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Sys-Admin Appreciation Day Tomorrow 155

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hey-secretaries-get-one-too dept.
nrmrvrk (ner-mer-verk) writes "Tomorrow, the last Friday of July, is Sysadmin Appreciation Day! A special day, once a year, to acknowledge the worthiness and appreciation of the person occupying the role, especially as it is often this person who really keeps the wheels of your company turning." Thanks to Martin, BSD-Pat, Liz, CowboyNeal: the guys who get the thankless job of keeping our hardware running smoothly.
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Sys-Admin Day Tomorrow More

Sys-Admin Day Tomorrow

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  • Because helpdesk operators get their appreciation every other friday, all $9/hr +pizza +Co.T-shirt worth of it.

    BTW, 9 times out of ten that person who told you to reboot windows is outsourced, taking calls from 2-3 different companies, and has no reason left to live by the time he gets home from his loveless job. So if you want to show me your appreciation, just shoot me the next time you see me. (I'm the one in the t-shirt that reads "The Internet: 100million Lusers can't be wrong!"

    Ò
  • Sometimes it is not for a sys-admin to decide what NOS is run on the network.... sometimes orders come from above and you need to conform a bit to keep a good job.

    A good sysadmin can change jobs in a day and usually come out ahead.

    Whoring: Just don't do it!

  • {sigh} Some moderators have _no_ sense of humor. The poor slob.
  • when everyone else in the office is in pristine suit, shirt, tie because they know you can walk away today and have an equally (or better)well paying job *topmorrow*. :)

  • I'm so happy to discover that I'm not alone '-)

    I do all of this everyday...
  • Explain to me the logic of posting a link about Sysadmin Appreciation Day that you know full well will cause the server to bog down. Is this some type of cruel joke? :P

  • Con
    Sul
    Tant

    Get paid by the hour, and get compensated for "pager duty". And, if you work for somewhere like Taos [taos.com] (my employer) or Andersen Consulting [ac.com], you get paid hourly, but you also get benefits, interesting work (at least mine is), and no unpaid "down time". oh, and paid vacation. and other things.

  • any single hot secretaries might consider FUCKing the sysadmin on Sys-Admin Appreciation Day.

    Married's no problem either..

    YOW-za!!

    Your Working Boy,
  • No, this isn't true either. I am a programmer by training but a sysadmin by profession. Sure, it takes me a bit to hack DNS, but all the programming theory comes in handy during upgrades.
  • "Tell the billy goats I said "Hi.""

    LOL! Congratulations on the perfect reply to a troll. so much better than getting "gruff" with them.

  • For those ever-lovin' sysadmins in your life:
    • A hammer: for recalitrant processes that refuse to parse the code that, dammit, should work
    • A large stick: used to celebrate Whiney-Static-IP-Wantin' User Day
    • A larger stick: to hold the machine room door closed on Visitor Day
    • A Clapper(TM): to put on the Enterprise 10000 on I'm Quitting This Damn Job Day

  • Well, it's true. If you can't figure something like that out, you really shouldn't be taking an OS class.

  • BOFH? (Score:1)

    by craw ( 6958 )
    Due to budgetary cutbacks, I find myself doing more sysadmin work each year. Dammit Jim, I'm a scientist, not a sysadmin! However, I have experience (grad school) in this and can do enough damage to make a good admin cry. Lately, I've become the de factor sysadmin for more and more computers. In the eyes of my co-workers, I'm turning into a BOFH.

    My attitude has always been very simple, and I have tried to convey this to the ppl I work with. If you bother me with a question concerning computers then this implicitly means that I might know the answer that you don't know. In many cases, this means that you consider me to be the expert and you are not. If this is true, then it means another thing.

    I also know if you are asking a stupid question. I know what effort that you would have to invest in order to answer that question on your own. If the question concerns a issue that previously took me a while to figure out, then I will help you. It also helps if you tell me what you did to try to answer your question. If you did nothing, then f*ck off. If the answer is easy and obvious, this means that you are a lazy bastard that didn't even bother to RTFM, or you are totally clueless. Clueless ppl I can better deal with. Lazy bastards are dog-meat.

    Remember, when you ask a question to someone, that person may have a good understanding of how much work you did on your own to reach an answer.

    I recently bought the RTFM coffee mug from ThinkGeek. It replaced my old Dilbert mug that said, "Let me drop everything to work on your problem." or something like that.

  • But sysadmins are NOT unsung. Anyone willing to disclose the amount of money they make as a sysadmin?

    Sure, but how many hours do we geeks work again? 60? 80? Hmm.. so let's say we're making 60k per year. Not bad, huh? Now, divide that by two... 30k per year. Less than what the average joe who's slobbering all over himself about e-commerce and how much "'dem pooter nerds are makun'".

