[452] in Humor
HUMOR: It's Solaris, sir...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Wed Sep 14 13:29:11 1994
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 11:40:25 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 09:26:27 -0600 (MDT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN%ARIES@VAXF.Colorado.EDU>
...
Forwarded-by: Wendell Craig Baker <wbaker@splat.baker.com>
I have a friend who has the worst job in the world: he is a Unix
system administrator. But it's worse than that, as I will soon tell.
Being a Unix system administrator is like being a tech in a biological
warfare laboratory, except that none of the substances are labeled
consistently, any of the compounds are just as likely to kill you by
themselves as they are when mixed with one another, and it is never
clear what distinction is made between a catastrophic failure in the
lab and a successful test in the field.
But I don't want to tell you about biological warfare, I want to tell
you about what makes my friend's job so terrible. First, some
context.
The training for Unix system administration is a frightening process.
When machines start dying, users start screaming, and everything
grinds to a halt, the novice feels the cold fingers of terror
clutching about his heart.
#!/bin/sh
# this doesn't work, but no time to fix it -- hope nothing crashes
progname=$0
But if one stays the course, one might some day achieve the dubious
satisfaction of being able to mutter "at least I know why it broke!".
#!/bin/sh
# This works...I wonder if it will get me laid
progname="`echo $0 | sed 's:^\./\./:\./:'`"
But there are many who must dwell in this miasma both day and night.
What makes my friend's job so ugly is that he doesn't only work with
just any strain of Unix--he works with Solaris. And he doesn't just
deal with just any braindead users--his users are the executives at
Sun Microsystems.
Let me tell you about Sun Microsystems. At Sun, there's a long
history of executives playing pranks on one another. For April Fools,
these rowdies would play tricks like putting a golf course (complete
with putting green) in Scott McNealy's office, or floating Bill Joy's
Ferrari in one of the landscaped ponds. Things have come a long way
since then. Now every day is April Fools, and my friend doesn't like
it one bit.
VP: "Admin!! What the fuck is this thing running on my machine?"
Admin: "It's Solaris, sir."
VP: "Get it off of my machine at once!"
Admin: "But sir, Ed Zander told me that you should be running solaris now."
VP: "Zander, huh? I'll fix him. Is he running Solaris?"
Admin: "No sir."
VP: "Why not?"
Admin: "If he ran Solaris, he wouldn't be able to get any work done"
VP: "Very well, restore my machine to SunOS, and put this Solaris
crap on Zander's machine"
Admin: "But sir..."
VP: "That's an order! And tell him Scott gave you the directive himself!"
Admin: "Yes, sir"
Zander: "Admin!! What the fuck is this thing running on my machine?"
Admin: "It's Solaris, sir."
Zander: "Get it off of my machine at once!"
Admin: "But sir, Scott McNealy told me that you should be running solaris now."
Zander: "McNealy, huh? I'll fix him. Is he running Solaris?"
...
The only thing worse that being a Unix system administrator is doing
the job for ungrateful users.
