(no subject)

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

Top 10 System Administrator Truths

It had me at #1 – Users Lie.



#1 – Users Lie

Good techies often wont lie about mistakes, thats the one thing I have noticed about techies as opposed to non-techies. A little background: I currently work as a security guard, a usually non-technical job, but since I do it at a high security datacenter for the Worlds Largest Software Company, it gets kinda techinical sometimes, and besides, its a stopgap job. But anyway, when a techie makes a mistake, liek sets off an alarm or gets trapped because they didint swipe their badge, they admit so, and we fix it and move on. But when the non-technical types are around, like the marketing people, or execs from outside datacenter services, they often will try to feign ignorance of the cause of their problems. Of course, this is giving them the benifit of the doubt and assuming that they can figure out what they did wrong.

#3 – Printers Suck

I have accepted this, in my domain, printers are depreciated, hell, even paper is depreciated. Thusly, at home my printer lives in my closet, holding up a stack of Netware 4.11 books.

#4 – Cleanliness is Godliness

Every time a system is brought down for any reason, out comes the canned air. I hate dust with a passion.

#5 – Backups are Crucial

I was annoyed to find that Retrospect isint available for Linux. But then again, Ill prolly stick to xfsdump and scripts.

#7 – No One Ever Got Fired For Buying Microsoft

Unless you work at Novell ;). Sometimes even at Microsoft, its own software isint the right solution.

#9 – Know Your Needs

Even as a firm beliver in Linux I must say that its not the holy-grail of adaptable OSes. But then again, the only Windows server I have is called MCSE, and you can probably guess what its used for.

Comments

[canthlian.livejournal.com]

I fully believe that #8 is a fallacy, and should not be believed. Truly, you will have more fun with snark, than with asskissing.

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

Yeah, perhaps.

But generally its not best to create negativity in your environment, most people don't like it.

[krrayn.livejournal.com]

I usually go with "Windows is flaky."

[dog-star-man.livejournal.com]

I tried that for awhile. I was generally percieved as a dick and it made my job harder. Ever try to communicate to someone about a problem they're having with their PC when they hate you? It's not a pretty sight. Now I happily chit chat about whatever with everyone I need to work with and it's like butter.

[kalium.livejournal.com]

Sometimes even at Microsoft, its own software isint the right solution.

Are you allowed to admit that without being sent back to brainwashing "advocacy" camp?

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

Said statement is from before I even was in this state, so its historical in nature.

[bpcslave.livejournal.com]

Canned air is so much fun. Don't shake, instead hold it upside down and squirt the freezy liquid on cups of water. YAY!

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

What are you, kidding? Where I work, if you're not off on some vitriol-filled angst-fueled sarcastic rant people's eyes glaze over and they wander off looking for something to do.

This is tech support. Bring the sarcasm.

[bdinger.livejournal.com]

I'd rather be the asshole that they leave the fuck alone, than be "that nice techie" who they invite over for beer, only to lure into their basement to fix their virii addled PC.

[dog-star-man.livejournal.com]

I'd kill some virii for some free beer.

[greylady.livejournal.com]

Be careful... (free) beer is generally not worth a lot of money. You'd be better off presenting a bill.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

That's because most cow-orkers aren't far enough up the evolutionary scale to have developed nervous systems capable of appreciating pain.

[jecook]

FOR networking issues, rebooting will clear:

ARP chaches
DNS caches

along with (usually):
resetting the software driver's packet buffer
resetting the NIC's hardware packet buffer if it has one.
resetting the DHCP lease. (unless your DHCP server has a "give me a lease for 30 days" crap, which leads to all sorts of fun and games when you have to kick the DHCP server...)

See? a cold restart does all sorts of good. XP's "repair connection" flushes the packet buffers and the ARP and DNS caches, along with the routing table (yes, NT systems do have a routing table built into them, just like the BSD unix from which it was spawned from)

[bdinger.livejournal.com]

No fucking shit? Really?

Seriously, how long have you worked in support?

[dog-star-man.livejournal.com]

Hey man, I got your back.

I have a "job" that pays the rent. I also help people with their computers in my spare time. I charge them in alcohol. It works out pretty nicely. I enjoy the friendship, the booze and helping people with my knowledge.

I guess I could be a dick about what I do, but what's the point. Seriously folks...trained monkeys could do our jobs. It's not like we're that indispensible.