  • banner ad day.
    kind of appropriate, really....
  • Do *you* want to be the one required to stay at work until everything's working perfectly again? I like my job. When the router blows up, I go home. The SAs are the ones who have to stick around until odd hours of the morning and fix it.

    --
    10Brett-T
  • True, but most of us would still prefer to *have* a system administrator and someone else to fix the toilet, instead of eliminating those jobs and distributing the responsibilities amongst everyone else like the original poster suggested.

    --
    10Brett-T
  • $7 / hr. (Grr)
  • Microsoft does have a good idea with the Protected File System they have going into Windows Me and partially into 2000. I think it could definetly use some fine tuning, so as not to restrict access to files some people will NEED to be able to change, but it certainly helps prevent end-user stupidity from causing problems.

    For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, it basically makes it impossible to remove, modify, replace, any "protected" file unless certified to do so. (Product manufacturer for a driver, etc.).

  • This is silly.

    If you don't have Programming skills, you aren't a Sysadmin, you are a technician, stick to NT, you'll do well there.

    Yes, I know of programmers that like to make things complex, but that's bad programmers. Scripts/Programs are supposed to make things EASIER, not harder. When I took over from someone with no programming skills everything was very simple, too bad there was no way to verify that everytime a new filesystem was added it was also added to the backups. Within the first week we found a lot of missing files/directories, and the backup procedures for the Oracle Databases didn't keep up with the DBAs either. Now there is a script system that collects the information about the Filesystems and Databases and creates the backup scripts, and if there are any problems with creating these scripts, the entire UNIX Admin team gets and E-mail.

    I know of the guys you are talking about, I hate them too (We had the same problem with Web Developers deciding that they HAD to have 18 versions of the same software installed in 15 different locations on their workstations). But that is the result of bad programming skill, as well as bad sysadmin skill.

    K.I.S.S is for both programming and sysadmin. We can rebuild from a crash in about 10mins more than it takes to reinstall the OS, by simply pushing our standard tools from a reference server.


    -- Keith Moore
  • No, they don't need anything. A monkey could get paid for clicking buttons all day. Chimps get paid to do that at NASA.
  • M$ Sysadmins don't need crap. Chimps get paid to click buttons at NASA. Maybe we should give the M$ sysadmins banannas.
  • So, do we have to give EXTRA appreciation to the poor bastards administrating the server this story is on? It's been Slashdotted.

    Luser: HI! I thought your Sysadmin Appriciation day was such a great thing, I submitted it to Slashdot? Isn't that great? Now everyone will know waht a great job you guys do!!!

    Sysadmin: Slashdot? SLASHDOT! Ohhhhhh, OK, yeah. Thanks. Thanks A LOT. (types rm -r /usr/home/)What's your user name?

  • after all, who needs stock options and company picnics when you have hot secretaries ready to pork 6-digit+ earning geeks?

    oh, wait...bill gates. *shrug*
  • Exactly, but atleast their calls make for funny stories most of the time.

    For instance, this week a lady in our accounting deptartment called our help desk every day because she forgot her password, sometimes multiple times per day. It got to the point where we wrote down her password and gave it to her manager so she'd stop calling us, heh.
    --
  • Dude, your obviously not a real sysadmin if you can't figure out how to deal with that. Forward the call to another fax machine. Then let them sort out the mess.
  • Take a closer look, it's not me.

  • ??? (Score:1)

    by bdowne01 ( 30824 )
    Interesingly enough, the site is blocked by my company's firewall. Kinda funny...

    Time to download HTTPort! :)
  • other "protected" files

    IE 5.x
    Windows Media Player
    Microsoft Frontpage
    some links in browsers

    these are automatically "fixed" if you "accidentally" remove them.

    Win2K - 'cause there's nothing like being an administrator when "you don't have the authority to stop this process."

    --
  • and in the mountains, too. Rocky mountain high, pacific ocean low.
    --

  • I would like to say a special thanks to my sysadmin, Sam. He's a really great guy -- but don't get me wrong, he's a great guy in the BOFH sort of way.

    The reason I'm singling him out for a tip of the hat is because he has taken the last few days remarkably well. Last Friday, we got hit by the Fwd:Joke variant of ILoveYou. After wiping out half a gig of images on our server, he dutifully restored them from backups and went around to each individual workstation (some seventy in our office) to personally chastise each user to NEVER OPEN FWD:JOKE EMAILS EVER EVER AGAIN. So what happened this morning? Yup. Several someones opened up fwd:joke emails. So he gets on the office PA and announces "Don't open any emails that say Fwd:Joke." So what happens? Yup again, half the office launches Lookout and opens the message to see what the problem is.

    So now it's the end of the day and we're almost restored back to normal. It took him a couple of hours, but he finally got the mailserver back up and running. And he didn't even kill anyone. Although several people seem to be missing...

