Rejoice! System Administrator Appreciation Day (SAAD) is nigh All Mariah Carey wanted for Christmas was you. Freddie Mercury and Queen wanted a lot more. All in fact. But what will the league of sysadmins desire most when their Appreciation Day rolls round next week? Now in its 23rd year, SAAD or System Administrator Appreciation Day is slated for July 29, and the The Register is …
This is an important cultural note, if you have a helldesk/pfy/edtech/anywarmbodywhocananseraphonecallwithturnitoffandthenonagain:
Share the joy of the day, bring in something to share with the rest of the IT and IT adjacent (and lets face it, probably also basement dwelling) colleagues and coworkers. Make a good impression and even the DBA might come down from the Ivory tower of the up-of-stairs to run interference for a day.
It's on an Friday, so you weren't going to change anything anyway right?
I doubt I can find the site now, but a developer wrote a post on his blog some years ago with a quote that I've etched (more or less accurately) into my memory:
"Most people don't know what sysadmins do, but if they all took lunch at the same time, you would run out of bullets defending your shopping cart full of canned goods from radioactive mutants before they had even gotten around to ordering."
I'm on permanent recovery (god willing) from being a sysadmin, but props to my former brethren and sistren!
I HEARTILY second this notion. Turn the net off for a day, and see how people get along.
I mean EVERYTHING. All the internet-of-twats devices, gas station pumps, light bulbs, thermostats, phones, ATMs, in the whole world lose connectivity for a 24 hour period.
NO exceptions. If your bank/restaurant/hospital can't run without internet, you need to fix it.
Probably more fatalities than Thanos snapping his fingers...
We turned the internet off for a day, that'll learn you ya bastards!
Hi I'm from HR, unfortunately the economic shock from the internet outage, yesterday, means we have to reduce opex. We are therefore placing 80% of sysadmins at risk of redundancy
Some nice, shiny new bit of kit to install. Ideally something that requires extensive assembly and which will not work without surgery and extensive reconfiguration.
That sort of thing could keep me happy for days on end. Bonus fun points if the provided manual is in error in a couple of key places, as sorting that out always got me a warm, smug feeling of godhood.
"...It also follows Pi Appreciation Day on July 22..."
July 22, also known as 22/7 = 3.142857..., is π Approximation Day. My wife even made a quiche, which is approximately a pie. (In truth, I think it was just a coincidence, and she just happened to want to make a quiche. But it was baked in a pi plate.)
A sys admin helped get me sacked once, for no good reason. I figured that out but 'magnanimously' offered him a lift home, way out of my way.
All the drive I was thinking, "On coming traffic or the road ahead." He certainly deserved a crash, but I'm an engineer, the oncoming traffic didn't deserve that.
I was demoted to sys admin in Holland once, it was horrific all that porn taking up a quarter of the server I'd suddenly inherited. And what to do about it. How to look people in the face next day.
In honour of sysadmin day.
(Guess the "inspiration", win an internet cookie...)
"Hi, you're gonna call off your righteous indignation.
You're gonna publicly state that there is no such thing as unnecessary downtime, or, these guys are gonna take your email access.
Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on:
We run your systems, We empty your file trash, We connect your websites.
We keep the system up so people like you can come on Facebook and bitch about downtime.
We guard your collection of 'pictures' while you sleep.
Do not mess with us.
We're the admins."
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
