Ask an IT guy

I'll go ahead and be the village idiot.
What does a systems adminstrator actually do?
I must admit, my knowledge of this profession is quite shallow once I sort past the steretypes and prejudices.
What does your usual day look like? Does it challenge you intellectually? Or does it merely piss you off that you need to deal with idiotic end users?
What pleases you the most about being an IT guy? Is it the feeling 'hey, check it out - it's supposed to work, and it does!"?
Do you actively learn while working or is the same old every day? If yes, what's the last thing you've learned due to your own initiative and actually found usefull in your everyday tasks?

What's the best way to introduce someone to Perl? Is there a specific API you'd recommend to a complete newbie? (A newbie with two first year university level courses in programming. Both in Java.) What can Perl do and what is it the most suitable for? Yes, I can do my own research, but a language's strengths and weknesses aren't usually laid out in layman's terms.

What makes you smile and think 'man, there's no other job in the world where I can do this!'?

This is a bit offtopic, but for some reason or another, I remember both of your avatars - CelticWhisper and Arainach, and they were both far more awesome than the ones you currently hold.
Is the change of your own volition, or has the crash forced this cruel fate up you?
I tend to associate people to their avatars, you see.

Jam it back in, in the dark.