  • Yeah, but (Score:1)

    by / ( 33804 )
    Their users have never been spoiled by quality, so they don't expect quality from administrators. They just expect to be told that that's how it is, and it's time to reboot.
  • As a fellow Taos'er [taos.com] I have to agree. I love getting paid for downtime and to wear a pager that never goes off. :) I'm on beach now as a matter of fact...life is good....

    The only downside is, we don't get stock in all these little startups we end up working for... a real bummer, but otherwise a great job...

    Ender

  • The sysadmin in the CS department where I go to school is a real asshole. Intro to operating systems, he says to the class:

    "If you can't figure out how to kill a process, maybe you shouldn't be in this class!"

    Our professor didn't take kindly to that. Most of the students where working in a unix environment for the first time.
  • If you got a day to celebrate, and then you'd lose your motivation to get out of the rage-inducing soul destroying position.

    My name is George, I used to work on a hotline. I've been hotline free for about a year now. Every once in a while I get the desire to take a few tech support calls, but I call my sponsor and he helps me get past that desire.

    George
  • Close - more like commuters without traffic cops. Wanna guess where that'll end up?

    Ah, sweet entropy...
  • Sorry, but I think you missed my point - Simon Trevaglia is still writing the BOFH for the Register at the moment - hence BOFH 2K. The most recent BOFH as of this posting is 25 July 2000 3:43pm.


    tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
  • Wow! Karma Whoring can be FUN!
  • Believe me, I have a LOT more respect for those people than I do for you.

    Well, from that post, I'd assume that you don't have much respect for anybody

    You don't know me, Bob, Dick, or Harry and what our jobs are about to us, so hey - shut up.

  • one thing going for them: money

    Ha ha ha ha ha - sigh. I wish... :(

    <wiping tear from eye> *sniff*
  • Thanks for:
    Playing XBoing all day
    Telling everyone "I'll get to it in my *spare* time".
    etc....

    What was your username again? clickety-click
  • I think in honor of Sysadmin Appreciation Day, we should all not work.

    Not only not work, but not fix anything if it breaks.

    I think if we all had a day off and all the black hats knew it, we'd be appreciated a whole heck of a lot. . . .

  • It's a called a punchline. Get over it.
  • My users better thank me every time they even think about using the machines, or bad things will happen (due to, um, solar flares. Yeah, that's what deleted their account).

    Hehe, I like being a BOFH. :)
  • You wrote:
    I want to know what the guy who invented beer is working on now.

    Very little. Since beer was invented hundreds of years ago, I suspect the guy's dead. *G*

    Rafe

    V^^^^V
  • It's loading up now, but very, _very_ slowly...I want to give it a look over before I send the url to my boss...
  • He may be a great guy, but I question his sanity and/or intelligence. What kind of sysadmin would be willing to work with that particular pile of shit Redmond markets as an OS?

    I actually enjoy having my users get viruses. My systems are untouched and winDOS support gets to take care of fixing the problem! HA!

  • I'm honored to have my trade compared with that of a janitor. If you were in an area recently affected by one of several janitors' strikes, you too would appreciate the job they do. But, I must say, you got one wrong:

    Feels the need to get to know and talk to everybody since he's so familar with all your files, email, etc.

    Trust me, we don't want to get to know you. We'd rather you didn't exist at all. We don't care what's in your files, what kind of mail you get, or what porn sites turn you on. We mostly just wish you wouldn't call up telling us about either a) Problems we were fixing when you interrupted us, or b) Problems that are actually ID 10T related. And believe me, we don't feel the need to talk to you. Leave us alone.

    Have I made my point yet? Sysadmin is just a high tech janitor. He creates... nothing.

    Agreed. We don't create much (though sometimes we get to set up a new shop, which is great fun), but rather we maintain existing investments.

    And certainly not deserrving[sic] of much higher pay.

    Agreed. Sysadmins should be paid maybe 20-30% more than regular janitors (simply because of the experience/education required). What that really means is that janitors are underpaid.

    And here's one more:

    8) Not having a good one makes it hard to get any work done (because nothing works).
    8a) Not having a good one makes it hard to get nay work done (because of the stink and clutter).

    -- Your Friendly Janitor

  • Telling everyone "I'll get to it in my *spare* time" ... Deleting my home directory then blaming me for not backing it up!

    I'm sorry I'm so far behind in handling user requests. I like you though, so I've taken care of this particular request for you right away.

    I'm happy to delete your home directory for you. You did back it up, right?

  • Fine -- they get a workstation (Ultra 60s now) and periodically I have to do a complete wipe and rebuild, normally about every six months.

    Uhmmm...root == responsibility. Shouldn't they be the ones doing the complete reinstall? I'd hand them the media and the instruction book and tell them to have at it. Such is the price of root. You can't have it both ways.

