Bringing awareness to AITO Syndrome.

If you work in IT I can guarantee you have run into AITO Syndrome, as it seems to effect an alarming number of people. AITO (Assumed IT Omnipotence Syndrome) is a very serious (and in some extreme cases life threatening) affliction which causes those afflicted with it to assume that anyone that works in IT knows everything about every computer related thing ever made, often including anything with a power cord.

Together, I believe we can stop AITO Syndrome, there are many warning signs, including:

• Conversations starting with “Do you know that one program that does…. I was wondering how I can change setting XYZ to make it do ABC better, you know, like on that one movie.”
• Calls from employees that go something like “Hey I installed program XYZ, how do I configure it?”
• Being asked to load up “that program we got a while back to do XYZ, on the new servers” which turns out to be stored on some 5″ floppy disks in the company fire safe.
• Conversations that start out with or contain any of the following phrases occur regularly, and these terms are used incorrectly: hackers, virus, Trojan, the Internet is down, email is broken, the network is down, crack (as in “can’t you just crack this password”, or “well I forgot the license code, so just crack it”)
• Or maybe (and this one is tricky, because you will have to hear it more than once to realize that it is an indicator of AITO Syndrome) “So I have this music DVD, and I want to transfer just the audio to my iPod because…”

If you know someone who suffers from AITO (or are a victim of this terrible affliction yourself), please have them read this carefully:

I am not God. I cannot make things happen that are physically impossible. I am not “The One”, I do not see the world in Matrix code. I cannot load a program written in 1985 on to a server with an OS made in 2000-anything, as the hardware interface for that program likely does not exist anymore.

Yes I can do some things with technology that may to the uninitiated appear to be magic, but they are not in fact magic. Please do not mistake this for Omnipotence. I have worked very hard to attain the technology skills I have, but I cannot know everything.

I do not use every kind of computer known to man (nor have I), so the chances of me being able to pull an answer to your obscure Apple IIe question off the top of my head are slim to none. I cannot possibly have used (or in most cases have even heard of) all of the available software packages that were released this month, let alone 5 years ago.

The software packages I do know enough about to answer those kinds of questions intelligently are all packages that relate to doing my job, so you will most likely have absolutely no use for them, let alone have heard of them.

My ability to understand computers, and servers, and the software that runs on them is the direct result of many years of hard work and diligent study on my part, which I cannot impart to you in a 5 minute conversation.

The truth of it is that “computers” and everything relating to them is a job for me. When I get home at night if I sit down in front of a computer, I am either working (IT professionals work quite a lot more hours than you would think, or is healthy quite frankly), or I may send a couple people email, or even play a game for a bit.

Most likely though (assuming I do not have work that must be done), I do not even want to look at a computer, as my brain is totally fried from all the mental gymnastics I’ve had to do at work all day (while sitting at a computer all day might seem like a kick back job, I can assure you that it is incredibly tough, and highly stressful).

AITO Syndrome is not incurable! If you keep the above in mind, the symptoms will begin to disappear, and you may eventually even be symptom free! Please, do you part to end the needless suffering caused by AITO Syndrome. If for nothing else, do it for the children.

Treatment options for AITO syndrome include:

• Frequent and hearty use of Google.com (this is considered by many IT professionals the best course of treatment).
• Possible use of books or help files for the program or OS you have questions about (usually abbreviated as “RTFM” when prescribed by an IT professional).
• Understanding that software has a usable life of approximately 1-2 years before it must be upgraded to a current version.
• Hardware has a useful life of between 3 and 5 years before it must be replaced.
• Operating Systems should be upgraded to the latest version at every hardware replacement, or at the very least when the OS manufacturer stops providing free support for them.

If these methods are not effective, more aggressive treatment options include:

• Revocation of network access.
• Filtering of Internet access.
• Liberal application of a L.A.R.T. by a qualified IT Professional.
• Migration from a standard desktop OS to DOS.
• Questions being answered with a link to http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com/
• Random stapling of written instructions to various parts of your anatomy by an IT professional.

Together we can beat this horrible affliction, do your part today!

