The back slide has started

There is one major problem with recovering from being a sysadmin, it is all so easy to back-slide.

Take me as an example. I was once a sysadmin troll at TCP Towers. The other trolls and I fought long and hard to fight the lusers from the tower and thus the talls of TCP Towers were written. However all things have to come to an end at some point and due to various reasons I left TCP and joined Pipex (or is that UUNetPipex (or is that MFS-UUNetPipex (or should that be WorldCom-MFS-UUNetPipex ?))) as a development person. A peon at the plush Pipex Plaza. I'd recovered.

Or so I thought. From what I can see, recovery is like a mountain. There is lovely view from the top, but it is oh so easy to slip down again. Especially when you're engrossed in the view and the wind is pushing at you. Before you know it, you're hurtling down the slope down to being a sysadmin again. Attempts to break your fall by aiming for rocks, fences and the like just end up hurting you - nothing can stop the fall. Or should I say decay.

As so often has been said on this newsgroup, a clueful user is a sysadmin waiting to happen. It just takes a little bit of decay and that clueful user mutates into a sysadmin. Friends who are clueful users don't believe this... even when they too are on the slippery slope down to being a sysadmin.

My problem is that I know that decay is inevitable... and I also know what its like to be a sysadmin. Whilst the good times (there are good times ?) of being a sysadmin are fairly good, the bad times...

sigh I guess I'd better explain where this post came from. When I joined up with Pipex, I was a development peon. I'm still a developement peon... just one that is developing sendmail.cf and enjoying it (I said I was back-sliding). Since my boss knows that I've done sysadmin stuff before, guess who gets to do some of the fun stuff ? Yep, me. Especially since my boss is also an ex-sysadmin and now he has someone else to tell to do the work. My cow-orker doesn't have any real sysadmin experience at all. Thus, muggins here is left carrying the can of development systems administration.

Its more worrying that I was actually talking to customers today, something I thought that I'd got completely away from. However it was quite fun in a way as the customers are being nice and are willing to test our current project which is in beta. This is kinda strange since they know that they are letting themselves in for problems of all kinds as they find bugs for us. At least in this beta test the sales droids have told the customers that they are using a beta service this time.

I did want to tell the customers that there was a very good chance that the new system would happily route their EMail via Outer Mongolia and SimonNet. Or put it through chef/jive/valley girl/etc. Or just crumple it up and throw it on the floor. However the sales droid we're "working" with didn't think that this was such a great idea. Personally I think that if we make the lusers believe that the system is going to be really unstable and most likely send all of their private EMail to the Sunday Sport then when it does work fine they will be really impressed and not drool quite so much (although that is asking a little bit too much - working systems and lusers that don't need bibs :)

Another aspect of me back-sliding is a lack of sleep. I know that I said not so long ago that a lot of my TCP Towers posts were due to the stress of working at TCP. I'm not so sure any more. I just the following in an EMail to a friend after she made a simple comment (hey Kendall, didn't the water buffalo thing start off in the same way ?)... something tells me that I need to get a little bit more sleep.

[A friend's comment about the combination of cooking and firewalls being a]
[little bit frightening after I had been making comments about LART the   ]
[luser in my house with cooking and a firewall.                           ]

Although if the firewall used banoffee pies instead of cheap custard pies (ie they use shaving foam for the cream, cheese for the custard and cardboard for the pastry. Oops, sorry, that's M$'s version, although the real M$ version wouldn't actually hit the intruder. It would hit the admin of the firewall itself :) people would continually be attacking the site to be hit by the banoffee pies.

Ho Hum, now I've got this wonderful image of a teenage cracker sitting at his computer, splattered in banffoee pie. Backing away we see several more banoffee pies in transit for the his house.....

Hmmmm, firewalls that respond by firing custard pies at the intruders. Something tells me that I need more sleep. Especially when I start thinking about what a BOFH would do. Adding nails, broken glass and the like would only be the beginning of the fun that could be had with such a system.

sigh I think I need a little bit more sleep and a little less documentation writing.

Posted on 27 Sep 1996