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Time to Say Thanks For the Uptime 342

Posted by timothy from the now-get-down-and-grovel dept.
DepecheModem writes: "MSNBC is running an article about System Administrator Appreciation Day. Ted Kekatos created this holiday three years after seeing a poster of a system administrator being bombarded with presents. Feeling somewhat underappreciated, he declared his "day" as the last Friday in July. I think we should all remind our employers that administrators are people too and proudly wear our buttons bearing "Have you hugged your geek lately?"."
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Time to Say Thanks For the Uptime More

Time to Say Thanks For the Uptime

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  • That's right. (Score:5, Funny)

    by SpanishInquisition ( 127269 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:29AM (#3944197) Homepage Journal
    Say thank you to the poor sysadmin by slashdoting his system.

  • How I'm planning on celebrating Friday... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:29AM (#3944200)
    By getting drunk at 9am! Wait until they meet Drunken System Administrator. "You lost your password huh? That sucks. Keep guessing!"

  • Show your appreciation... (Score:3, Funny)

    by oldmildog ( 533046 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:30AM (#3944201) Homepage Journal
    Say hello and show your appreciation by paging your sysadmin with "07734" every hour or so.

  • Blah (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 )
    Another stupid Soandso Day.

    Blah.

    I get paid, that's thanks enough.

    World would be better with no appreciation days.

    • I agree (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ProfBooty ( 172603 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:39AM (#3944282)
      Really, do we have a CEO appreciaton day for all their hard work? Do we have a janitor appreciation day for thanking the janitor for cleaning up after us? Do we have a dentist appreciation day for the dental work they do?

      You get paid a salary to provide a service, that should be enough compensation. Heck I'm an engineer, wheres the engineer appreciation day? No thanks for all the technology which was devleloped by scientists and engineers to provide sys-admins jobs? ;)

      this isn't really news-worthy, but i do find it funny.
      • You should come work for Lockheed. We have an Engineer Appreciation Day 'round here.

      • Re:I agree - YES, CEO appreciation day! (Score:4, Funny)

        by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @11:10AM (#3944498)
        Really, do we have a CEO appreciaton day for all their hard work?

        Yes. Every freaking day they climb into the company jet, or the stock goes up a tiny bit and they are worth millions more, all the catered lunches, just about every freaking moment.

        I think, in fact, a CEO non-appreciation day would be quite the event, where a CEO is treated just like any other employee. He has to get his own coffee. Field his own calls. Make his own travel reservations and fly coach to his luxurious golf trip / business meetings.
      • But we as engineers get engineers week [ieee.org]! Let the sys-admins have their day basking in the sound of 10,000 80mm fans blowing. :)

      • Re:I agree (Score:3, Funny)

        by sharkey ( 16670 )
        Really, do we have a CEO appreciaton day for all their hard work?

        Good idea. We should. Those chairs don't stay moist on their own, you know.

      • True, but consider... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Burning1 ( 204959 )
        ...that with the exception of the Janator, system administrators are the only people who get no appreciation for a job well done.

        Keep the network running flawlessly for a year. Deal with all the stupid questions (bet your CEO doesn't have to do that,) and generally do your job perfectly...

        Then the first day that the PDC goes down, everyones bitching at you.

        CEOs and dentists get the occational pat on the back... Administrators are generally critical to a company but still get walked over.

        I think we could use a little appreciation. : )
      • CEOs are part of an elite upper class that has no need for plebeian "appreciation days". They get extensive perks, rather impressive salaries, and golden parachutes. More often than not, they have great responsibilities as well (our CEO has been entrusted with a $12 billion war chest, and a mandate from the board to spend that money on dominating 10 new markets in the next 3-5 years). When they perform well, I imagine CEOs receive tokens of appreciation far beyond what us grunts could ever imagine. Even when they do poorly, they still enjoy better benefits than the rest of the company. "CEO Appreciation Day". What a joke.

    • Re:Blah (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ThinkSpeak ( 465814 )
      I think the reason for this "holiday" and others like Secretaries Day are to recognize members of your organization who go "beyond the call of duty."

      I am sure you all have stories about incompetent sys admins but what about the gurus that get asked all sorts of questions about things that may not fit into their job descriptions.

      I can't tell you how many times I get calls about things that have nothing to do with my official job (what digital camera should I buy?, How do I network more than one computer to use my home internet connection? How do I create my own web site?)

      I try to provide answers and even point the user to a place where they can do some more research on it even though I could easily say "That's not my job!"

