Hooray! It’s finally here!

We’ve been celebrating all month long, but today is the official SysAdmin Appreciation Day.

The last challenge of the month was to tell us about your proudest SysAdmin moment, a time when you were the hero. We had some great submissions, but our winning story tugs at the heartstrings and really speaks to what SysAdmin Day is all about.

Winner Patrick Farley is the SysAdmin for Florida Drug Screening Inc., “a national provider of drug testing and alcohol testing and specimen collection services; including DOT, FAA testing, Drug Free Workplace policy development, education, instant on site drug testing devices and At-Home drug testing.” He tells of a week when he was flying SysAdmin solo, and got slammed with a series of unavoidable issues. He overcame all, and in the end got the recognition he deserves.

Happy SysAdmin Day to Patrick and all other SysAdmins. Today is your day, so enjoy it.

-Team OpenDNS

PS. Some of you asked us to give your boss a gentle reminder about SysAdmin Appreciation Day, which we did gladly.

In Patrick’s own words:

First off, I’m here alone all week. I’m the only person in the Tech Department. So naturally it has been a busy week, but I didn’t mind that so much. It’s just hard to get a lot done when I have to stop constantly to help someone track a problem. Alright, no big deal, that’s what I’m here for. What bothers me is that Monday and Tuesday everyone took the time to come to me for something, but no one had the two seconds afterward to say thanks. That’s ok, anyone in IT has had that “not appreciated”. No big deal. I have my iPod and my servers. They love me.

(more…)

A brief note to say thank you to the several individuals who responded to our request for help on router instructions. We’re using the many useful emails and comments we got to cover the requested D-Link and Actiontec routers. We don’t need any more assistance with those models, at least.

We’ve also been entranced by the very well done emulators on the D-Link site: helpful to us and (I’m sure) to their customers.

Update: We’ve gotten great response from D-Link and Actiontec customers. No need to send anymore. Still waiting on confirmation about Blackberry.

We realize there are lots of popular (and not-so-popular) routers and modems we don’t have instructions for on our site. But it’s hard writing instructions for a device you don’t have in front of you. That’s why we’re calling on you to help us build out our Get Started library. At the top of our wish list are instructions for these models:

* D-Link DGL-4300
* D-Link DI-604
* Actiontec GT701
* Actiontec GT704

Inititally we thought we could write instructions based on user manuals. We found the manuals, but they didn’t provide enough information to teach others how to change DNS settings.

This just in: For Verizon users and others, we added instructions for the very popular Westell 327w today.

If you are so kind as to help us (and other OpenDNS users who share in your router or modem taste) out with instructions, please send a few bulleted steps based on any of the instructions we already have. Screenshots to accompany the steps would be great, too. Anyone who sends in accurate instructions will get a shout-out on our Web site and will forever be known as the helpful author of the [insert your router/modem model here] instructions.

Don’t worry about perfection. At this point anything will help us. And, of course, it’s our job to polish up the instructions and make them look pretty for the site.

There is also the possibility that some routers/modems don’t allow users to change DNS settings. That information is as helpful, if not more, than instructions.

Just send an e-mail with the instructions and screenshots, or other feedback, to contact at opendns dot com.

Oh, and if you have a Blackberry and can verify that these instructions work, we’d really appreciate it.

1. Go to Start->Network Connections->Show All Connections
2. Right-click your BlackBerry Internet icon, select Properties.
3. A window will open. Click the Server Types tab.
4. Click TCP/IP Settings.
5. Select “Use the following DNS server addresses:”
6. Enter 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.