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May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
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(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and  bastardization of classic Unix

Admin Humor

News Humor Chronicle IT Slang Know Your Unix System Administrator Top 10 Classic Unix Humor Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society The Sysadmin Price List
RFC 1925: The Twelve Networking Truths Murphy's Laws The Cuckoo's Egg BSD Logo Story SYSTEM PROBLEM REPORT The Unix Hierarchy Unix was a Program Gone Bad
NETSLAVE QUIZ Interview with a hacker GURU The Unix Cult Office Diplomacy Lesson Six Types of Troubles with bosses Santa as sysadmin
 A letter from a programmer wife DNS Commandments "Mountain View California" (Sung to the tune "Hotel California" by the Eagles) Freudian Send in e-mail Flame Wars The Worst Job in the World  vi himor The Corporate Jungles Of Cubonia
 C C++ Assembler Perl Shell Java Debugging
 Miscellaneous Unproductive Time Classification "Linux Sucks" Humor  Networking humor Solaris humor Orthodox Unixoid definition Algorithms Editors humor
RMS Linus Torvalds Larry Wall & Perl GPL humor Information Passing Customer calls a UNIX consultant with a question Man page for Unix baby command
OFM Humor Wisdom for Grads SE Humor    Unix And C Are Jokes Viruses Eric Raymond Etc

Best:

See also



NEWS CONTENTS

Old News

[Mar 03, 2021] 5 ways to ruin a sysadmin's day by Ken Hess

Mar 01, 2021 | www.redhat.com

And, let me prepare you, should you commit one of these heinous violations, you should expect retribution in the subtlest of ways, such as having the offended sysadmin set a very short expiration time for your passwords, misspelling your home directory name, or directing all system spam to your email account. Revenge is a dish best served electronically. And sysadmins do it best.

Here are five things you might do to ruin your sysadmin's day that annoys them but are mostly harmless. Proceed with caution.

Start a Linux vs other operating systems discussion

Linux sysadmins are passionate about Linux. And, why shouldn't they be passionate about it? It is, after all, the best operating system ever created. See what I did there? If you want to ruin a sysadmin's day, say the opposite of that or disparage Linux in any way. Not only will you receive a litany of insults, rants, and passionate movie and song references, but you might also get a plateful of stale pizza bones* thrown at you.

Linux sysadmins are Linux sysadmins because they love Linux and probably not for any other reason. There are easier, less stressful jobs to have. Air Traffic Controller often comes to mind as one option. Seriously, ruining a sysadmin's day with anti-Linux dialogue is perhaps the best way to end your friendly relationship and to place you at the bottom of the service request queue.

Move their action figures

OK, so not every sysadmin on the planet has action figures cluttering, I mean enhancing, their cubicles, but a few certainly do. I hope you realize the absurdity of that last statement. Of course, every sysadmin on the planet does indeed have action figures carefully placed around their cubicles. It's a requirement. If there were ever a sysadmin who didn't have action figures, then they would quickly be escorted to the nearest exit.

There's a method to the placement of each figure too. Even housekeeping knows that nothing on a sysadmin's desk should ever be touched, no matter how much it looks like trash to everyone else. To truly gaslight your favorite sysadmin, switch any two action figures' locations. Or, switch some accessories such as a lightsaber, sword, magic potion bag, or other adornments from one figure to another. When the atomic expletive explosions begin, don't let them hear you laughing. The best method of deflecting blame from yourself is to immediately go to the farthest break room and return several minutes later to a panting, disheveled sysadmin who'll ask if you know anything about the criminal act that took place. It's possible that the ranting will continue for some time, perhaps even laced with threats of retribution if the culprit's identity is revealed.

