The most important lessons in my opinion are caching, tweaking configuration and stress testing.

The way that I’ve found that seems to work best for me in understanding other people, and having them understand me, is to put myself in their place, and consider the situation from their perspective. Doing this requires humility, because it supposes that my way may not be the best or only way. This is difficult, because I have an ego and admitting I may not be right requires swallowing my pride. But I do it, because to work together for mutual improvement, it’s necessary to maintain an open mind.

Not everyone makes this effort, however. There is, and probably always will be, a minority of people who are xenophobic. That is, they are afraid of things and ideas that are different from theirs. As I was explaining to someone on twitter earlier, this xenophobia manifests itself in a complete antipathy toward methods and opinions which differ from their own. You’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it. You see it whenever someone decides an idea is wrong because it belongs to someone else, and if you challenge that stance, the person attacks you.

Can't honestly say that I'm always the understanding and considering sysadmin myself, but I try...

• http://code.google.com/p/php-syslog-ng/

• http://lopsa.org/...