A
term I
coined which describes the common
sysadmin ability to stay
cool in a perceived
system-related
disaster. The
sysadmin calm is a nice side-effect of a present
sysadmin exercising his
cool.
Since sysadmins are trained, by trade, to stay cool even as the world is falling apart all around them, they develop the inability to simply panic because they've seen it all before. Hard disks crashing without a backup, network lines cut, monitors blowing up, routers failing, CPUs smoking, it's all the life of a sysadmin.
I came to this realization just recently during a series of events. One of them occured while
I was in an informal meeting with my boss. The power went out, plunging us both in darkness. While the front desk staff ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, the boss and I simply continued talking as if nothing had happened at all, despite the fact that several key (but not critical) computers did not have UPSs on them.
Nobody hires a hot-headed sysadmin who makes irrational decisions during a catastrophe. The reason why this is, is because sysadmins actually love the chaos of a large problem. They revel in the challenge that such a disaster presents them. It allows them to come up with unique and creative solutions to very complex problems, which in turn, is very satisfying.
The ability to stay cool, thus, sysadmin cool is a required part of being a good system administrator.