I'd vote for a regular backpack and use separate sleeves for each of the laptops. That would give you individual padding on the laptops and lots of extra pockets for mice, USB thingys, dongles, power bricks, CDs, swappable drives, etc. If you're going to use the bag exclusively for the laptops, you could even fold up a towel or something to put in the bottom of the bag for extra padding in case of a drop, or just for the average setting the bag down. As a bonus, your bag won't stand out to thieves quite as much as a laptop-specific bag.
Document Management and Knowledge Management are two (sometimes very) different things. Document Management is pretty much required for businesses of all sizes. I'm not sure if it's a state or national law, but I know that in Texas, companies are required by law to be able to produce pretty much any document sent to, sent from, or used by the company for 7 years. This includes all financial documents, checks, tax returns, letters from customers, etc. At the most basic level, it's handled by dumping papers into document boxes, putting a date on the side, and stacking the boxes up in a spare room. As a company gets bigger, that isn't feasable anymore. Companies used to get documents "imaged" to microfilm or microfiche, nowadays they're scanned into an electronic format, usually a TIFF or something similar. I work for a fairly large insurance company. We have a complete document management solution that involves scanning every bit of paper into TIFFs, then putting those into a workflow application so we can move applications, policies, and claims around electronically without needing a stack of files on everyone's desk.
Knowledge management is a whole different ballgame. It's frequently tied to document management, but with a whole lot more bells and whistles. Do you have a corporate intranet where you work? A company newsletter? A file server where shared documents are stored? Those are attempts at knowledge management. KM products that you buy or build tie those various resources together to give employees a one-stop shop to find information. The more robust solutions seem to be intranet-based lately, where you have a company "portal" where you can search for documents enterprise-wide, get current corporate news, manage your HR benefits, etc. A lot of the offerings in that space aren't necessarily tied to the "KM Movement", and a lot more are home-grown, so you won't find them in Google results.
Programming of any sort (including web design) is probably the most portable of the IT trades. You can do it from your house, or from your dorm room if and when you go off to college. Beyond that, maybe building custom-order systems for people, but it's unlikely you could ramp that up in 3 months. You might also check out itmoonlighter.com for some available contracting work in your area which might not require you to be on-site.
I work testing desktop app integration, and a very good book I've seen that's quite accessible to the beginner is Testing Computer Software by Kaner, Falk, and Nguyen.
I bought it and passed it around our lab just for the first few chapters which deal with the mindset behind software testing, such as why even bother testing when you can't assure 100% bug-free code. Later chapters cover how to effectively log bugs, how to test things besides actual code (devices, localization, manuals, etc.), and an overview of how to manage a software testing team.
From experience, I can tell you that not 100% will be applicable to the particular job you're about to start, but it will meet your "get me in the mindset" requirement.
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I'd vote for a regular backpack and use separate sleeves for each of the laptops. That would give you individual padding on the laptops and lots of extra pockets for mice, USB thingys, dongles, power bricks, CDs, swappable drives, etc. If you're going to use the bag exclusively for the laptops, you could even fold up a towel or something to put in the bottom of the bag for extra padding in case of a drop, or just for the average setting the bag down. As a bonus, your bag won't stand out to thieves quite as much as a laptop-specific bag.
Document Management and Knowledge Management are two (sometimes very) different things. Document Management is pretty much required for businesses of all sizes. I'm not sure if it's a state or national law, but I know that in Texas, companies are required by law to be able to produce pretty much any document sent to, sent from, or used by the company for 7 years. This includes all financial documents, checks, tax returns, letters from customers, etc. At the most basic level, it's handled by dumping papers into document boxes, putting a date on the side, and stacking the boxes up in a spare room. As a company gets bigger, that isn't feasable anymore. Companies used to get documents "imaged" to microfilm or microfiche, nowadays they're scanned into an electronic format, usually a TIFF or something similar. I work for a fairly large insurance company. We have a complete document management solution that involves scanning every bit of paper into TIFFs, then putting those into a workflow application so we can move applications, policies, and claims around electronically without needing a stack of files on everyone's desk.
Knowledge management is a whole different ballgame. It's frequently tied to document management, but with a whole lot more bells and whistles. Do you have a corporate intranet where you work? A company newsletter? A file server where shared documents are stored? Those are attempts at knowledge management. KM products that you buy or build tie those various resources together to give employees a one-stop shop to find information. The more robust solutions seem to be intranet-based lately, where you have a company "portal" where you can search for documents enterprise-wide, get current corporate news, manage your HR benefits, etc. A lot of the offerings in that space aren't necessarily tied to the "KM Movement", and a lot more are home-grown, so you won't find them in Google results.
Programming of any sort (including web design) is probably the most portable of the IT trades. You can do it from your house, or from your dorm room if and when you go off to college. Beyond that, maybe building custom-order systems for people, but it's unlikely you could ramp that up in 3 months. You might also check out itmoonlighter.com for some available contracting work in your area which might not require you to be on-site.
I work testing desktop app integration, and a very good book I've seen that's quite accessible to the beginner is Testing Computer Software by Kaner, Falk, and Nguyen. I bought it and passed it around our lab just for the first few chapters which deal with the mindset behind software testing, such as why even bother testing when you can't assure 100% bug-free code. Later chapters cover how to effectively log bugs, how to test things besides actual code (devices, localization, manuals, etc.), and an overview of how to manage a software testing team. From experience, I can tell you that not 100% will be applicable to the particular job you're about to start, but it will meet your "get me in the mindset" requirement.