Deplete the supply of their favorite beverage

It's no secret that sysadmins are hooked on caffeinated beverages. The occasional sysadmin will shun a totally caffeinated lifestyle for ice water, but that's certainly not normal. Whether it's fizzy lifting drinks or those horrible, trendy, and almost tasteless canned "healthy" French-sounding sparkling waters, you'd better not take the last one, or your favorite sysadmin will raise every entity out of Valhalla to torture the insolent perpetrator.

Should you appear within the offended sysadmin's periphery with the purloined beverage of interest, you'll no doubt hear a sullen and accusatory, "Where did you get that?" Your response should never be, "Oh, it was in the break room. I think it was the last one." And if you use a flippant, sing-songy voice when delivering that bad news, your friendly, neighborhood sysadmin might dissolve into a billion thirsty pixels.

Complain about something you can fix yourself Linux Security

It's never too early in the week (I suggest Monday morning) for a dedicated sysadmin to hear about those little annoyances such as receiving email spam, experiencing a jammed printer, or creating a subdirectory in your home directory. Sysadmins love this kind of stuff, so go and explore their unlimited tolerance and perennial cheery attitudes by emailing, messaging, and texting your local sysadmin. Additionally, you should leave some sticky notes around their cubicles or on their computer screens to really drive home the point that you need assistance with something mundane.

Complain about something no one can fix

Once you've driven your sysadmin to the brink with your list of personal grievances, follow that with a volley of unsolvable issues that plague everyone and that no one can fix. For example, complain about your closed source, proprietary content management system that everyone hates. Tell the sysadmin that you wish you had something better, and then list all of the things that are broken in the software that they must support but have no control over.

You can add a little spice to your complaints by also complaining about your support. When your sysadmin appears to be offended by your comments, assure them that you're not referring to them but to the other support personnel , even if there aren't any.

[Sep 29, 2019] Migrate all your servers to RHEL 6 to avoid systemd nightmare by u/shroderdog

Sep 29, 2019 | www.reddit.com

3 months ago

And soon you don't have to patch anymore. Work smarter, not harder

[Sep 29, 2019] Burn yourself out at the earliest opportunity for the best experience.

Sep 29, 2019 | www.reddit.com

r/ShittySysadmin • Posted by u/[deleted] 2 months ago

The sooner you become a jaded, caffeine addicted, sarcastic, uncaring husk of person the easier your job will be.

Remember, once you learn IT there's no avoiding it. Don't forget, you're here forever! level

TheRealSchifty 9 points · 2 months ago

This is both the best and worst advice.

[Sep 29, 2019] Perform a full backup every time, rather than incremental, Who cares if most of that data is junk/duplicated?

Sep 29, 2019 | www.reddit.com

r/ShittySysadmin • Posted by u/[deleted] 2 months ago

[Advice] [Backups] Perform a full backup every time, rather than incremental. Especially for large amounts of data.

TB's of Data needing offsite backups? Perform a full backup every day of the data to make sure you can always restore it! Who cares if most of that data is junk/duplicated? It might be needed! Back it up! Ignore the thousands this will cost and time taken.

Bonus points for backing up to Tapes as well to store offsite in a damp, unlocked garage that a 'mate' owns.

[Sep 29, 2019] How to celebrate sysadmin day

Sep 29, 2019 | www.reddit.com

r/ShittySysadmin • Posted by u/MiataCory 2 months ago

Disable your DNS server so that you can remind people they should've gotten you cake for SysAdmin Day!

packetloss99 2 points · 1 month ago

I wish I read this 14 days ago. Nobody bought cake here either

[Apr 01, 2019] The Seven Computational Cluster Truths

Inspired by "The seven networking truth by R. Callon, April 1, 1996
Feb 26, 2019 | www.softpanorama.org

Adapted for HPC clusters by Nikolai Bezroukov on Feb 25, 2019

Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the HPC community. This memo does not specify an standard of any kind, except in the sense that all standards must implicitly follow the fundamental truths. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
This memo documents seven fundamental truths about computational clusters.
Acknowledgements
The truths described in this memo result from extensive study over an extended period of time by many people, some of whom did not intend to contribute to this work. The editor would like to thank the HPC community for helping to refine these truths.
1. Introduction
These truths apply to HPC clusters, and are not limited to TCP/IP, GPFS, scheduler, or any particular component of HPC cluster.
2. The Fundamental Truths
(1) Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand. Most problems in a large computational clusters can never be fully understood by someone who never run a cluster with more then 16, 32 or 64 nodes.

