this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information that will expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers hey what'd you say it's the 100th episode of the art of network engineering that shows older the dirt you know back in my day we didn't have these fancy pod widget thingies to listen to or online communities to connect with other people we just sat alone in the corner of a cold dark data center and we liked it i used to have to build new switches one by one with the serial cable none of this zero touch provisioning flashiness if you've never felt the pain of accidentally trying to walk away with your laptop while still consoled into a router you weren't living i tried to get trendy once got one of those bluetooth serial adapters so i didn't have to sit on the floor two feet away from the dang switch left the damn thing somewhere can't find it played marco polo with my laptop for months in the data center trying to find it anyway i'm glad folks still listen to this show but i better go i can't keep these darn kids off my land oh my god tim that was fantastic welcome to the 100th episode of the art of network engineering i am aj murray at no blinky blinky that was tim burtino at tim burtino tim thank you so much that was a that was a stellar intro for episode 100 tim's been drinking it's our hundredth episode i'm celebrating i also popped in but it was just seltzer oh yeah this is this is about 8.3 seltzer um i do need to say something um before any anybody cut in because that intro was in no way shape or form supposed to represent andy by any means before anybody says anything that's not what i was trying to do not what i was trying to do i knew it tim earlier when i asked her if you had a tim or an intro ready i'm like i bet you he's gonna use this hundred as an old man thing get off my lawn and here we are brother get off my hand that was great that was so good yeah my goodness at andy laptop andy how are you i'm good aj uh really happy to see y'all i miss you guys uh i love my thursdays with you guys it's awesome and i can't believe we're on episode 100 i i thank my wife on the way into the studio tonight and i'm like you know thank you for supporting us and you know 100 uh 100 episodes 100 nights you know it's uh what a journey huh it's been amazing i can't handle you talking seriously with those glasses it is hard to do wait this is serious andy they're podcast listeners the goat has is it go to boy or a girl the goat has their hat on yeah and then this wins by the way oh come on this is like a dj remix of the goat the goat needs batteries dj remix so in summation aj i'm awesome i really miss you guys this is amazing and i'm looking forward to talking about a hundred episodes and all the good stuff that uh has happened in the past what's it been two years i guess yeah a little over two years now we released our first episode july 24th in 2020 uh early on in the pandemic uh and uh it's been a wild ride lexi at track it pacer lexi how are you i'm still getting over andy just just talking like there's nothing nothing going on he's got these like bright ass you know glasses on that are just lit up flashing like a police car it's a celebration lex none of you people dressed up at least tim did an intro i'm not shaming you i'm just i looked for i looked for a birthday party like hat but i could not find one in my house or any funny hats it's really kind of sad how few funny hats i have in my life i need to fix that christmas wishlist the only birthday party uh paraphernalia i have happens to be from my son's recent pokemon themed uh birthday party so i pokemon 100 i just didn't quite fit hey you gotta catch them all man that's right look at andy you could wear anything just as long as it's fun and something as long as it's something no i'm good i i uh i'm excited about 100 episodes too even though i've been here for like not that many so i i feel like i can only take take credit for like i don't know like a fifth of that or something i don't i don't actually have a great idea of how many episodes i've been in now hey you're here with us now that's all that matters nobody's counting but you likes you're an integral part of the team and we appreciate having you oh for sure absolutely thank you i'm very i'm very grateful to be here with you guys and be able to do the podcast together it's been an awesome ride so far i can't believe it's only been since i think i've been here since february or something yeah yeah hasn't been super long congrats guys we made it we made it unfortunately dan could not join us tonight uh and we could not put off recording episode 100 anymore we got to get it recorded and edited and ready for release in a couple of weeks so tonight is the night as they say uh thank you dan for your contributions to the last 100 episodes and we look forward to the next 100 right right uh before we get going tonight i i want to check in i'm realizing as i sit here behind this microphone even though i sit behind it all day long on my webex meetings uh i i haven't done this with you guys for a very long time i miss y'all so what what have i missed what's everybody been up to um well since you've been gone we've broken like every episode we've tried to do so that is true we're hoping you're the we're hoping you're the game changer so no pressure we'll see see i doubt it though tim what's new in your world it i say it about every time i get asked it's been a year it's been um a lot of good things have been happening we're getting settled into our house still things are just going really well and just just trying to take the time and