  • I'm a geek. I sysadmin a network, and rare is the day that goes by that I don't write some code. Other people have made profit off my code, and so have I. My code is running in production situations, and a lot of it gets used 20,000 times a day.

    And yet, I don't see the point of a sysadmin appreciation day. There is nothing unsung about being a geek, anymore. Ever since Open Source became a coined trademark, geeks have been the trendy thing to be. Ever see any of those banner ads on slashdot? They are marketing to an image that I accredit ESR for hyping. Certainly, geeks were around before that image, and they will be around after everyone gets as tired as I am with it.

    But sysadmins are NOT unsung. Anyone willing to disclose the amount of money they make as a sysadmin?

    We can be more than what "our" culture defines us to be.
  • Programmers who become sysadmins tend to write code to do things.

    They write a bit of code to do this.
    They write a bit of code to do that.
    They write a bit of code to make this do that.

    Bit by bit the entropy sets in. They never seem to see the whole picture. 1 year down the line and you have to hire 3 sysadmins just to handle the reboot dependencies.

    Good reading for all (potential) sysadmins:
    http://www.infrastructures.org/
  • Not like "I didn't know what OLEAUT32.DLL was so I deleted it" which kills me. :)

    Several years ago, one of our clients called up to say that their system wouldn't come back up after a reboot. It turned out that the user was running out of disk space, so they removed that /unix file that was taking up so much space...

  • Minus the rest of your post, I'll agree with the topic; any single hot secretaries might consider FUCKing the sysadmin on Sys-Admin Appreciation Day. Trust me, it'll brighten him up a little... and you never know... maybe you'll make one person whose homedirs he won't accidentally delete! :^)
  • A phone that doesn't ring every 30 seconds (especially when it is a fax machine that calls four times because someone forgot to dial 9).

    Dude, you pick up the phone?

    If it's not in email (documented, logged and backed-up for future evidence) I don't know about it. That includes problems with email.

    OK, OK, some people (my boss and staff) have my mobile, but I have CID and they know my abuse policy...

    Your Working Boy,
  • Tommorrow is also the first day of the Oregon Brewers Festival [oregonbrewfest.com]. 72 Microbrews by the riverside. Starts at noon - I just took the whole day off for my sysadmin appreciation.
  • You know what? It really saddens me that so many people have this view of the sysadmin as Mr. 'Big Brother' bad asshole who looks over their shoulder and tells them what to do.

    The fact remains... the sysadmin, and the IT staff in general, are *responsible for ensuring that computers are available to do what htey need to do for the company*.

    I've had times when I've said.. hey.. most of my users are very computer literate. I'll just let them do whatever they want with their workstations.. you know what? The amount of work I have to do goes UP! WAY UP! Why? Because...
    If Mr. Programmer installs some software, and de-installs it, re-installs it, hence, destabilizing windows (we all know this happens), and his computer BSODs every day, and he can't get his programming done, it is still *MY JOB* to fix it, not his. It is no longer relevant who's fault it is, it's still MY JOB to fix it.

    As for 'taking back' users computers... It's not *YOUR COMPUTER*. It's the COMPANY'S computer. You should not *care* what it runs so long as you can do your job.

    I must say, in my shop, if someone came to me and said 'can I put linux on my computer, because it lets me do my job better' then, if I believed them, I'd say 'here, have a second computer to use linux on'.

    Users have JOBS to do. Project managers, programmers, designers... they don't have fucking TIME to deal with network issues.

    Excuse me? to guarantee myself a job? Dude, I don't know what you think is out there, but if you were to only use software that an idiot could administer, nothing would get done.

    How are your abilities compromised?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I mean tranfer it when you pick it up and discover its a fax... you don't have a tranfer feature on your phone. You don't have to send it to the right fax, just tranfer it to any fax and let them figure out what went wrong.. hehe
  • yea, I leveled 3 times in d2 during our last "outage."

    Worked all night, I did. :-)

    --
  • Isn't this inherently an anti-BOFH's thing? Don't true BOFH's loath and hate from the quiet solitude of their server rooms? They don't allow anyone in there anyway, so how could we honor them? :)
  • Some of us don't do it for the money. We do it because we enjoy the job more than anything else we've ever done. I personally don't make that much money at it, but perhaps someday I will. Until that time, I'll just continue to do my job the best I can as I always have done. Agreed, I am not looking for a pat on the back. It would just be nice not to hear people saying that I don't deserve one. At least if noone says anything I can go home feeling like I earned my paycheck. But then again, what the heck, everyone else gets a day for doing their job (secretaries, bosses, etc...) so why not? Besides, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone outside of Slashdot who has ever heard of this holiday. I personally think someone made it up.
  • Don't know if any of you noticed, but only the advertising banner shows up... the rest of the page? Network Problems. But works hard to load www.do-not-sleep.com. Funny.
  • All righty, let's see what I can do after 70 hours of overtime in the past two weeks (my PFY is on vacation) and 2:00 am page.

