It is once again, SysAdmin Day. When I remember (or when the day shows up on my social media), I like to celebrate this day.
There are many reasons sysadmins are amazing. They keep the internet running. They keep your local network running. Some will even help you fix your computer! Often they do this without much thanks, and often their customers are not the nicest of people. So go hug your nearest SysAdmin, Site Reliability Engineer, Security Engineer, DevOps Friend, IT Professional, Tech HelpDesk worker or relative who you call to fix your wifi.
My current team of server monkeys:
But outside of that, I wanted to thank the sysadmins who helped me get into computers. Long ago, my mom visited O'Reilly Media's offices looking for a job, and instead found a flyer for NBLUG. It took me a while, but I finally got the courage to email the group, and then eventually, attend a meeting (I refuse to find the email where I ask if there is an age limit to attend... the email that @docmollo will forever make fun of me for).
NBLUG taught me so much, and introduced me to a lot of wonderful and amazing people such as @docmollo, @AugieSchwer, @kylerankin (whose website http://greenfly.org/ was like the coolest thing I had ever seen when I was 16), @dankinon, @ioerror and @freiheit. There were many others as well, because through these folks I was introduced to IRC, and I've never been the same since.
Many of these people that I met through NBLUG I haven't kept in touch with. Some I only saw give a few talks, others I've chatted with here and there, and others have become life long friends. But without the encouragement of people there, I would never have ended up where I am today. @docmollo especially, but also everyone in Sonoma county who I talked to thanks to NBLUG. Everyone really encouraged me to get into computers and try new things. I broke many things (that moment when you accidentally format your entire hard drive), and am still learning every day, but without sysadmins and Linux nerds, I would be lost.
So thanks! Have a great day. I'm gonna go shed a tear and raise a glass to sysadmins everywhere.
/Nat