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.
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.
Editor - vim
Mail - mutt
desktop - currently gnome 2 and sawfish 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
Webdav is far superior to ftp, delta-v support will be really nice
PaulNasrat