    10 Easy steps Every User Should Know on 'How to Please Your Auto Mechanic':

    1. When you bring your car in to have work done, leave your seat all the way up and your radio on the local rap/country/classic rock station at 20. We really love your music and would rather listen to it than work on your car. Don't forget to leave the dirty diaper in the back seat and the food wrappers on the floor.

    2. Ignore the idiot lights. They are there to tell you that you have oil or that your car is hot. Don't bother to tell us, we'll figure it out from the smell.

    3. When the tow truck driver says he's coming right over, go into your house and wait for him. We know where you live and will knock on your door when we get there.

    4. When the Mechanic says that your AC is a little low on freon, tell him that you'll catch it next time. The AC will operate just fine while low on lubricant.

    5. When the Mechanic is elbow deep in your engine and whacks his knuckles on the power steering pump, say "ouch, that must have hurt". He appreciates your sympathy.

    6. Stop by every 10 minutes and ask how it's going. He appreciates the interruptions and loves to stop what he's doing to tell you what he's doing.

    7. When your car is experiencing problems, drop your keys off in the night slot with nothing but your garbled phone number and feeble description of your car. We like going to each car in the lot trying the key and testing the security systems.

    10. Don't learn the proper term for anything technical. We know exactly what you mean by "My thingy blew up."

    That'll be $935.34.

  • I hope that it would be possible to turn protected filesystem off, to give you access to stuff. Otherwise, ugh, its getting proprietary past closed source! What happens if a trojan gets installed as a protected file? The user has to wait till a patch program comes out before they can disable the trojan. Dumb idea if it cant be turned off.
  • 'fraid so - they too have to deal with clueless users - maybe their plight is even more difficult to bear. If you have an MCSE, aren't you supposed to know how to do every function of Excel, Word, Access, Powerpoint, etc? Users think so. Users ask me all the time about things like that. Not that I couldn't figure it out in a couple of minutes, but I am not really interested and take the attitude RTFM.

    It's even better when they start with: "I learned this on my Advanced Word|Excel|Powerpoint course. Why doesn't it work?"

    Usually, I walk to their machine, pull up the online lack-of-help and get the answer. Of course they didn't see the secret code I used so they're back the next day. (And of course they checked the help before calling.)

    Oh well, I'll resign myself to being the custodian of the secret knowledge of F1.

  • Does this include the sys-admins whose machines were used for K5 DDOS attacks?

    ----------
    AbiWord [abisource.com]: The BEST opensource word processor
  • Most just want their God damned word processor to not second guess them, and help them do their JOB.

    I totally agree with this. How many times has an "upgrade" caused users to lose productivity just to keep up with MS's newest release? Managers don't always figure in the cost of the upgrade learning curve.

    . RTFM? What FM?

    Here I disagree. These people are not just key-punchers - they really use these apps. A lot more than I do. If they have a problem with the software not performing a function correctly I will spend all the time necessary to remedy the situation, but if they need training, that is not my job. There are plenty of good books in the bookstore for which my company will reimburse whomever wants to further their education. They ought to use that resource. That said, point taken about the talking paperclip LOL.

    Your job might be easier if all your users were not superusers.

    God, how I wish my users were all superusers. Power users have taught me more by showing me freakish problems. I love power users - at least if they break it it is interesting to fix. Not like "I didn't know what OLEAUT32.DLL was so I deleted it" which kills me. :)

  • If your company runs vantive, file a 'Happy Sysadmin's Day' vantive and forward it to your support team's inbox. Sure, it's unprofessional, but perhaps you'll get some extra RAM out of it. ;)
  • Oh well, I'll resign myself to being the custodian of the secret knowledge of F1.

    How I hate shit like this. MS users are clueless because MS likes them that way. Most just want their God damned word processor to not second guess them, and help them do their JOB. MS help files have gotten better, but are still not all that helpful because the underlying application is flawed/limited and painful to use. Half the pain is all the stuff that gets hidden and can only be revealed with some secret handshake, like hold the shift key while opening that database. RTFM? What FM? That talking paperclip? Don't be so smug, the user is generally frustrated by the inferior MS app that replaced the app that worked better and was more familliar.

    Yes, the average user will blame IT for the software on their desk. Who else makes such decisions?

    I can forgive IT at my company for being forced to use NT and office. They are generally nice about things. I enjoy making smug ones feel small.

    Your job might be easier if all your users were not superusers. Dump MS, please!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This is so obvious, why not have a telephone-tech-support day? What would the world do without someone telling us to reboot windows?! There is no spoon.
  • I love getting paid for downtime

    That was the deal I was supposed to have with Ajilon [ajilon.com]. Not only did the fsckers NOT honor that commitment, they also neglected to give me my final paycheck, as well as failing to reimburse me for over $1500 worth of travel expenses that were "guaranteed" to me IN WRITING. Now, I have to hire a lawyer just to get my fscking money and he'll probably steal half of it.

