Advice Needed - Career Modding

[jonyoon]

I can feel my brain slowly de-evolve a bit and I think it's time to give my tech savvy a shot in the arm.

Previous job I held (although EXTREMELY STRESSFUL) was nicely geeked out, doing basically the job of a mini-NOC doing some Linux Administration, Oracle Database Administration, Network Administration, and some QA stuff with Java, Korn Shell, and XML Script debugging. I was only doing this for a year, but I learned alot.

I know that where I'm working now is where I want to stay, but the actual job itself I know will be on the outs soon enough. So I'm trying to figure out how to educate myself and 1.) Not lose the basic knowledge I gained from the other job & 2.) Do my best to increase my knowledge so if an opportunity comes up in another dept where I can geek out again - I'll be a better prepped internal candidate for it.

I'm dusting off the SQL and Linux books that I used at the previous job and I'm looking at the Linux+ and an Oracle cert track for the moment. I'm also looking at AJAX as something else to expand my knowledge with. (Note: It's not easy though since the current job I'm doing involves NONE of those things and real-world practice is often the best way to learn.)

Any advice, suggestions, critisms (yeah, you can be harsh as long as they're productive in some way) are welcome.

[sunn]

There's plenty you can do to keep your knowledge fresh:
1) Get a book on the topic of choice and apply lab setup
2) Get Certs on the topic of choice that you have experience in
3) Build systems for your own (or others) needs. An example is building a webserver using FreeBSD running Apache and a MySQL DB.

--I dunno, it's been a while since I've done anything like that - but you get the point.

On the job front, why not talk to the manager(s) of the department(s) you'd want to work for and see what skills you need to have? It also makes your intentions known so if an opportunity does become available they might consider you?