World SysAdmin Day - 27'th July 2007(Today)

System Administrator Appreciation Day, also known as Sysadmin Day or SAAD, was created by Ted Kekatos, a system administrator in Chicago. Kekatos was inspired to create the special day by a Hewlett-Packard magazine advertisement in which a system administrator is presented with flowers and fruit-baskets by grateful co-workers as thanks for installing new printers. The holiday exists to show appreciation for the work of sysadmins and other IT workers. It is celebrated on the last Friday in July. The first System Administrator Appreciation Day was celebrated on July 28, 2000.

A sysadmin unpacks the server for us from its box, installs an operating system, patches it for security, makes sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitors it for stability, sets up the software, and keeps backups in case anything went wrong. All to save the work we have done

Also, sysadmin installs the routers, puts the cables, configures the networks, sets up the firewalls, and watches and guides the traffic for each hop of the network that runs over copper, fiber optic glass, and even the air itself to bring the Internet to your computer.

Not to forget, a sysadmin makes sure your network connection is safe, secure, open, and working. A sysadmin makes sure your computer is working in a healthy way on a healthy network. A sysadmin takes backups to guard against disaster both human and otherwise, holds the gates against security threats and crackers, and keeps the printers going no matter how many copies of the tax code someone from Accounting prints out.

A sysadmin worries about spam, viruses, spyware, but also power outages, fires and floods.
When the email server goes down at 2 AM on a Sunday, your sysadmin is paged, wakes up, and goes to work.

A sysadmin is a professional, who plans, worries, hacks, fixes, pushes, advocates, protects and creates good computer networks, to get you your data, to help you do work -- to bring the potential of computing ever closer to reality.

So if you can read this, thank your sysadmin -- and know he or she is only one of dozens or possibly hundreds whose work brings you the email from your aunt on the other side of the world, the instant message from your friend onsite, the free phone call from your brother in Australia, and this webpage.