Life of a Sysadmin 09 2008

Sysadmins Law 9, or Backups must be automated

We have a reasonable system to perform backups of laptops that are regularly on our local network. For laptops that live most of their life connected to the office over the internet and through a VPN connection it is much harder. Instead of an automated backup, the user must initiate the backup themselves. Automated messages are sent out when it has been a week without backups. And I talk to them on the phone a few days after that if a backup hasn't been done.

He came into my office complaining that his laptop blue-screened on boot, and it had been crashing regularly for the few days before. Booting off other media quickly showed the disk was failing in a pretty spectacular way. When I inform the user of this, he says, "I guess I should have backed up like you told me to, eh?" Yeah, I guess so.

Which brings me to sysadmin law 9

Backups that are not automated are not done.

Adobe Licensing website, or a total inappropriate use of a PDF

While perusing the Adobe license management website (the place volume license users track license serial numbers), I come across a link to contact support. The link was to this pdf

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that Adobe would use a PDF in place of a simple html page.

Drug Running, or an illegal business opportunity

Each week a man in a uniform shows up in our lobby with a locked box. He calls my office, and I bring a locked box out to him and we trade. I realized while I was performing this action this afternoon that it's almost a perfect setup for a drug swap.

I really should stop considering such things at work.