Evolution of the System Administrator

Amazement -

You are first amazed at how anyone could be so silly. (Obviously when the manual said 'copy' the disk, it meant to use the computer, not a copying machine!)

Pity -

This is a nice phase. You aren't shocked by them anymore. You just want to help. "You opened up the little door on the disk and used a ball- point pen to write 'Master Thesis' on the shiny black stuff? No I don't think I can do anything now. Did you have a backup? [Yeah, right!]"

Apathy -

Helping has gotten boring, since you've been asked the same question three thousand times. "I've put 50 Inits on my Macintosh, many of which do the same thing, and now it doesn't boot!" or "I couldn't figure out how to remove the floppy disk, so I used a screwdriver and pried it out. That was ok, but now when I put the disk back in it makes this crunching noise that wasn't there before." So now you become a little snippy.

Hatred -

Now they have become truly annoying. Why can't they understand you getting angry when they say things like "My machine is broken, fix it." When all you have to do is change the brightness on the monitor, at which point they say, "I was wondering what that dial did, when I fiddled with it my machine broke." Another classic is, "Look I'm 300 miles away on my first vacation in ten years, could you tell me a little MORE about the problem?" and they say, "I turn on the machine... And it's broke." or "I did everything you told me to. I came in, sat down, typed in my name and nothing happened. Did you push the big power switch on the front? Ummmm... No."

Loathing -

This is an insanely advanced state. Hopefully by the time you get here you can advance into management, or get your own island in the Bahamas. This brings us to the final stage.

Fear -

Where you see that all of these people who have no understanding of any of the workings of machines are making decisions about them. Saying crazy things like, "Connecting the astromy and gymnastics databases will create a strong user base and will increase technology exchange, information availability, productivity, re-use and access." Or the classic, "Let's talk about getting a partial T1, the campus is a little tied up going through my 1200 baud modem on my desk." to which the committee says, "Oh no, we'll wait on the VaporNet 3000, which enhances productivity by putting crystals on the Ethernet card that go direct to your Chakras! Now, who made that suggestion about re-using those TRS-80's?"