The Life Of A SysAdmin

Apr 25, 2007 · 1 minute read

Being a system administrator is a bit like being an architect, a builder, an occupant, but most of all, a caretaker. You often get to write programs of all sorts of shapes and sizes, but you can’t fob them off to second-line helpdesks. They will either be used by you and get on your nerves until you fix them, or in the hands of people who don’t want to know how a computer works or why organising timetables efficiently is a very hard computer problem; they just want to get their work done. You end up knowing all sorts of nooks and crannies of all the operating systems you have installed, because people will uncover the most obscure bugs known to mankind, normally at 4:52pm on a Friday.

Also: wireless routers are, in general much more trouble than they're worth. Especially when they're have a 'Belkin' label on them, or are being expected to service fifteen computers that suck down remote profiles from a central server...