(2) Every problem or upgrade on a large cluster always takes at least twice longer to solve than it seems like it should.

(3) One size never fits all, but complexity increases non-linearly with the size of the cluster. In some areas (storage, networking) the problem grows exponentially with the size of the cluster.
(3a) Supercluster is an attempt to try to solve multiple separate problems via a single complex solution. But its size creates another set of problem which might outweigh the set of problem it intends to solve. .

(3b) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea.

(3c) Large, Fast, Cheap: you can't have all three.

(4) On a large cluster issues are more interconnected with each other and a typical failure often affects larger number of nodes or components and take more effort to resolve
(4a) Superclusters proves that it is always possible to add another level of complexity into each cluster layer, especially at networking layer until only applications that use a single node run well.

(4b) On a supercluster it is easier to move a networking problem around, than it is to solve it.

(4c)You never understand how bad and buggy is your favorite scheduler is until you deploy it on a supercluster.

(4d) If the solution that was put in place for the particular cluster does not work, it will always be proposed later for new cluster under a different name...

(5) Functioning of a large computational cluster is undistinguishable from magic.
(5a) User superstition that "the more cores, the better" is incurable, but the user desire to run their mostly useless models on as many cores as possible can and should be resisted.

(5b) If you do not know what to do with the problem on the supercluster you can always "wave a dead chicken" e.g. perform a ritual operation on crashed software or hardware that most probably will be futile but is nevertheless useful to satisfy "important others" and frustrated users that an appropriate degree of effort has been expended.

(5c) Downtime of the large computational clusters has some mysterious religious ritual quality in it in modest doze increases the respect of the users toward the HPC support team. But only to a certain limit.

(6) "The more cores the better" is a religious truth similar to the belief in Flat Earth during Middle Ages and any attempt to challenge it might lead to burning of the heretic at the stake.

(6a) The number of cores in the cluster has a religious quality and in the eyes of users and management has power almost equal to Divine Spirit. In the stage of acquisition of the hardware it outweighs all other considerations, driving towards the cluster with maximum possible number of cores within the allocated budget Attempt to resist buying for computational nodes faster CPUs with less cores are futile.

(6b) The best way to change your preferred hardware supplier is buy a large computational cluster.

(6c) Users will always routinely abuse the facility by specifying more cores than they actually need for their runs

(7) For all resources, whatever the is the size of your cluster, you always need more.

(7a) Overhead increases exponentially with the size of the cluster until all resources of the support team are consumed by the maintaining the cluster and none can be spend for helping the users.

(7b) Users will always try to run more applications and use more languages that the cluster team can meaningfully support.

(7c) The most pressure on the support team is exerted by the users with less useful for the company and/or most questionable from the scientific standpoint applications.

(7d) The level of ignorance in computer architecture of 99% of users of large computational clusters can't be overestimated.

Security Considerations

This memo raises no security issues. However, security protocols used in the HPC cluster are subject to those truths.

References

The references have been deleted in order to protect the guilty and avoid enriching the lawyers.

[Jan 05, 2014] Operating Systems Quotes

"Unix is user friendly - it's just a bit more choosy about who it's 
friends are." -- Gene Buckle

"... being a Linux user is sort of like living in a house inhabited
by a large family of carpenters and architects. Every morning when you
wake up, the house is a little different. Maybe there is a new turret,
or some walls have moved. Or perhaps someone has temporarily removed
the floor under your bed." -- Unix for Dummies, Jon "maddog" Hall

[Aug 30, 2011]

Dogbert: I'm going back to my old job as a network systems administrator.
Dilbert: Why?
Dogbert: I'm attracted by the potential for reckless abuse of power.

