The Lone Sysadmin

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”  — Robert McCloskey

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“An architect knows something about everything. An engineer knows everything about one thing.”

- Matthew Frederick, “101 Things I Learned in Architecture School”

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“No one wants to learn by mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.” – Henry Petroski, “To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design”

My friend Jon has a script to randomize quotes in his email signature, and this came through yesterday. I’ve always enjoyed Henry Petroski’s books, and though he’s a civil engineer most of the lessons are ones IT professionals can learn from, too.

Luckily, most of our mistakes don’t involve buildings collapsing, though.[0]

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[0] Which reminds me of another thing a former boss of mine used to say during crisis situations: “Calm down, nobody is dying here.”

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“A man’s troubles can be measured by the number of keys in his pocket.” – David Plankers

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“After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws, it will be discovered that the gasket has been omitted.” – De la Lastra’s Corollary

There’s probably a linear relationship between the work needed to secure said access cover and the likelihood of omitting the gasket. As usual, from Michael Moncur’s Cynical Quote Collection over at QOTD.

Popularity: 3% [?]

“Even though I’m a man, I don’t like beer. I prefer appletinis. They make me feel fancy.” – J.D., on Scrubs.

Boy I’m glad Scrubs is back.

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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke

“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” – Gray’s Law

(hat tip to Joshua Brauer at Adding Understanding for calling my attention to Gray’s Law)

Popularity: 3% [?]

“A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.” – Saki

(hat tip to QOTD as usual, best quote feed ever)

Popularity: 3% [?]