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Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day 220

Posted by samzenpus from the thanks-for-the-uptime dept.
alphadogg writes "It's the last Friday in July. Have you hugged your system administrators today? Bought a cake? Picked up the tab for lunch? There's still time to show your thanks for the unsung heroes who keep corporate desktops, servers and networks running. Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day, an annual event thought up by IT pro Ted Kekatos. A company picnic and an old HP advertisement sparked the idea for the first SysAdmin Day, now in its 12th year."
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Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day More

Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day

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  • Happy System Administrator Day (Score:3)

    by cosm ( 1072588 ) <thecosm3NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday July 29, 2011 @10:13AM (#36920938)
    The servers are down.
    • I would appreciate it if my company fired the current sysadmins and hired someone competent.

    • Re:Happy System Administrator Day (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29, 2011 @10:24AM (#36921054)

      I was fucking in last night at 00:15 when we lost power. And I was here until 03:30 when power had been back on for an hour and I brought the servers up in their proper order. I then slept in a hotel room on my own dime, because I was back in at 07:20 today.

      I'll work until 17:30 today. We've had so many storms in the area that I have gotten 7 hours or less sleep every night for the past two weeks. This means I give up my hobbies on the weekend, as I am too fucking tired to compete safely.

      But does anyone give a rats ass about this? No. They are pissed off that I missed the first 20 minutes of a company wide meeting because I was monitoring circuits that had wet Smartjacks in order to make sure that the branches stay up.

      Fuck system admin day. I'm going back to school.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Why don't you leave that shit hole and work some place that has UPS and generators, and doesn't have a leaking roof?

      • Might I suggest nursing school? The hours are often weird, but that's not always bad (e.g. three 12-hour days on, four days off). And demand will only go up, no matter how fixed-up or fucked-up the health care system gets. Not a great choice if you can't handle body fluids or you got into tech because you hate dealing with people, but for some people it's the perfect career if they need to get out of one they hate.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by geekoid ( 135745 )

          why would he want a cut in pay and worse hours?

          Plus, who wants a nurse as whiny as he is?

        • Actually, right now there is a glut of nurses, and recent nursing grads are having trouble finding work. With the economy down, existing nurses are working more hours, going from part time to full-time, and delaying retirements (often because a spouse is getting less work). According to a news story I heard, lots of people out of work means lots of people without health insurance, so planned medical procedures are down - (yeah American healthcare - put it off until it is an emergency) - so hospitals are g

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by geekoid ( 135745 )

            yeah, but in the next 20 years demand is going to sky rocket because of the boomers. After which it will collapse, just like every industry that did after boomers past there prime buying age.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Synerg1y ( 2169962 )

        All your doing is making it worse for you and your co-workers. My servers go down at 1 am and i'm not working on them thus its not my fault? I wake up shower, shave, and then come in to work, bring up the servers and boom, god status. I'm not going to ever do work for people I don't care about if they won't appreciate it. The best way I can put it is a job's a job, not your life, if it's your life, you better be rich. If they fire you for not working at 1 am in the morning, you really don't want to work

        • Sadly, you can only do the 8-5 shift and deal with it situation on corporate entities that don't require 24/7 uptime.

          And you can only play this type of hard-ball if your direct IT management are in your corner.

          Where I work, that's not the case. Their mantra is 'We do it because we're the ones who care the most'. My thoughts is I really don't give a rats ass when someone else should be responsible for it, and we're being turned into martyrs, but no one listens to me.
          Ownership on this company. The last per

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by geekoid ( 135745 )

            wrong. You absolutely can do the 8 hour shift thing in a 24/7 environment.

            And you play that kind of hardball. Maybe you win, maybe not. Not trying doesn't fix the problem for you.

            I WANT to own SAP. After a year I could write my own ticket at any other company.

            The problem is you do not know how to properly convey the problem, and you don't know how to properly maneuver to get more staff.

          • Tibco

            I thought that shit went out with the dinosaurs.

      • Counselor for people with Tourette syndrome.

    • My mother told me that good servers don't go down.

    • The DoD has a $19 billion space budget too.