I, SysAdmin

(Evil SysAdmin laugh) Silly Users! You cannot escape my domain! I have been getting a whole lot of questions regarding… “Can I do this at work” or “Will I get caught if I am downloading…” and my all time favorite “If I look at a little pr0n will I get caught?”

Here’s a clue; most of the time, if we have the capabilities of remote monitoring, we’re not using them. Unless you do something to draw the Evil Eye of a SysAdmin, we just don’t care, we’ve got other things to worry about.

Now that being said, if you DO happen to do something to draw our attention, you’re dead in the water if you’re doing something wrong.

Here is a list of things that most SysAdmins don’t really care about:

• Light Porn surfing (if it’s playboy type stuff) up to say 10-15 minutes a day, we just don’t care. We might be a bit entertained by your old woman or tranny fetish, but chances are, nothing to really worry about. Unless you owe us money. Just be aware, we know what you’re doing.

• Reading news sites, or shopping online. Again, we just don’t care. Most of our days are spent in one of two modes; putting out fires, or preventing fires.

• Circumventing the proxy to go watch that really funny YouTube video your brother sent you in your corporate email. If you’re smart enough to do it, more power to you. If you didn’t do it exactly right, the Evil Eye is turning your way right now. If it’s just a funny YouTube video, no big deal. If you’re logging into hardcore pr0n sites to download videos, and eating all the T1 bandwith, your fapping is about to be seriously interrupted. It might even be something like total computer failure, which we will conveniently be able to pin to the pr0n you were downloading.

If you have thus far managed to evade the Evil Eye, good job! Here are some things that will draw down the Striking Hammer Of God:

• Illegal pr0n. If she could be your daughter, or our kid sister, you are toast. We don’t just get you fired, we call the FBI and let them arrest you. At work. If you (sick bastards) are unlucky enough to get a SysAdmin like me, you first get the living shit beat out of you, then you get to deal with the Feds.

• Illegal pr0n. If the “man” of the pr0n is named fido, we call the FBI and again, probably beat the crap out of you for good measure. We definitely make sure that EVERYONE in the company (and likely your spouse, and/or family) know what you were doing, and why the men in suits have come to take you away.

• Downloading illegal music. Not cool man. Not at work. Yeah we have a T1, but it’s not your personal playground. Expect to have the music mysteriously disappear from your machine overnight, and forget being able to do anything like that in the future, we just demoted you to the Guest account.

• Listening to streaming music. Ok, so yeah it’s not illegal. But you and your 10 brethren have just filled our T1, and effectively DoS’d the email server. If you want music, bring it from home on a portable hard drive, and don’t copy it to the machines. Just play it from the hard drive.

• Installing or running any port scanners, or downloading anything that might be considered a “hack” tool. Congratulations, you just pissed IT off, and will likely be locked out of the network shortly. I’ve got enough to do without wrangling your script kiddie ass too.

• Heavy pr0n surfing. Like 5-6 hours a day heavy. Dude, just stop. You are likely going to be visiting some websites that are, ummm, let’s just say less than legit, to get in that amount of pr0n every day. You are going to end up getting that machine infested with virii and spyware. You might even actually inadvertently compromise the corporate network. If that happens, do you really think that anyone is going to let that slide? Now I’ve actually had to explain to the boss why you need to be fired before your little problem destroys the network, and I don’t really care to discuss what you’ve been looking at (you mean there’s more than one person that looks at THAT?!?!?) with my boss.

Even if I’ve been cool enough not to filter out web content, the boss is going to want to know how you were able to view this stuff. Rather than blow it for everyone, I am going to do the right thing. I am going to lie my ass off. You must be a hacker, because you’ve been able to circumvent every filtering method I’ve set up, and I have logs to prove it (believe me, I have logs to prove ANYTHING).

The short answer is, if we’re watching you, there is no escape. Between hardware keyloggers, and specialty software that is designed to be undetectable (which is extremely hard to find even to buy), we will catch you.

If you are doing something that is in a grey area, take your SysAdmin out for lunch a couple times, or for a beer, and find out what the real policy is (the one that gets enforced, not the one in the manual). Hell if we like you, we’ll let you get away with a lot more than if you’re a dick to us in the hall.