Dangerous. As long as it's plugged in to a computer, there's a chance it'll get fried.
I once worked at a place where we had a lightning storm. Within a week, about half of the hard drives had failed, out of about a dozen. RAID won't save you then. And how fast can you get replacement hard drives installed, anyway?
All the affected machines were plugged into good UPSes, too.
Better idea: Run flexible plastic conduit (aka "Smurf Tube"). It's pretty cheap, and it's easy enough to run. No matter *what* becomes standard in the future, you'll probably be able to run it in the smurf tube.
...the ones posted in the job ads, that is. Everybody wants a senior sysadmin with 5 or 10 years' experience, but there aren't enough of those to go around. If they're advertising, it's because they need somebody. You may apply at a lot of places that don't take you, but that's par for the course this year.
Your first few months will be difficult and frustrating. Making the transition from junior sysadmin to full sysadmin skillsets mostly requires being in the hotseat and screwing up a few times. If you can, find a good mentor who can tell you where the documentation is; that's often the most difficult part.
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It's the same story, after all. And more /. readers are likely to recognize Lawnmower Man than Flowers for Algernon.
Cool stuff, really.
Maybe we should leave those deep-sea creatures where they are.
I once worked at a place where we had a lightning storm. Within a week, about half of the hard drives had failed, out of about a dozen. RAID won't save you then. And how fast can you get replacement hard drives installed, anyway?
All the affected machines were plugged into good UPSes, too.
Moral of the story: Always use offline backups.
And yes, leave a piece of string in each run.
Your first few months will be difficult and frustrating. Making the transition from junior sysadmin to full sysadmin skillsets mostly requires being in the hotseat and screwing up a few times. If you can, find a good mentor who can tell you where the documentation is; that's often the most difficult part.