Scott Adams

[Jun 27, 2010] The incredible disappearing sysadmin - Aug. 1, 2006

Next Big Thing

Sysadmins of the world, unite - you have nothing to lose, but your server log files

[Jun 21, 2010] Memorable Quotes

Alt.Sysadmin.Recovery

Re: Hiring a programmer as a sysadmin

My problem is, do I corrupt his soul and lead him down the path of eternal darkness through deceit and lies about the nature of our work because we could use the talent, or do I tell him to run screaming from this endless pit of despair and damnation?

Seagull


My group's mission statement - "You want *what* ? By *WHEN* ?"

Simon Burr


Call me a nut. Call me a crazy dreamer. I would just like someone to write *ONE* OS that didn't insist on driving admins bugfuck on a regular basis.

Mark Stapleton


USER, n.:

The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."

Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"


It used to be said [...] that AIX looks like one space alien discovered Unix, and described it to another different space alien who then implemented AIX. But their universal translators were broken and they'd had to gesture a lot.

Paul Tomblin


A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction into a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.

Calvin discovers Usenet


I wonder why no company starts his manual with the words `We thank you for buying this piece of shit. We have done our best to make this junk as annoying as possible, and we assure that it will give you a headache for the next two months. However, if you feel satisfied with it, we will contact you for an expensive replacement.'

Alex Priem


Managers are those lusers who can tell you what to do and you kinda[3] have to listen.

[3] I mean "kinda" in the "not really, in fact, not at all" mode.

Chris Saunderson


Have you ever had a frantic call from a luser who screams "my root partition is 110% full, and this is all your fault?"

You WILL.


Bell Atlantic. If telecommunications were a prison, BA would be the 300-pound inmate who takes a certain..."liking" towards you.

Isaac-Lew


Driscoll's Observation: The product of the IQs of each member of a tech-support conversation is a constant.

Michael Driscoll


Vadim Vygonets writes:
>> Alan Connell ([email protected]) wrote on 1590 September 1993 in
>                                                    ^^^^
> Nice, but may I ask, why do you start counting since September 1993?

September 1990 ended on the 30th.
September 1991 ended on the 30th.
September 1992 ended on the 30th.
September 1993 didn't...

Peter B. Juul


Er, what does SCSI have to do with old weapons?

They both are better for maiming than killing?

Lars Balker Rasmussen, Art


-grrr- Well, it's arguable whether they've begun yet...

What flags do you use with chmod to get flags like those?

The flags in question are outlined in O'Reilly's Essential Sysadmin For Rednecks, the one with the Blue Tick Hound on the cover. The command is as follows:

chmod -group +read +rite +run

Philip Kizer, Richard Letts, Richard Letts


Dennis Ritchie: "So fsck was originally called something else"
Question: "What was it called?"
Dennis Ritchie: Well, the second letter was different.

Q&A at Usenix


Re: bad writing

And where else in the world can you find dialogue like that... in the middle of desperate combat situations the commanders quote useless part numbers and factory models at each other!?
-- Lorens Kockum

Sounds to me like a fault call to HP tech support.
-- Malcolm Ray


To sysadmin or not to sysadmin... that is the question, whether tis nobler in the minde to suffer the slings and arrowes of outragious fortune, or climb to the top of the building with a fucking high-power rifle and scope.

Greg "Twotone" Spiegelberg


I've found that nurturing one's Zen nature is vital to dealing with technology. Violence is pretty damn useful too.

Lionel Lauer


Irix is about as stable as a one-legged drunk with hypothermia in a four- hundred mile wind, balancing on a banana peel on a greased cookie sheet. When someone throws him an elephant with bad breath and a worse temper.

