What do I do I thought to myself, well in reality I shovel other peoples crap around. Am I good at it? I’m not sure. I seem to get a lot of it to do, but not  a lot of recognition for doing it. If you’re reading this and you see similarities between yourself and the above statement then welcome to the world of the systems administrator. Not for us the “I’ve filed in the form and It’ll all happen – Oh no!” We live on the edge, think on how many of the people that you come into regular contact with. Then think on how many of them could outsmart a building brick, after a few minutes of thinking you’ll know what I’m getting at here.

The people that I provide services for!
Now my job involves keeping computer systems running in a smooth and efficient manner, “that sounds OK” I hear you say! Well if I’m honest it is, computer systems mostly look after themselves. But what nobody tells you when you come into this industry is that the computers aren’t the problem – the people that you meet and have to work with are. Do I get a lot of crap in my day to day work, not really – the people that rely on my cooperation have learned that it is unwise to upset me. Not that I would ever be so unprofessional as to threaten them, but they do have to come and see me when the system that they rely on for their livelihood stops working the way that they expect it to! I’m sure that you know what I’m talking about here, the locked account etc…. Now can I make some users life miserable, well I’m the root user on a couple of hundred servers – so what do you think! You’ll know that as the root user you can pretty much do as you want, so creating a bit of misery is very easy. A lot of it comes down to just how much of a Bastard that you are, me I’m not a complete Bastard, just a trainee – although I’m improving all the time as the people that I deal with are finding out.

Mr Slinky's Boss.

But now I find that it’s time to take this to a whole new level, Mr Slinky and his boss are, I think deserving of my attention. With that in mind I have decided to embark on a new course, I’m going to completely ignore them unless I know that they are wrong – then I’m going to do exactly as they request! Not that it’s the right thing to do you understand, just that Mr Slinky and his boss are such a pair of hmmm – whats the word that I’m looking for I don’t seem to remember….. Ah an other senior moment, what joy!

In the good old days, when people actually considered the skill set of the resource that they had. The planning and implementation of the relocation of some 250 applications and environments would have been planned in some detail, I must say the plans seem to be a bit fluid at the moment – the first draft of the plan is in and the completion date is end of September 2011. This it would seem if my maths is correct works out at around one per day, possibly a little optimistic I think! Especially as Mr Slinky caused an emotional outburst by suggesting that I looked at the lights on the front panel of the server to see if it was on. Said server was 600 miles away and I must need an eyesight test, still it indicates that as yet he does not even understand the resource that he has – Ah! It’s what I live for!!!!