  • Day? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    last Friday in July

    Errr ... in half the world (EU and US) it is Wednesday. In the other half it is Thursday.

    Or is this just a setup for the duplicate on Friday?
    • Well it will be friday someday,... right then we will celebrate.... and you can always ask your sysadmin to change the system clock..simple
    • It's so we all have time to go out and buy pretty hallmark cards that say "Happy ______ Day" and can fill in the blank and give it to them. (I can't imagine any 'Happy Admin Day' cards exist yet.)
    • Oddly enough the 26th is a friday everywhere that uses our calendar and days of the week. The website plainly referes to the 26th as being System Admin Day.

  • Hope Hallmark doesn't jump on this (Score:4, Funny)

    by theRhinoceros ( 201323 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:32AM (#3944221)
    Great idea, actually, might even actually do something to improve professional relationships. I just hope Hallmark doesn't latch onto this like they have Mother and Father's Days... imagine commercials for cheesy cards and flower arrangements and chocolate baskets for SysAdmin Day, managers frantically calling 1-800-FLOWERS to avoid the manufactured faux pas of forgetting the date until the last minute...

  • "SAAD"? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Radi-0-head ( 261712 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:32AM (#3944223)
    Does anyone else find it ironic that the acronym for "System Administrator Appreciation Day" is "SAAD"?

    System Technical Overseer, North Eastern Division ("STONED") would be more appropriate in our case...

  • Only problem I see... (Score:3, Funny)

    by heyitsme ( 472683 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:32AM (#3944226) Homepage
    I think we should all remind our employers that administrators are people too and proudly wear our buttons bearing "Have you hugged your geek lately?

    Unfortunately, no one would ever see one of these buttons if I wore one, as my company never lets me leave my administrative cave.
    • You have a cave? Lucky guy. It must be quite cool inside.

      We have a poorly-lit room with too-thin walls and a broken air conditioning system. But at least the door locks, which can be helpful for [l]user avoidance.

  • What I would like on my day. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Neck_of_the_Woods ( 305788 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:34AM (#3944231) Journal
    I would just like every developer that says "it is a server issue" to be forced to take the "perfect" code they have and submit it to a code review before he/she gets to me. That would be the best present of all. Just so I don't have to spend hours digging into it to prove it was that code, in the process fixing the error, and doing thier job. Wait! I just realized, this may be by design. I can hear my CIO now, "if you have a problem that you can't seem to fix, just upload it into production, blame the server, and force the Admin team to prove you wrong. This will narrow cast your problem, and you can work on something else while they figure it out."

    Interesting.....DING!

  • Appreciation (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hesiod ( 111176 )
    Why is it that any person who can be remotely considered a member of a group has a day for them. I consider myself appreciated every day that the servers don't go down. Just 'cuz it's not said every day doesn't mean I don't "hear" it. Plus, I am shown appreciation every other Friday when money magically appears in my checking account.

    • Re:Appreciation (Score:5, Funny)

      by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:47AM (#3944338) Homepage
      I consider myself appreciated every day that the servers don't go down.

      Really? Personally, I find myself far more appreciated every time the servers *do* go down in flames due to a massive (vendor, contractor or intern-caused) issue that nobody else has a clue about. I can feel the appreciatation radiating off my boss when I tell him that I've used my years of experience and contacts in this-or-that organization to save not only the data of the developers, but also his private image collection.

      Weirdly, these problems seem to crop up just before quarterly reviews. That's when I really feel appreciated.

      • hey now... as a hard working FTE software developer i have also had my hand in some massive system issues (vms page issues due to some c program testing ;)). please don't give the contractors, vendors, and interns all the credit. us FTE's earn our keep as well!!
      • vendor, contractor or intern-caused

        Oh man, it's so true. I'm interning right now and an extra greedy regular expression I wrote totally hosed our $300,000.00 intranet server. One minute I'm searching and replacing, the next second I'm using 2.5 gigs of RAM, and I get kicked off of my ssh session. Then the box starts to drop pings and the intranet domain goes offline. Talk about adrenaline. Nothing like a good CGI and an extra good intern playing with a Sun box to make the SysAdmin wet himself.

  • Not december 21? (Score:3, Funny)

    by anticypher ( 48312 ) <anticypher.gmail@com> on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:35AM (#3944241) Homepage
    Wouldn't the shortest day of the year be more appropriate?

