Inventory Everything (Score 1)

My experience taking over was about the worst-case scenario you can have. I was hired to replace the lead System Administrator at a newspaper after he was fired for a number of reasons (e.g. he told Reporters to fuck off when they needed his help). He was a true BOFH. He was gone by the time I started, and everything was in chaos. There was no documentation for anything. The expensive robotic tape backup unit that the IT Director thought was being used to do backups was actually in the original box in the corner of the guy's office. The newspaper didn't have any backups! It also turns out that he had been running his own side business on company time. The thing that helped me understand everything the most was doing an audit/inventory of every server, computer, router, etc in the building. If a sysadmin leaves on bad terms your first priority has to be securing and updating everything. For me that meant forcing password resets, making sure every account in LDAP was needed by someone still working there, making sure there were no local accounts on any computers, updating virus signatures and running virus scans, making sure the latest software patches were applied, etc. I found a few computers with modems on them, so I removed those. I enabled remote desktop on computers so I could help people from my office. An audit/inventory of everything helps helped me meet a lot of people too. There were many hostile users... and they treated me like shit at first because of their experience with the previous guy. You have to have thick skin and just kill 'em with kindness. At a newspaper there's a period of time when everyone is rushing to make their deadlines to get the newspaper out the next day, so I blocked out an hour of each day during the crunch to spend it the newsroom. If anyone had any problems they didn't have to call me or try to find me; I was right there to help fix it. If there weren't any problems I'd just work from one of the empty desks. It garnered a lot of good will, which comes in very handy to any sysadmin.