sysadmin Memes

My Day In Two Parts: The DNS Saga

My Day In Two Parts: The DNS Saga
The three stages of every network troubleshooting session, beautifully captured as poetry against cherry blossoms: First, the denial: "It's not DNS" Then, the stubborn resistance: "There's no way it's DNS" Finally, the crushing realization: "It was DNS" DNS (Domain Name System) is the internet's phonebook that translates human-friendly domain names into IP addresses. And somehow, despite being the first thing you're supposed to check, it's always the last thing you actually check. The haiku-like progression perfectly captures the emotional journey from confidence to despair that every network admin has experienced at 2AM while the production server is down.

Stop Doing Cloud Computing

Stop Doing Cloud Computing
The cloud revolution promised us scalability, high availability, and infrastructure as code. What we got instead was paying AWS $5000/month to run what could've been a $500 desktop PC under someone's desk. Remember when "scaling" meant buying another computer? Before we were sacrificing goats to the Kubernetes gods and writing 200-line YAML files just to deploy a simple app? Docker, Proxmox, Terraform - they've convinced us we need complex container orchestration when most companies barely have enough traffic to warm up a Raspberry Pi. Meanwhile, sysadmins who've been quietly maintaining reliable on-prem servers for decades are watching this circus with their arms crossed. The greatest trick the cloud ever pulled was convincing developers that managing your own hardware was too difficult... right before making them learn 47 new abstraction layers to do the same damn thing.

Click Ops Engineering

Click Ops Engineering
The fearless cloud engineer, who boldly proclaims "I fear no man"... until SSH enters the chat. That moment when your terminal connection drops mid-deployment and your heart skips three beats. Infrastructure as Code? Nah, we're running Infrastructure as Prayer hoping the connection stays alive. Nothing quite matches the primal terror of watching your SSH session hang while you're elbow-deep in production configs at 2PM on a Friday.

Sudo Install: When RAM Upgrades Get Physical

Sudo Install: When RAM Upgrades Get Physical
Ah, the classic Linux user's nightmare turned weapon. Someone took "sudo install" a bit too literally by turning RAM sticks into actual knives. When your sysadmin says they need to "forcefully upgrade your memory," you should probably run. This is what happens when tech support gets tired of explaining that "no, downloading more RAM isn't possible" and decides to take matters into their own hands. Physical memory installation has never been so terrifying.

BitLocker? What The F*** Is BitLocker?

BitLocker? What The F*** Is BitLocker?
That moment when you swap your NVMe drive into a new PC and Windows freaks out about BitLocker encryption you didn't even know was enabled. Suddenly your precious data is held hostage behind a recovery key you never saved because "it'll be fine" was your security strategy. Nothing like that sinking feeling when your 200GB of "homework" folders and side projects from the last five years are locked behind Microsoft's digital fortress of doom.

Severance Package: Chaos Edition

Severance Package: Chaos Edition
When your severance package includes five minutes of unsupervised access to the data center... Revenge is a dish best served with unplugged cables. The perfect digital equivalent of taking your stapler when you leave. "You can't fire me, but I can fire your uptime!" Somewhere, a DevOps team is having the worst day of their lives while an ex-employee is having the best one of theirs.

Kernel Panic At The MRI Disco

Kernel Panic At The MRI Disco
Doctor: "How does it look doc?" MRI Machine: "Hold on a sec" *proceeds to have a complete kernel meltdown* Nothing says "your scan results might be delayed" quite like a cascade of system failures. Reminds me of that time I deployed to production on a Friday and my phone wouldn't stop buzzing with alerts. The machine is basically saying "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas." At least the error messages are consistent - consistently failing at everything!

Please Don't Make Fun Of My Home Server

Please Don't Make Fun Of My Home Server
Nothing says "I've reached peak adulthood" quite like defending your janky home server setup from judgment. That little black box running your Plex media server, personal cloud, and three different abandoned side projects is basically your digital child now. The corporate IT folks might have their fancy racks and redundant cooling systems, but your repurposed desktop sitting on a doily with blinking lights is hosting your entire digital life on a residential internet connection with a dynamic IP address. And you'll defend it to your dying breath. Sure, it crashes every time there's a power flicker and your uptime is measured in "since the last thunderstorm," but it's yours , dammit!

Backup Capacity Expectations Vs Reality

Backup Capacity Expectations Vs Reality
When the CTO says "We've allocated sufficient backup storage" but your database grows faster than your budget. That tiny spare tire trying to support a monster truck of data is basically what happens when management thinks a 1TB drive will back up your 15TB production environment. Bonus points if they expect you to fit the logs too.

Packet Loss Has Different Consequences

Packet Loss Has Different Consequences
The difference between IT Engineers and drug dealers when "losing a few packets" is night and day. For network folks, it's just Tuesday - hit retry and move on with your life. For the pharmaceutical distribution specialists, it's 5-10 years without parole. TCP will happily retransmit your lost data; the DEA won't retransmit your freedom.

The Bell Curve Of DevOps Enlightenment

The Bell Curve Of DevOps Enlightenment
The bell curve of DevOps wisdom. On both extremes (with IQs of 55 and 145), you've got the enlightened ones who know the truth: just blame AWS and chill. Meanwhile, the average 100 IQ middle-managers are sweating bullets about "hosting in-house" like it's 2005 and they just discovered server racks. The true galaxy brains understand that when your cloud provider inevitably goes down, you can just post the AWS status page in Slack and take an early lunch.

Life After AWS Crashes

Life After AWS Crashes
When half the internet suddenly vanishes because AWS decided to take a nap, there's nothing left to do but rediscover the mythical "outdoors." The tweet says it all: "AWS is down, go touch grass." Suddenly DevOps engineers everywhere are forced to experience sunlight, fresh air, and the strange green stuff growing from the ground. The most terrifying part? Some of them might actually enjoy it. Nature: the ultimate fallback system when your cloud provider fails.