    If you don't get the reference, you aren't getting enough User Friendly [userfriendly.org] . Failure to get enough UF in your diet can lead to blindness, so head over there now for a dose.

    the AC
  • Lets send him ....... well umm... nothing i want to live more

  • Not really created in our honor (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sheepdot ( 211478 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:37AM (#3944262) Journal
    I'd like and appreciate the day a LOT more if it wasn't created by a system administrator. No offense, but it doesn't seem like a genuine thank-you if the the only other people that celebrate it are other administrative staff, or if they are only celebrating it because they found the website saying that they should.
    • And all the other holidays that were invented by Hallmark are genuine?

      I'm rarely concerned about the sincerity of the person who brings me pizza unless I think that they might have figured out that I'm the one that altered the entry in their address book for the tight-bodied gal in the mailroom to include their significant other in their mailings to her.

      Maybe my next manager won't question a beer keg being expensed as an "external storage device required for optimal network performance".

    • it's not another creation of the card companies.

  • Sysadmins are the oil the make everything run smoothly (except in cases where they are defective, of course.)

    Having worked with many over the years (and having a father who was one for a 20k+ user network for ~25 years) I know a little of the trouble that these people put up with. The devil-possessed clueless users hounding them about problems reading e-mail and how the printer is not working. The enverending department computer inventory cataloging project. The revolutionary updates to the system snuffed by the managers in the ivory tower who don't know what they're killing. The triple booked lab coverage at the same time someone infects the network with a few worms and the UPS on the server starts to whine.

    And people accuse admins of being detached, stuffy people who treat their users with disdain.

    APPRECIATE YOUR ADMIN. </rant>

  • We already have geek appreciation day... (Score:5, Funny)

    by hex1848 ( 182881 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:45AM (#3944329) Homepage
    Its called payday, happens every other friday...
  • Just what I need, another day for the system administrators here to claim all the glory, when I as a lowly telephone tech support person have to take all the angry calls when the paper MCSEs here screw up the email, web proxy and other servers.

    Blah ... I'd say more but the phone's ringing and it's probably another corporate executive who can't find the "on" button again. :P

  • maybe there are stupid appreciation days for people whose jobs are being done perfectly when no one notices them, and failure otherwise. sales guys get to yell "i got the soandso account". sysadmins dont get to yell "hey another 16 hour day of cleaning up digicrap and no one noticed the massive changes i made". tech support people should have a day too, if they dont have one. actually i like the idea where there's no apprecation days. everyones got it right with the paycheck thing. but i'm just saying, maybe its for the people that only get spoken to when something broke, not when something went right. its grating on the soul when the only people that talk to you are angry.
  • How else are we supposed to get laid?

  • Danm! (Score:2, Funny)

    by wbattestilli ( 218782 )
    I just told my wife about this and explained that I needed some recognition for the 6 machine LAN that I admin in our home. She laughed at me.

    If my wife reacts like that, I'd hate to see your boss.

  • Vacation times (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stackster ( 454159 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @10:53AM (#3944403) Journal
    Couldn't they have placed that day sometime else? Right now, 90% of the people working here are on vacation. Just the sysadmin is at work, as usual. (Actually, I went on vacation before everybody else, so now when I'm back, it's more or less a couple of weeks of vacation-at-work.)
  • Some of us just have disciples.

    Yes, you too may now bow before me. :P

  • What you get during the morning sysadmin appreciation day cake and ice cream when you realize you forgot to reset the software dead man's switch for that day. [arsware.org]

  • Whah??? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Observer ( 91365 )
    "Have you hugged your geek lately?"
    Is this some new variant of "embrace and extend" that we must guard against?

  • Ain't gonna happen (Score:5, Funny)

    by wirefarm ( 18470 ) <jim@mmdCOWc.net minus herbivore> on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @11:40AM (#3944713) Homepage
    Yeah, sure, the people in your company are going to suddenly going to buy you lunch because you got their printer working or reset their password. Sure.
    Maybe you'll get some half-dead flowers from the cheap florist on the corner or some inane computer-related doo-dad from Office Depot. ("Look! a mouse cover that looks like, get this: a MOUSE!")
    Good God, I want a sysadmin day where users just LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE. It's bad enough that I eat my pathetic convenience store sandwich at my desk while trying to watch a downloaded divx of futurama, but some moron, seeing me with my headphones on and half a sandwich in my hand has got to come over and ask for me to print a document or fix her excel macros or update the company web page. ("Nobody's hit the Investor Relations page in a week, I *think* your updates can wait twenty goddamn minutes...")