    If you are a geek looking for work, and Ajilon calls, do yourself a big favor and tell them to get bent! They are a pack of fscking lying, thieving weasels. Do not trust a word they say. If you do decide to work for them, demand that they pay any travel expenses UP FRONT.

    (Fortunatly I got a job with a fantastic company where I'm appreciated AND paid on time!)
    "The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

  • Damn you, I was going to mention the BOFH first. :) Normally that wouldn't warrant a reply, BUT...

    Here's a useful snippet. This [ntk.net] is the address to the *complete* BOFH archives.. I don't think this can be disputed as it's the author's own page, and has material as recent as 1999!

    I've been reading this for about three weeks now off and on... damn good reading.

  • We should have a help desk appreciation day. They are the one that have to deal with these idiots. "How do I view the ads at www.adcritic.com?" "why cant I go in chat rooms?" This is all I hear all day. At least the sysadmin get to do fun things with their computers, i just get to fix other idiots problems.
  • any single hot secretaries might consider FUCKing the sysadmin on Sys-Admin Appreciation Day.

    If that is observed, I'd like to request a Programmer Appreciation Day, too :)

  • Now sysadmins are just as appreciated as secretaries. I can hardly contain myself.

  • The average idiot is far too stupid to appreciate their sys admin... We just barely got people to recognize their Secrataries, and they have to look at those people every day. No one understands what a sys admin does, and no one will appreciate them.
  • Let me add my appreciation for Kuro5hin's sysadmins to the appreciation that Slashdot's SA's deserve.

  • Re:THANKS A TON (Score:3)

    by narf ( 207 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @04:10PM (#899278) Homepage
    And we thank you for:

    Printing 500 page accounting reports on the photo-proof printer
    "This will only take a second"
    Five-hundred-meg pst files.
    Politics. Stop telling us why you hate XYZ and how they are a b*tch.
    Telling us how to do our job ("When are you going to linux? It's a better fileserver than NetWare")
    Using things like napster and gnutella, then complaining about how the internet connection is soooooooooo slow.
    "Why use the manual when we can ask the admin? Not like they are doing anything else."
    Right before scheduled downtime, the inevitable "Wait, no, the finanicals have to go out today!" "It's 5pm, you couldn't do it *before* now?"
    Eating our M&M supply. (We get a 2 lbs bag of M&Ms for every $400 worth of kit purchased)
    Wondering why the mail server is slow, then proceeding to forward a five meg movie of a monkey peeing into it's mouth to your coworkers. You know, there's a reason why it takes seven hours to backup the mail server.

  • Open Letter to my users.. (Score:3)

    by starvo ( 33598 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @08:16PM (#899279) Homepage

    Dear Users,

    Today is National SysAdmin appreciation day. Yes, a day devoted to the countless geeks like me, who help you work better on our computers.

    We do your backups, chmod those fules, and even fix the DB2 server for you.. All the while, slowly but surely losing our sanity.

    If you wish to show your appreciation by contributing a "gift" I have crafted a list of recommended items below:

    -Copy of Diablo 2
    -Any Nerf Weapon
    -Iced Mocha from Mojo's coffee in Austin Tx.
    -Mt. Dew
    -Palm Pilot (Palm V or VII only please.)
    -Geforce 2 video card
    -22" LCD monitor

    Please feel free to deposit all gifts, in the "syadmin appreciation gift basket" Located inside my cubicle.

    Thank you.

    (Yes, my weary attempt at humour)

  • BOFH alive and well (Score:3)

    by Phallus ( 54388 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @02:45PM (#899280) Homepage
    Oh what memories

    Memories ? The BOFH is still alive and well and on The Register [theregister.co.uk] - BOFH 2K: Kit and Caboodle [theregister.co.uk].

    tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose

  • Re:micro$oft Sysasmins (Score:3)

    by Col. Panic ( 90528 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @02:45PM (#899281) Homepage Journal
    'fraid so - they too have to deal with clueless users - maybe their plight is even more difficult to bear. If you have an MCSE, aren't you supposed to know how to do every function of Excel, Word, Access, Powerpoint, etc? Users think so.

    Users ask me all the time about things like that. Not that I couldn't figure it out in a couple of minutes, but I am not really interested and take the attitude RTFM.

    Perhaps that is why I make it a point to eat a large bag of garlic and vinegar flavored potato chips in the afternoons to cut down on nonsensical calls. Then again maybe it's just cause those chips are so good ;)

  • Oh bug off (Score:3)

    by NightHwk ( 111982 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @02:33PM (#899282)
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/30/index.html [theregister.co.uk]

    Sysadmins don't want to be apreciated, we want to be left alone!

