red mage

I don't know about the majority of people, but all of the books/articles that I have read focus on the IT pro being a programmer, designer, or admin of some sort.

How many out there fall under the old FInal Fantasy 1 group of RED MAGE.
Where you are all of them at your company?

What are your pitfalls?
Strengths?
Weaknesses?
Or are you still able to survive as a CCNA w/out Apache, Photoshop etc.

I have to be capable at all while never being totally focused on one. I work in the rural areas though, anyone in the same boat. Just curious.

FF I on the NES, wow nice reference .

Lots of stuff in the bag o' tricks. Mostly a programmer (in the past C++, some VB, currently PHP/Postgres). I enjoy design and can occasionally come up with some creative, original stuff, but that's never been my main focus and I can't compete with most of the real artists out there. Also doing minor linux administration, and some smaller .net projects here and there as well as the occasional pc software/hardware troubleshooting when it looks like it may be related to something I've done.

I'd say strengths: programming, design
weakest at (with some knowledge): linux admin / networking

For the most part I get to enjoy wearing the black mage hat of a programmer, occasionally I'll have to dabble in other arts when called upon to do so.

-b

I handle programming, web administration and development, server adminisration, troubleshooting (a la Level X tech support), database design and administration, business writing (policy and internal communications), and project managment. All of this is done across Windows and (soon) UNIX systems using countless combinations of tools.

Strengths: Creative Problem Solving via Programming (usually as a result of jumping through artificial hoops caused by poorly built 3rd party systems).

Weaknesses: Dealing with other people. I hate people!

All that and I get paid crap too!

Yeah, i can design graphics and do cool stuff with PS, but I CANNOT draw. I wish I could. I like admining sometimes, but it can be a real headache, printers..grumble, grumble.

I just put on my black hat for web dev and I have to say I really am impressed with what can be done. I have practically thrown out GoLive and Dreamweaver for my text editor. They're great LAYOUT programs but, server side sure makes it easy.

On the FF1 note, I remember playing that on 8bit nes going, gosh, (I didn't cuss as much back then), I wich that I had a computer so I could play all of those cool games, instead of just nes. Now those 'cool' games are abandonware, I downloaded a few and they are unplayable unless you're '95 or DOS. '98 seems to ttry to run it too hard.

I downloaded a nes emulator and had to laugh, I have a superpowerful AMD with a gig of RAM, a bunch of great newer type games and a decent video card- and it's ten years later and I am using to play old 8 bit nintendo, And I love it!

I hate people too. I just had to go freelance, my company moved and I live in a very, 'limited' area. I'm not good with people, no cold calling!

I forgot, my strengths are web design and server admin. I've almost given up on LAN administration. I have a sick little computer family in the office, very mixed. So I guess networking multiple OSes is a good strength: I have:
1 98 box, 1 2K box, 2 OS Xs, 1 Linux, 1 Mac 8(why I still don't know, I guess just 'cause I like to learn OSes), and 1 BSD.

I find it pretty easy to deal with people as long as they're willing to listen. Once it gets to the point past rational discussion I just go into daydream and nod mode 99% of the time, the other 1% I go into rage mode. Recently, not many people have had to stick their head in my work when it wasn't necessary so things are good at the moment, just plodding along programming, learning and stopping by devshed occasionally along the way.

I'd like to beef up my skills in linux and have done all the usual stuff with setting up mail/web/db/samba, but if I had the cash I'd probably want to do some RH cert classes just to for personal knowledge, also Postgres cert classes if they offered some standard ones (more for tweaking/file system/DBA stuff than normal SQL, plpgsql stuff)

-b

I wanted CCNA, but now I think that I will get mysql and maybe a linux server, I wish that they had a widely recognized full on LAMP track. I am basically learning that now anyway.

So I just learn a bunc with each site I develop, I wich I had a dedicated server of my own...