Between work and home I interact directly with more than one hundred machines, from IBM Risc 6000 running AIX to Ubuntu laptops to WinXP drones under corporate

Between work and home I interact directly with more than one hundred machines, from IBM Risc 6000 running AIX to Ubuntu laptops to WinXP drones under corporate lock-down. These machines are not even speaking to each other. My most important piece of kit is my thumb drive, which I keep chained to my car keys. I'm not big on aliases or scripts to do simple things. Better to make a one-liner or throw-away script to do exactly what I need now, something that will work on many machines. Automation is only useful if it can significantly reduce repetitive effort. I'm no master or hacker, I just get on with my projects without much frosting. I'm partial to a cheap (dropable?) Ubuntu laptop with emacs, gdb, wireshark, k3b, and lots of medium-length cables and adapters.