    Now please excuse me while I take these disks to the bulk era....er..bulk virus scanner...

    NightHawk

    Tyranny =Gov. choosing how much power to give the People.

  • Who deserves the most credit (Score:3)

    by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @02:34PM (#899283) Homepage
    Hmm. I'd have to say we should appreciate the Windows administrators tomorrow - they have such a difficult and frustrating job compared with unix administrators. Let's hear it for those who are in the worst areas of the front line trenches!

  • great way to show your appreciation (Score:3)

    by Spider-X ( 159360 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @03:08PM (#899284) Homepage
    Yeah, lets celebrate by slashdotting the site, make the poor sysadmin at "www.sysadminday.com" work his ass off!!

  • All I can say is... (Score:3)

    by Jon Shaft ( 208648 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @02:32PM (#899285) Homepage Journal
    All I can say is The Bastard Operator from Hell [iinet.net.au]

    Oh what memories... :~(

  • Santa is a System Administrator (Score:4)

    by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @05:00AM (#899286)
    rhf (on one of its rare funny moments) had a list of reasons why Santa must be a Sysadmin, and I added to it, and people archived it... and here it is.

    Why Santa is a System Administrator

    • Santa is bearded, corpulent, and dresses funny. (KM)
    • When you ask Santa for something, the odds of receiving what you wanted are infinitesimal. (KM)
    • Santa seldom answers your mail. (KM)
    • When you ask Santa where he gets all the stuff he's got, he says, "Elves make it for me." (KM)
    • Santa doesn't care about your deadlines. (KM)
    • Your parents ascribed supernatural powers to Santa, but did all the work themselves. (KM)
    • Nobody knows who Santa has to answer to for his actions. (KM)
    • Santa laughs entirely too much. (KM)
    • Santa thinks nothing of breaking into your $HOME. (KM)
    • Only a lunatic says bad things about Santa in his presence. (KM)
    • Santa is forced to do all his work when his users are in down time. (TS)
    • He's forced to work even on observed holidays. (TS)
    • He claims he's unique, but you see people just like him at the mall. (TS)
    • Users make an incredible number of unreasonable demands, but in the end, the only thing that really interests them are new toys. (TS)
    • Somehow, somewhere, by some unknown process, he found a wife just like him. (TS)
    • Where people don't believe in him, inevitably there are other people who do the same job, just with a different title. (TS)
    • Users aren't happy enough to see the results of his work. They keep asking perstering questions about how he manages to do it. They can't accept that it's just some sort of "magic". (TS)
    • Even the non-religious pray for him to arrive. (TS)
    • He's the only one who laughs at his message of the day. (TS)
    • He'll never get another job; his resume is too specific to the job he currently has. (TS)
    • Some of the users who make requests are kind of sophisticated, but most of them are having a good day when they avoid peeing their pants in his presence. (TS)
    • He's forced to crawl into unreasonably small, dirty spaces to do his job... even when he's wearing a nice suit. (TS)
    • Even if his work is really mostly spiritual, the world is a better place because of his existence!!! (TS)
    • People expect everything from him, within 24 hours, and at no cost. (SS)
    Credits:
    KM = Keith Meidling
    TS = Tony Shepps
    SS = Steve Simmons
    --

  • Dear User (Score:4)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @04:40PM (#899287) Homepage Journal
    Thanks for;
    • Never listening to any explaination
    • Never reading any instructions
    • Walking away from your PC I'm fixing if it takes more than 15 seconds
    • Treating every other interruption as more important than me
    • Considering your computer illiteracy to be "cute" or "funny"
    • every sentence you utter that includes technology being total gibberish
    • Requesting the impossible and then telling me "But you like a challenge"
    • Wanting the computer to do your work for you, but not being willing to spend any money on it
    • Wanting new features without having to learn how to use them
    • Writing specifications that look like they were written by the chimps John West rejects

  • A serious answer (Score:4)

    by bee ( 15753 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @03:09PM (#899288) Homepage Journal
    Any computer system of any size needs a sysadmin for one obvious reason, at least: it frees up the users to use the computer, and not have to worry about keeping the thing running. If there are 10 users on a system and each is spending 10 percent of their time keeping the system running, then they are already devoting a full person's time keeping the system going. Better to let one person do that and let the others spend their full time using the computer.

    It's common in any large group: people specialize in what they're best at. It's been going on since the beginning of time: towns didn't have everyone dabbling as a blacksmith, or a preacher, or a mortician, even though anyone could do those things. Generally even very small towns usually had one of each. The same applies with sysadmins.

    ---

  • Sysadmins at Napster (Score:4)

    by LS ( 57954 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @04:07PM (#899289) Homepage
    They are really celebrating over at Napster. Tomorrow the sysadmins will get the day off!

