Listen Up, Sys Admins

If your life-long dream is to become a system administrator, or you've already achieved your goal, you'll want to check out a list of the Top 10 System Administrator Truths, written by Evan Erwin of Oak Ridge, Tenn.

I figure with enough time and effort, anyone could be a System Administrator. Really, it's not hard, it just takes practice, methodology, and trial and error. A lot of trial and error. These truths will certainly get you on your way.

One of Evan's truths (No. 10 to be exact) is that the good old reboot is the Holy Grail of Tech Support.

Rebooting can cure ailments of all sorts, can stop network troubles, crashing computers, find missing documents, and rescue cats in trees. System admins all over the world have, by en large, trained their users to reboot before even calling support. I mean, when's the last time you didn't reboot to see if it cured a problem? If you're not, then youre either stubborn or you're an admin who knows better. Rebooting doesn't cure all ailments, but it cures so many of them it's hard to not throw out a "Can you reboot for me?" to the end user when they call with some off-the-wall issue. Use and abuse as necessary.

I don't think anyone can argue with that, but Ed Bott wrote about a new feature in Windows Vista may make the trusty reboot a thing of the past.