Many people refer to their job as a “calling.” For many system administrators, there’s a calling as well. Generally at some obscene hour because the monitoring system noticed that a critical server went down. From your banking to your time wasting on Facebook, life as you know it is made possible by the system admins who work to keep things running. Let’s face it, you probably never give any thought to those poor men and women who sit in their cramped, dim offices (or cubes — yuck!). Nobody stops to think about the vast amounts of coffee, Mountain Dew, etc that go into fueling the labor of the sysadmin. These brave souls who always have their BlackBerry or pager within arms reach — not because they want to, but because the SLA stipulates five nines.
Fortunately, today is the day you get to show your appreciation for all the work the sysadmins do for you. Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day. On this highest of holy days, show a sysadmin some love. Buy him a beer. Offer to take some of the empty soda cans out of her office. Don’t break things. If you feel comfortable, offer a platonic hug. But don’t dawdle. Even today, the sysadmin has plenty of work to do.