    LS

  • micro$oft Sysasmins (Score:4)

    by kenf ( 75431 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @02:30PM (#899290)
    Does this go for the fine folks who got their MCSE or whatever, and click on buttons to administer their NT servers?

  • The best sysadmin appreciation: $$$ (Score:4)

    by Gandalf_007 ( 116109 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @02:32PM (#899291) Homepage
    I'd hate to have to take on the responsibilities of a sysadmin--being paged at 3 am, etc. But they've got one thing going for them: money. While my programmer's salary keeps me happy, I know that many of the sysadmins (and also the database guys) make a TON of money. I'd just hate to have to work through a 28-hour database outage (which recently happened).

  • Re:***FUCK*** the sysadmin. (Score:5)

    by The Man ( 684 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @08:58PM (#899292) Homepage
    Sysadmin is like policeman. You might well go through your entire life without needing one, in which case the cost seems extravagant. But if you ever do need one, nothing less than a seasoned professional will do.

    At best it should be treated as additional duties assigned to one of the programmers or other tech staff member, or even outsorce the job as needed to a temp service.

    *sigh* You are completely clueless. There's nothing worse than a system run by a non-sysadmin. Programmers make the worst sysadmins on the planet. A monkey could do a better job of it. Honestly, you're better off with no sysadmin at all than with someone who really does something else but got forced into the job because nobody else wanted it.

    Yet in some ways your analysis is correct: the really good sysadmins really don't have anything to do all day. They've already spent twelve 100-hour weeks setting everything up so perfectly that it runs itself, never needs fixing, and will last till the day the machines burn out. The programmer-sysadmins, on the other hand, seem to spend an awful lot of time fixing problems with the systems. Funny how that is. The fact that everything is working really is attributable to the admins. I've seen shops where things usually don't work right. Trust me, it's plenty possible to be a sufficiently lousy sysadmin that nothing ever works right. Of course, invariably those people are programmers or managers or brownnosing idiots or CIS/MIS fuckwits who are stuck doing sysadmin work until they can get back to their real jobs.

    Go thank your admins for the fact you you never see them and the fact that they never do anything. That's the way it should be.

  • Re:You damn well should appreciate (Score:5)

    by PsychoKiller ( 20824 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @02:30PM (#899293) Homepage
    I think there should be system user hate day

    That only happens on days that end in 'y'

  • From the "How to Please Your IT Dept." department (Score:5)

    by Wedman ( 58748 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @04:31PM (#899294)
    10 Easy steps Every User Should Know on 'How to Please Your IT Department':

    1. When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it
    buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals,
    dried flowers, bowling trophies and children's art. We don't have a life,
    and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.

    2. Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages
    from here.

    3. When an I.T. person says he's coming right over, go for coffee. That
    way you won't be there when we need your password. It's nothing for us to
    remember 700 screen saver passwords.

    4. When I.T. support sends you an E-Mail with high importance, delete it
    at once. We're just testing.

    5. When an I.T. person is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and
    spill your guts right out. We exist only to serve.

    6. Send urgent email all in uppercase. The mail server picks it up and
    flags it as a rush delivery.

    7. When something's wrong with your home PC, dump it on an I.T. person's
    chair with no name, no phone number and no description of the problem. We
    love a puzzle.

    8. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print
    jobs frequently get sucked into black holes.

    9. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all
    68 printers in the company. One of them is bound to work.

    10. Don't learn the proper term for anything technical. We know exactly
    what you mean by "My thingy blew up".

  • Don't use that URL! (Score:5)

    by The Big Bopper ( 150305 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @04:19AM (#899295) Homepage
    It's just a domain squatter that is putting the site into a frame so they can spam you with banner ads at the bottom. The real site that they are ruining is http://www.kekatos.net/sysadmin [kekatos.net].

    These are the same creeps who are squatting on all the slashdot.org misspellings and putting our beloved News For Nerds site into frames.

    Moderators please jack this up so people get the right site. (either way, it's still slashdotted right now)

  • THANKS A TON (Score:5)

    by chowda ( 161971 ) on Thursday July 27, 2000 @02:37PM (#899296) Homepage
    Thanks for:

    Playing XBoing all day
    Telling everyone "I'll get to it in my *spare* time".
    Insulting the boss and getting away with it.
    That *interesting* oder..
    Deleting my home directory then blaming me for not backing it up!(ass munch)
    Never explaining ANYTHING!
    Getting paid more for doing less.
    Knowing *everything* and never being wrong.
    Your incredible lack of patience.

    And all the other little things that make you soooo invaluable.

  • You damn well should appreciate (Score:5)

    by TheLer ( 209287 ) <whittakt.cs@uri@edu> on Thursday July 27, 2000 @02:26PM (#899297)
    I think there should be system user hate day

    Sometimes you by Force overwhelmed are.

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