      This includes the GPS system, weather satellites and communications.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cosm ( 1072588 )
        Good to know, I'll probably adjust those statistics accordingly. They're a bit rough around the edges and averaged from multiple sources. Still, even knowing there's an additional 19B, it doesn't stack up against all the other programs (military and entitlements), and hence my intended point about long term priorities.

        • What is included in your "war budget"? It gets really frustrating to look at those numbers because all too often insanely dumb things get lumped together which actually are not related to the war budget at all. For example, all too often people lump in costs which would exist regardless of the current war operations. Sometimes their cited numbers are off by 50%. So are your numbers accurate or just once sided political lies?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by cosm ( 1072588 )
            They're pretty close to raw numbers, and I try not to take things out of context, those numbers are straight from the horses mouth and also extrapolated from 3rd party analysis:
            http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Overview/ [whitehouse.gov]
            http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget [whitehouse.gov]
            http://budget.house.gov/fy2012budget/ [house.gov]
            http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget12/index.html [ed.gov]
            http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/budget_2012.pdf [whitehouse.gov]
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_federal_budget [wikipedia.org]

            If you find any one si

            • Please don't misunderstand, I'm not accusing. I would have taken your word at face value had you said you made a good faith effort to calculate the numbers, as opposed to simply parroting someone's propaganda.

              Honestly I wasn't expecting references. Kudos for providing them.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by cosm ( 1072588 )
                No problem. "So are your numbers accurate or just once sided political lies?" is pretty accusative, and looking to start a partisan fight. Not enough room in the signature field to provide any more than what I got in, maybe I'll throw in a tiny url or something with full sources. What frustrated me by your comment is how it seems people automatically assume any political rhetoric is partisan these days. Gotta love what the media has done to us Americans.

                Cheers

                • is pretty accusative

                  That's hyper sensitive. It was a direct question, nothing more, nothing less. And given the political and media landscape and the hyper-biased user base here, its an extremely reasonable question.

                  and looking to start a partisan fight.

                  Considering I never sided, that's not true. Hell, my follow up even stated my leaning was to take your reply at face value without any references. I mean come on... You're a little too sensitive, IMOHO.

                  Insulting you was not my intent. But honestly, if your feel slighted from someone asking and direct question about

  • Are they worthy? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We have several people in our department who are much more competent than our sysadmins. It seems like a constant battle. We often have to explain to them how the best way to do things is and why they are not doing it correctly. They probably need to pay the position more money so that competent people will choose that career path and not the more lucrative one that is our primary business and what butters our bread.
    • Pay is only half of the issue.

      You would just be paying people more to come to work to listen to "more competent people" tell you to just shut up and do what they are asking you to do while explaining why it has to be done that way, but :
      - dont understand you are doing exactly what your boss (and theirs) tells you that you're required to do by company policy.
      - have no clue that their code sucks ass and has massive resource leaks that caused the problem in the first place (not POS servers with shitty ad

      • clap/clap/clap....{ bows down respectfully to the master....}

    • I'm sure my developers say the same thing about me. I mean, their Silverlight app works fine when they run it on their test server on the same subnet as them. But somehow, when I forward to it with our load balancers, it breaks. Apparently, my load-balancers are crap, and i should just put their IIS machine right in the DMZ.. They have decided that I don't know what I'm talking about, and their app searching for http://hostname/ [hostname] is going to magically resolve on the internet, since it works in their offi

  • Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Legion303 ( 97901 ) on Friday July 29, 2011 @10:22AM (#36921024) Homepage

    My wife always comes to me when the computers act up. I think I can leverage this into a blowjob.

  • I don't think it's a coincidence. System Admins deserve some free chicken wing love today.
  • Happy SAD to you too.

  • No, I haven't hugged my sysadmin, and I probably won't do so - something about not wanting to get multicolored greasy stains on my shirt.

  • I would do both the cake and the lunch for this guy. And then change your password just to be safe. http://bofh.ntk.net/BOFH/ [ntk.net]

  • SA is the BOFH (Score:3)

    by Creepy ( 93888 ) on Friday July 29, 2011 @10:40AM (#36921276) Journal

    I think my SA is the BOFH [wikipedia.org]... a hug may get me killed... or committed. I'll stick to the Code Hack zone, where it is safe I think.

