firefighting

firefighting n.  1. What sysadmins have to do to correct
   sudden operational problems.  An opposite of hacking.  "Been
   hacking your new newsreader?"  "No, a power glitch hosed the
   network and I spent the whole afternoon fighting fires."  2. The
   act of throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a project,
   esp. to get it out before deadline.  See also {gang bang},
   {Mongolian Hordes technique}; however, the term `firefighting'
   connotes that the effort is going into chasing bugs rather than
   adding features.