Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day 108
ArbiterOne writes "The 11th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day is today. Celebrated worldwide on the last Friday of July, this day honors those who fight in the digital trenches to keep the Net alive. OpenDNS offers a way to remind your boss about the holiday, while another blogger shares war stories. The startup Ksplice has created an homage to these heroes in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure." Reader Netbuzz submits a sobering look at the profession from Network World, which notes, "In the past year, [sysadmins'] pay has dropped, and more of their positions are being farmed out to temporary workers."
Thank you! (Score:1)
Happy sysadmin day? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I've been a sysadmin for a while time now, and I've never had one person wish me a happy admin day.
Happy admin day! ;)
Re:Happy sysadmin day? (Score:4, Funny)
Now get back to work!!
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Couldn't he, say, advertise what day it is by using his IT skills and permission to, for example, tag every internal email with "Don't forget, today is System Administrator Day. Be sure to tip your local IT person today!"
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When a user's not engaged in his employment (his employment)
Or maturing his pathetic little plans (little plans)
His capacity for innocent enjoyment (-cent enjoyment)
Is just as great as any honest man's (honest man's)...
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If you'd act like you're happy more then maybe people would. :p
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Re:Happy sysadmin day? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you thinking something sugary and hallmarkesque, like the PR that "administrative professional's day"(formerly for appreciation of secretaries, now renamed) gets, or something more along the lines of "We route your packets, we back-up your documents, we administer your databases, we install your drivers. We maintain your uptime while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us. "?
The latter please. The bit actors from the Sopranos are probably looking for some easy ad money.
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Are you thinking something sugary and hallmarkesque, like the PR that "administrative professional's day"(formerly for appreciation of secretaries, now renamed) gets?
As some of the more outspoken AAs used to say at one place I worked, "Raises, not roses." They were less than effective because they never added the magic words at the end of their missive: "or else we'll organize a union, asshole."
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.....Do not... fuck with us.
But but but... this is one of the problems I'm trying to *solve*!
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We should have an industrial action day. e-commerce, and thus a large swath of the economy, grinding to a halt for a day would be the wake-up everyone needs. And it wouldn't cost us any air time fees
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Someone want to fund a commercial? Lets add it to every calendar world wide. Who's with me?
We don't need commercials, how lame is that!
Like the calendar idea.
How about using adzapper (or the like) on our proxies replacing all ads with a "happy sysadmin's day" message for the day?
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Well, if you're not happy, this video [youtube.com] will cheer you up:
Happy sysadmin day!
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I email the entire company once a year, about a week before. Cron is yer friend.
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Do you really want to be reminding them how easy it would be to replace you with a cron job? :-)
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Do you really want to be reminding them how easy it would be to replace you with a cron job? :-)
There's much more to it than that. I'm a cron artist.
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Your claims of direct interpersonal interaction are undermining your credibility a bit here.
Happy sysadmin day! (Score:2)
And are you hiring?
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I went to the 'Seasonal' aisle of my local supermarket, and they had absolutely no SysAdmin Day decorations for sale.
It's disgusting, the way this country treats its SysAdmins.
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I very much appreciated sysadmins here at IETF. (Score:2)
Mailing list posting from one of the sysadmins (Too bad they don't do word wraps).
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/78attendees/current/msg00848.html [ietf.org]
Staying up until 7 AM so that bunch of geeks could get decent connectivity in their hotel - kudos.
There was also the nice orange Cat6 cable running through the parking lot, going through windowframes and doorways and ending up at a Catalyst switch taped to a window :)
So just for today... (Score:3, Funny)
When we leave the bag of dog poop in their cube, we don't light it?
I think I can handle that.
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My copy of "Essential System Administration" has chapters on TCP/IP networking, managing network services, and configuring email servers. It seems to me that whether "system administrator" and "network administrator" are distinct concepts depends upon the context, and that in practice there's extensive overlap.
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Networks are systems, but systems are not always networks.
Personally .... (Score:2)
... I'd like to wish our BOFH overlords a happy sysadmin day.
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BTW whats the cake for today.
Who are we kidding? The cake is a lie.
If you're a Happy Sys Admin... (Score:3, Funny)
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...and you know it, clap your hands!
Now stop dicking around and go reboot the load & performance box.
Re:If you're a Happy Sys Admin... (Score:5, Funny)
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Seriously... I'm 36, and I still feel young around the people I work around :)
(system admin)
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...and you know it, clap your hands!
What about all the one handed sys amdins you insensitive clod!!!
Oh wait that is the happy sys admin, you just cant see the other hand
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Happy
Sane
Sysadmin
Pick two.
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I'd like to shake his hand.
Oh Great (Score:2)
Re:Oh Great (Score:5, Funny)
It's okay, you've got a couple of hundred years before you need to worry about computers. Watch out for the Jacquard loom, that will be showing up in only 94 years.
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You know, for some time now I've been thinking that the Doctor really needs a good sysadmin to straighten out the TARDIS. It's good he's finally got one.
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Well gee... (Score:1)
I did my part. (Score:5, Funny)
I opened a trouble ticket with the text "Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day!"
