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Nominate SysAdmin of the Year By Oct. 12

PMcGovern writes "Deadline for nominations for SysAdmin of the Year 2007 is this Friday Oct. 12. The award is sponsored by Slashdot, SourceForge, Digg, Usenix, Lopsa, Splunk, and Naspa. The first 2500 sysadmins nominated win a free SysAdmin Rockstar tee shirt. Prizes include a MacBook Pro, a non-bricked Apple iPhone, Gibson guitar, Splunk license, a full-paid trip to the LISA conference, cases of Red Bull, and more. If you know a sysadmin that goes beyond the call of duty, nominate them."

42 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. bofh == win by User+956 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I nominate this guy

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
    1. Re:bofh == win by dgun · · Score: 1

      Cooper?

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      FAQs are evil.
    2. Re:bofh == win by dgun · · Score: 1
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      FAQs are evil.
  2. I nominate Eikonoklastes by eikonoklastes · · Score: 4, Funny

    Seeing as sysadmins are the ones reading slashdot, I foresee a tonne of self nominations.

    1. Re:I nominate Eikonoklastes by speedingant · · Score: 1

      Like mine. Pick me pick me pick me!

    2. Re:I nominate Eikonoklastes by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 1

      If you have time reading /. then why isn't Exchange operating properly? I still can't sync my PDA or log in through owa.
      Because of you slacking I can't do much right now. The only thing I can do is read /. and wait for things to get fixed.

      wait a minute...

      I vote for Eikonoklastes.

  3. USA and Canada only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Shouldn't this be called "north-american SysAdmin of the year", considering they only accept nominees from two countries...?

    1. Re:USA and Canada only by walshy007 · · Score: 1

      The context is usually gotten from where it is used, in your example of McDonald's employee of the month, you are only likely to see that in said store, if used anywhere else that store would either be implied beforehand, otherwise the name of the store specifically said.

      In the case of slashdot, this is an international website, a significant portion of users come from countries other than the US. and thus it makes sense to assume an award by slashdot, digg, sourceforge etc, would be international, for all of the sponsors are. It makes a great deal of sense where only a small portion of your audience will be applicable to use a quantifier to identify them in the summary or title.

  4. Who me? by ender- · · Score: 1

    I guess it wouldn't be very sportsman-like to nominate myself. Of course, it would also be a horrible lie, since I'm a pretty mediocre SysAdmin at best. :)

  5. An unbricked iPhone? by McNally · · Score: 3, Funny

    Surely the sysadmin of the year should be able to unbrick their own iPhone..

  6. I norminate my system admin by jsse · · Score: 1

    because he put scripts to delete all emails with subjects like "CONGRATZ YOU WON A FREE IPHONE FOR BEING THE ADMIN OF THE YEAR BY /.!!!!", so he'd probably won't get the prize anyway.

  7. Sis, add men! by Itninja · · Score: 1

    I nominated myself for the sole purpose of registering for something who's male 'model' is fatter and uglier than I am. Sold!

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  8. I nominate home Windows admins by jesser · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... for selflessly pooling their resources to create what is perhaps the largest distributed computing project ever, the Storm botnet.

    --
    The shareholder is always right.
    1. Re:I nominate home Windows admins by rts008 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I was going to nominate myself for this award, but when you put it that way....well, I have to concede to MS's Junk-fu.
      But does the Storm botnet run Linux?...No?, well I guess I am SOL here.
      The win goes to MS botNets, hands down.

      I'll bet SETI@Home would love this kind of power- too bad it's relegated to Windows spambotnets.

      Thankfully I have lost track of this shite since I have been running Kubuntu since 5.10.(now on 7.04, and no problems!)

      Yes, I caught the recent article about the cracked Linux boxes: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/05/1234217, but I also saw this: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/07/1722202, so I am still leaning towards MS systems causing the most problems.

      I used to try to care, but now I am content to keep my own shite squared away, and let the rest muddle through on their own.
      I will help if asked, otherwise...Darwin Awards for you! ( why fsck up a good, stable network running great for me and my own)

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  9. fie gentlemen, fie by meliux · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "The Contest is open only to residents of the U.S. and Canada..."

    well bugger that. Here I was expecting an all-expenses-paid-for-round-the-world-trip, but no... I can't even make an "all I got was this lousy t-shirt" comment.