    But yet, if you send them away, you'll pay later...

    The best thing to do is to take quiet revenge. Turn off the proxy server. Randomly delete mails with attached spreadsheets. Write perl scripts to rewrite outgoing mails (s/the/teh/g) and on incoming mails as well (s/Regards,/I find you strangely attractive,/g)
    Send a company-wide notice that the router that handles internet browsing will be down from 2:00 to 4:00 pm for an "LRF Support Module" upgrade. (LRF = Little Rubber Feet.) Then take those two hours to download ISO after ISO of whatever the hell you like.
    Subscribe everyone in the company to bugtraq - for security's sake...
    Find new and creative uses for /dev/null
    When you are asked to push back your vacation a few days, wait until after and let it slip to your boss know that you were supposed to be the Best Man at your brother's wedding, but instead spent that Saturday restoring the backup domain controller.
    Nope, you ain't gonna get a day - even if you did, you wouldn't enjoy it. Make your own fun...

    Cheers,
    Jim in Tokyo

    • Write perl scripts to rewrite outgoing mails (s/the/teh/g) and on incoming mails as well (s/Regards,/I find you strangely attractive,/g)

      Hah that's priceless! I'm thinking of doing just this to a co-worker for kicks. I figure it will be much safer to do this to e-mails comming to the user (so he doesn't get in trouble) rather than the converse.

      So here's a script for all you lazy admins ;)

      It's up to you to configure your sendmail.cf though.

      #!/usr/bin/perl

      use strict;

      my %words = (
      "^((Regards|Sincerely|Thanks|Peace|Cya),)" =>
      "I find you strangely attractive,",
      "\\s+the\\s+" => " teh ",
      "\\s+and\\s+" => " adn "
      );

      # Expression to match victim's e-mail address

      my $victim = "(user|fname.lname)\@domain.tld";

      my @lines = <STDIN>;

      # Make sure the e-mail is going to the user.
      # If it is not just output the e-mail un-changed.

      foreach my $l (@lines) {
      if($l =~ /(To|CC):/) {
      if(!($l =~ /$victim/i)) {
      foreach my $lin (@lines) {
      print $lin;
      }
      exit 0;
      }
      }
      }

      # Now re-write the e-mail

      foreach my $line (@lines) {
      foreach my $expr (keys %words) {
      $line =~ /$expr/$words{$expr}/ig;
      }
      print $line;
      }

      --
      Garett

  • My sysadmin doesn't deserve any appreciation. He's an incompetent boob who should have been replaced years ago. Unfortunately, we can't replace him because he's got the network so screwed up that no one else could ever figure it out.

    Mind you, I'm not the only one who feels this way. This isn't a personal grudge. All of my coworkers get the same defeated look whenever they are forced to deal with him. More projects and initiatives than I can count have been abandoned in midstream, because the sysadmin either put up too many roadblocks or broke an important bit of code or whatever.

    The rest of the company has learned to work around him, but I am beligerant enough -- even after two and a half years here -- to really call him out. I've spent hours watching over his shoulder, pointing out his mistakes, whenever he tries to screw with my Web servers. He has finally come to understand that I am one of the few people here that he can't afford to cross, because he knows that I know just how bad he truly is and that when the real business decisions (priorities, budgets) get made, I now have far more pull than him.

  • Yeah, I got yer appreciation... RIGHT HERE! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nobodyman ( 90587 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @11:43AM (#3944744) Homepage
    The majority of sysadmins that I've worked with have been almost carbon copies of "Nick, your company's computer guy": rude, arrogant, impatient, and unresponsive. Many forget that it is their job to fix computers and feel they should be begged and groveled upon.

    The sysadmin is the mechanic of the 21st century. You are not a god because you spent 3 weeks getting your a+ certification. Your one year at a tech school does not compare to the 4-year degrees of the people you serve.

    Try earning your appreciation, rather than declaring your own holiday.

    • Re:Yeah, I got yer appreciation... RIGHT HERE! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Pyramid ( 57001 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @12:46PM (#3945274)
      SysAdmin's aren't born being Nick Burns, they're slowly transformed.

      Usually they start out being the plucky, helpful guy who works his ass off to solve your problems. Slowly, the years of fixing the same problems for the same users takes it's toll. The plucky fellow tried his damnedest to teach the Luser how to use their computer more efficiently, but they just don't want to learn. "I'll just keep doing it the way I've always done it and bitch when things (predictably) fuck up", says the Luser.

