/Charlie's part (the only big part so far, hint hint, is unifinished/
Who are admins, sysadmins, and geeks? Why do you have to worry about them? How are they different from the leading brand of human?
Technically, 'system administrator' is the title of someone who keeps computers happy. People call them that, or admins, or sysadmins, or geeks, or thechies, or whatever, and the thing they have in common is that -- uh -- well -- um.
Okay, from here on, I speak for myself. This is my perception of the Admin Nature in myself. A hundred or a thousand years ago, a thousand or ten thousand miles from here, an eighteen-year-old male from a middle-class family might have been:
a monk (Buddhist or Trappist), sworn to relinquish perception of the world to become part of it;
a squire, vowed to serve one knight without thought of dishonor;
a student of the Torah, devoted to understanding God's Word;
a shaman's pupil, learning everything my culture knew about every herb, animal, and spirit;
a law student, working long though the night and up into the day through abstruse textbooks on how to settle disputes;
a blacksmith's apprentice, with the single goal of one day being the best metalworker I could be;
a lover, set on one woman and one woman only, keeping myself pure and worthy of her hand;
a soldier, volunteered to fight and die defending my family, town, and country against those who would kill them;
a painter, with no hope but the one hope: to understand light;
a jester and fool, putting all my energy into the very serious pursuit of humour;
a medical student, wanting nothing but to heal the ill;
a philosophy undergrad, asking the biggest questions I could and learning to go beyond "I can't think about that";
a wandering carpenter, with only a box of tools, my own good hands, and word-of-mouth to keep me fed.
None of these looked just right here and now, so I did one of the few things my culture likes people like me to do: play with computers. I'm not here because it was the only place to go -- I can work steel, write poetry, babysit, and split and haul wood -- or because the money is here -- it's not where I am, anyway -- or because it just kind of happened to me -- I chose to do this. I'm here because, um, of all the things I have the chance to do right now, hanging around on IRC, quoting /Futurama/, writing code, and having late-night conversations is the best. I'm a geek proudly and voluntarily. What makes me want to be one?
Well, like my elders and betters (to whom you should extend some WellDeservedRecognition), I have the Sysadmin Nature. It's a grotesquely-inflated, debilitating, contageous disorder of the character, with these symptoms:
B. A few extrememly sensitive spots in the ego, where the most casual comment will send me into a panic.
Third. A tremendous supply of patience, matched only by my supply of condescension (look it up). I'm not happy until I can be obscurely insulting or insultingly obscure.
iv. A firm respect for other people's boundaries.
Five. An almost fanatical devotion the the Pope.
My ego -- I call him Maurice -- demands that I be a nice fellow, and I want to keep him happy, so I try. This means doing what people ask me to do, and doing everything as well as I can. I'm a perfectionist, I suppose, but a practical one, with a sense of proportion. If something more important comes up, I'll leave something not yet perfect, but I won't like to. I feel like there are complex patterns in my Universe -- I don't know whether they're decaying from order or arising from chaos or both or neither, but I feel thim -- and I try to float along on them. I think people are often surprised by my combination of laziness and energy: I see this as just doing what seems right. It tends to work out, really: a certain balance of trust in intuition and faith in reason. If killing someone seemed just right, I'd do it.
But my sense of what's right is pretty conservative. Maurice's sensitive spots are mostly about doing a good job and living up to people's expectations. I want to be able to make everything work out for people, and to explain it to them. I'm ashamed when people say "that makes no sense!", "I don't have the time to screw around with a website", and "
I had some good models here. Once when my dad was taking the family home from music lessons across a five-mile channel in a six-mile-per-hour, seventeen-foot diesel-powered wooden boat, he adjusted his course for no apparent reason. I was used to this, because he spent all day every day on the water, and what looked like some far off-ripples to most people was a clue to the currents and a way to shave three minutes off the crossing time to him. Sixteen hours a day, sun, rain, wind, snow, ice, whatever: if he wasn't endangering anyone's life, he would cross. On this day, though, there was an unexpectedly stong chop, and after five minutes heading several degrees off course, I asked him what he was aiming for. He shugged and pointed at what looked like some driftwood in the distance, visible every few seconds through the waves. Fifteen minutes later, we came up alongside four kayackers, overboard and clinging to their kayaks a mile from land. Dad had just happened to be looking out for something like this. They were ten minutes from death -- life-vests didn't matter, because the water at that time of year kills by hypothermia. No other boat was in sight, and they were drifting further and further from land. We hoisted them on board, stripped 'em down, wrapped 'em in wool, and dropped them off on the island where they'd left their stuff. Dad wouldn't take money, or give our address: he just said "well, I hope I see you again out here in the someday in the summer when it's a bit calmer -- have a nice life". That was all for him.
