Happy SysAdminDay!

To victims of modern business computing, the thought of a day dedicated to the IT department might seem outlandish, if not akin to North Koreans being obliged to celebrate Kim Jong-Il's birthday.

But there is a real System Administrator Appreciation Day, it happens today, and the basic idea has some logic to it.

True, the IT folks are possessed of such mysterious powers as the ability to change your password and, legend has it, even read your e-mail. But it's not accurate or fair to think that they picked all the lousy software you have to put up with on the job. Behind a lot of impatient techies telling you to read the manual are pointy-haired bosses who thought the company had to buy into this year's "solution" for a better "information architecture."

Those IT folks may have sighed inwardly on hearing this news (really, how many times do you need to reinvent e-mail, and how many dollars do you need to spend on somebody's proprietary variation of it?) but were stuck with the job.

Put it this way: If you think Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook look ugly on the outside, what do you think they're like on the inside? Think about that, and remember to say thanks to the worker bees who keep things running. SysAdminDay isn't about sucking up; it should be about solidarity.

(Note to the Post IT department: You haven't forgotten my request for a larger storage quota on the server, right?)