We still

Has it really been a year folks? Today is the 18th System Administrator Appreciation Day, the single greatest 24 hours on the planet if you believe what you read in the press (source Z Beeblebrox Esq Esq).

This year has not been a good one for the humble, grumpy sysadmin. Wave upon wave of malwarez and critical patches have kept every single administrator very busy, very stressed and very worried.

The trouble with being a sysadmin is that it is a bit like running the highways, sewers or power. When it is all working fine you are invisible, some might say taken for granted. Just the one sinkhole, raw sewage leak into the Thames or power outage during Love Island and you are lower than a mangy cur.

The requirements, expectations and demands of ‘users’, personal and corporate, have grown at an astonishing pace and it is to the total credit of hardworking techs the world over that this has been possible. Talk about making a rod for your own back.

The SysAdmin appreciation organisation (with a staff of one) ask you to sort out the following for your dedicated support team:

• Cake & Ice cream
• Pizza
• Cards
• Gifts
• Words of gratitude
• Custom t-shirts celebrating the epic greatness of your SysAdmin
• Balloons
• Confetti
• Did I say gifts

Clearly these people are from Over There.  In order to show appreciation to your hard working, highly stressed and under appreciated in house geeks, we recommend the following:

• Beer

As we have been muttering and banging on about for ages, we are all running loads of old software, which has been, can be or will be exploited. The confusing antics of The Shadow Brokers (we have been assured that they are Russian, but we are not so sure, just saying) hint at forthcoming bad stuff on Windows and Unix (including products from the Sacred Orchard).

Proper Prior Patching Prevents Piss Poor Performance. For that you need happy SysAdmins. You know what to do.

If you would like to buy any of our long suffering SysAdmins a beer or want to know more about what is going on with the Shadow Brokers (mwahahaha), please contact us at: [email protected] or call 020 7517 3900.