enjoy the summer spend some time with the family and i actually just got back from uh i spent got to spend a week with my wife's brothers uh in uh uh national forest in colorado so i i get it you know you you agreed to go on a trip with your brothers-in-law and and thought you would actually come back well i did it uh i didn't i didn't uh you know quote get lost up there we had uh we had a really good time other than the fact that on the very first day i put this on twitter i went to uh to just sit down on the ground to try to get a good look through the binoculars on something and didn't see a tiny small little cactus sticking up out of the ground and uh ouch i think you know the rest yeah did you get it in a high knee a little bit did i who pulled it out i don't want to talk about it did they have to suck out the poison wait there's poison in there there is now for the purposes of this story yes okay but it was it was wild i mean it was it wasn't you know one of those things where people put in their out office saying that i'm going to be out of the office and i i can't check email or not going to check email that kind of thing that's really what it was i mean where we were at there there was no cell service to be found and and honestly that that was a good thing by probably after the first day i got to the point where i wasn't even trying to grab my phone anymore to to see something that you know i'm sure i really needed to see not really but it was good to really shake that feeling and good good to get away but definitely good to be back yeah yeah i have also found a new work-life balance with my new employer they they definitely like when you say you're gone they respect the hell out of that like i i got back from a vacation and i saw so many emails you know replies from project managers like if she's on vacation right now he can answer this when he gets back i never heard from my boss i never heard from any of my peers i was absolutely and truly out of the office which was uh which was a new feeling for me it was quite nice to to have while we were out on vacation as a family so lots of fun uh lexi how's everything going uh with blue origin if you can talk about it i know and it's a sensitive subject it's all super secret and i can't talk about it of course of course andy could have told you that every time uh no it's it's going it's going really well i uh i've i've learned more in the past like six months than i probably did well not quite more than i did getting my ccna because that was such a huge steep curve for me but uh it's close it's close to me entering into networking for the first time it's it's bizarre i'm working on uh learning about how custom devices get built from the ground up and that's a lot of electrical oh wow engineering and that's it's it is a lot it's a lot in my face that's awesome been learning some other little technologies like tap aggregation and still dealing with ethernet and the wonders of that whole world but yes it's going great i unlike y'all do not have a great work-life balance um but it's through no fault of my employers it's just i i want to know all of the things and i get stressed out about not knowing all the things so i just start start going at it in my off time i need to stop it sounds like it's more passion driven than stress driven maybe yeah it's it's it's a little bit of calming a little bit is it okay yeah no it's it's well you know it gets stressful not knowing things for some people i don't know i i constantly i'm surrounded by like people with masters and phds and in various types of engineering so it's like you know i gotta i gotta at least get the basics down right but there's very little like basic electrical engineering stuff out there it's just sort of like either you learn or you don't the end that's been a fun learning experience and how about yeah i'm great how about uh life in seattle and out in washington have you acclimated uh i'm sure there must be some differences between uh washington and uh and texas yeah i mean so texas is hot as all get out uh in the summer like right now okay but the difference between and seattle is like okay it's like actually today it looks like it's 90 for the first time in a while it's like 80s 90s here which to me is not that much because i'm used to 100 110 in in houston but the problem is that here i don't have air conditioning oh so yeah like right now i'm i'm sweating you just can't tell thanks webcam yeah there's no there's no we have portable ac units but they're in our like you know bedroom and so there's not one in my office and so i'm just sitting here sweating it's it's really terrible um but other than that seattle area is gorgeous um i walk out my front door and i can see mount rainier just sticking up right above the trees it's it's actually it's amazing so i love the area um but man i would kill for some air conditioning right now i bet yeah i i feel ya that's crazy and andy what's new in andy's world it's been a great summer um spent some time down the shore by the ocean which was nice um what else would be done we went to disney world it was cool uh we're we're building a pool which has been the bane of my existence i won't i you know these are first world problems so i don't mean to sound like a whiny crybaby but like i've had to get the pool deck board torn out and report three times oh my gosh what mistakes they've made today they came out and had to fix another thing so yeah you know like i've heard people say that when you do things at your house like construction contractors that it's painful i can tell you we got windows put in last year and those