Brothers an sisters in data.  Today is your day.  You’ve worked thankless hours patching servers, running cable, installing operating systems and configured innumerable routers and other network devices that move bits from point a to b and then some.  You’ve answered the “so, what do you do with all those computers when you replace them” question 2 freaking MILLION times.  You’ve been there when your CEO forgot his password he wrote on that Post-It stuck to the bottom of his mouse.  You’ve answered the call when the marketing lady pulled her flash drive out before that sales presentation was fully copied.  You’ve arrived at work on a Monday, only to find 3 laptops sitting on your desk with no description of what the hell was wrong, other than “it’s broken, can you fix it by 9?” on it.  You’ve run cable in attics, underground, in bee-ridden sheds.  You’ve sat and watched endless progress bars during restore jobs for hours only to find that there was a corruption on the tape while sitting at 99%.  You’ve stayed up for 40 hours or more rebuilding datacenters because someone accidentally pushed the Halon release.

You, yes YOU, are appreciated.

Maybe not outwardly, but when your users step back for a second and think to themselves, “Wow, how does all this stuff stay running?  Truly some sort of magical wizard with god-like patience must be behind this mastery of technology?” maybe then they can begin to fathom a fraction of the sheer awesomeness of your skills, what it is that you do and the utter ridiculous crap that you must endure from day to day.

Orrrrr…most likely not.

But, let me say to you, my fellow Sysadmins, collectively, we can appreciate each other.  You do what needs to be done in order to let the data flow…sure you curse, you get frustrated, sometimes you might drink a fifth of Knob Creek to help uh…refine your ninja-like IT skills…but you get the job done and you don’t care that your users know how you did it, because quite frankly, they will have no f#$king idea what the hell you are talking about, and that, my friends, is awesome.

So…I raise my Internet Explorer 4.0 coffee cup to you.  Cheers.

Happy Sysadmin day.

Visit the official Sysadmin Day website to get an idea of what the hell I am talking about.

-The Faildesk crew

[Picture Source: Fred Ross Lord (CC)]