Sysadmin of the Year

PMcGovern writes "Do you know a great sysadmin? Nominate them for OSTG's sponsored Sysadmin of the Year. The first 2500 sysadmins nominated receive a free ThinkGeek T-shirt. Your sysadmin can also win great prizes including an Apple MacBook, a trip to the LISA conference in Washington DC, Splunk Professional server, and cases of Bawls soda. Only two weeks left to nominate your sysadmin (Oct. 31, 2006). (Note: Slashdot is part of OSTG.)"

Must be that "new" Math

[VGPowerlord]

Only two weeks left to nominate your sysadmin (Oct 31, 2006). (Note: Slashdot is part of OSTG.)

See, this is why you don't let submissions sit in the queue. Tomorrow is October 31st. One day is significantly shorter than two weeks.

Invisible workers

[Hoi Polloi]

Lets be honest, people only notice the sysadmins and network admins when things don't work, then they get flack. When they are busting their humps keeping things working or improving their systems they are generally taken for granted.

Re:No, but...

[eln]

That might be good enough, except by the time he notices your post, the contest will have been over for two weeks, so you'll miss out anyway. Better luck next time.

Re:Invisible workers

[0racle]

If you do the job right, no ones sure you've done anything at all.

The Slashdot Submission Queue is slow

[JoshDM]

They're quick to kill a story, but they pend forever. I wonder if my journal entry on buying Comics for Kids on Halloween [slashdot.org] is going to make it in time for people to get to the local comic store.

Re:Invisible workers

[dpilot]

Then you get redeployed or given the opportunity to participate in a resource action.

If only for your own management chain, it's probably good to generate some noise about the problems you've made sure nobody sees.

Re:Invisible workers

[WuphonsReach]

Whenever I try to explain, that I do zip during working hours, means I am doing a great job, people give me this sheepish look... If things dont work, its my fault...if things work, I'm a lazy bastard. Just forget about ordinary users voting for their sysadmin

Yeah, no kidding. My usual tactic is to make sure that there are spare parts everywhere, lots of blinking lights, a few dozen windows display "tail -f" on the mail queue log, and stacks of books artfully arranged with dozens of bookmarks and/or open books.

That or walk around with a piece of network cable or any other easy-to-carry but non-functional part...