much to ask that for one day out of the year that people interact with their sysadmins in a positive manner.
GMD
watch this
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!
I love my Sysadmins, but what about us Network Admins. We keep the backbone of the company running, and do we get any thanks.
Of course not.
It really is a shame the only ones who even know about (let alone recognize) system administrators day, are the system administrators.
...because SOME people treat me like one for PHP/MySQL over AIM. It's like someone put my AIM & MSN names up on php.net labelled "24/7 newbie tech support". These are REAL QUOTES of things people have said to me!
...
...
"I have the following error: 'Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_ECHO, expecting ',' or ';' in whatever.php on line 2', but line 2 looks fine! PLEASE HELP!"
"You missed a semi-colon on line 1."
"It says line 2, not line 1, that can't be the problem."
"Believe me, it is."
"Okay, so which one is the semi-colon again? is that the one next to P?"
*BLOCKED*
"Can I use a 'switch' statement for when I want a variable to be changed if a certain condition is true?"
"Why not use an 'if' statement?"
"Yeah, I was thinking about that, but I don't feel like writing one of those right now, can you write one for me?"
*BLOCKED*
"I am getting a 'Parse error', but I don't even know what a 'parse' is!"
*BLOCKED*
"Now I got this problem! 'Parse error: parse error, unexpected ',' in whatever.php on line 1', HELP!"
[I look at code and find:
echo($var1,$var2,$var3);]
"Don't take this the wrong way, but have you actually read a book on PHP, or even at least read a 'beginning PHP' guide on the Internet?"
"They make those?!?!?"
*BLOCKED*
Really, truly, I do appreciate SysAdmins, because they have to deal with these problems, but with stupider people. They don't have the comfort of a nice shiny "block" button that I have.
Happy System Administrators Day!
PS: Does anyone know if there is a block limit for AIM & MSN? I hope not...
*clickety click click*
Hmm... you don't seem to even have an account on this system...
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."
Nah... you've got it all wrong. Ever consider that an "appreciation day" is simply a reminder to say "Hey, thanks"? Some people appreciate a pat on the back every now and then (apparently not you).
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
I had my file tree up and decorated on System Administrator Appreciation Day Eve. ;)
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.
Why would sysadmins want a special day all to themselves? Do we need to have a "Programmer Appreciation Day" too?
Where's "Janitor Appreciation Day"? If there is anyone that is underappreciated in this world it's them (among others, of course).
Self-glorification is an ugly thing.
I don't need a holiday for this. Whenever I want to be appreciated I just randomly unplug cables from the switches, "troubleshoot" it for an hour, then plug everyone back in and magically solve the problem. Suddenly I'm everyone's hero. :)
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
ie. Sysadmins look cute and Cuddly, but if you disturb them when they are sleeping or eating, they'll tear the skin off your face?
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
That's why we walk quietly and carry a big lart.
Whenever you read this sig someone's refrigerator light turns on.
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.