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.