@Vigdis She. I hope not any time soon. She seems like she'll fit in well and picks up things quickly.

@kurtm Oops. I hope so!

@mwlucas I think it will be less hell. I started this job 13 years ago basically doing the job of 1.5-2 people. The department has more than doubled in size since then. Even with magic sysadmin leveraging powers, it's been too much for years.

@kurtm oh, it will be less hell.

Eventually.

You do have, like, Ansible or some such, I hope.

@mwlucas Ansible? Yeah. It's over here on Mount "I wish I had more time and energy". It's got a lovely view of Lake Burnout.

Ansible is actually pretty close to the top of my list because of recommendations by you and a couple other BSD folks.

@kurtm ansible cures burnout. really.

@mwlucas If Ansible is so great, why hasn't my favorite tech author written a book about it? :)

Is the documentation good? Do you have a book about it you like? I'm off a bunch this month and next, but I think perhaps I'll make Ansible one of my Summer projects. The new sysadmin and I can learn together :)

@kurtm a Copious Free Time project is "Ansible for Artisan Systems"

@mwlucas @kurtm learning the basics of Ansible is a coffee-break conversation. The growth of modules and use cases leaves plenty of space for better documentation. There's more than enough to keep you both happy. :-)

@kurtm @mwlucas he is working on a playbook just for you: ansible kurtm -m read book

@kurtm @mwlucas I finally started tinkering with Ansible a bit at time. Starting with it handling system updates for Linux/BSD boxes. I realized how much time that had been eating up with the babysitting. It took some pressure off. I kept adding roles/tasks and now can just add more machines by adding them to the inventory file and letting it do the rest.
I use a couple de-com blade servers with vbox for dev to test. Put in repo when happy and pull to prod.

@kurtm @mwlucas Hang in there.

Ask for help or just talk if you need to blow off steam. Many of us have been through the trenches and would be happy to help where we can.

@Strog @mwlucas Thanks. Much appreciated.
Things do seem to be getting better. All my OpenBSD servers are running 6.1 or 6.0. I did document a bunch of stuff in preparation for my neck surgery in October.
My buddy is the managing sysadmin in the department we're sharing the new sysadmin with, and he's made it clear he's figuring the new sysadmin is going to be mostly for us to help me catch up.
That, and #BSDCan is coming up in a month :D

@kurtm @mwlucas Sounds like my life though it was 12 years ago instead of 13. Two of us handled everything (desktop, PBX, network, much more, etc.) here.
3 Years ago, my counterpart's personal life got in the way of his work life and he walked out the door. It was hell. I know where the burnout line was because I crossed it many times that 1st year. We got a couple guys with desktop experience and was able to eventually move desktop and related tasks off me.

@Strog @mwlucas
It was a little over 2 years ago when I realized that Fall semester hadn't calmed down because the amount of work had grown beyond what I could really keep up with.
I mean, I think most sysadmins have a pile of things undone all the time, but I realized mine was only growing, not getting smaller.
It only took 2 years and 2 surgeries (1 planned, 1 emergency) to get them to agree to a *shared* additional sysadmin.