alt.sysadmin.recovery, or ASR, is a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to the mental and emotional recovery of sysadmins. The anagram name Scary Devil Monastery is also very common, as many of the group's members, in the words of the Jargon file, "rather justify the reference". In the words of the FAQ, "Think of it as a virtual pub where we can all go after hours and gripe about our job." Many sysadmins consider the profession to be quite stressful. Commonly cited sources of stress include having to deal with lusers, cow-orkers, marketing weenies, and PHBs; brain damaged products; and customer dis-service from vendors. Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ... A newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users at different locations. ... The term system administrator, abbreviated sysadmin, designates an employment position of those people responsible for running technically advanced information systems or some aspect of them. ... An anagram (Greek ana- = back or again, and graphein = to write) is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce other words, using all the original letters exactly once. ... The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... SVenssons ITS on KLH-10      Welcome to SV! SV ITS.1648. ... Cow-orker is a term widely used in Usenet for a co-worker, derived from a fortuitous typo, with perhaps a hint that orking cows is illegal. ... It has been suggested that Product marketing be merged into this article or section. ... The original Pointy-Haired Boss is the fictional manager in the Dilbert comic strip. ... Brain damage or brain injury is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. ... Customer service is the provision of labor and other resources, for the purpose of increasing the value that buyers receive from their purchases and from the processes leading up to the purchase. ...

The official motto of ASR is: "Down, not Across".

The name stems from the term "recovery" as used by many addiction support groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. A concept frequently put forward by such groups is that one is a "recovering" addict. Some say that only with great effort can one become "recovered"; others say that one never truly recovers. An early description for the group thus read "For recovered and recovering system administrators". (As of 2005, the description is "Getting over the trauma of system administration".) In ASR, one is only "recovered" if one has quit sysadmin work for another profession. Exactly how seriously any given member takes this view varies. Addiction is a compulsion to repeat a behaviour regardless of its consequences. ... Please wikify (format) this article as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

ASR is a place where BOFH, gurus, IT managers, and other professional computer geeks can come to unwind. Actual computer-related discussion is fairly rare -- in fact, such "Unrecovery Information" (UI) is considered off-topic and strictly taboo. The reuse of the abbreviation for User Interface is probably deliberate. "Useful Information" (another alternate expansion for UI) is greatly savored and enjoyed, as long as it is not work-related. Logo The Bastard Operator From Hell (BOFH), a fictional character created by Simon Travaglia, is a rogue system administrator who takes out his anger on lusers (his colleagues, bosses and anyone who gets in his way). ... References ^ Tirha, B. B. A Taste of Trascendence, (2002) p. ... Information technology (IT) or Information and communication(s) technology (ICT) is a broad subject concerned with technology and other aspects of managing and processing information, especially in large organizations. ... Look up Geek in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A taboo is a strong social prohibition (or ban) relating to any area of human activity or social custom declared as sacred and forbidden; breaking of the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society. ... The user interface is the part of a system exposed to users. ...

Some aspects of the common behavior on this newsgroup can make it annoying or hard for the casual browser coming from outside to enter the community. This is probably intentional: Many of the members do not want to be bothered by people looking for technical help, nor do they want their rants associated with their professional careers. Many participants set the "No-Archive" header flag on in their postings, meaning that public archives (e.g.., Google Groups) contain frequent gaps in the message threads. For alternate uses see: Archive (disambiguation). ... Googles main pages unusually spartan design, uncluttered appearance and quick loading time have contributed greatly to the sites mass appeal. ...

Also, the use of ROT13 is rampant. For instance, it seems to be regarded as taboo to give any company or product name, or Web address, in plain, cleartext form. The ostensible goal of this obfuscation is to make it harder for a person looking for technical help to stumble into the newsgroup by mistake: a search for "Linux" will not find the ROT13ism "Yvahk". More obtuse are references to chickens and blood sacrifices. ROT13 replaces each letter by its partner 13 characters further along the alphabet. ... In data communications, cleartext is the form of a message or data which is transferred or stored without cryptographic protection. ...

External links

• alt.sysadmin.recovery on Google groups
• Newsgroup FAQ
• Memorable Quotes from Alt.Sysadmin.Recovery