Do SAP system administrators originate from an Alien civilization?
Introduction
Honestly, I think so but there is no hard evidence just yet. In fact the whole human race could be originating from Alien civilization. There are a lot of facts and small pieces of the puzzle and hopefully one day the puzzle is put together and humanity will know how it all got started. Whatever our origin is we are here now and we are evolving, learning and getting ready for some amazing years where we will see science come up with such breath taking technologic breakthroughs it will be hard to imagine in fifty years how we lived today.
What the … Am I blogging about?
I guess some of you are already wondering if I had magic mushrooms for breakfast by now but I can assure you I did not. I stumbled upon a video on youtube featuring Erich Von Daniken. I really love it when a video or a blog makes me think and that is exactly what the video did. After watching the video I went to look for more content on whether or not aliens ever where in fact on earth or even if we originate from alien civilization. I found a documentary from history channel and it is in fact very interesting.
In one of my previous blogs “Dumb Poetry of a wise SOAL..!!!” – copy found in http://bit.ly/fUVUMj you can find hints that how dumb I was. How does any of this relate to basis administrators? I invite you to read on and find out the answers.
We are who we are
System administrators are often stereotyped as being geeky and asocial. A stereotyping I dislike a lot but sometimes I cannot get around the fact that some of my beloved out of work activities seem to fall in that category. Although the gaming industry is much larger than the movie industry these days gamers are also stereotyped as being geeky. So I already have my profession that points in the direction of being geeky and then I have the fact that I love playing games. Wait is that a bad thing really? Geeky is hot nowadays, the huge geeky looking glasses are worn by some hipsters and geeks seem to be attractive somehow.
I do believe a lot of diverse persons exist within a single profession but I also see similarities. Of course everyone has its own personality and looks different and I’m glad that is a fact. How boring would the world be if everyone would have the same personality and look exactly the same? Seriously, I wouldn’t want to have a girlfriend that looks like a copy of someone else.
A similarity I often see among SAP system administrators is that they are dedicated and flexible. We tend to have very flexible work hours and it is also something we love. I do love the fact that I can do irregular work hours, especially if I can start at five am. Of course the job also brings along timings or tasks that are less interesting. Working during weekends or being called in the late evening because a SAP system has crashed for example. When we are on guard we can be called 24/7 in case something goes wrong.
The importance of flexibility
There is a lot of unawareness what system administrators do and it also brings some what I call “crazy eye” looks along with the unawareness. Sometimes to others it looks like we are not working hard, for example when I would be leaving the office at two pm. But that is because the other people in the office don’t know that I was awake at five am solving an issue and started to work already. It can also be the case that I have to do more work at seven pm again from home.
As a SAP system administrator being flexible is important. It makes sense that the business doesn’t want to bring down their productive SAP system during the work hours or even extended work hours so it also makes sense as a system administrator you will sometimes be working in the evenings, at night or in the weekend.
Working twenty-four hours straight
I’m planned in to do a SAP upgrade in one of these weekend and not to my surprise I’m being misunderstood by my own better half who has been feeling slightly ill this week. As some of you already read I have two children (Karim, 18 months old and Ishrath Nine years old) and it can be exhausting to keep them busy so I can understand it isn’t easy.
Being a SAP system administrator means you have to constantly keep learning to avoid your contract being cut off and ending up losing your job in the worst case scenario. Last week I attended a Cloud Computing of SAP to broaden my knowledge and get in touch with Cloud Computing. Of course I ended up coming home very late because I had started at five thirty pm. I arrived back home at around six pm and my daughter is asking where are you been.!!! I have a self-defense class today do you know that ?
I know I will be called at any time when I’m on-call or to start working on the upgrade. I also know it is going to be a lot of work since it is a large, distributed environment with a lot of dependencies. It is also a very business critical mission because it is one of the most important SAP systems in use. Given this and all the tasks that I will be performing, taking into account the durations of all of the different tasks I performed on the Q A landscape I know up front I’m looking at staying awake for more than twenty-four hours straight.
It is a necessity to ensure I will be ready on schedule so functional testing can begin once I have finished my work. This is also part of being a system administrator. Later on the day I will finish the latest preparations so I can start tonight and have a smooth upgrade. Of course I’m not the only one involved in general for the upgrade but to perform the technical upgrade of the SAP system and everything connected to it that is depending on it I am.
Alien language
Sometimes I really feel as if I’m talking in an Alien language as my better half has a hard time understanding why I have to work at certain timings or why on earth I have to stay awake for twenty-four hours if needed. Can’t you just check every few hours? No it doesn’t work like that.
I want this upgrade to succeed and I don’t want to lose time that can be spend on performing proper testing before the actual Go Live. It can feel like talking to a brick wall but then again my better half seems to have the same feeling. No matter how far my explanation goes that it is a necessity and that it is of great importance the misunderstandings and the crazy eyes seem to stay.
System Administrators Attention
I hope this blog and other blogs about SAP System Administration or also referred to as Basis Administration can give a view on what we do and get rid of some of the stereotyping and misunderstandings. I’m glad to see other community members, start to bring system administration into the picture by producing content on this Blog.
I was also very pleased with the SAP Virtualization and Cloud week that did contain sufficient information for SAP system administrators. It was very interesting and in my opinion also very much needed as we still have to search really hard sometimes to find sufficient information. I still see a lack of system administration related content in certain events but I will keep voicing the need for content and also for a system administration space.
I also still invite everyone to use the hashtag #sapadmin to mark interesting content on twitter for system administrators.
I do what I have to do
I’m glad I was able to vent my frustration by writing this blog which is actually a great way to vent. I’m dedicated to the cause and I will do whatever it takes to make this upgrade a success story.
This is what a system administrator has to do and it is one of the reasons that make us valuable.
