Seven days after CrowdStrike's bad update took down Windows-based computers around the world, System Administrator Appreciation Day has arrived. And what lovely gifts did your employer spoil you with today? Shares in the company? A brand new Cybertruck? A USB stick?

Maybe you got that new hardware you'd been asking for? Or did they perhaps, as a flood of emails from marketing people suggest, help you gain the tools and strategies you need to succeed... in the form of a lovely bit of GenAI to incorporate into workflows and keep all your data in compliance? What do you mean that's not going to help?

Today, we salute those guardians of the digital realms in the black band T-shirts whose devotion to duty, a thing of legend and XKCD comics, keeps our systems up and running.

OK, it's a tongue-in-cheek poll, but there's room for ideas both serious and silly in the comments below. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/07/26/happy_sysadmin_day/