windows leak so that's great um the pool has just been nothing but you know a heartache but it's almost done um was it was it supposed to be like a bean shaped pool and they like gave you a banana or something like that just problems with the concrete you know it comes from a plant and some of it miscolored and then the last thing they did the thing they poured it was all cracked the next day which isn't good and so you know whatever right it just it's been consuming a lot of my time but um beyond that uh you know you guys were talking a little bit about work and your jobs for the first time in my life i'm in like a healthy culture and i feel that i have the work life balance that i want and um i just really been soaking that in there's been we talked about on the last episode there's been a fair amount of stress because it's such a different role and kind of like lex i'm surrounded by brilliant people you know they're these people have patents i work with russ white right like just everybody's brilliant they all know how to code they all know more about business than i do but um i'm really enjoying my time at juniper the people i don't know what makes a culture but man the people that are in leadership making decisions top down just uh it just feels really nice you know um but that's been i've been on here a lot over the years right crying about pain at work and culture and stuff so it's been a long time coming and i just i'm really happy where i'm at and i'm finally getting the hang of things and i think i have ownership of this new thing that we're working on which that'll be nice um i feel like i can make an impact so yeah man pretty uh pretty good how about you aj i haven't really i've seen you flying some drones yeah he's like a long distance photographer now it's really cool yeah yeah it's uh it's been pretty fun so i picked up a new hobby earlier this year uh i bought myself a nice camera drone i i had a budget for a dslr and i had a budget for a drone and i ended up combining the two and i bought a really really nice camera drone uh and so i've been enjoying flying that uh it turns out there's a commercial license that you can get from the faa to fly these things so you can you know get compensated or do special work or whatever and you know me and certifications uh i had to do it i had to do it uh and i took a little bit of time studied and i passed the exam uh i'm an aviation enthusiast a big you know nerd so it's it was you know a walk in the park for me it was a lot of fun but yeah i i've been taking some really great photos behind you here on my desktop i have a a beautiful scenery of uh you know downtown burlington part of town that i grew up in and reminds me of home and i see a lot of things that's very familiar to me and it's just it's just really cool so i'm having an awful lot of fun doing that it's you know as much fun as i have doing the podcast like it's something that's not tech related right like it's sure it's got computers and whatnot but uh it's not has nothing to do with my day job and it's just nice to do something a little bit different and uh that's so important yeah yeah it's been a lot of fun yeah and the aerial perspective is is so cool right like we're not birds we don't fly right it's why i always get a window seat in a plane because i'm just fascinated yeah same how the world looks from above you know and and you get to capture that with your drone which is really cool it's you know it's like how the birds live it's got to be so cool up there just it's kind of floating around right where did you get a mavic yeah i got a mavic 3 yep dji mavic 3. they're the nice ones right yeah yeah that's it's pretty good uh outside of the drone stuff the family and i have been doing a lot of traveling and have a lot of fun um we've gone down to to visit where my wife grew up in rockport mass and just a beautiful piece of the country down there um done a little bit of travel for work but nothing crazy i haven't really left new england a whole lot which is fine by me compared to how much traveling i was doing in the past uh it's nice to be a little bit closer to home uh and yeah things are going well at work things are going great at home and very very relaxed for the first time in a long time that's great to hear so um with that let's get into episode 100 uh and and for the 100th episode of the art of network engineering uh we wanted to focus on the things that we have learned uh you know from doing the podcast from folks in the community both in our discord it's all about the journey and the network engineering twitter community we asked for folks to send in some notes on things that they've learned from either listening to the podcast being a part of the communities and so forth and we got a lot of great responses and input from folks and you know we want to share our thoughts as well as uh you know what we heard from you and if you're watching the live stream tonight and it looks like a bunch of you are feel free to drop a line in the chat let us know what your thoughts are and we'll share it here as we record um but i'll kick it off uh as i think about the last two years of recording 100 episodes you know one thing that i'll say if you're ever going to start a podcast make sure you record a bunch of episodes first uh but i'm sure not a lot of people are considering starting a podcast but um i i feel like i've certainly learned a lot more from our guests and from you guys as co-hosts way more than i thought i would uh and it's been about everything it's been you know personal stuff work stuff um you know branding we've talked about an awful lot i've