  10. Whom would I nominate? The unpaid. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Probably the sysadmins who do it for free (NGO's), under fire (Iraq, Afganistan, Sudan, Rwanda (I'm going there to do IT work next year) and China (pro-freedom anti-communist NGOs).

  11. Re:Yeah, this is a worthwhile topic... by timmarhy · · Score: 1

    let me guess you submitted a story about your barbie doll collection and your annoyed it got rejected. jealousy is such an ugly emotion.

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    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  12. and from TA - and then, not including Quebec by Typoboy · · Score: 1

    "excluding Quebec due to restrictive contest laws." Why? A quick search turned up this, this and this. Interesting.

  13. I think it's pretty obvious who should win.... by Wescotte · · Score: 1

    I nominate one Wesley Crusher

    1. Re:I think it's pretty obvious who should win.... by arbitraryaardvark · · Score: 2

      I nominate one Wesley Crusher
      Done.
      wil wheaton
      wil@wilwheaton.net
      monolith press

      1) really is a rock star.
      2) plays mean guitar hero
      3) adminsters systems well.
      4) rules the earth
      5) has clever nick name
      6) gave pax keynote
      7) insane DIY cred

  14. MacBook?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    How many sysAdmins use MacBooks!?

    1. Re:MacBook?? by Tsunayoshi · · Score: 1

      My brand spanking new Macbook Pro just came in yesterday...replacing my Powerbook G4

      --
      "Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." - Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
  15. Nobody here deserves it by drharris · · Score: 1

    If you're reading this, it means you don't deserve to win this award.

    1. Re:Nobody here deserves it by laejoh · · Score: 3, Funny

      hehehe, later they'll say:

      Only six people on Slashdot knew that the title of the Sysadmin of the Year was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.

      With humble apologies to a certain D. Adams of course

  16. Stupid contest by mcrbids · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really, the best sysadmin is one so good that he/she/it doesn't appear to do much of anything at all - because that's exactly what he/she/it should be doing. Who is really going to nominate a guy who seems to just sit around while everything around him seems to work just perfectly?

    Thus, the contest is biased. You'll either get:

    A) The guy that always seems "industrious", nominated by people who aren't sysadmins, or

    B) The guy that seems "lazy", sits around not doing much at all while dozens to hundreds of carefully written scripts fire off all day long, sending an occasional message when an error condition is detected. Since this guy would have to be nominated by a sysadmin, and sysadmins are in the minority, this contest is biased in favor of the incompetent.

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    1. Re:Stupid contest by fyoder · · Score: 1

      B) The guy that seems "lazy", sits around not doing much at all while dozens to hundreds of carefully written scripts fire off all day long, sending an occasional message when an error condition is detected. Since this guy would have to be nominated by a sysadmin, and sysadmins are in the minority, this contest is biased in favor of the incompetent. It's probably a problem that could be overcome by a perl script of only a few lines, but I not only seem lazy, I AM lazy. Though the free shirt would be nice...
      --
      Loose lips lose spit.
    2. Re:Stupid contest by Bluesman · · Score: 1

      A sufficiently intelligent Perl script of a few lines could nominate you over and over by October 12th.

      If you could have it also be the winning entry of the obfuscated Perl contest, then you'd win for sure, and deservedly so.

      May the best sysadmin win.

      --
      If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
    3. Re:Stupid contest by blhack · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes, yes, yes yes, and YES!!!

      YES! I cannot TELL you how many times i've had to explain this to people. I get to sit in my office and play with my lin box all day because of all the time i spent when we first got started organizing everything, and making sure that everything was setup CORRECTLY!

      Some people in my company/industry hate me because I'm 20 (I started here when i was 19) and I'm the admin of a medium sized business (we have about 200 employees). What they don't understand is that the reason why they have to sit in their cubicles inputting numbers into the computer all day, and I get to sit in my office reading /. is:
      when i was in highschool and they were out getting hammered and partying, i was at HOME sitting at my computer learning python and perl and mysql. I was learning howto setup apache while they were learning how to use an apple as a makeshift pipe. I was on ebay buying up cheap routers so that i could learn IOS, they were at the local flea market trying to buy fake ids.

      Yeah thats a bit of a rant, and slightly off topic, but i have a feeling that a lot of people here share the same experience. It just torques me when people at work get mad because I don't have to do some mind-numbing job all day. /rant off.

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  17. America IS THE WORLD stupid! by skipau · · Score: 1

    It appears that only American's and Canadian's can be SysAdmin of the year... I guess that America "Is the World" anyway so... you can't complain that much - otherwise they will put a cap in ya ass!

