I'm interested in computer immunity and agile systems administration using XP like methodologies.
Some wibblings:
Test first. Vmware/bochs/virtualisation is your friend. You can modify small parts of the system and run your tests.
Small components. Package management is essential, choose something that works for you. I know rpm very well as a packaging format, it's a policy based thing. Use tools such as apt-get, urpmi, current/up2date to maintain policy. Control the flow of packages into the system (prevent rpm hell). Learn to build your own. Have also done Solaris packages, etc. Java on Linux ppl may want to check out www.jpackage.org/
continuous integration - have automated installers (kickstart, jumpstart, ant scripts), constantly merge updates (either as a post install or as a living tree - again policy decision), make sure new/old servers are in sync.
I also pair and develop with ConneXtra dev team in Java, Python (and bash when I can sneak it in!). I enjoy developers not breaking things by testing first, unlike other places I've worked where I've had to fix things.
pauln.truemesh.com/
Editor - vim
Mail - mutt
desktop - currently gnome 2 and metacity or Quartz/OS X
Languages - perl, python, java, c, a touch of x86 asm (and I mean a touch), shell (bash, korn, csh).
Projects - ELKS Psion 3 port and housekeeping elks.sf.net, current current.tigris.org
Webdav is far superior to ftp, delta-v support will be really nice
PaulNasrat