Administrating a mixed network would be hell if I couldn't centralize my logging. The good thing is that there's help out there (like <a href="http://ntsyslog.sourceforge.net/">ntsyslog</a>) for creating a common logging environment. You can then filter your logs down using <a href="http://logcheck.alioth.debian.org/">logcheck</a> and being aggressive with <a href="http://www.balabit.com/products/syslog_ng/">syslog_ng</a>. But the best part of having a diverse log feed is the log entries, like:

<blockquote>
<a style="text-decoration: none" href="http://www.iisfaq.com/Default.aspx?tabid=3096">The data is the error code.</a>
</blockquote>

Finding koans like that in your morning mail just makes your day because I like the idea that a Zen master is working at Microsoft. <hr /><tt>Seen splunk?  My friend at OSU swears by it -- I'm looking into it for our own boxes.</tt><hr /><tt>Just checked <a href="http://www.splunk.com">Splunk</a> out. Seems to be a step
in the right direction, re: capturing everything and identifying logical
linkings in log output. The problem seems at least two-part: a] derive semantic
information from log parsing, and b] create heuristics to detect rising
problems. 
</tt>