"Sysadmin of the Year" Winners Announced

lisah writes "Ten winners of this year's 'Sysadmin of the Year' contest have been announced and, while Robin 'Roblimo' Miller says it's not quite like winning the Miss America contest, being selected from approximately 2,500 entrants is nothing to sneeze at. This year's first place winner battled an office fire to save a RAID backup server, while another IT manager won an honorable mention for his dedicated work at a yarn store. From the article, '[The nominating entry said:] Any man who would take on a position at a yarn store, much less a technological position while surrounded by a dozen women, ages 55+ deserves some kind of reward...'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Knit picking

[Rob T Firefly]

Any man who would take on a position at a yarn store, much less a technological position while surrounded by a dozen women, ages 55+ deserves some kind of reward...

Hah! As a somewhat avid knitter, I wish more men would work in yarn stores, as there are only so many sweet old ladies I can handle in a single shopping expedition. I say "somewhat avid," as the one thing that stops me from knitting a lot more is the fact that I can't type or play video games while doing it.

Speaking of video games, anyone who thinks knitting is all girly flowers and things hasn't seen the cool retro-gaming knits at Bits 2 Die 4. [b2d4.com]

Re:Yeah, all men hate being around old women.

[SoapDish]

Too bad it was clearly written by those 55+ year old women you think it discriminates against.

Or perhaps you say it discriminates against men who want to work at a yarn store with women twice their age?

Re:Yeah, all men hate being around old women.

[Monokeros]

That's a quote from Janice Yamamoto, The woman who nominated him. ...Just so you know.

Re:Hardly!

[JerkBoB]

No offense, but everything about that invitation screams "It's a trap!!" /me sighs.

Must I?

Read this: BOFH [wikipedia.org]

Re:Burning down the house

[Anonymous Coward]

Your setup is in a company who understands the need to backup. His does not. Sysadmins work with what they are given. When you do not control the purse strings, then your hands are tied.

The blatently obvious answer and solution to this problem: The Manager/Owner/President/CEO didn't approve it come budget time? Then send them in to retrieve the RAID array. I am certain that come requisition time in the future, far greater emphasis will be placed on disaster recovery, offsite backups, etcetera. Funny thing that.

Your life is not a budget-line item, and non-negotiable for a Sysadmin position (outside of the military, that is). What is the worst thing that they could do if you refused? Would you rather be terminated or fired (Maybe fried would be more appropriate)?

Hands tied my ass. I can still flip the bird even with both hands tied behind my back.

Re:sysadmins

[goodtim]

Sir, I recommend what is called a "disaster recovery plan". Many institutions use asynchronous replication to mirror their data to a far away place. Should there be a complete disaster like a fire, or even worse a hurricane (can you say Katrina?), your data is all nice and cozy tucked away in a disaster recovery data center. You could even take it a step further and setup a large VM box hosting replicas of your systems. They would not be full speed of course, but who cares - in this scenario you're probably dead. And the cost isn't even that outrageous. And besides, if your business will be impacted that drastically by the loss of 5 days worth of data, then you're probably big enough to afford setting up some real DR.

Cheers.