Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day 2013

I thought I would take a minute out of my busy hectic day to give a shout out to all my fellow under-appreciated systems administrators out there in their dark offices on this the 14th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Consider all the work your sys.admin does behind the scene, keeping your network connection running, your email not being overly flooded with spam, your IM’s running at a decent speed, and being there to fix a server outage at 3am just so some people can go look at the funny picture you uploaded.  Consider how often this creature gets thanked on his day to day fight against spammers, hackers, lUsers, Software Updates, etc Consider this, then be happy that this IT Hero gets one day a year when (s)he gets appreciated.

So everyone, go take a coffee, cake, or gift to your sysadmin now. or at least drop by their hidy hole to say thanks.

For more information on this IMPORTANT festive day go read THIS SITE

For those about the Insane Asylum Myself & Demop are fond of Cake, Beer, & Chocolate (Oh and anything with glowing blue LED’s) !!!

CN

P.S.

Consider this as well. Your Friendly SysAdmin has access to your email, they know what you have been doing and to who. They see all the packets of data traveling back and forth from your machine, seeing when you are working and when your just browsing ebay/facebook/etc, They know what websites you’ve visited (and can change your history to show you been looking at p0rn in the office), Stuff you may not want made public.  They control your password, your login name, your email address, how much of the networks bandwidth you can use, what IM clients are banned, and a million other things that help you through the working day.  Consider this well, and remember, “Its only one day a year!

Funny Support Emails

Dear Constant Reader,

I got into the Insane Asylum this morning to find the following email on your support system, and it was too amusing not to share 😉

Enjoy!

F*cking iPhones. His iPad has exactly the same settings as his iPhone. iPad connects and retrieves email. iPhone does not. Have advised him to test it against a brick wall.

iShit really is the spawn of the Devil. You would NOT believe the problems I have with them (or perhaps you might). Wi-fi connection seems a favourite one. Happy to connect to one AP but not another (same manuf, same encrypt etc…).

They are as shi**y as a very shi**y thing.

You can tell I’m not happy.

Ps. Until a few months ago I had a mac. Just for testing purposes. I need blood pressure medication and I had to get rid of it for medical reasons. The day some dork won the eBay bid was one of the happiest of my life…

Internet? We don’t need no Stinking Internet!

So We have a slight issue here at the Insane Asylum. The ADSL Line that out VoIP server is on can not keep a sync, The second it connects up it then disconnects. It has been doing this for two days now.

This is bad enough, but not something we could not deal with since we have two internet lines coming into the building. But Our main line is behaving just a “Tad” better. It can stay connected for a whole FOUR minutes before dropping the connection.

Hey, The Internet in four minute segments is not that bad right? How about the speed of that line has dropped due to the constant disconnects and is now syncing up at a WHOPPING 0.5Meg.

This is no where near enough to supply the amount of people here trying to work. So even thought we were able to do a bit of creative patching and got an old style phone working (One phone for all the numbers coming into the building) We do not have enough of a connection to the Net for us to do any work even if you were lucky enough to get us on the phone.

There is just one question remaining.

Who has the board games?

Conversations with Support – Updated

This morning as I was in the Support Office attempting to dismantle a multimeter using a Swiss Army Key (Long story and totally Irrelevant here) the following conversation happened between OfficeBitch1 and myself. I should point out OfficeBitch1 (A name given him by TheGovernor)  used to be the main Support Guy of the Asylum many years ago, and has recently come back one day a week to get himself back into IT.

OB1: “I cant log in!! Has my password been changed?”

OB1: “Stupid keyboard is broke! the m key doesn’t work, no wonder I cant log into my account”

GN: “The m key is broke? do the other keys work ok?”

OB1:Yes, everything is fine bar shift-m”

GN: “Hang on, lower case m works? just shift-m doesn’t?”

OB1: “yes. m works by itself, it doesn’t with shift”

GN: “Why don’t you use caps lock then?”

OB1: *Typing* “arrgh That doesn’t work either!!!”

GN: “Did you turn caps lock off after you typed the M?”

OB1: *mutters* *types*

In his defence, the issue was that he was using the wrong email address as his username, and he had his laptop set to numlock so the m was in fact a 0. Even still I feel for anyone phoning the Asylum today for support.

Update:

I was right in worrying. I just had a simple “add this text to dns record” support ticket escalated to 3rd line Server support on the one day of the week when we have double the normal amount of support guys in. Apparently Cut & Paste is too advanced for 1st & 2nd Line Support.

 

Insane-Cam

TheGovernor has recently Implemented a bizarre new security regime here at The Insane Asylum. This basically involved placing a “Hidden Camera” in the Padded Cell of YoYoMan.

Here we spot the lesser spotted YoYoMan in his unnatural habitat.

This may have seemed a Good idea at the beginning. But alas we are not called The Insane Asylum for nothing.

The local Wildlife spot the hidden camera.

Along came Tux and frightened the poor Roo away.

Awwwww
They made friends.

And thats why we can’t have anything NICE!!!!

StopGo roadworks guy You owe me a Pint

Some time ago I wrote a post praising the good work done by StopGo men. I even doffed a pint to their hard but important work.

The original post can be found here -=> “A thanks to the StopGo roadworks guy

I now wish to retract my earlier admiration for these evil power mad people, who have nothing better to do than stand about causing problems for poor commuters.

Let me explain why I have had a reversal of opinion.

This morning on my daily commute I came across some “Gully Cleaning” in progress midway down a LONG straight road. There was a StopGo man standing by the works van with his little sign which was showing STOP in my direction.

Now I was the ONLY vehicle on the road, long straight road, with Just me driving towards the StopGo Man who is signaling with his sign I have to stop to let the none existent Cars from the other direction come through first.

Now Since I’m still a bit away I figure he will swap the sign as I get closer. NOPE. It still says STOP, as I slow down as I get closer and closer to him. Until I reach him and have to come to a complete stop since the sign is still saying STOP.

He looked at me, checked the NONE EXISTENT oncoming traffic, checked me, checked again and changed his sign to GO.

WHY god darn it WHY???

I was the only car on the road, he could easily have checked and changed the sign to save me having to stop. I figure the evil jumped up person wanted to abuse the small power he has in his life. After all his entire role in life to so stand and hold a stick. There are not many jobs where you could be replaced by a pile of dirt and still have the same competence of work.

*mutter*