Doug, Another suggestion for getting your foot in the door might be to look at a small ISP in your area. In many cases, they are owned and operated by computer people and are therefore more open to helping someone who is interested in computers without making judgements based on age. Additionally, there are many opportunities to deal with security issues in this kind of environment and your linux experience may be of great value to them. If I were you, I would call around to the different providers in your area and see who would be interested in meeting with you about a possible internship. Then, I would write up a quickie resume that shows what your computer experience is and where you could be of value to their business and present it to them when you meet.
<lecture> The key is presenting yourself as professionally as possible before you begin and immediately after you start. Before anyone will allow you to work on their systems, they have to trust you not to screw them up (regardless of whether they are paying you or not). Unfortunately, because of your age, your attitude is more important then your knowledge in this area. Therefore, you will have to prove to a prospective employer that you are serious about this and not just doing it on a whim. Always remember that you are looking at this as a great learning experience, but they have to feed their kids based on how their business does. </lecture> As for resources, you don't have to pay for a copy of windows 2000 in order to play with it. Microsoft gives away 120 day evaluation versions to anyone who asks. Check out: http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWS2000/edk/default.asp for a free copy of Advanced Server. Plus, they have an incredible amount of documentation available for free at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet and free multimedia presentations about Windows concepts at http://www.microsoft.com/seminar . The advantage of Linux is that you don't have to pay for it to actually use it, but Microsoft does make it very possible to learn everything about Windows without spending a penny. I hope that this helps you, Mike
