101 Reasons Why You Can't Find Your System Administrator
Compiled by the readers of
alt.sysadmin.recovery
1.They are hiding under the stairs
2.They are on holiday for the first time in 5 years
3.They are in the cellars conducting the rituals to keep the machines running
4.They are in hospital suffering from an overdose of caffeine
5.Taken away by the police after killing the last user who asked a stupid
question
6."You *have* a system administrator ?"
7.Walked past the table they were gibbering under
8.The SysAdmin has built a maze with the door to their office at the center
9.You *are* the system administrator
10.Missed seeing the system administrator asleep under their desk
11.The admin is chained to their desk in a dungeon only the CEO has the key for.
12.Having to explain to the management why they need an asistant.
13.The admin is suffering so bad from sleep deprivation that they may as well
not be there for all the sense you can make of the words they are saying.
14.You are afraid that the admin will use you as a punch bag so you are
searching for them, but desperately pray that you don't find them.
15.The admin came to work disguised as a tea boy to avoid talking to users
16.The admin electroculted themselves whilst installing some cabling near the
main power cable. Since the admin's body is the only thing keeping the
power flowing, the management boarded up the body and pretended they
still had a system administrator.
17.Stuck in a lift shaft pulling network cable to another floor
18.Getting Jolt out of their under-floor cache
19.Hiding on the roof
-- Simon Burr simes@tcp.co.uk
20.(S)he's looking up the BOFH excuse of the day.
21.(S)he's out buying some caffeine.
22.(S)he's busy installing xfishtank on the main fileserver.
-- Mark D. Roth roth@uiuc.edu
23.(S)he's out buying refills for the Nerf(TM) crossbow.
24.(S)he's locked in the computer room playing Deathmatch.
-- Dennis J. Preston Jr dpresto@lookout.ecte.uswc.uswest.com
25.Booted to DOS and is playing doom across the network.
26.Went to Stop&Go to get ANOTHER case of insert favorite caffinated beverage
here
27.Went to the room with padded walls that nobody dares open when the door's
closed.
28.Managed to find time to sleep for an hour or two.
29.Just found out he had a two month old child, and is getting re-aquainted
with his SO (and the new child)
30.is playing netrek.
31.Is in the hospital after being severly injured by a falling soda can mountain
-- William S. Duncanson caesar@earth.ops.neosoft.com
32.Is closeted with boss trying to explain why (s)he uploaded a user to
seven.rings.of.hell.com
33.(s)he's at the hopital having his/her fingers splinted after typing 100
times NO you cannot use your old address after our domain name changes.
Please go read the announcements that we have been posting for the last
three months.
-- Marge Robbins mrobbins@netins.net
34.(S)he's catching twenty winks under the floorboards, tread gingerly.
35.(S)he's watching the building electrician trip a circuit breaker that will
reduce the company 'frame to rainbow colored slag,
36.(S)he's out by the turnpike waiting for a case of Jolt to bounce out of the
truck after it hits the speed bump.
37.Is out back beating a luser into corn mash who asked "When will the system
be back up" one time too many.
38.Finished a double shift and is out back wondering what that big burning ball
in the sky is.
39.Is busy packing up to go to a site that has contemporary hardware
40.Is engaged in a staring contest with a pack of evil dogs
41.Is on the phone trying to talk his wife out of buying a house without ISDN
-- The Unknown SysAdmin The8thMan@aol.com
42.(S)he's sitting under the desk, hysterical at what the (l)user just asked.
43.(S)he's at the pub, it's all *too* much.
- Andrea Gibney a.gibney@mailbox.uq.oz.au
44.(S)he's standing behind you, holding an axe.
45.(S)he resigned in disgust five minutes ago.
46.(S)he's in a meeting with the boss to discuss poor user response times.
-- Ade Rixon ajr@rheidol.elsevier.co.uk
47.Just look up at the ceiling (Think 'Aliens')
-- Grant Denkinson Grant.Denkinson@nottingham.ac.uk
48.(s)he can't be reached via phone or e-mail becuase (s)he is too busy on
usenet telling everybody how busy (s)he is or thinking up 101 reasons
why (s)he can't be found.
-- D. Allen Bassham abassham@svm.com
49.(s)he is hiding under a table so that (s)he will not be the one sitting for
hours watching Ultrix reinstall from a single-speed CDROM because the
users who inexplicably have root access have destroyed the filesystem
*again* during a misguided attempt to "improve" /etc/rc by
repartitioning the disk at boot time "so that it doesn't forget".
-- Matt Bandy m-bandy@uiuc.edu
50.DELETED...
-- dbryant@netcom.com
51.We have a 'secure room' here - bloody great lock on it. I hide in there :)
-- Rob Wheeler rob@pypers.demon.co.uk
52.The Grey Wall(tm) has fallen on them and no one has noticed their absence.
[clunk,clunk,help!,anyone?]
53.They've gone to find some more coffee. Sysadmin has left the building!
-- Matt Haswell ccdmlh@zippy.dct.ac.uk
54.they've snapped, started muttering about "this %&^#$@ post office", and left
for the nearest gun store
55.they're out on an interview
56.they're seeing a therapist who doesn't have any computers in their office,
a non-threatening place.
57.they've gone to a computer museum to beg for parts for the PDP-10s running
the place (ala Compuserve).
58.they're out looking for an ad in any media where DEC mentions OpenVMS
59.they're planning where to be on 01/01/2000, when all of the MVS systems,
and some older minis in mission-critical applications like process
control turn to crap. They may be shopping for a bomb shelter if SAC's
launch control systems only have a two-digit year.
60.they're at a travel agent's, booking a vacation to friendlier place, like
Iraq.
61.they're out fomenting rumors that the Windows 95 cd-roms have the Church of
Scientology's copyrighted teachings hidden on the disk.
62.They're meeting with Guido, to put out a contract on the parties that
started the open systems myth.
63.They've gone to Oklahoma City, to enroll in the FAA's Air Traffic Controller
training program, to start a less-stressful career.
64.They're seeing a commodities broker, to arrange direct deposit of their
paychecks into buying coffee bean futures.
-- Gerald (Jerry) R. Leslie jleslie@dmccorp.com
65./pub/lunch
-- Gary "Wolf" Barnes gkb@aber.ac.uk
66.look better. He/She is probably in the basement somewhere behind the modem
racks.
67._finally_ took a day off.
68.It's 9 AM. He/she is not working that late.
69.Vendor demonstration
70.Convinience store across the street opened
71.Pizza delivery is at the front door
72.Sleeping under the floor tiles
73.On some floor, in some wiring closet, trying to fix things
74.In the dumpster behind the building trying to get rid of some frustration
by using a sledgehammer on the Macs.
-- Koos van den Hout koos@kzdoos.xs4all.nl
75.Because the trauma induced by repeated attempts to install Solaris 2.5
pre-beta on an Intel system has forced him to seek psychotherapy.
76.Still trying to come down from inhaling too much tape head cleaner.
-- Nick Cuccia cuccia@talamasca.com
77.out chasing the rodents off of the twisted pair/power lines
78.gone home to sleep (1st time in x days)
79.been convicted of computer crimes (vague reference to randal schwartz)
80.what was you're username?
-- Tim Bandy bandy@cs.umn.edu
81.Emptying the bit buckets.
-- Michael Shields shields@tembel.org
82.They finally caught him/her for that -big site-masacre (s)he thought (s)he'd
gotten away with.
-- Carlo Cozzi cozzi@otb.tudelft.nl
83.ObReason n+x: Your system administrator is walking in circles outside saying
"TUESDAY? They want it by TUESDAY? TUESDAY?"
-- Stephan Zielinski szielins@us.oracle.com
84.rcp $FAV_RESTAURANT:$FAV_FOOD /dev/stomach gurgle gurgle...
-- Shannon Robert Madsen madsen@cs.umn.edu
85.Hiding in wiring closet.
86.Outside having a smoke because it's illegal in the building.
87.On the roof of the building, contemplating jumping.
88.On the roof of the building, contemplating which users to throw off.
89.On the roof of the building, contemplating traffic.
90.On the roof of the building, contemplating.
-- Johan van Zanten johan@habanero.evtech.com
91.In his/her manager's office, trying to explain why the manager gets lots of
calls from lusers who can't find the sysAdmin.
92.(for us part-timers only) In his/her manager's office, trying to explain why
the "real" (programming) work doesn't get done. Manager doesn't
understand -- when he gave you this job, he said it would only take a
couple of hours a week....
93.Is in luser's office, trying to explain why "export VAR=xxx" from one xterm
window doesn't have any effect on the other windows. "But they're all
on the same Xstation -- what's the problem?"
-- Michael Hartwig hartwig@lfs.loral.com
94.Sysadmin's down in the administrative offices fixing one of their DOS boxes.
-- Al Castanoli afcasta@texas.net
95.He's out getting a caffine fix.
-- John Wanger jwagner@mental.mitre.org
96.There's more caffeine than blood in his veins, and he was last seen hopping
down the hall pretending he was a pogo stick.
-- J.D. Falk jdfalk@cybernothing.org
Well the sysadmin is too busy
97.1) playing with the web
98.2) reading news
99.3) sleeping
100.4) reading other peoples email (not that I do this...)
101.5) installing the latest Xgame on the main fileserver... (this is real cool)
-- Michael Miller mmiller@mars.cs.unp.ac.za