My job: System Administrator
by Tim Faircloth on Mar 28, 2007, 4:06 pm
I know I have one English buff out there that will either be delighted or horrified by this post.
I have a hang-up about the second word in my job title: “administrator”. The word itself (and its various forms) are quite confusing, and it’s annoying when someone says I’m the System Administer.
The word “administer” is a verb, not a noun. That’s just wrong. I’m a System Administrator.
I administer servers… or do I administrate them? “Administer” sounds more like something an anesthesiologist would do, and “administrate” sounds more like a managerial task. You administer a drug, but you administrate a department (or system).
I usually just say “I manage servers”, but if I gave up there this wouldn’t be a very interesting post, would it?
If you look up “administrate” in a dictionary (like Dictionary.com, which shows entries from several different dictionaries), however, almost any definition you’ll find says “to administer”. Does that mean you can administrate a drug, too? Something smells fishy.
So I looked at a thesaurus entry for both “administer” and “administrate”. Here’s where we find out what’s going on. Focus on the “Main Entry” lines on each of the pages previously linked. On “administer“‘s page, the “Main Entry” line for each article reads “administer”, while the “Main Entry” line for each article on the “administrate” page is something different — and not one of them is the word “administrate”.
What does this mean? Is “administrate” even a proper word? It’s in the dictionary, so someone must consider it to be a word. The thesaurus just didn’t quite do what we expected it to do. Instead of showing us the synonyms for the word, it showed us articles for each synonym of the word.
Study that thesaurus page for “administrate” for a bit, and I think you’ll find a better definition for the word. Perhaps its best synonym is “manage”.
I think it’s best to say that I administrate systems, because that word describes what I do and leaves no room for confusion. To say I administer systems would not be incorrect, but it also wouldn’t be completely correct either.
In short: I’m a System Administrator. I administrate systems.
Also, in my search for the truth, I found this blog post and made a comment. I wonder what he’ll say.
New Laptop
by Tim Faircloth on Mar 21, 2007, 4:36 pm
I had two laptops irreparably damaged during the tornado (one was in the spare bedroom, the other was under the attic hatch right outside the bathroom). I’ve decided to replace them both with one computer.
So I bought a MacBook Pro with a 17 inch display. I was so excited about it that when I placed the order I went ahead and spent the extra $15 for “expedited shipping”. Apparently it left Shanghai, China at about three o’clock pm (about ten and a half hours ago).
I’ve been daring myself to buy a mac for a long time — since they announced the first version of OS X. Now I’ll have one for my very own.
Any of you Mac fans out there have any uber-cool apps or widgets I should try out?
"Ninety to Nothing"
by Tim Faircloth on Mar 19, 2007, 4:22 pm
I just had an interesting conversation with my boss.
I’ve often heard people use the phrase “ninety to nothing” when they’re really busy, but it never made any sense to me. It seems to me like it would mean you were really busy and then suddenly had a break — you were going ninety, but now you’re going nothing.
We had a few ideas of what it could mean. Maybe it’s like a score (“We’re beating you ninety to nothing”), but that doesn’t make sense because it’s not used in a competitive context.
It’s also possible that it means “we’re going fast toward nothing”, but that doesn’t make sense because when you’re going ninety to nothing you’re usually striving toward a goal.
So we did a search on wikipedia and found nothing. A google search showed articles and such of people using the phrase, but they all used it to mean “striving toward a goal in a fast or hurried manner”.
Adding the word “definition” to our google search led us to the fact that it’s actually a form of the phrase “nineteen to the dozen”.
Adding the word “origin” to our google search led us to this page, which describes the origin of the phrase “nineteen to the dozen”.
It hearkens back to the days of tin and copper mining, when coal-powered pumps were employed to clear out water in the mines. At maximum efficiency, one of these pumps could clear out nineteen thousand gallons of water for every twelve bushels of coal consumed, which is much faster than a hand pump could work.
The phrase is also used to describe quick speaking. Someone speaking “nineteen to the dozen” is apparently talking so fast that he says nineteen words where the average person could only say twelve.
On another note, this is probably one of those times I should use a blockquote, but I haven’t stylized blockquotes yet. I’ll put that on my to-do list.
Website Troubles
by Tim Faircloth on Mar 13, 2007, 10:54 am
I apologize for the recent downtime. The system administrator was in Cancun and php extensions got hosed, so the site and rss feed were inaccessible for a few days.
I’m thinking about changing hosts. Right now I’m using (b.armory.com)[http://b.armory.com] for this site because it’s free. I think at some point (maybe after I get a banner and fine-tune a few things with the code) I’ll move it over to a more reliable server. I may even host it myself if I can ever get the phone line back at my house.
Downtime definitely hurts productivity. Over the past few days there were several articles I read that I wanted to expand upon here, but I was unable to make a post — that is, not unless I wanted to try to use some long-ass sql statement from the command line (phpMyAdmin wasn’t working either).
Oh well. It’s not like I’m popular just yet.
Didn't Make it to Oz
by Tim Faircloth on Mar 5, 2007, 7:26 pm
So, as many of you have seen and heard (and even posted on your blogs), Americus was hit by a tornado last Thursday night.
As some of you probably don’t know, a tree knocked a big ass hole in my roof. I’ve also got some water damage on the wall in my spare bedroom (and on the carpeting under the attic hatch), some shattered storm windows, and a wall separated at the corner of my main bedroom. The tree has since been removed from my house, the hole (temporarily) patched, and the roof covered with plastic.
I’ve also got four trees down on my property.
I’m currently staying with a friend as I search for contractors and tree removal specialists and deal with my insurance company. I may even get to stay in a hotel a few days once I hear something more solid from them. So far I’ve gotten a claim number and been assigned a case worker. I left a message for him, but that was only ten minutes ago.
For those of you who are concerned, I am ok, and my Tiny Tabby Terror (Tom-Tom) is just fine, though she was a bit shaken up when she crawled out of my neighbor’s attic (who has a hole in his roof as well — there used to be a lot of trees in my neighborhood).