Honestly, I think so but there is no hard evidence just yet. In fact the whole human race could be originating from Alien civilization. There are a lot of facts and small pieces of the puzzle and hopefully one day the puzzle is put together and humanity will know how it all got started. Whatever our origin is we are here now and we are evolving, learning and getting ready for some amazing years where we will see science come up with such breath taking technologic breakthroughs it will be hard to imagine in fifty years how we lived today.
What the … Am I blogging about?
I guess some of you are already wondering if I had magic mushrooms for breakfast by now but I can assure you I did not. I stumbled upon a video on youtube featuring Erich Von Daniken. I really love it when a video or a blog makes me think and that is exactly what the video did. After watching the video I went to look for more content on whether or not aliens ever where in fact on earth or even if we originate from alien civilization. I found a documentary from history channel and it is in fact very interesting.
In one of my previous blogs “Dumb Poetry of a wise SOAL..!!!” – copy found in http://bit.ly/fUVUMj you can find hints that how dumb I was. How does any of this relate to basis administrators? I invite you to read on and find out the answers.
We are who we are
System administrators are often stereotyped as being geeky and asocial. A stereotyping I dislike a lot but sometimes I cannot get around the fact that some of my beloved out of work activities seem to fall in that category. Although the gaming industry is much larger than the movie industry these days gamers are also stereotyped as being geeky. So I already have my profession that points in the direction of being geeky and then I have the fact that I love playing games. Wait is that a bad thing really? Geeky is hot nowadays, the huge geeky looking glasses are worn by some hipsters and geeks seem to be attractive somehow.
I do believe a lot of diverse persons exist within a single profession but I also see similarities. Of course everyone has its own personality and looks different and I’m glad that is a fact. How boring would the world be if everyone would have the same personality and look exactly the same? Seriously, I wouldn’t want to have a girlfriend that looks like a copy of someone else.
A similarity I often see among SAP system administrators is that they are dedicated and flexible. We tend to have very flexible work hours and it is also something we love. I do love the fact that I can do irregular work hours, especially if I can start at five am. Of course the job also brings along timings or tasks that are less interesting. Working during weekends or being called in the late evening because a SAP system has crashed for example. When we are on guard we can be called 24/7 in case something goes wrong.
The importance of flexibility
There is a lot of unawareness what system administrators do and it also brings some what I call “crazy eye” looks along with the unawareness. Sometimes to others it looks like we are not working hard, for example when I would be leaving the office at two pm. But that is because the other people in the office don’t know that I was awake at five am solving an issue and started to work already. It can also be the case that I have to do more work at seven pm again from home.
As a SAP system administrator being flexible is important. It makes sense that the business doesn’t want to bring down their productive SAP system during the work hours or even extended work hours so it also makes sense as a system administrator you will sometimes be working in the evenings, at night or in the weekend.
Working twenty-four hours straight
I’m planned in to do a SAP upgrade in one of these weekend and not to my surprise I’m being misunderstood by my own better half who has been feeling slightly ill this week. As some of you already read I have two children (Karim, 18 months old and Ishrath Nine years old) and it can be exhausting to keep them busy so I can understand it isn’t easy.
Being a SAP system administrator means you have to constantly keep learning to avoid your contract being cut off and ending up losing your job in the worst case scenario. Last week I attended a Cloud Computing of SAP to broaden my knowledge and get in touch with Cloud Computing. Of course I ended up coming home very late because I had started at five thirty pm. I arrived back home at around six pm and my daughter is asking where are you been.!!! I have a self-defense class today do you know that ?
I know I will be called at any time when I’m on-call or to start working on the upgrade. I also know it is going to be a lot of work since it is a large, distributed environment with a lot of dependencies. It is also a very business critical mission because it is one of the most important SAP systems in use. Given this and all the tasks that I will be performing, taking into account the durations of all of the different tasks I performed on the Q A landscape I know up front I’m looking at staying awake for more than twenty-four hours straight.
It is a necessity to ensure I will be ready on schedule so functional testing can begin once I have finished my work. This is also part of being a system administrator. Later on the day I will finish the latest preparations so I can start tonight and have a smooth upgrade. Of course I’m not the only one involved in general for the upgrade but to perform the technical upgrade of the SAP system and everything connected to it that is depending on it I am.
Alien language
Sometimes I really feel as if I’m talking in an Alien language as my better half has a hard time understanding why I have to work at certain timings or why on earth I have to stay awake for twenty-four hours if needed. Can’t you just check every few hours? No it doesn’t work like that.
I want this upgrade to succeed and I don’t want to lose time that can be spend on performing proper testing before the actual Go Live. It can feel like talking to a brick wall but then again my better half seems to have the same feeling. No matter how far my explanation goes that it is a necessity and that it is of great importance the misunderstandings and the crazy eyes seem to stay.
System Administrators Attention
I hope this blog and other blogs about SAP System Administration or also referred to as Basis Administration can give a view on what we do and get rid of some of the stereotyping and misunderstandings. I’m glad to see other community members, start to bring system administration into the picture by producing content on this Blog.
I was also very pleased with the SAP Virtualization and Cloud week that did contain sufficient information for SAP system administrators. It was very interesting and in my opinion also very much needed as we still have to search really hard sometimes to find sufficient information. I still see a lack of system administration related content in certain events but I will keep voicing the need for content and also for a system administration space.
I also still invite everyone to use the hashtag #sapadmin to mark interesting content on twitter for system administrators.
I do what I have to do
I’m glad I was able to vent my frustration by writing this blog which is actually a great way to vent. I’m dedicated to the cause and I will do whatever it takes to make this upgrade a success story.
This is what a system administrator has to do and it is one of the reasons that make us valuable.
No comments:
Post a Comment