I'm currently a Windows admin and have wanted to jump ship to the *nix side for a while now. I've been studying both through an lpic level 1 manual as I have time (focusing on debian), and a solaris 10 cert book. The problem is I only have a handful of hours a week to study, and my current job offers no exposure to *nix. I guess my questions would be, what would be some small projects to work on at home (admin type, scripting, etc - I'm not really a programmer though) that would be similar to in a corporate environment (other than setting up a wordpress site, lamp environment, etc which is what other people have told me to do), and once I feel comfortable looking, what kind of a job would I look for? I'm in my mid 20's, have about 4 years of windows admin experience and 0 "real world" *nix measurable experience - would I just be looking for an intro *nix helpdesk/junior *nix role? Or should I be looking for a mixed Windows/*nix environment so I'm not restarting my career from scratch?

I figure there's a few people who have made a similar switch here. And I know there are similar forums, but there's always some new people willing to comment with ideas that haven't been posted before :-)