certainly learned a lot of lessons from from you guys about that um and then you know just all the professional advice on what to do during interviews you know i've i've had my resume peer reviewed a bunch of times from folks in in the uh community uh and it has been a huge game changer in a lot of aspects yeah i think that's going back to the community thing we we've brought it up multiple times where that's something i really learned that really opened my eyes is that there there really are good people out there that are willing to help others just for the purpose of helping others because it feels good and it's the right thing to do you took mine i'm sorry i'm sorry i mean we we've had um i can think of at least one example i'm sure there are more where people have gotten jobs because somebody knows somebody else they they know their character and they say hey i've got an opening why don't you come apply um and and people have gotten hired because of of this community that's been that was you know built by the original a1 crew and really i will say i i know aj you guys built this but as soon as you build it it really took off organically on its own um we've got a number of people that are deemed as quote staff in in the discord channel and they're always in there helping people responding to questions requests all that kind of stuff and just to see how much of that is grown from just the original you know crew that that started the podcast is so cool yeah well one of the things that's always um you know intrigued me about this community is that and i was just talking to taylor taylor was in town uh for for work and we got together we had dinner it was great to catch up with him uh and we were actually talking about the community and and he said that he doesn't have to do anything if if he's making changes to the server it's because he wants to learn something he's tinkering it's it's just something that you know a project that he's got you know and he he wants to to make it a little bit better in any way that he can but it kind of runs itself there's there's no real moderation that has to happen every once in a while you'll get like a spam bot account that drops in but it's quickly identified and taken care of but other than that it's unlike other communities you see in just you know the internet uh this isn't one where you get people that you know shame people for not knowing something and always welcome any skill level to help answer a question or anything it's it's been a really welcome site uh especially on the internet i mean in that general channel every single morning there's there's dozens of people that just pop in and say hi good morning i mean that's i just feel like you don't see that a lot of places on the internet yeah yeah i've had quite a few troubleshooting sessions just impromptu as i'm trying to get something to work with people in the discord right it's just people are just we're all interested in the craft right and we all everybody just wants to help everybody out it's such a collaborative community in a lot of ways like i can't tell you how many times i've just had a question and like somebody even if they don't have the answer sits there with me for a while and just goes through like the steps of troubleshooting and lends their knowledge and expertise it's really amazing i always learn something when i talk to people there this is the community i wish existed when i was sitting in my comcast cable truck as a tech studying that cisco uh networking academy material now four hour class friday four hour class saturday morning studied like crazy all week any minute i wasn't working you know and i didn't um my community was about i don't know nine people in that class nine or ten people they're the only people i knew some of them worked in tech but most of them didn't a lot of them were like me you know people looking for something better pivoting and uh you know it sounds corny and i've said it a million times and and you know we we didn't set out to do this i don't think but somehow a community developed that i really wished i had because i've said it before that my peers at in the cable world you know told me i was wasting my time and this wasn't going to amount to anything and i had no idea if that was true or not you know i just i i wanted a better life and i saw a path you know 2-1 but it was a leap of faith and when i see you know all these people in our discord on twitter you know emails there's so many communications chat you know channels that like it's not just us right like there was a network community before we showed up on the scene um and and i'm really grateful for all those folks and then just to have one to call our own i don't know if there's like 3 500 4 000 people in our discord now but like tim was saying you can go in you could say hi there's alda macho my buddy from you know phi serve he's he's in there studying for a juniper service provider track with a with a bunch of people and i just love it i hop in people are studying people are lifting each other up but you know hey how you doing you know labs floating around i see people like hey i got gear and again i i wish i had this so it just feels really good that i know people can show up feel lifted up and and i don't know how but there really has i guess like you were saying tim the people that helped moderate it it hasn't gotten toxic there hasn't been much if any nonsense you know nobody's asking for money or harassing people or it just because i've heard community builders warn us of that like man when you get to a certain size you know you just you have enough of a