-Rick
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Ticket closed. Resolution: Beer Acquired.
Re:I did my part. (Score:4, Funny)
Non-Holiday (Score:3, Funny)
That's like having a day for sasquatch. A Happy System Administrator? Doesn't exist!
Silly Holiday! (Score:3, Funny)
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Definitely not unique (Score:2)
"In the past year, [sysadmins'] pay has dropped, and more of their positions are being farmed out to temporary workers."
Sysadmins... and everyone else.
That said, cheers to all the sysadmins out there and thanks for all the hard work!
Somebody remembered... (Score:3, Informative)
Somebody must have been reading the intranet site at my company because this year people brought in food for the I.T. department. It's on the company event calendar. I'm stuffed. The food and appreciation makes me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside.
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Re:Somebody remembered... (Score:5, Funny)
I've had a vision of my death and it involves some Windows Server 2008 R2 machines becoming self aware and plotting my death. So unfortunately I trust my coworkers more than my Windows servers.
For what it's worth, my Cisco gear did try to save my life and fight them off.
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If the food is making you feel fuzzy inside, you probably shouldn't have eaten it.
Thanks! (Score:2)
thanks for making the tubes work, keep it up!
They like temps as they don need health care to be (Score:1, Offtopic)
They like temps as they don need health care to be pay for by the work place and that why worker cost so much in the usa the high cost of health care that over seas that work places do not pay for.
Obligatory XKCD (Score:1)
Nice to be Appreciated (Score:1)
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I appreciate anyone who does work I can't or don't want to do. A day of appreciation is nice but a few moments on a regular basis are better. I know it's the janitor's job to empty my garbage can but I still thank him for doing it.
Why did I use the janitor in my example? Because he deals with a lot of garbage and doesn't get much credit for it either.
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When the cleaning crew comes by to empty my trash cans, I thank them.
Every time I'm working late and they come to my cube.
hmm (Score:2)
Happy [insert job your paid for doing here] day.
Mamby pamby whiny crap.
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Secretaries get free lunches, flowers, cards, etc. so why not Sys Admins?
Tits.
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Yay you. (Score:2)
UK sys admins have a site (Score:1)
And dont forget that the official UK sys admin day site is at http://www.sysadminday.co.uk/ [sysadminday.co.uk]
I am confident that it wont get slashdotted.
Mainly because nobody cares about sys admins
Although I must admit that lots in work liked that I took in cakes!
What? Fill a Boss' e-mail address into a webform? (Score:1)
No self-respecting sysadmin would dare sign their boss up for (er) spam, would they?
I got a card for sys admin day... (Score:1)
With such comments as "Most days you suck. Today you suck less." and "Great job at keeping things working most of the time" *sniffle, tries to hold back tears*
(only reason they remember is I have it added to my shared work calendar)
Re:Dear Sysadmin (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly you don't work for a company with 500+ desktop users and countless outside users hitting various web servers every day where IT is at the core of the business (like say, a large e-commerce outfit or a telco). But even in those places IT is seen by many as nothing more than unimportant computer janitors, yet when for one reason or another no one in IT is around for a few days the entire operation comes to a screeching halt and some poor sysadmin with a high fever and a headache capable of killing large farm animals has to stumble to work to fix something that someone broke, the classic examples including someone deciding that it would be ok to cut power to the main on-site server room "for just a minute" (read: 30+ minutes so most servers shut down) so they can repair the elevator (because it's easier to just switch the power for the entire building off than taking 30 seconds to figure out which switch to turn off. And yes, this meant that everyone in our main building sat around doing nothing for the 30-60 minutes it took to repair the elevator and then another couple of hours while IT rushed to repair the damage), someone in senior management deciding to power-cycle the domain controller when they can't login at 8 AM (since they denied the required server upgrade so the domain controllers can't handle the load efter merging with another company which is now using the same domain controllers) and countless others...
And in case you're wondering how they managed to find the domain controller? Well, this senior manglement character actually called a person in IT (who was actually on vacation that week) saying he couldn't login, he was told this was most likely due to too many users trying to login at once, he then asked a few followup questions including the name of the domain controller. The person being asked these questions assumed this was just curiosity/research into the possibility of pushing for money for new domain controller machines, turns out this person had somehow figured out that if he power-cycled the primary DC he'd disconnect everyone who was logging in so he'd be able to login faster and since all our servers are labeled and senior manglement has access to every part of the building....)
Re:Dear Sysadmin (Score:4, Interesting)
Amen to that - I fell seriously ill on the last day of a holiday about 2hr drive from home. I also have T2 diabetes, which just added to the fun. I emailed my boss in the afternoon of that last day to say I would be staying over until I was fit for travel. My boss responded the next morning to enquire whether I was coming in to work and I replied when I managed to wake up and crawl out of bed at around 11am that I was staying another day then someone was driving me home via my doctor (who subsequently signed me off work for 2 weeks with strong antibiotics for a serious chest infection).
