The life of a system administrator is something like that of those people at information counters in shopping centres. You seldom have to do anything other than answer stupid questions and entertain their even stupider requests.
Q: Eh, where's the toilet ar?
A: You got two eyes right? See the sign?
And when there is actually work to do, its usually quite serious, like when somebody goes missing, or in my case, when someone kicks the server over and effectively disables the WHOLE network.
You think that's nothing? Not when you're supporting like 60 computers on exercise and suddenly 60 angry and sleep deprived men want to know at once why their work has disappeared. Its like a scene from Night of the Living Dead, but with bad breath.
Like I said the requests are usually stupid. I was holidaying in dreamland when a warrant officer suddenly walked up from behind me and tapped my shoulder. As it is after all the seventh lunar month, I wasn't exactly composed. But I tried my best to look the attentive soldier as he related his request. Quite futile since he already saw me sleeping and my forehead had a red bump from sleeping too long on it.
"Eh my laptop hang leh. How ah?"
Oh, you take the laptop, smash it against the wall and get a new one. Alternatively you could try waiting for it to recover. It might actually decide that hanging is pretty boring and come back into action.
Of course I couldn't tell him that. But somehow there's no way to tell him that he only needs to push a button without making him sound dumb. I think he's pretty used to it anyway being a warrant officer but still its not very nice. He's after all an old man and I've been taught to respect old men. If only for their age.
But that wasn't the stupidest request. The stupidest one came from of all people, a commissioned officer.
"Hey, I can't see any email from other people. Is there something wrong with my mailbox?"
We thought it sounded serious, so we went down to check. Guess what the problem was?
No one had sent him any email. Of course he hadn't received any email and hence, he couldn't see anything. D'oh!
Stupidity should be outlawed.