Today, the last Friday of July, is SysAdmin Day, a day to celebrate the labors of systems administrators, which, if successful, are never otherwise noticed.* Systems administrators are the men and women who keep computer systems running. Anyone who has ever used a computer used by more than one person at once, or connected to a network, let alone blogged about cats, has benefited from the work of a systems administrator.
Many of us no longer see our systems administrators, for our systems are out there in the "cloud" rather than in a glass room in our buildings. But the sysadmins are out there, keeping the systems running, keeping the data backed up. If you can't buy any of them a beer, think good thoughts about them.
(Thanks to The Register for reminding me of the day.)
*Some months after the computers in a limited part of the University of California campus were networked together, in the 1970s, the administrators found it necessary to bring the network down for some changes. At once the halls were full of persons complaining that they couldn't get any work done. Or so I have read.
Computers and their systems are a great paradox: They have made life easier and more difficult at the same time. I am one of those people who both embrace and recoil from the computer age. I live the paradox.
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