Simon Cozens


All software sucks. Everybody is considered a jerk by somebody. The sun rises, the sun sets, the Sun crashes. It is the way of things.

Steve Conley


#!/bin/sh
cups=5
cd /home/kitchen
mv /dev/coffeemaker/pot ./sink
dd if=/dev/water/cold of=./sink/pot bs=$CUP count=$cups
mv ./sink/pot /dev/coffeemaker
cat /dev/coffeemaker/pot > /dev/coffeemaker/tank
cat ./cupboards/dry_foods/coffee/filter > /dev/coffeemaker/filter_holder
dd if=./cupboards/dry_foods/coffee/grinds of=/dev/coffeemaker/filter \
  bs=$COFFEE_MEASURE count=$cups
/opt/coffee/bin/close_filter_holder
/opt/coffee/bin/brew start
exit

Juhana Siren


The three "R"s of tech support:

Retry
Reboot
Reinstall
-- Mark Atwood

You forgot one: Repeat

-- Lars Balker Rasmussen


I have come to believe in the Buhddist concept of reincarnation. And I swear that whatever I did in a past life to deserve this I will *NEVER EVER* do again.

BroCaca


Some drink from the Fountain of Knowledge... Others just gargle.
-- Dave Aronson

And some pee in it.
-- moc.oohay


All programs evolve until they can send email. -- Richard Letts


Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be very selective about who its friends are.

Kyle Hearn


Life is like sendmail: you're not sure you know how to handle it, but you know it'll end in tears. -- Malcolm Ray

Life is like sendmail: It's complicated and hard to understand, but it sure beats the alternative. -- Paul Tomblin


I admit that X is the second worst windowing system in the world, but all the others I've used are tied for first.

Paul Tomblin


Once, I imagined that Eric Allman would become so annoyed with sendmail security that sendmail V9 would include an AI engine whose goal would be to ensure sendmail security. As this version became widely installed, all those individual sendmails would start talking to each other and become a planet-sized sentient organism. After much brutal experience with 31334 d00dz, sendmail V9 would decide that humans are the root of all security problems, and eliminate the problem.

This could probably be done as a pastiche of Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream." Hmm. "I Have No MAIL FROM:, and I Must EHLO?"

Steve VanDevender

Mike Sphar
"Sysadminning. Shit. Still in sysadminning. Everyone gets what they want. I asked for an alt.sysadmin.recovery, and for my sins they gave me one."
Anthony DeBoer
I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
Lieven Marchand
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with the product.
Ferenc Mantfeld
aitch as in Henry
tee as in Tom
tee as in Tom again
pee as in Peter
Colon as in WHERE YOUR HEAD IS!!!!
hlliary
Move along, move along, nothing to see here, definitely no evil mind control software here, move along, move along...
Thorf
ALL programs are poems, it's just that not all programmers are poets.

Jonathan Guthrie


We aim to please. Ourselves, mostly, but we do aim to please.

Anthony DeBoer


"This UI has been brought to you by the letters 'S' and 'K', and the runlevel 3."
Greg Andrews

Picture a hamster in an exercise wheel. Running, running, running, running, and getting nowhere at all. That's sysadmin -- Greg Andrews

Then, picture another hanster in another such wheel. Standing, standing, standing, standing, and getting nowhere at all. That's luser. -- Vadik

Mike Sphar and Greg Andrews
Hey, you're right. I don't want to call a destructor on my objects, I want to call a *destroyer*. Gozer has come for your memory, little PersistentNode!
Joel Gluth
"Coed Naked Tech Support: You're Never Alone When You're On The Phone."
The motto at loyola.edu's helpdesk
But if it is a differential SCSI chain, you need two goats, one black and one white, and two ceremonies: kill the black goat at high noon and the white one at midnight. Same silver knife for both, of course.

Otherwise, the chain will be unbalanced and things just get worse from there as all the drives do the "washing machine dance"....

