[lug] System Administration - First Dive?

[Jeffrey S. Haemer]

Erik,

I would like to learn how one could best acquire the knowledge and skills
> necessary for developing a Unix/Linux expertise.


Start.

Ask any three, expert sysadmins: each will have started a different way.
 10,000 hours from now, you'll be an expert with your own story.

Unless you don't do it.

There are two kinds of jobs.  Doctors train to be doctors.  If you found out
yours didn't have an MD, you'd call the cops. Novelists write books, then
sell 'em.  In contrast, people with MA degrees in Creative Writing are
perpetual "aspiring writers."

The latter professions become the former.  Abe Lincoln didn't finish high
school. He got to be a lawyer by "reading law" -- by apprenticing.  Civil
engineering is just finishing that transition: one of my friends, who's a
PE, has nothing more than a BA in Anthropology. He's over 60.

The rest of the world remains credential- and guild-bound, but America's
always let folks who couldn't find "real jobs" make their own fields. Right
now, Unix/Linux system administration's still one. Evi Nemeth, who
effectively invented it, was a ski bum who ran out of money.

Reading, tinkering, taking classes, ... whatever works for you.  The world's
your oyster until companies start requiring an MS in System Administration.
Once that happens, you might as well be living in Europe.

For full-tilt learning, come to BLUG talks. Ben Whaley, author of the
canonical SysAdmin book, showed us the future of system administration,
Puppet. Before that?  Alan Robertson, who invented Linux HA, told us about
his new invention, an O(1) monitor.  Before that?  A hands-on, AWS workshop,
and a git tutorial by the founder of GitHub.

Not too shabby.

Or take a hands-on, prep course from someone like our next BLUG speaker,
David Willlllson. Me, I did.  Learned a ton.  Took driving to Denver every
Monday night for six months, but way worth it.

Other Thursday nights -- tonight, for example -- come drink beer at the
Southern Sun and hack at Caffe Sole.  I learn new stuff, every single week,
listening to guys like Kevin and Rich, then trying what I'm hearing, right
there, on my own computer.

Just do it.

-- 
Jeffrey Haemer <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com>
720-837-8908 [cell], http://seejeffrun.blogspot.com [blog],
http://www.youtube.com/user/goyishekop [vlog]
*και οστις σε αγγαρευσει μιλιον εν υπαγε μετ αυτου δυο*
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