  • Does this mean (Score:3)

    by Grand Facade ( 35180 ) on Friday July 29, 2011 @10:42AM (#36921302)

    I'll get fair pay,

    and an 8 hour day?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Find a job that treat their employees better. Or get a labor lawyer t give you an opinion of what salary means in your state. Tenh sue for back OT, and settle for company policy that sys admins get OT. Suddenly all those little daily emergencys aren't as important.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by noc007 ( 633443 )

      Unlikely at your current job. I suggest looking for employment elsewhere. There are companies that are willing to pay the right amount given you have the necessary skills and experience. It took me a little over half a year to find a company. I was seriously considering taking a job that was strictly for VMWare or Exchange, but this one came and will leverage my existing repertoire along with managing new technology.

      The thing that drives me crazy is a SysAdmin is expected to be an expert at everything under

  • A small bonus can't help to show some appreciation.

  • As much friction as there can be between sysadmins and developers (devs not giving proper instructions, sysadmins not notifying us about "scheduled" server maintenance, the hassle of trying to get production logs...) I can still appreciate it that it's not my ass on the line when servers go down in the middle of the night. Thanks, and I hope you have time tonight to enjoy a beer!
  • You always have to kiss their butts to do anything. 1/2 the time they are in the server room playing WOW.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Install some Wow hacks on their machine, then report then to blizzard.

    • Wow I don't know what country you are in, that has sysadmin playing WoW. Here in the U.S. we have to sit in a 90 degree server room because the company have no $ to fix the A/C, and we are forced to use our student loan money to play in the Wall Street Casino in normal business hours because otherwise we have no $ to pay for basic food such as ramen.

  • oh and YOU'RE WELCOME!!

  • Another 'special' day, oh joy. I like how every day is special anymore. Mom assures me I'm special, too
     
    Tomorrow is 'Cat Walkers' Day! Grab a leash it's gonna be special!

  • Artificial appreciation days (Score:3, Insightful)

    by grimmjeeper ( 2301232 ) on Friday July 29, 2011 @11:06AM (#36921604) Homepage

    If sysadmins were more consistently good, we wouldn't need to manufacture a day to "appreciate" them. One of the reasons sysadmins are under appreciated is because a non-trivial percentage of them aren't worth spit. Sure, I've worked with some incredible admins and appreciated every second of their time. But I've worked with some pretty clueless idiots who had no business whatsoever coming anywhere near a computer. Nobody remembers the good admins because everything just works and no one needs to call them. Unfortunately, that means that the only admins you really do remember are the ones who couldn't figure out how to pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel. And that is what is really not fair for the good admins and why they are under appreciated.

    So, for all the good admins out there, kudos to you. You should be appreciated on more than just one day arbitrarily chosen out of the year. For the rest, well, mother always said if you didn't have anything nice to say don't say anything. I don't have anything to say to you.

    • Good sys admins are generally smart enough to quit so they can find work that doesnt involve hand-holding clueless jackasses.

  • not a single fuck about us was given that day. But god forbid you forget "Secretary Appreciation Week" or whatever it is. :/

    Back to the basement, cube trolls!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Did you tell anyone? Did you get it on the company calendar? No? well then how the fuck will anyone know?

  • We are down to one part-time sysadmin, and she does a terrific job. I've seen lousy sysadmins, and know well to appreciate a good one. Now if only management appreciated her as well!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Management won't appreciate anything unless it is properly spelled out i a report, along with costs and saving.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • He stops laughing and just tells me where the "any" key is.

  • Yeah for Sysadmins (Score:5, Funny)

    by WankersRevenge ( 452399 ) on Friday July 29, 2011 @12:12PM (#36922464)
    But seriously guys ... it's been seven years now [slashdot.org] ... can I finally have root access now?

  • I am celebrating today because I put in my notice. Current Chief Idiot Officer doesn't understand WTF I do, doesn't care to try and understand, and is quite content with paying peanuts for it.. So I found some place that's actually willing to pay a decent rate. I'm essentially getting a 65% raise. Bummer is I'm going to have to wait a month to start seeing that extra money.

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