He has flaws, he's no superhoero -- he's my dad -- but this was part of the job. He spent months and months hauling groceries over water at tiny margins, keeping on-time and charging honest prices, one day saved four lives, and the next day got up at six to haul groceries over water. That's his job. I try for this. I think of his dedication to an seemingly gray and flat job, and that no one had realized until then that he was always scanning to horizon for drowning people. I'd like to be able to do that: to know the medium I work in though 'boring repetition', to find new joy every day in the same work, and to 'happen to be there' when someone needs help.
For example, take your e-mail. I'm afraid I'm going to scare you with this exapmle, but you do deserve to know. I can read your nbtsc.org mail -- inbox and outbox -- any time I want. Right now, I might be printing out your love letters -- or deleting them, or forging them from your address. I can also add to, delete from, and change your nbtsc.org website -- I could make your main page say "I am a great big wanker" in Christmas colours, and there wouldn't be a thing you could do about it. I could even cover my traces so the other geeks probably wouldn't notice I'd done it, and you'd have no good way to prove it was you who wrote e-mail or anything. I could /be/ you in e-mail, on the web, and on IRC. So could several other people you talk to every day.
But I don't. In the same way, I don't kill my friends and make it look like suicide so I can take their CD collection. I could probably get away with it, but it really wouldn't be worth it for them, for me, or for Maurice. I don't touch your data without your informed consent, and I'm happy this way, because I'm neurotic and paranoid about your privacy. How far does this go?
I can't see your mail without that action being recorded in a way that every geek can see. If I were to try to delete this, that deletion would be visible.
No matter what I do, I can't steal your password itself -- no one can, because it's encrypted. I could /change/ it, but then you'd know something was wrong.
I'd never read any of your non-public files ever. At all. Not just to see what kinds of things you were keeping around, not just to make sure things were working for you. I never have, and can't imagine doing so. It would be like reading your private diary, only worse -- it would be like looking at your private diary if you were trusting me to take care of it.
This isn't just a feeling of "well, I guess I'd better be responsible", it's the kind of dedication that acts in monks and squires. I'll go through a hell of a lot for your data -- weird contoritions to keep from accidentally seeing it, pathologically never letting anyone else get a chance to do anything that might lead them to an opportunity to theoretically be able to think realistically about ever seeing it -- whatever. I'd go through a good deal of physical danger for it, and wouldn't feel like I was doing a special favor.
-- Charlie
**I'm not sure who wrote that but I have one comment on the forging emails bit. With a little skill and time ANYONE can forge an email from ANY address. the other end could trace it back if they tried hard enough but not easily. especially if they covered there tracks a little bit. I personaly have had fun fucking arround with using my computer as a mail server. sending out a few bogus emails(to friends with my name signed) from addresses such as "bill-gates@isuck.com". it's not very hard. --Rael who sends anything he really wants private 1024 bit encrypted(which is... nothing... but I could :p)
***Fair enough. I'll give the point when I get mail from billgates@microsoft.com. -- Charlie
Sysadmins are humans too. Not only can I work steel et cetera, I can carry on a conversation about the weather, fish, comets, love, popular music, you, and the perception of science in art. I have a grandmother and a little sister and am I an exception? Nope. I'm just me, and wait till you hear about the non-computer skills other geeks have.
The problem with passing someone off as a geek is that you pass off both the geek part of their personality /and/ everything else, as though they can't be anything but a geek. It's as if I were to think that if someone was gay, then they could have no other personality -- that they spent all day "being gay", and didn't have any time left over for anything else. And at the same time, by saying "Oh, that person's gay", I wouldn't be looking at what it was /like/ for them to be gay. I would completely write them off by sticking a box over their head and only talking to People Like Me. Boxes = bad, right? Right?
Recognize the Admin Nature -- respect it and be thankful for it.. At the same time, look beyond it to the whole people who happen to have it.
(Also think about ComputerSkills, TermsOfService, NiftyAdditions, WellDeservedRecognition, and TheMeaningOfLife. Platypus says: -make a page for each part of your own personalty!-)
-- Charlie
*Sir Charlie, if I were to genuflect to you right now, what percentage of you would be embarrassed, and what percentage flattered? Please treat us all to more unfinished essays some time soon, because they're terrific. Very terrific indeed. --Squire Mitchell
**34%, 28%. I'm kinda into the Jewish/Quaker thinking on genuflection, tho'. What would really make me feel good is if you were to think about these issues. Wait, you do. I feel good.
see also: BenevolentDictatorship
Edit This Page Show Changes Add Archive Tag Revisions Random Page List of Pages Recent Changes Main Page Log in