[booleandilemma]

I was in your situation about three years ago, and I'll tell you what I did. I found a startup company that was willing to hire me for $15/hour as a low level computer tech. A computer janitor, essentially. I worked "in the field". My job roles consisted of configuring hundreds of computers by hand, performing keyboard and screen replacements, and occasionally having to physically deliver dozens of computers to our clients' office locations. My fellow techs had never progressed beyond high school, and I had just graduated a liberal arts college with a CS degree. I felt a little ashamed. To get attention from management, I started writing software to automate a large portion of my job. Surprisingly, and fortunately for me, no one had thought to do this before. The company's sysadmin was excellent, but he lacked a flair for programming. Management soon moved me into a sysadmin role, and I became the company's go-to guy for writing programs that would make configuration changes to our thousands of client machines in the field. My pay was increased and I got a desk. It helped greatly that I was the only person in our company's US office that had any programming ability. I guess my advice to you is to first get your foot in the door doing the most trivial work they'll give you, and then show them what you're really capable of.