BASTARD SYSTEM MANAGER FROM HELL #3 - How to Produce System Usage Stats
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I pull up in my new bright red Porsche.  Park in the spot outside my office
marked "Emergency Vehicles Only".  I wonder how that sign got there, I wonder
with a chuckle.

Fire up the terminal.  Cluster dies like a dog, as usual.  I kill off a few of
those big database update batch jobs that have been running for the last few
days.  Lower the allowable number of users down to a sensible level, one, and
kill a few of the users who have upset me recently.  I only kill the users who
have not upset me much.  Users that upset me a great deal suffer more than that.

The phone rings.  It'll be one of those users complaining that they can't get
into the system.

"Hello," I say.

"I can't get into the cluster," he says, in a reasonably groveling voice.  He
must have phoned before.

"I'm afraid the system's overloaded," I say, "I've been fighting the Big Boss
to spend some money and buy a 9000 to improve user response time and
reliability."

He falls for it.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Well," I say, "you could put the word about that we desperately need a new
computer due to the overloading.  People pressure is the only way we're going
to get better user facilities."

"Okay, I'll do that."

"By the way, what's your user name?"

"Why?" he asks.  He's phoned me before.

"Because," I reply, "if you're helping me, <DUMMY MODE ON> I'd like to help 
you.  I'll see if I can arrange some time for you later, at a higher priority."

He falls for it.  

Wait until you see your next usage bill, Buster.  Tut, tut, you really shouldn't
leave six terminals logged on running cpu hungry tasks over night.  Every
night.

With the profit I'm making for the department, it shouldn't be long before we
get that 9000.

Cheered up, I open my e-mail.  965 messages.  Shit.  I run the anti-luser
software I developed.  7 messages.  Nice program that; deletes all messages
from users which contain the words help, privilege, priority, disk space,
working set etc.  Just to be safe it also seeks and destroys the copy in the
sender's mail file.  I like neatness.

The phone rings again.  This calls for action.  I grab my pager and the
clipboard marked 'Accounts to be Removed' and leg it.  

Within four rings I deep within the terminal room amongst the Little People. 
Pager and clipboard very visible.  Plenty of witnesses that the pager never
went off (I've taken the batteries out - makes the pager so much lighter for
carrying around), whilst the clipboard, when fingered menacingly, warns users
not to disturb me.  Now I can prowl all day and no-one will dare hassle me. 

I love this job.