System Administrator Appreciation Day

At Pleth, we will be celebrating System Administrator Appreciation Day!  What an awesome idea. I know that this holiday is probably not on those calendars you get for Christmas from your family each year, but it’s a pretty cool thing to add to it.  Friday, July 31, is system administrator day across the country, it’s celebrated on the last Thursday in July each year.  If you have a system administrator be sure to let them know how much you appreciate what they do behind the scenes.  And if you have never had a conversation with your system administrator when you weren’t frantic about something, you should take it even a step further and take them to lunch or something because he / she probably thinks you are a turd… 

I feel blessed because I have worked with a lot of system administrators over the years and can honestly say that Matt Critcher is quite possibly one of the best ones out there, and I have the pleasure of working alongside him putting out fires.  Of course it’s usually him spraying the water and me pointing at the fire with a dazed look in my eye, and also sometimes denying any responsibility for the fire whatsoever!

So What is a System Administrator??

A sysadmin unpacked the server for this website from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went wrong. All to serve this webpage.

A sysadmin installed the routers, laid the cables, configured the networks, set up the firewalls, and watched and guided the traffic for each hop of the network that runs over copper, fiber optic glass, and even the air itself to bring the Internet to your computer. All to make sure the webpage found its way from the server to your computer.

A sysadmin makes sure your network connection is safe, secure, open, and working. A sysadmin makes sure your computer is working in a healthy way on a healthy network. A sysadmin takes backups to guard against disaster both human and otherwise, holds the gates against security threats and crackers, and keeps the printers going no matter how many copies of the tax code someone from Accounting prints out.

A sysadmin worries about spam, viruses, spyware, but also power outages, fires and floods. When the email server goes down at 2 AM on a Sunday, your sysadmin is paged, wakes up, and goes to work. A sysadmin is a professional, who plans, worries, hacks, fixes, pushes, advocates, protects and creates good computer networks, to get you your data, to help you do work — to bring the potential of computing ever closer to reality.

So if you can read this, thank your sysadmin — and know he or she is only one of dozens or possibly hundreds whose work brings you the email from your aunt on the West Coast, the instant message from your son at college, the free phone call from the friend in Australia, and this webpage.

System Administrator Appreciation Day