Chronicle the Seventh · The Honours List

The Idiot Admin: A Royal Honours Ceremony

Let the trumpets sound, but quietly, for the guest of honour has disabled the alerting. Tonight the court honours the Idiot Admin: holder of all privileges, reader of no documentation, and the only man alive who can destroy a kingdom with a checkbox.

Understand, subject, that the Idiot Admin is not a villain. Villains have plans. The Idiot Admin has a to-do list from 2021 and the sincere belief that he will get to it. He is beloved. He is helpful. He once fixed the printer by granting the entire castle administrator rights, and the printer works to this day, which is more than can be said for the castle. Tonight, we honour him. Every award is real, and every award is a warning.

The honours are bestowed

The Order of the Sticky Note, for keeping the master password where it can always be found: on the monitor, facing the window, visible in the background of the official castle photograph. The court notes that a password manager costs less than a siege, and that the sticky note has now served three administrations without once being changed.

The Golden Snooze, awarded for clicking "remind me tomorrow" on the same critical update four hundred consecutive tomorrows. The Second Decree says honour your updates. The Idiot Admin honours them the way one honours a distant relative: warmly, in theory, never in person.

The admin/admin Cross, for valour in leaving the factory credentials on the castle firewall. Username: admin. Password: admin. The brigands did not hack the gate, Your Majesty. They knocked, said "admin" twice, and were shown to the treasury.

The Temporary Rule of Permanence, for the firewall exception labelled "TEMP - remove after testing, 2019". It has outlived two servers, one merger and the man who wrote it. Archaeologists of the far future will find it still open, still temporary, still load-bearing.

The Star of the Open Port, for exposing the remote desktop to the entire internet "so I can work from the pub". The pub is grateful. So are several thousand strangers with password lists, who have been trying the door handle every four seconds since Tuesday.

The Sacred Chalice of the Untested Backup, our highest honour. The backups ran faithfully every night, green ticks all round, onto a disk that died in the spring of 2022. Nobody looked. The Fourth Decree does not say keep backups, subject. It says keep them holy, and test them, for a green tick is not a restore.

Sire, a late addition: the honouree has begun asking an AI chatbot to write his firewall rules, on the grounds that it "sounds very confident". Sire, I have met the chatbot. It also sounds very confident about the number of letters in "strawberry". I move we seat them at separate tables.

ROYAL THREAT LEDGER, THE HONOUREE [■■■■■■■■■□] Privileges held ................. ALL OF THEM [■■■■■■■■□□] Sticky notes bearing secrets .... A CONSTELLATION [■■■■□□□□□□] Updates installed ............... EVENTUALLY [□□□□□□□□□□] Backups tested .................. NEVER ONCE

The toast

And yet the court raises its glass, for here is the uncomfortable truth of the evening: the Idiot Admin is not a man. He is a mirror. Every kingdom has a sticky note somewhere, a snoozed update, a temporary rule grown roots. The wise subject laughs at the honours list, then quietly checks which award they are currently winning.

To the Idiot Admin: may his passwords grow longer, may his backups restore, and may his temporary rules someday know the peace of deletion. The ceremony is concluded. He has left the awards logged in on the podium.