Category Archives: Systems Administration

Sysadmin is a thankless job

      4 Comments on Sysadmin is a thankless job

I recently noted (and replied to) a post in /r/sysadmin regarding the fact that someone received (Holy Didn’tExpectThat Batman!) some thanks for a job well done. It’s something I’ve noticed in the jobs I’ve been in and the bosses I’ve had. Systems administrators generally don’t get thanks. They don’t get the same level of praise as the front line, who… Read more »

Anger and frustration at work – my experience and learnings

There are a great number of things that irritate me at work and while I do spend a fair bit of time ranting on Twitter, there are some things that do require more than the average 140 characters. I have a hard time controlling my anger and frustration, something that I am working on trying to fix (and I’ll address… Read more »

Advanced Audit Policy – which GPO corresponds with which Event ID

I spent a good part of a day a few weeks ago searching around looking for a simple spreadsheet or table that lists the Advanced Audit GPO’s and what Event ID’s they correspond to. I couldn’t find one. Went through 4 pages of Google results, went through multiple TechNet articles. Could not find something that simply stated “These event ID’s… Read more »

Impostor Phenomenon/Syndrome – also known as “I thought it was only me who felt like that!”

Attended a talk last year, held by Geek Girl Dinners, here in Brisbane. After investigating, the topic was something that I really wanted to hear about and it. The title of the dinner was “Impostor Phenomenon”. I’d heard of this term before, but after seeing the post advertising the dinner, I went off and did a bit of research of… Read more »

Letting go by learning how to delegate. It’s harder than it looks!

So I recently had a situation where I was required to delegate. Woah, was this harder than expected. The job in question was something I’d been working on for a while – it hadn’t been able to receive my full attention as it hadn’t yet had the full thrust of any management “This is important” pushed onto me. So it… Read more »

Quiet times – things to do when you’ve “got time”

One of the things that all sysadmins *LOVE* to be able to say is “It’s so quiet, I’m bored, there’s nothing to do”. In my organisation, the ‘Q’ word and the ‘B’ word are never to be mentioned. They will bring down the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing (kudos to those who get that quote, by the… Read more »

How did I get where I am in IT?

UPDATED – May 2019 Spurred on by reading a similar blog post on Adam Fowlers blog (go have a read: How did you get into I.T.?) I decided to do a post of my own about how I ended up where I am today. I’m relatively lucky in that I wanted to know from a fairly early age what I… Read more »

An update to ‘Admitting your mistakes…and quickly’

(This is an update to a post I made about admitting your mistakes, which you can read here!) As some of you who read this may be aware, I recently posted on Twitter about an exceptionally bad day I had at work. I had a MAJOR screw up. This isn’t the kind of screw up you can brush under the… Read more »

Tech.Ed 2013 – Day 4, Friday 6th September

Last day! We’re nearly there! Also, have moved by ‘Shout Outs’ & ‘Tips’n’Tricks’ to different posts, just so this isn’t overloaded! Friday, 6th Sept At this point in time, I was extremely surprised I was able to keep going. 7am rolls around – snooze. 7:30am rolls around – snooze. 8am rolls around…I figure 6 hours sleep should be enough, so… Read more »

Tech.Ed 2013 – Day 3, Thursday 5th September

And we’re onto Day 3 – I’m surprised I’m still conscious! Thursday, 5th Sept: I tried so hard to be up in time for the first session, I really did. Sadly, the sinus infection I’d been battling (as well as the alcohol that I’d had the night before) decided that an early morning was not for me. So I finally… Read more »