Why yes, I do
Of course I remember the incident that you're referring to. However you've misremembered some particulars.
First of all, what additional skills would have prevented the problem? Drives fail. Until they fail, you don't know that they will. A drive failed and I noticed. A certain experienced sysadmin talked to me about it and said that he'd had similar disks of a similar vintage fail recently.
Secondly I lost no data. Did I go through stress? Yes. Would that have been less if I was an experienced sysadmin? Of course. Could even an experienced sysadmin have made the configuration mistake resulting in only one drive being bootable? Apparently one did. But the end result is hardly an unmitigated disaster.
Thirdly it is easy to say that it would be good for me to have skills that I do not have. It is also somewhat impractical for me to aquire them. I find that technical skills need practice to perfect. I'm never going to become a decent sysadmin unless I get practice, preferably practice on multiple machines with the opportunity to try different things out. In fact I'm not going to get anywhere mediocre without that. (As long as I only have machines that I care about, I'm never going to try stuff that might be risky, and I won't gain critical skills...) Where do you suggest that I get that practice? At work? We have people hired for that job, and my volunteering would not be a good use of anyone's time. At home? I don't have room for more machines, nor do I have much interest, my time is already occupied and I have no desire to invest money on practice equipment. Unless all of those change, I'm not about to become a sysadmin.
Oh, I'm not saying that I won't become somewhat better than I am - that isn't hard - but I'm not about to become significantly better.
Fourth, and related to the last point, even if I aquired those skills, they would tend to rust fairly quickly. I remember what happened when I installed an Apple ][ emulator. I couldn't remember how to use it. My fingers had forgotten the commands. Well the same is true of system administration, if you don't use it you lose it. Furthermore computers are constantly changing, you need to invest some energy on an ongoing basis to keep up to date with new technologies and improvements in old ones.
Fifth there is the question of how much I would gain by aquiring sysadmin skills. What it takes is fairly clear, it takes a fair amount of reading and tinkering, then constant work keeping up with what is changing in the computer world. What I gain is the ability to better handle the occasional disaster. So by spending a lot of time constantly doing what I'm not currently good at I'll gain the ability to do what I'm not currently good at when I notice that I need it. Which is every year or three. And even then I'm fully aware that I could lose everything that I have on my computer and not miss it that much. Thus putting the effort out doesn't really seem worth it.
Now if I really needed to be a sysadmin, I would be one. Also if I found tinkering to be fun, I would be one as well. But I don't find tinkering with my machine (or machines in general) to be fun. Nobody really depends on my having any skill in doing so. And so I don't see the point in my gaining that skillset.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
Edited by
ben_tilly
March 26, 2005, 05:15:41 PM EST
