What do you do for a living ?

Tonight, I was introduced again to another train rider. And again, I was asked about my work. For some reason, I always find it difficult to answer this question. I usually start by telling them that I work for IBM. That way they would have an idea what kind of industry I am in.

For me to answer this question requires an assessment on the person asking. How much does he or she knows about my line of work. I wish my title is as well-known as an accountant or a nurse or a teacher. But it's not.

I am a UNIX System dministrator. You're a what? asked the lady who obviously had never heard of it. Who can blame her? Not too many people know what UNIX is. Then, I just told her I work on computers, the big ones. The ones that you never really see or care about.

But she seemed interested about it. What is UNIX? And all of a sudden, all eyes were on me. I felt really uncomfortable because I was never really good at explaining things, especially about my work. But I tried my best to lay it out in layman's term.

UNIX is an operating system. What is an operating system? one of the guys quickly asked this question. Clearly, these guys were just giving me a hard time. I'm sure they knew what it was. Windows, which you are all familiar with is an example of an operating system. It makes our lives easier. It acts as the master controller of the computer, the glue that holds together all the components of the system, including us, humans, which we normally call users. When you want the computer to do something for you, like start a program, copy a file, or display the contents of a directory, it is the operating system that must perform those tasks for you.

Why UNIX? One of them asked. You mean why not Windows? That was supposed to be a joke but no-one laughed..... UNIX, despite the fact that it's more complex and unfriendly, has a lot more advantages than other operating systems like Windows. It is well known for its reliability and flexibility. Most of the high-end servers in the world has UNIX as their operating systems. Especially the ones that host the internet, like google. Google is using almost 10,000 Linux-based servers.

What is Linux? It is one of the many different flavors of UNIX. There are a number of companies that make UNIX operating system. You are all familiar with SUN and HP right? Well, they are the biggest ones in the UNIX world. SUN makes SunOS or Solaris. HP has HPUX. And of course, IBM has AIX. Linux, on the other hand, is somewhat different because it was developed under the GNU or General Public Language, the source code is freely available to everyone.

So, which ones do you manage? Depending on what the clients have. At the moment, I am assigned at one of the J&J companies which has SunOS, Solaris, and HP-UX servers. I try to make sure that these servers run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. I am on-call 24x7. I am also in charge of fixing any hardware problems and making sure that all data or information are protected and are being backed up in a regular basis.

My job is to keep the machines healthy, and keep the users happy.

I guess the question should not be about what I do for a living, but "What I do for THE Living and the Non-Living (--- the machines)".

"Out the wireless NIC, into the hub, through the router, down the T1, over the leased line, off the bridge, past the firewall...nothing but Net."

- MY WORLD -