Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Poetry For Sysadmins: Shall I Compare Thee To a Lumbering Bear?

Posted by samzenpus on from the admin-admin-burning-bright-in-the-office-fluorescent-light dept.

itwbennett writes Don't forget that July 25th is Sysadmin Day — a good day to show love to the folks who save your butt again and again when you mess up your computer. Forget the chocolate and flowers, long-time sysadmin Sandra Henry-Stocker has tailored some poems to celebrate these under appreciated, hard-working souls.

16 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Sandra? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Hmm. That's a weird name for a guy.

  2. Guess it's not the greatest day. by KruiserX · · Score: 2

    Especially at http://sysadminday.com/ Site is already down.

    1. Re:Guess it's not the greatest day. by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Maybe they should have projected some extra traffic on sysadmin day. I hope their sysadmin didn't take the day off.

    2. Re:Guess it's not the greatest day. by Dr.+Tom · · Score: 1

      LOL

  3. ACK! Ignore! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Please, for the love of your own mental health, do not click the story's hyperlink to the poems.
    They are just bad. I might not have been able to do better if I was in kindergarten. By third grade, yes, I could have. If I just spent five or ten minutes trying.

    If you want something to lighten your mood today, check out Despair.com or spend some time reading XKCD. And if you don't get XXKCD, there is ExplainXKCD which can help.

    But, please, please, please, don't read those poems that the story's hyperlink points to. They're worse than awful.

  4. Re: ACK! Ignore! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    sysadmin poetry == Vogon poetry

  5. Speaking as a sysadmin by Psiren · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If I find myself fixing someone's computer, then someone else is not doing their job properly. That's why we have (competent) help-desk staff. As a sysadmin I'm far too busy looking after servers, storage and network to worry about your PC. If I'm doing my job properly, you'll never see me.

    1. Re:Speaking as a sysadmin by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Smaller organisations have not enough servers or users to justify separate staff, so it's not uncommon to see a sysadmin who also does support, or support staff who also admin the couple of servers the office needs.

    2. Re:Speaking as a sysadmin by niado · · Score: 2

      Smaller organisations have not enough servers or users to justify separate staff, so it's not uncommon to see a sysadmin who also does support, or support staff who also admin the couple of servers the office needs.

      I would say this situation is not just "not uncommon", but ubiquitous.

      I would even say that most people whose job title is some derivative of "system administrator" do at least some end-user or desktop support as part of their day-to-day job duties.

  6. Poetry says ReadMe ... by Forget4it · · Score: 1
    README
    http://www.advogato.org/person/ReadMe/diary.html?start=9#0

    + Like most public domain distributions this package contains a README.
    + Unlike those packages, this one contains ***only*** a README.


    Bootstrap
    begin
    {
    • I write therefore you are reading;
      else you are reading then someone has been writing;
      I am that someone;
      I am a literature machine;

    }

    --
    Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
  7. Wrong audience by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1, Troll

    Poetry isn't for left-brained types. It is the province of free-thinkers, of artists, it's not really intended for anyone else. The low number of comments on this article is evidence enough nobody cares.

    "Poetry is nobody's business except the poet's," wrote Philip Larkin, "and everybody else can fuck off."

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    1. Re:Wrong audience by UncHellMatt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And as the near immortal Lazarus Long once said, "A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits." The whole "left brain - right brain" concept has been thoroughly disproven BTW. http://www.plosone.org/article...

  8. Anonymous jewels by Keruo · · Score: 1

    I find this comment very suiting, too bad he said Mordor rather than Redmond..

    --
    There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
  9. Do not Rhyme by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

    The poems do not even rhyme.

    --
    Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
  10. Beer by grasshoppa · · Score: 2

    Seriously.

    --
    Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
  11. Haiku by mendax · · Score: 1

    I think changing the messages produced by 404 pages so that they produce haiku similar o that produced by BeOS its NetPositive browser runs into a problem would be funny, especially if the sysadmin doesn't know about it!

    --
    It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.