Anyway, when I got home there was a hand delivered letter from work inviting me to a disciplinary hearing upon my return for failing to notify my boss of my absence from work prior to the start of the working day (for the day I replied to his email at about 11).
Well, they went ahead with a formal disciplinary and put a first written warning on file, although that was only after I appealed against their initial decision to jump straight to a final written warning.
Fortunately that boss has gone now.
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"..a high fever and a headache capable of killing large farm animals has to stumble to work to fix something that someone broke, "
Yeah, they shouldn't be coming to work. If they are that sick, and everything comes to a halt, then maybe management will get addition staffing.
as long as you allow yourself to be abused in that manner, you will be.
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Dang. Your IT friend deserves at least a sucker. Wait - no those can be messy when he/she is working on those computer things. A gummy bear would be more fitting. Those have no spine either.
Ps. For the humor impaired, this was/is sarcasm. On multiple levels. Reading comprehension is FUN!
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LEARN to use the equipment necessary to DO YOUR JOB just like a mechanic learns to use the tools he needs and THEN maybe you can spout off about us supporting you. Most IT support roles could be eliminated if the end users weren't either blithering idiots or pathologically scared of computers. Seriously, if you can't remember your password how do you manage to drive a car to work and back every day?
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Most IT support roles could be eliminated if the end users weren't either blithering idiots or pathologically scared of computer
No! No! Please continue in your ignorance!
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My car doesn't require me to create a new key every 30 days.
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But the purpose of a car is a lot simpler than that of a computer (when looking at the entire computer system).
A better way to look at it is to see the computer as a collection of tools (spreadsheet software being one tool, email client another and so on). But it still boggles the mind that some people can use the same software day after day, week after week, month after month and still have weekly calls to helpdesk because they forgot where the Print button is in the application they use for several hours
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My car doesn't require me to create a new key every 30 days.
Because a thief just needs to break the window. A car key is kind of like a password on a non-physically locked down computer, or one where the passwordless guest account has admin access.
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We could have a company with no IT department. Oh it wouldn't run nearly as well, because you are an important SUPPORT function. But it would still bumble along somehow.
Maybe at a small business, but just try running a 50+ sized business without any IT. Your company would probably run swimmingly for the first year, have virus problems the next, catastrophic hardware failures and data loss the third, and then you'd sell the old computers without wiping the harddrives, and your business would then face legal troubles. IT may be a support role, but it's a mid-high educated support role, like a paralegal or a nurse (and a lot of us have a Masters in CS, but just don't like
Re:Dear Sysadmin (Score:4, Informative)
Dear Anonymous Coward
You are about to be subjected to a rant.
System Administrators generally don't work for the IT department, at least not in the way you seem to think. The IT department is where you find the Windows support people, while the System Administrator is the one who fixes things when the IT department has messed up, and implements safeguards to make it harder for IT to mess up, and easier to clean up when they succeed in doing it anyhow.
To use a language you might understand, a System Administrator is to IT PC support like an accountant is to a payroll clerk.
And yes, it's very conceivable that a small company can do without a sysadmin on the payroll. Just like they can do without an accountant on the payroll. The services can be purchased outside the company when needed.
But when the brown stuff hits the revolving blades, you may be glad you have them.
System Administrator Appreciation Day is about letting them know you appreciate all the times they have kept the faeces away from the chopping action, without you even noticing.
The better the sysadmin is, the lazier and more overpaid you think he is, because his success can be measured in all the bad things that doesn't happen. When your network didn't go down while your suit buddy's network did, you get upset with the sysadmin because e-mails to your buddy bounce while your buddy's network is down. You don't appreciate him for your network being up, despite all the things you and your suit friends have done to bring it down, including (but not limited to) surfing teen pr0n from your overpriced notebook while at a hotel room, bringing infected USB keys from home, "bringing" a printer home because you thought nobody used it (in reality, it would print out ALERTS, which thankfully weren't that often), or buying inadequate and overpriced hardware to scratch the back of your suit buddies at the nineteenth hole, blatantly ignorant of the problems interfacing yellow crap to brown crap. No, you leave that problem to the IT department, who can't tell crap from their own shoes (with good reason). So when the sysadmin fixes things to at least working conditions, you get upset because he isn't productive, and doesn't give you a big smile.
Dear Anonymous Coward, if you took the time to look things over, you might be astonished to find that the company does better when you are on vacation than it does when the sysadmin is. Perhaps you aren't as indispensable as you think?
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First of all, it's not to "support you". It's to support the company, with the tools it needs to do bussiness. No, that shinny laptop that your company assigned to you is not "yours". It's the company's. I know it's a tough concept, but it's lot's of people seem to forget about it.
Second, for more and more companies, IT isn't just a SUPPORT function. It's part of the core. IT downtime due to people that don't understand that they are using company property and not using their "cute toys" from home can cause
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Car manufacturers? Cars just get people to and from work. They're just support. Doctors? They just support people's health. Farmers? Carpenters? Teachers? Engineers? All just support for other people, so they can do their real work.
What most human beings do is support other human beings. The few who don't are parasites. Human societies are interdependent ecosystems.