Poetry for sysadmins on their special day

Don't forget that tomorrow is Sysadmins Day -- a good day to show love to the folks who save your butt again and again when you mess up your computer. Here are some poems, tailored just for them.

How Do I Need Thee?

with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
How do I need thee?  Let me count the ways
I need thee every time I mistakenly trash a file
I need thee when my laptop slows to a crawl
and when my server has crashed
I need thee when my system has been infected
with horrible malware
and when I forget the password that I set up just yesterday
I need thee with a confidence that I seem to lose
when errors pop up all over my screen
I need thee with the breath,
Smiles, and tears, of every hour I spend at work
and, if I get safely home tonight,
I shall but need thee again tomorrow

Sonnet 1:30 PM

with apologies to Shakespeare 

My admin’s eyes are nothing like the sun
He wears glasses and needs a flashlight to look into the backs of racks
of servers
Poets speak a language far easier on the ears
and, if the network moves data more quickly than I can imagine,
still he lumbers into the data center like a bear
If cables be tools, long black tools drag behind him as he moves
I have seen whiteboards covered with red and blue,
But no words or phrases describe what is in his head
And in most septic tanks there is more delight
Than in the sigh that emits from his mouth when I ask a question
I need to hear him speak, yet well I know
That the ravings of a lunatic might have a far more pleasing sound
I grant I never saw a knight stride by
My admin, when he walks, shuffles his feet and looks at the floor
And yet, by all that I have seen, I think my admin as rare and as precious
As any with whom he might be compared

Feel free to change the gender on the second one.

Looking for something a little more tangible to give your favorite sysadmin? Here are 8 gifts they'll really like.

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Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 30 years. She describes herself as "USL" (Unix as a second language) but remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries. She lives in the mountains in Virginia where, when not working with or writing about Unix, she's chasing the bears away from her bird feeders.

Now read: Getting grounded in IoT