Sysadmin Appreciation Day
Barely half an hour ago, I wrote a comment linking to this entertaining piece and re-discovered this little snippet:
Most people don’t even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn’t make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.
Having not had a dedicated sysadmin to help me with the myriad of headaches I've had to deal with over the last few months, this has only proven to me to be a truer statement than I had ever realized. Then, out of curiosity, I decided to look into when sysadmin appreciation day was. It turns out that, quite serendipitously, it happens to be today.
So, with that in mind, I thought I would take a moment to remind you all to remind your sysadmins just how much you appreciate them keeping the roving bands of mutants at bay with all that they do. And to those of you who are yourselves sysadmins, keep being awesome :)
Having been a BOFH, a/k/a Beware of Ferocious Hermit, I can say that the best approach is to tiptoe up to the data center door and silently leave your tribute of freshly baked cookies, kowtowing thrice as you retreat. Should you be granted a peek into the demesnes, don't fear the arcane cursing, strangely tinted lights and peculiar aromas, but tentacles are definitely matters of concern.
You may or may not receive a single-word e-mail message of acknowledgement, but the benison of an appeased sysadmin is not to be scoffed at. Your issues and requests will move a priority or two up the queue, you may actually be granted a callback to verify before your instance is rebooted...
The world's architecture is held together by duct tape and dreams.
Whose dreams?
The fevered dreams of that overworked crackpot hiding in an office, who nobody thinks does anything.
Until it breaks. Then you come with threats and bribes, praying they might fix it.
The curse of the system administrator.
"Everything has been working for months. What the hell do I pay you for?"
"Everything is broken! What the hell do I pay you for?!"
I'm curious if management utters those same two phrases to any other groups of people on such a regular basis...
That cracked me up. Don't take away my deli! Take my respect instead!