I bought a cheap smoke machine for $15. It comes with a switch on 6 Ft of cable. Press the button, you get smoke. So fine if your going to sit beside it all night but a not very useful otherwise. You can get a timer for $25, It will trun the smoke machine on and off for a set time ever so often.
But I came up with a much better idea. A montion sensor switch to trigger the smoke machine when someone approches.
I picked a "tomb stone" for $6 that has has a montion sensor. When the sensor is tripped it makes a sreaming noise and flashes some LED's. Open it up and disconnect the LED's, wire in a 5v reed relay, from Radio shack, in place of the LED's. Then wire the relay to the switch that came with the smoke machine (or use a separate cable).
Now when the sensor is activated the screams come on for 3 or 4 seconds and a the same time the smoke is on. Great to put just out side your door.
Smaller companies want an admin that can do anything, Windows/unix/exchange/IIS. They need to have one or two staff to cover everything - keeping costs down. Great way to work, you get to use all these skills all the time.
Go to a bigger company that's looking for staff and they will be looking for a XYZ admin. Be it Windows or Unix. It will always help to show some experience in the other area but chances are your going to be 99% involved in your core OS.
At the last place I worked, the senior Windows Admin responsible for 1600+ servers, left to go work at a really small company, with less than 50 servers, just so he could get a chance to do other things.
When someone finds out you "know about computers" and asks you for help, just put your hand in your pocket, take out your wallet and give the person $100 and tell them to go find someone else.
It will be cheaper for you in the long run...
Most "standard" use on a machine with Windows OS rarely pushed the CPU over 80% for any significant time. The main thing slowing everything down is disk access. Processors and RAM have got much faster. The Burst speed of disks has got much faster but you still have only one head arm so the machine spends most of it's time waiting for the disk head to get to the sector it needs.
The requirements for applciations to come with hundreds of DLL's and other files means that the disk is always hunting for files.
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I bought a cheap smoke machine for $15. It comes with a switch on 6 Ft of cable. Press the button, you get smoke. So fine if your going to sit beside it all night but a not very useful otherwise. You can get a timer for $25, It will trun the smoke machine on and off for a set time ever so often.
But I came up with a much better idea. A montion sensor switch to trigger the smoke machine when someone approches.
I picked a "tomb stone" for $6 that has has a montion sensor. When the sensor is tripped it makes a sreaming noise and flashes some LED's. Open it up and disconnect the LED's, wire in a 5v reed relay, from Radio shack, in place of the LED's. Then wire the relay to the switch that came with the smoke machine (or use a separate cable).
Now when the sensor is activated the screams come on for 3 or 4 seconds and a the same time the smoke is on. Great to put just out side your door.
Smaller companies want an admin that can do anything, Windows/unix/exchange/IIS. They need to have one or two staff to cover everything - keeping costs down. Great way to work, you get to use all these skills all the time.
Go to a bigger company that's looking for staff and they will be looking for a XYZ admin. Be it Windows or Unix. It will always help to show some experience in the other area but chances are your going to be 99% involved in your core OS.
At the last place I worked, the senior Windows Admin responsible for 1600+ servers, left to go work at a really small company, with less than 50 servers, just so he could get a chance to do other things.
When someone finds out you "know about computers" and asks you for help, just put your hand in your pocket, take out your wallet and give the person $100 and tell them to go find someone else. It will be cheaper for you in the long run...
Most "standard" use on a machine with Windows OS rarely pushed the CPU over 80% for any significant time. The main thing slowing everything down is disk access. Processors and RAM have got much faster. The Burst speed of disks has got much faster but you still have only one head arm so the machine spends most of it's time waiting for the disk head to get to the sector it needs.
The requirements for applciations to come with hundreds of DLL's and other files means that the disk is always hunting for files.