This thread is so long, and I'm so lazy that I do not know if I answered already (pretty sure I have not.)
For 10 years BMFA (Before My First Amiga,) I worked and played with all sorts of computer systems, having grown up during the home computer revolution (and bust.) TI-99/4A; Commodore VIC-20, 64, and 128; Atari 800XL; Apple ][+ and //e; early Macs. I had my hands on every computer and book on computers I could.
First Amiga was an A500 I bought in 1993 from a guy who had just graduated doing some kind of molecular stuff for which he used this 500. I originally just wanted it for SoTB, but sadly this kit did not include it. I slowly migrated away from the C128 being my primary rig to the A500, pretty much doing everything I did on my C128 except for, sadly, programming, though my ex bought me Cubic for Christmas a couple years back. Over the years I have built up a meager collection of running and usable Amiga machines, which now include A500+/030/32MB, A1200/060/192MB, A2000/060/128MB, and A4000/060/128MB.
What do I do? I am a technology consultant for small and very-small businesses. I do everything from the ground up, including network engineering, server support, workstation support, telephony, and the like. I link sites by point-to-point VPN using Cisco PIX (and starting now with ASAs,) support mobile devices and interconnectivity, assess infrastructure security, help coordinate disaster plans, swap and store tapes, etc. These days, anything to pay the bills, including whoring myself to McDonald's for modem installations. I specialized in providing services to home building, real estate, architectural, and engineering firms. Whoops! :-)
In my peak, my largest customer was a multi-million dollar-a-year home builder with 75 internal users, about 75 external users on mobile devices (laptops and smart phones,) and two branch offices.
I also run a hosting business consisting of several servers in a couple of co-location facilities, providing MySQL, PHP, SQL2005, .Net, ColdFusion, and a few other tidbits including SSL-based services. I have my hands in Windows 2003 and Solaris servers, and have also hired myself out for server admin work. Though I do not do on-call support anymore. I play with various Windows-to-Unix interoperability stuff to keep me sharp, a lot of my own design using anything from Rexx to command/shell scripting. (No real coding here.)
Last, but not least, I am a Gold Authorized Reseller for AVG.
What is the most fun for me is that several of my colleagues call upon me for help and insight on really whacked out issues. Including, at times, legacy formatted media and data recovery.
At this point I have started back to university as a student in the School of Criminology as a Computer Criminology major, which is a new NSA-sponsored curriculum. In May I find out if I have been awarded a Department of Defense C-SAIT scholarship which will have the long-term effect of catapulting me to working in the ranks of the NSA, DSS, DSA, or DISA. And, yes, I will be taking my Amiga with me... I just will not be able to post pics of it in my office :crazy:
