[plug] certification / employment

[Leon Brooks]

Frank Guidara wrote:
> I am currently studying at tafe and doing a diploma of internet and
> networking technologies. I have found this course to be boring as shit

You will have years like that in *anything* you choose to do. To do well, you
will need to be able to survive such periods without freaking out.

> would like to follow my passion of linux administration. I needs some
> ideas on certification and job opportunities

Job opportunities are legion - but you do need to be able to actually understand
and do all of this stuff. Practice lots on your home machines. Set up bizarre
routing chains and play with them (multipath, broadcast etc) until you have a
feel for how it all works. Get yourself a dynamic DNS account and play with DNS.
Set up VPNs and tunnels between you and elsewhere. Run painful clients like
videconferencing software from behind a masquerade (NAT). Install and try out a
whole pack of different mail servers and such like (having a few boring but
active mailing lists to hand can be a valuable source of test email for this).
And so on.

Certification is another question. It's more necessary if you're targetting
larger companies and a wage, but even smaller companies and individuals are
interested in qualified people simply because they had the sticktoitiveness to
finish a course of some kind.

-- 
"Of course the Universe hates you. You're working to reduce chaos by
expending a lot of energy to do your job. Thus, you're contributing
to the eventual heat death of the universe, and it's just protecting
itself from you." -- John Batzel