There are 17 days left until SysAdmin Appreciation Day, which means it time to unveil challenge No. 2.

This week we ask you to go deep inside yourself and find your inner poet. Write a haiku on a topic that is intimately familiar to you: What it means to be a sysadmin. Compose the poem - the funnier the better - and send it to our judges at sysadminday at opendns dot com.

For those of you less poetically inclined, the only guideline we’ll give you is that haikus are generally three lines in length. That’s not to say yours needs to be, but it should give you a starting point.

Here are a few examples from Librenix:

“Email Dilemma”

Mail is killer app
spam overflows my quota
I need new mailbox

“The Script Kiddie”

My server was hacked
SSH had a hole
now my box is 0wned

The rules are the same as last week…

First place gets a $50 American Express gift card.
You have until Friday at 9 a.m. PST to submit an entry.

Good luck sysadmins, and remember: You have to send in your entry via email to the address listed above.