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“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” – God; Futurama

By on 11/1/2011 in Geek Speak

“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” – God; Futurama episode ‘Godfellas’

I saw this in someone’s signature on a tech mailing list I belong to today and it immediately reminded me of some of the conversations I have had with fellow sysadmins about our jobs. When we do our job well, nobody knows we’re here at all. It’s only when things go boom that people remember we’re around. We said this so often in my former office that perhaps in the back of our mind we were realizing we were doing things ‘too well’. As it turned out grant cuts came around and they decided to merge all our responsibilities into the central IT department, quite possibly because they didn’t realize what exactly we did since we had successfully kept ourselves invisible.

I care too much about the people I worked with for 11+ years to wish them ill will, but the lesser me wants them to regret this decision.

But oh well.. moving forward and back to the subject at hand. When googling this quote I found I’m not the only sysadmin to notice this quote;

http://lonesysadmin.net/2005/08/17/when-you-do-things-right-people-wont-be-sure-youve-done-anything-at-all/

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The last person left with a job

By on 6/2/2011 in Jokes

I always loved this comic. I don’t know the artist’s name, anyone recognize them?

 

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Mixed Feelings

By on 5/24/2011 in Random Babblings

Dear friends who keep telling me ‘Congratulations‘, I do appreciate it but please realize that isn’t what I ‘need’ right now. To be honest with you, I’m more in the mood where I’d rather hear ‘Sorry you’re leaving‘ or even just ‘I know this is a hard time for you and just wanted to let you know that I’m wishing you well‘.

While I am excited about my new job, our new life in a new community etc,  right now it’s hard to see past the gloom and doom of leaving 13.5+ years of friends and community, spending way too much fixing up our house just to sell it, finding a rental home in a place we don’t know that will take 4 cats, 2 dogs and 2 kids that’s big enough for our stuff (and that’s near a good school district). Oy, even just writing that all out is depressing and scary.

We’re trying not to stress on the ‘OMG how can we afford this? What if our house doesn’t sell quickly? What if … ‘ angle of things and just hope that it’s a ‘Jump and the net will appear’ kind of moment. Net or not, we’ve already jumped (or perhaps a better metaphor here would be we were pushed) so… here’s hoping for a net, or at least a soft crash landing.

So when you bump into me and I’m not immediately perky and excited about chatting about where we’re moving to and the new job, I apologize, I know you mean well and that it’s easier to talk about ‘good stuff’ like new jobs & bright futures than it is to talk about the sad and the scary.

Sorry if I seem ‘glass half empty’ about things right now. I have been doing my best to push myself 180 degrees and smile and say thanks and talk about what I’m excited about, but I’m way too open about my feelings with friends to do that for too long. That’s just where my heart is these days so thus, certainly with friends, I don’t feel the need to put on a happy mask and not let you know what I’m really feeling.

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