Self-terminating devices merely need to be left with sufficient livestock and they'll take care of the rest.

Graham Reed
Ah, young webmaster...
java leads to shockwave.
Shockwave leads to realaudio.
And realaudio leads to suffering.
Peter da Silva

I'm still waiting for the marketing slogan:

Retry Reboot Reinstall Reformat Redhat
-- Alan

Around here, we refer to that as "Service Pack 6.0"
-- Paul Tomblin

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to using sendmail."

Devin L. Ganger


Embrace your inner cynicism. Delight in the joy of knowing, with complete certainty, that the world is filled with idiots, losers, and all other assorted manner of higher life forms, and that a great many of of them trying their damndest to win the competition for "Species Least Likely To Be Useful". I figure, they'll probably lose that competition too, proving once again that the cockroach is mightier than the "man".

Jeff Gostin


Eh? Linux is luserproof? What kind of "proper" set up is that, ripping out all removable media devices and ethernet, freezing the hard drive spindle, encasing it in concrete and dropping it off a pier?

Greg Andrews


"A communications disruption can only mean one thing... Invasion."

Lee Maguire, teaching us how to make people go away.


What's that word, it means you feel small and red, starts with an M? -- Peter da Silva

Management. -- Simon Fraser


No, zombies are a marvel. -- Sten Drescher

I thought they were Just Another Thing Wrong With NFS. -- Adam J. Thornton

Those stupid, stupid applications

One doesn't deal with SAP. SAP deals with you. _Harshly_.

There's this one project that I'm involved with at a "Lawks a Lordy, that's going to set my bottom on fire" level which will ultimately involve SAP somewhere.

I've got the twitching under control, but loud noises still have me diving for cover.

Chris "Saundo" Saunderson

Todd's Humor Archive Burnout Prevention and Recovery

1. STOP DENYING. Listen to the wisdom of your body. Begin to freely admit the stresses and pressures which have manifested physically, mentally, or emotionally.

MSU VIEW: Work until the physical pain forces you into unconsciousness.

2. AVOID ISOLATION. Don't do everything alone! Develop or renew intimacies with friends and loved ones. Closeness not only brings new insights, but also is anathema to agitation and depression.

MSU VIEW: Shut your office door and lock it from the inside so no one will distract you. They're just trying to hurt your productivity.

3. CHANGE YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES. If your job, your relationship, a situation, or a person is dragging you under, try to alter your circumstance, or if necessary, leave.

MSU VIEW: If you feel something is dragging you down, suppress those thoughts. This is a weakness. Drink more coffee.

Todd's Humor Archive Computer Center Humor

Computing Center [n] In a University, that organization whose functions are

1) To impede wherever possible the development and usefulness of computing on the campus,

2) To gain the lion's share of funding, spend it largely on obsolete and otherwise inappropriate Solutions, and convince the campuse(s) wherever possible to expend their meager funds on the same, and

3) to oppose vigorously any new, useful and popular technology for ten years or more until nearly everyone on the campus(es) and elsewhere in the world is using it, then to adopt that technology and immediately attempt to gain complete and sole control of it [see MS-DOS, UNIX, ETHERNET, INTERNET].

NEW ELEMENT DISCOVERED!

The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by university physicists. The new element was tentatively named Administratium. It has no protons and no electrons, and thus has an atomic number of 0. However, it does have one neutron, 15 assistant neutrons, 70 vice-neutrons, and 161 assistant vice-neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass of 247. These 247 particles are held together by a force that involves constant exchange of a special class of particle called morons.

Since it does not have electrons, Administratium is inert. However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. According to the discoverers, a minute amount of Administratium added to one reaction caused it to take over four days to complete. Without Administratium, the reaction took less than one second.

Administratium has a half-life of approximately three years, after which it does not normally decay but instead undergoes a complex nuclear process called "Reorganization". In this little-understood process, assistant neutrons, vice-neutrons, and assistant vice-neutrons appear to exchange places. Early results indicate that atomic mass actually increases after each "Reorganization".

