I have about seven years of experience as a system administrator. Whatever else happens to me in life, some part of me will always be a sys admin. I especially enjoy making things work. There's a warm feeling that comes from installing and setting up a machine. It's especially rewarding to get an old, "worthless" computer running and doing something useful. These pictures show some of the hardware I have worked on.
Most of the stuff I have at home isn't very valuable, but it sure is fun. About a year ago I got a server rack from Jayce Hall, BDFL of the PLUG. It was an ugly beige color, but I fixed this by spray-painting it black with the help of my roommates. Especially for a free rack, it's perfect. It can hold 32 U's of equipment, and it has extra space along the side that easily holds power and network hardware.
My main servers are springshield (the firewall) and mcbain (everything else). Here are some pictures of them, including a close-up shot of mcbain's backplane.
I also have an old iMac, smithers, which I use as an X11 server:
I can't personally afford any real hardware, but we have some pretty good stuff at work. The following pictures show most of the main servers, one of the two massive UPS systems (that's a lot of batteries), and the AC unit.
