System Administrator Appreciation Day

System Administrator Appreciation Day, also known as Sysadmin Day or SAAD (as in Happy SAAD!), falls on the last Friday in July. It exists solely to show appreciation to sysadmins and people with other similar occupations.

The first official Sysadmin Day was celebrated on July 28th 2000. Typical observances of this holiday are to present gifts to your Sysadmin. These gifts include chocolate, beer, wine, electronic toys, video games, and cake & ice cream.

Ted Kekatos has created System Administrator Appreciation Day, a time to honor the people whom neither rain, nor snow, nor bizarre illegal operation errors can keep from fixing your machine. Kekatos, a system administrator in Chicago, was inspired to create the special day by a Hewlett-Packard ad he saw in a magazine. In the ad, a system administrator is presented with flowers and fruit-baskets from employees as thanks for installing new (HP) printers. Ironically for a website celebrating the people who keep the servers running, during the first several years, the website is not reachable on the day in question, since it invariably gets Slashdot effect.

System Administrator Appreciation Day is now recognized as an international holiday. Many companies have Cake & Ice Cream parties for their entire IT staff.

This year (2005), Sysadmin Day was on July 29th. The next occurrence is Friday, July 28th, 2006.

=Lyrics to the System Administrator Day song=

(Original music and lyrics by [http://www.deadtroll.com/sysadmin/ Wes Borg])

There s a guy who works in another room, or on another floor. He s the one you call, when your document ain t there no more. He s probably a boy, but he might be a girl, or something in between. He s the only one in the office who knows what PC Load Letter means.

He s your system administrator, he s probably into comic books. And you tremble in fear when you have to hear one of his What a dummy! looks. Got a virus Lost your password Or you just can t print In an hour he ll show up and crouch and squint. Fight to save your files, he might be there all day, But sometimes he just presses Case sensitivity and walks away.

(Spoken) But HEY! Suddenly my password works! Wow! Hooray!

Hooray, hooray, oh happy day! I m gonna buy my guy a gift to say: Having you around means I get to stay stupid! and uninformed! And I can keep opening dot e-x-e file attachments, And forgetting my mother s maiden name, cause you ll fix it all for me, Yay!

I ll give you a cake, I ll give you a hug, I ll buy the world s best System Administrator mug. Just help me out, system administrator. Please plug in my mouse, system administrator. I don t know which button is the mouse click button, system administrator.

Piss him off, and you ll be fired by tomorrow morn. Cause he s the guy who knows you ve been surfing porn. So, make sure you stay nice to your system administrator.

=External links=

*[http://www.sysadminday.com/ The official Sysadmin Day website] *[http://www.deadtroll.com/sysadmin/ The System Administrator Day Song (video and mp3)]