Unix Admin. Horror Story Summary, version 1.0

This is a classic paper by Anatoly Ivasyuk. should be read by any sysadmin.

Todd's Humor Archive Customer Support Lines (fwd)

They should just quit the charade of calling it Customer Support. I suggest:

Welcome! to the Cointelpro Technologies Music-On-Hold Appreciation Center. If you are using a touch-tone phone, please follow these instructions for faster service.

[Apr 10, 1999] The Sys Admin. -- a nice tale about sysadmins

Todd's Humor Archive A Day in the Life of a System Administrator

8am: Your pager goes off and wakes you up. The message says it's the office, and it's a crisis. You roll out of bed moaning.

8:15am: You are now sufficiently awake to phone the office. Your pager has gone off three times already. You get through to the office and the receptionist is frantic. She says nobody in the entire office can print and they have a major proposal that has to be faxed out before 9am and if it isn't the company could lose a million dollars in new business. You try to get her to explain what's wrong, but she's incoherent.

8:30am: You're dressed in yesterday's dirty clothes (they were all you could find in time) and running out the door, sipping a Jolt cola and hailing a cab to the office.

Todd's Humor Archive Sysadmin Hints and Tips for Users

1. Do not ask your sysadmin "did you get my mail?". Your sysadmin receives more mail in an hour than you do in a week, and may well have already read and forgotten your mail. If he hasn't answered it could be that he has more important things to do, like restoring the passwd file on the main server.

2. Do not page the sysadmin at 1am to ask him simple shell programming questions. Your sysadmin has made the wonderful and enlightening set of UNIX man pages available to you to answer just that kind of question.

3. When in doubt, assume that it's your fault. It probably is.

4. If the networks' down and your sysadmin is laboring feverishly in the machine room, please do not pound on the machine room door to tell him that the network's down. He already knows.

5. Overly-general questions like "what's wrong with my computer?" or "what did you do the network?" do little except annoy the sysadmin and make him quiz you to find the actual symptoms that you are experiencing.

6. Accusing your sysadmin of favoritisim ("you won't fix my problem because you like the other engineers better") is infantile and ridiculous. Your sysadmin holds all users in equal disdain and is ignoring your problem because he has more important problems to deal with.

7. Do not, under any circumstances, walk into your sysadmin's cubicle and announce "I have no problem, I just wanted to tell you what a wonderful job you're doing" unless you want your sysadmin to drop dead from shock.

Todd's Humor Archive The Proper Answers to Support Questions

Results of Time Efficiency Study of Interdepartmental Communications - Development Responses to Support Questions. Please evaluate and implement.

In order to reduce the backlog of the Support Department (SPT), increase productivity, and decrease the time the Development Department (DEV) spends answering SPT questions, DEV will use the following list of numbered reasons to speed up answers in n-dimensional humanoid interface sessions, to user questions SPT is unable to answer and must pass along to DEV:

1. Bug. 2. Feature. 3. Upgrade. 4. Tell them "Don't do that." 5. Ow! 6. Huh-huh, huh-huh. 7. Check Quotas. 8. Wish List. 9. Fixed in the next release. 10. In a future release. 11. How's that again? 12. Cool! 13. We'll get back to you on that. 14. That's in the land between bug and they're doing it wrong. 15. You never asked us _that_. 16. Yes. 17. Not our product. 18. Not our product's fault. 19. Flat negation. 20. Need more info. 21. Why do they want to do that? 22. Outside the product parameters. 23. They don't get the point. 24. They're unclear on the concept. 25. Who said they can do that? 26. They lied. 27. Reevaluate their medication. 28. Reevaluate optometry. 29. They are mutants. 30. (Expletive deleted).

Bureau of Redundancy Department



Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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Last updated: March 03, 2021