I, Sysadmin
(or, the adventures of jane operator)

woo woo.

Late in the afternoon, even a sysadmin gets tired. Bored, actually, but tired too. And it's not just in the afternoon, it's in the morning. And around lunchtime. And inbetween morning and lunchtime.

The thing about a sysadmin who gets tired is this: she does crazy things. She upgrades, she deletes, she fscks, she re-organizes filesystems. No directory is safe from her wrath, no configuration file too small to edit.

The problem with a reboot is that it takes longer than you want. So darned long, in fact, that it's usually considered a great idea to start the reboot, then take an hour lunch. The true sysadmin is always optimistic about the server's ability to start itself back up properly. It's that same, undying optimism that gives the sysadmin her sanity, her bright and cheery demeanor, and her intense and raging flurry of profanity when it doesn't actually boot sucessfully.

It's in the later stages of the afternoon when the sysadmin starts thinking to herself... "I wonder what would happen if I try to re-partition without re-starting the server process..." or "I wonder where I put that Dr Pepper" or "I wonder if /^:(.*)\!(.*)\@(.*?) (.*?) (.*)/; will parse in accordance with rfc1459."

That's when it's a good time to go home.

Sometimes Jane wishes she was more of a man.

[back to verbosity]