    1. Re:America IS THE WORLD stupid! by MollyB · · Score: 1

      Interesting. AC made this post twenty-seven minutes prior to yours. Marvelous coincidence? I realize that slashdot users overseas get irked over this site's (North) American slant, but it carries political correctness to absurdity if the contest/publicity stunt were made international. The criteria by which sysadmins in say, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc., might be the opposite of what westerners value. Sysadmins in this hemisphere largely facilitate connectivity for the user, while those in the nations mentioned might be valued for their ability to plug holes to keep users from accessing information damaging to the power structure.
      BTW, some of the finest posts I've ever read on Slashdot are from overseas. Ideas should be valued above geography, but this is such a trivial thing that it doesn't seem worth getting exercised about.

    2. Re:America IS THE WORLD stupid! by MollyB · · Score: 1

      Interesting choice of countries. I've been brainwashed by CNN.

      Having worked in similar locations I can tell you sysadmins are valued on pretty much the same criteria. I happily stand corrected. Thanks.
  18. help! by AlgorithMan · · Score: 1

    Who's Googles main Admin? I want to nominate him - just to destroy some chairs in redmond...

    --
    The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
  19. A nominee from Eastern Europe by Erikderzweite · · Score: 4, Funny

    A couple of years ago a friend of mine asked me for an advice. He has just started to work as a sysadmin at some middle-sized bank. They have had a lot of *NIX servers that were working just fine. But there was also one Windows NT-based server there with a *very* special application which was absolutely crucial for bank's business processes. The very special "feature" of this application was that it crashed quite often and took the whole server to the realm of BSODs with every crash. The old sysadmin was working in the server room and has had no problem resetting the server manually if needed. My friend, however, preferred remote administration from his sunny office (yea, i know, how weird it sounds :) ) so walking down to server room in order to restart a server was hardly an option for him.
    Fixing a program was not possible - no source code was available.

    After a weirdest brainstorming i have ever participated at, he finally found a solution - he has built together a crappy PC with linux 2.4 on board and connected it to the server via a crossover cable.
    The sole task of this PC was to ping the alleged server and if it wasn't responding - eject /dev/hdc.
    The cd-rom drive opened itself and pressed the Reset button on the server. Fool-proofed system and the funniest linux-based solution to solve windows proglems I've seen in my life.

    1. Re:A nominee from Eastern Europe by Sourcehack · · Score: 1

      funniest thing i've read here in a long while.

    2. Re:A nominee from Eastern Europe by Erikderzweite · · Score: 1

      A very creative solution to say the least. Although, it sounds to me that this isn't a "Windows" problem as much as it is the unstable application that's bringing the system down. Either way, the solution is impressive.
      I just couldn't resist and add some "lin vs. win" salt to the story.
  20. I nominate... by Lexical_Scope · · Score: 1
  21. But... by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Isn't he best sysadmin the one you don't know is there. I find in general Bad Sysadmins are the ones complaining all the time, and always working very hard with fires, Complain about the pager because they know it will go off. While good sysadmins are rarely seen unless they want to be so. Because they have the organization running so well and smooth that most problems are preemptively fixed, the ones that are not have enough backup and fail over that he can fix without disrupting anyone else's work. That is a good sysadmin... The problem with that is they are also the first ones to be considered for layoffs because they don't seem to be working hard... But they learn in a couple of months that his job was necessary.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  22. I vote for my SysAdmit by vitalyb · · Score: 2, Funny

    My sysadmin told me to vote for him or he'll post my internet logs and rape my user permissions.

  23. Re:I NOMINATE THIS GUY by nonos · · Score: 1

    How can you be sure that the Ubuntu packages weren't backdoored ?

  24. Re:Who is the fat guy on the site homepage? by razorh · · Score: 1

    what? you have time to jog?

    And here I thought it was just that most sysadmins didn't have time to eat.. hrmmm...

  25. Ok, slam me by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    Ok, I'm going to risk a massive Troll slam, but my trigger finger's just too itchy.

    > Nominate SysAdmin of the Year

    With real programmers around, isn't this kind of like the NIT tournament, the battle to be the 65th best college basketball team in the country?

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  26. I nominate this guy. by DiezMilScoville · · Score: 1

    http://www.chemistrius.com/ He's gotta get his main site back online .. *hint*.