      You see, it *is* the Admin's job to fix computers, but babysitting arses who don't give a rat's ass about their job or anyone else's, isn't.

      The SysAdmin may be the mechanic of the 21st century, but just like his "olden days" counterpart, he's stuck trying to make the shoddy technology those "I have a four year degree, I don't need to debug, I'm invincable" pricks have unleashed upon us.

      For every A+ toting, MCSE waving wannabe, there's an army of competent individuals working in the background to keep those NT boxes, Unix machines, Netware servers, bizarre networks, crappy windows workstations full of dancing baby screen savers, phone systems and hoards of damned legacy software you were too cheap to upgrade working as YOU SPECIFIED so you can bitch when the *SHITTY CODE* you inserted into the production server without permission kills the database for a day.

      That's why Admins guard root like it's the Arch of the Covenant; if they don't, some consultant twit or cocky developer will invariably fuck something up 4 o'clock on a Friday evening and leave without telling anyone.

      It's one thing to do one's job, but an entirely different ball of wax to constantly clean up everyone else's messes and get no credit for it.

      How about next time you infect your PC by installing some retarded waving flag applet, your admin just says, "I told you so" and instructs you to fuck off when you call him over and over again?

      Cheers
  • This appreciation day includes many system administrators:

    Computer Administrators
    Network Administrators
    Internet Administrators (webmaster)
    Telephone (PBX) Administrators
    Voice-Mail Administrators
    Database Administrators (DBA)
    UNIX ® Administrators
    LINUX Administrators
    Lotus Notes ® Administrators
    Novell GroupWise ® Administrators
    MS Exchange ® Administrators
    IBM Mainframe Systems Programmers ("sysprogs")

    What about us Tivoli Storage Manager/Veritas Netbackup Admins? where's our love? remember this next time you need your files/SAP/Oracle DB restored

    r saso
  • while most sysadmins are really good, some suck royally. is there also a day where we can openly complain about them and slap their overblown egos a bit while not being scared of being sent to never-never land next time we have a problem?
  • Wanna know what's fun when you're working in a cubicle environment? Unplug the DSL modem. Not only do you learn new words, but you can play with everybody's day at once!

    Wish they appreciated me, I'm getting too creative when it comes to annoying people.

  • Help them (Score:3, Funny)

    by inkfox ( 580440 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @12:08PM (#3944969) Homepage
    Celebrate the holiday by hosting an intervention. Take your favorite sysadmin out to TGIF or similar, and muster up the courage to say: "We're here to help ween you from User Friendly. It's just not funny. It's Ziggy, only with a narrower world view."

    Every time you read a User Friendly strip, you should be reminded of the goofy daleks wheeling about and chanting "weeee are the superior beeeeings" and threatening everything with the only one tool they have. Tip one over and it's done for.

    Taken to its extreme, the single ongoing punchline is: "Ha ha the people who actually do things with computers instead of fetish-fixating on the computers themselves are stupid! Ha ha we control the computers! Ha ha the people who actually do things are stupid again! Ha ha! We still control the computers!"

    Being a sysadmin is cool and all. But generally speaking, you're one of the less valuable cogs in the machine which people are more eager to replace if you maintain that mindset.

  • I remember... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChozSun ( 49528 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @01:07PM (#3945488) Homepage
    ... when I was a SysAdmin back when jobs were plentiful.

    I enjoyed coming in and completely fixing the last "sysadmin's" handy work.

    I enjoyed migrating all servers from Windows to Linux (funny how you can get your way when you do not have to spend thousands of dollars) while all the users can still use the os's that they are familiar with (Windows, Unix, Macintosh) and still be able share the same files and printers.

    I enjoyed uptimes of months (only downtime was due to upgrading the UPS... funny you have to actually unplug the server to utilize the UPS... sheesh :).

    I enjoyed rebuilding all workstations to MY SPECIFICATIONS so that I get no more than one call a day from a user having issues with whatever.

    I certainly did not mind helping my fellow employees making their home computers that much better. Actually kind of flattering because they see that I can take a low-end workstation (similar specs to their home pc) and make it run for weeks without problems. I wouldn't blame them for wanting the same thing at home.

    I enjoyed sharing my enthusiasm about whatever was leet going on in technology with other people and seeing them started to get interested in that same technology.

