I applaud thee, for hitting the nail head on.
But let us not forget that this is our own fault, for thinking we were untouchable in our ivory tower of arcane knowledge. We should've seen the signs as IT matured and learned how to crunch the numbers like a controller do, and market this to the policymakers.
It was fun while it lasted, but now it is all business I'm afraid.

This ^

Unless you have management with you on where you are right now, and what is required to get where _they_ want to go, you're not doing a good job. No matter how technical superb your solutions may be then, they'll still just be your solutions and not the companies. If you have an understand, there will be resources (or at least support for making the right priorities).

Especially because I, just like Hellesö, is a Norwegian photographer living in this part of Sweden (northern Småland). When I saw his book Året (http://www.fotosidan.se/shop/viewproduct.htm?ID=17869) where he took one great shot every day of a full year I was flabbergasted and couldn't believe it was possible. Obviously it wasn't. Everybody manipulates photos, just by adjusting the ISO you're manipulating, but he stole stock photos, passing them off as his own. And yet, I accept his apology as heartfelt, and just wish he had redefined his works instead of passing them off as "real". If you're interested in nature photography, do check out his portfolio still. His style, where presence takes precedence over clarity is novel and refreshing.

...at a wellknown ISP in Oslo. My job was to check their power distributors for faulty ground cabling. I think this was their first downtime since the company started, so both racks had gotten new equipment added along the way. They were powered by a single extension cord that hung over the door from the "serverroom" into the adjacent room. Guess what happened when they fired up both racks simultaneously?

...and consider the opportunities. If, by some unprecedented fluke, the automanufacturers agree on an open standard for V2V communication and radar becomes standard in cars. What then? Augmented reality where cars are bracketed on your windscreen? The option to toss a "thank you" at someone who let you into their lane? Your driverslicence keep a record of these messages from fellow drivers, where your drivingexperience and behaviour is indicated in their windshield brackets? I smell an interesting new future where intercar communication goes beyond flashing headlights and honking horns.

Not all. Some play that tradeoff game until consumers protest enough. In heaven.... http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/stolen-pixels/8286-Stolen-Pixels-241-The-Gaming-Afterlife

I particularly like that they hyperlinked the split articles for ease of reading. Remember when magazines used to have a "(Continued on page 80)" at the end? Well, they've thought of that, and kudos for the extra effort!

I can't say whether planes would actually fall out of the sky, but I did have to patch communication equipment used to synch flightdata between national flight control and abroad. If not, they wouldn't know what those blips on their radars were, when they were supposed to arrive etc. I'd call that a rather paramount issue. OTOH, the only post Y2K incident I had to clean up was a server spewing out invoices dated 1980... in September 2001 (NW server rebooted due to a powerfailure). I think it's fair to say we did a good job.

Establish protocols and make the processes transparent.

Users in general have no idea about technology and don't care. This is fine. That's your job to know, after all. But when their ignorance include how internal IT handles their tickets you have a huge problem. To solve this, you must have management on your side. If you fail at this you should look for something else (start you own business and sell your services back at a premium rate perhaps?).

Management should know their IT-investments and importance of the systems involved like the back of their hand. If they treat IT like a magic moneydrain you need a consultant to teach them another perspective. Organize the services provided by IT, delegate responsibilities accordingly, prioritize the said services, document the processes, and market the whole bundle internally. Use ITIL or COBIT or whatever suits your organization and pleases the top brass. But make it obvious to the users how things work and what can be expected!

Have management sign SLAs saying stuff like it's ok to expect a new user account in 3 days, priority printers fixed within 4 hours etc. Yes, it's a lot of paper, and no, you can't do this alone. But if they really care about their business they will do this to translate what IT do into money, which, in any commercial business is vital. With that backing users will still behave like pricks and try to sidewind the system, but you have your back covered.

Turning bitter and disillusioned takes about a year or two in IT support. After 3-4 years you will likely be permanently scarred unless the fundamentals are solid, so take control now or perish. Asking here is a good start, but at heart this isn't a personal issue, it's a management problem.

Believe me, it's the only sane road. Take it from someone who started out enthusiastic and eager to help, turned bitter and BOFH and later burned out.

Good luck, you've got a long road ahead of you.

OMG, Derek Smart! I had completely forgotten about Battlecruiser 3000AD until I saw this post. For entertainment I used to follow a newsgroup back then where the flames went higher than anywhere else I've seen. It didn't take more than a flametroll the size of a match to set off an entire forest of replies, and they never seemed to die. Some acid remark was dropped, immediately attacked by loyal fans, who in return was attacked by more angry customers and in the middle Derek Smart in person trying to defend himself by throwing more fuel to fire. He's a Don Quixote legend in my eyes, never mind his programming. If anything, the whole circus around BC3000 taught me to temper my postings, thus making the world an infititesmally better place.