how to get to that next level

[d0pp]

He deleted his post

Is that in reference to me? Cause I didn't delete anything. If one of my posts dissapeared, it's a moderator playing around where they don't belong.

[barrywilliams]

me thinks if you wanna take things to next level get a job.

me thinks get a job as junior sys admin or work towards it. you got to get your hands on the hardware, NOS's, services, e.t.c. if you are successfully going to lauch pentests against an environment ---> you need to understand the things business use in their IT environments.
VPN, single signon, a NFS system, DNS, firewalls, managed switches, SANS, and my personal fav, replication. all those little wonderful things.

btw #1 - reading a book will not cut it. you need to actually do the grunt work. set it up. get it working. then you know that you aren't just talking out of your a$$.