Celebrate Sysadmin's Day on Wednesday at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco
This is pretty much my favorite holiday of the year -- the day when we celebrate the unsung heroes of the wiring closet and the server room and the admin interface. All hail the sysadmins, especially Our Ken, who is a freaking god.
A sysadmin unpacked the server for this website from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went wrong. All to serve this webpage.Party like a SysAdmin in San Francisco July 29th (Thanks, JWZ!)A sysadmin installed the routers, laid the cables, configured the networks, set up the firewalls, and watched and guided the traffic for each hop of the network that runs over copper, fiber optic glass, and even the air itself to bring the Internet to your computer. All to make sure the webpage found its way from the server to your computer.
A sysadmin makes sure your network connection is safe, secure, open, and working. A sysadmin makes sure your computer is working in a healthy way on a healthy network. A sysadmin takes backups to guard against disaster both human and otherwise, holds the gates against security threats and crackers, and keeps the printers going no matter how many copies of the tax code someone from Accounting prints out.
A sysadmin worries about spam, viruses, spyware, but also power outages, fires and floods.
When the email server goes down at 2 AM on a Sunday, your sysadmin is paged, wakes up, and goes to work.
A sysadmin is a professional, who plans, worries, hacks, fixes, pushes, advocates, protects and creates good computer networks, to get you your data, to help you do work -- to bring the potential of computing ever closer to reality.
So if you can read this, thank your sysadmin -- and know he or she is only one of dozens or possibly hundreds whose work brings you the email from your aunt on the West Coast, the instant message from your son at college, the free phone call from the friend in Australia, and this [blog].
the latest
latest episodes
*bows*
On behalf of your sysads, I'm sure they gratefully accept your thanks.
I know I am overjoyed whenever anyone thanks me for my job. (and I have excellent users, they thank me much more often than one day a year)
-abs truly loves helping people by fixing their problems, even when it's a 2 AM emergency, in fact the 2 AM emergency makes him feel valuable and essential, he also knows many other sysads who feel the same way.
(Oh, and I owe a shout-out to Debian. "Go Go apt-get Powers! I Love You Dude!")
is there a reptilian sysad underground? If not, you should start one.
None that you shall know of, mollusk!
muahahahahahaha....
Sorry Tak, if I revealed the existance of the reptilian system-administrator underground to you I'd have to tear off my face, revealing my reptilian nature, and then eat you so you couldn't reveal our existence to everyone.
(Please tell me you taste like hamster or some other rodent? I do so love them . . .. for lunch!)
-abs has clearly been overly influence by the TV series "V" during his youth, and it doesn't help that we had a cool "V"-related article earlier here on BB
an international fraternity of evil sysads... I like it.
Hi.
I'm at a startup called aprigo and we're building SaaS software for sysadmins. I want to point out that we don't have anything to sell, so I don't want to come off as a spammer.
To celebrate Sysadmin Appreciation Day we're giving away $10 iTunes gift codes to the first 100 sysadmins that sign up on our site http://www.aprigo.com/sysadmin/ There's just one catch: you need to be a sysadmin at a company (ideally one with 100 employees or more). On the 31st we'll send out codes to the 100 who sign up. Sure, it's a marketing gimmick, but the only thing you'll get after signing up is the code, plus an email when our free product is ready (and you can unsubscribe at any time, obviously).
And to prove that we're not just a bunch of spammers, we also created a YouTube video called "A World Without A Sysadmin". That can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyLdIlj7Wvg
Hope you find this relevant and not just a plug. I hope you find it both.
Woo, jwz in BoingBoing... my worlds collide!
(sort of self-serving, but...)
On mainframes, sysadmins are often called 'systems programmers' - the reason why is probably covered by the chads of millions of punched cards - and we still exist. We do the same sorts of things, but usually you'll find us doing it for your bank, or your government, or your airlines reservation system. We do, as of the last 10 years, also support web software and tools since mainframes do that too.
As a 'sysadmin' I'd like to say thanks to my colleagues everywhere who make the 'Net so interesting and so (mostly) stable and usable.
a secret handshake at the very least.
As a network engineer, I shudder at the thought of a sysadmin installing routers, configuring networks and firewalls, and making sure the network connection is safe
When's Desktop Support Appreciation Day? We are the (apparently) unsung heroes who actually have to go out and interact with the users. We're like sysadmins, but with social skills! (ducks)
I feel it must be said, SysAdmin Day is Formally Observed on Friday (the last Friday in July). Don't forget your goodies.
http://www.sysadminday.com/
Ironic, isn't it?
~$ host -t ns sysadminday.com
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
Looks like they might need some help from a *real* sysadmin. ;)