As a former network engineer I know exactly what you feel like. I am now a full time payed programmer for an ISP doing what I started to do at the last few jobs I have had. What I do? I take the best of two worlds and wrap them into one. Take my love for networking, routing and whatever, and making tools in which interface with them. For example I do alot of network automation type programming right now, from automating the installation and configuration of CPE equipment, auditing Cisco configs and Juniper configs with programs that I have written or helped write. Network monitoring is also a big "thing" in my programming life. I just got done a project that acted much like cadia's "Skitter" program that maps networks via the ASN's, but for a localized (company only) view. AS5800 (Dial chassis) cisco equipment, bgp/peer monitoring, real time graphing and all the cool stuff.

Why do I think that I am good at this? Becuase I was a former network engineer, so I just think of things that I used to wish I had access to when I was doing network engineering. Things that would have made my life easyier and everyone elses life easyier. The ability to develop smart applications that I could use to automatically audit and reconfigure mis-configured routers, stuff that told me when some obscure service went unavailable (IE a modem pull reaching max peak or auditing a set of modems for possible bad ports, then disabling them)

Just take what you know, think of what would be of great use to not only the 'world' but to you. Hack it out, erase it, then hack it out again!

-cleen