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As far as hands on experience, i worked at Compaq back in the late 80's, and have worked on my own computers ever since, but no formal working environment. All the jobs i see posted for this type of work seem to want at least a BS degree and 5 years experience. I am more than willing to work my way up from PC tech, so i am hoping that the school will at least get a door open.
Thanks guys, I think yall might have killed my posting phobia,
I have been lurking since Alamo Gal started getting curious, and i have always enjoyed the forum, but never wanted to post for fear of sounding like a total idiot. (Better to keep your mouth shut and be seen as a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt!)

Don't worry that your training isn't necessarily formal.

I have done a significant amount of hiring over the years for the IT department at my company. I rarely care very much about certs or formal training of any kind. Sure, sometimes it is interesting, but that's not even close to the whole story.

My favorite interview question when I'm interviewing somebody for a tech support job is: "Tell me about your home computer, and your home network". If I have the right candidate, I'll know it before they say a word. Their eyes will light up, and they'll take a deep breath, and they'll get really excited about telling me about this simply *wicked* multi-processor server they built from scratch as a game server for Unreal Tournament (or whatever) and the *simply insane* video card that they found for their system.

Then... I know I've found the right person.

I was hiring a fairly senior network engineer just recently. We were talking in the interview about network monitoring systems, when he pulled his linux-powered PDA from his pocket and showed me some scripts that he'd written (for a large unnamed ISP) that worked on his linux PDA. He pretty much had the job at that moment.