    I enjoyed supporting and helping people without making them feel stupid because they asked a question about computers.

    I don't care for an appreciation day. I just want to be a sysadmin again.
    • Yeah man, I feel your pain. :(

      What is it, really, that happened? It's a travesty how so many sysadmin jobs have gone out the door - people haven't simply stopped needing their computers to get maintained, have they? What's the deal? It seems to me that there are more computers out there on the market than there was a year ago, in corporate use - so why less admin jobs?
  • Bless your souls for keeping those sites up late at night.
  • My office celebrates System Admin Appreciation Day.

    This week, I got layed off!
  • Time to Say Thanks For the Uptime

    If the purpose of this holiday is to thank the sysadmins for our fabulous uptime, I think I can safely skip it.
  • Thanks for calling attention to this event and providing the official-sounding links. I convinced my boss that this is an important national day, and the company agreed to spring for a pizza party with ice cream and soda on company time for the whole IS department on Friday.

  • Ok (Score:2)

    by The Cat ( 19816 )
    "Come on everybody!" (clap clap) "There's cake in the conference room!"

    "So, what are we celebrating?"

    "It's System Administrator Appreciation Day! Look, we've got 'Have you hugged your geek today?' buttons and everything!"

    "Uhhh, we fired all the IT people six months ago."

    "Oh. That's a shame. More cake?"

  • No (Score:2)

    by wdr1 ( 31310 )
    I am not celebrating sys admin day. Frankly, I find it ridiculous. Enough with the self-martyring. For a profession paid an average of $60,5000 [intepros.com] (well above national average), I think your take home pay should be sufficent enough.

    Yes, there can be the occasional developer that makes your life hell. Guess what? There's the occasional BOFH who does the same for developers. By large both groups are good people, but every profession has their share of assholes.

    Yes, you work overtime. YOU KNEW THAT BEFORE YOU GOT INTO IT. And damn it, so does everyone else in IT: Developers, CTO's, QA. And speaking of QA, talk about people who get no respect for what they have to put into it. It's the nature of the beast.

    You do your job. You do your best. You take pride in it. That should be enough.

    My two cents,
    -Bill

    And no, I don't want a developer's thank you day either.

  • My Internet is broken... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mmuskratt ( 232684 ) on Wednesday July 24, 2002 @08:13PM (#3948337)
    Wow,
    This is a great thread. Here's the problem, for all of you people who are complaining about your sysadmin:

    1) Someone who can barely type in a password of more than 3 characters hired your sysadmin.

    2) That same person waffled at paying a REAL sysadmin what they were worth to your company, and in this world, you get what you pay for.

    3) Because you complain about things you know nothing about (and yes, that includes developer cowboys who like to screw things up for everyone else to get what they want), you are probably going to get a little bit of that treatment in return. Try this little test: Go to a nice restaurant, without a reservation. Grab the first waiter you see by the arm (if you're lucky, the waiter will have just walked in the door), and tell them that you want to order the steak and lobster, and you needed it 2 hours ago, and it is for a big, important client (who is generating revenue, not costing your company money). You will be sitting over at that open table, which hasn't been wiped off yet, and complain to the waiter about not having wiped the table clean in preparation for your unannounced arrival. Wear a suit to make yourself look important, because, well, you are, aren't you? Then, when your steak and lobster doesn't show up in fewer than 5 minutes, call over the manager, who will then tell the waiter to do what you ask them to do. A good waiter will give you excellent service, smile, and accommodate your every whim (interruptions, you explaining to him how he should work on the steak and lobster, constant bitching about not having water, wine, bread, 4 other tables). Any other waiter will be, oh, just like YOUR sysadmin...and will treat you the way you deserve.

    4) Having an MCSE doesn't mean the sysadmin your Office Manager hired will know dick about computers.

    5) You probably know less than your sysadmin about computer systems. If you know more about computer systems, you should be a mentor, not a whining prick.

    6) Nobody notices a good sysadmin. Shit just works. If you constantly have computer downtime at work, see #'s 1 and 2.

    Oh, and my Internet is just fine, I was only kidding...how's yours?


  • let's not go down this track - official appreciation days really suck - mother's and father's days are bad enough - but over th last coupla decades seems every lobby group been claimin a day for self-congratulatory purposes - in my opininion this is only demeaning to th ppl concerned

    ppl who appreciate what you do and know not to take other ppl for granted will always show unprompted gratitude - others who don't or are more self-centered will only resent it and any gratitude they express will be false

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