cross-section that things can get weird and nasty but that that really hasn't been our experience and it's been it's been really nice right it just feels like a safe place um anywhere i'm at that that has anything to do with us it's just been really nice it it it means so much and i've and i've learned so much on the show it's just been it's been an education it's been so much fun you know but it's it's also just been such an education i'm really i'm really grateful for this i've said it before thank you for for inviting me on to this show you know we're just studying for the ccmp and the next thing i know or i've said it before i just wanted to be a guest on a podcast someday you know because i thought that was really cool been a guest a hundred times now yeah right but but that wasn't planned you know like i think you just gotta make an effort and put yourself out there and you know and then and take chances right and be uncomfortable we've talked about that we've all taken different jobs different roles like the more uncomfortable we've gotten the the greater the rewards have been in careers in the show and you know like asheville come on man that was awesome incredible all fly in and people from all over the country and just you know after the lockdown and man just i i god i've just never had a community like this around my career you know i know it's bigger than that right but we are all in tech and that's our commonality and i've just never experienced anything like this it's amazing we've also had quite a few people um write in and let us know some things that they feel about the community we had some really kind messages um okay is it okay if i like read one of them yeah yeah i've got a couple lined up too fireworks awesome so this is from one of our buddies jordan villarreal i don't know if jordan is actually here oh yes he is he was hey jordan there he is can i read your really nice thing that you sent in i'm assuming yes since you sent it in this is a great okay so here's what jordan said sliding into your dms for the show tonight oh wait i should probably not say that huh no um jordan says growing up in networking in the late 90s early thousands there wasn't much of a community to speak of especially for an 18 year old who's trying to get his ccna all my classes and encounters were telco guys who were updating their skill set for this new networking thing that was coming to life the fact that there are such open communities these days filled with friendly and helpful people is truly amazing it was my lack of not having access to something like that that compels me to participate and be a part of this great community to help bolster and build out what i didn't have access to so that others can avoid having to walk that growth path alone in the future it's so wonderful thank you for sending that in jordan you are awesome thank you for being a force for good in the community jordan's one of those people that that i had kind of said in my head before i met him i i really wish i could meet up with him and have a beer sometime and and i'm glad that i've gotten to do it um but i gotta say it it wasn't just one it was it was a few yeah just one jordan one big one hey everybody lexi here our friends over at netali just announced the next generation etherscope nxg the first and only analyzer of its kind that fully supports wi-fi 6 and 6e this powerful all-in-one instrument can help you quickly test verify and troubleshoot technology upgrades and base t poe 10 gig and wi-fi 6 and 6e networks so check it out go to netally.com etherscope to request a virtual demo um i i've got a note here from network netsequezy luis he he wrote in uh and he said that you know thinking about where he is today and two years ago when when we all commerce kind of like came together whatever he he would have never thought that he would be where he is today uh so he wants to thank the a1 team and everybody on the server you all pushed me to be the best i could be and definitely got me through some very rocky times and have changed my life for the better i haven't been as involved lately but i truthfully feel there's no better group in the world than the it's all about the journey and a1 fam every time i hop on i see people at the highest level helping those just starting and i've seen so many people advance and change their lives and i'm glad to call you all my friends i hope to one day be able to do what you all have done for me pass that on to others uh so thanks very much so weezy was actually one of the examples i was thinking of that paid it forward so he was instrumental in helping somebody else in the uh in the discord community uh gained employment um last year sometimes so he he's already been paying it forward and you know what's amazing wheezy's one of those people that just randomly reaches out to me regularly yep on discord and it's it's funny and then i was thinking uh tim sent me a note once on an index card which was really sweet i forget what you sent me but like just being nice to like people that you know you never know like the timing it's just so strange wheezy will ping me and i just really need to hear from somebody when he does you know like that every time but like i'm just so grateful for that note and it's nothing big or heavy like hey hey man how you doing you know i'm like up wife's upstairs you know with the kids i wonder if i should go up there or not you know you know but like i'm just as a small example right but it's it's just nice to hear from somebody outside of the walls of my house that you know that just cares you know how i'm doing um and that's happened a lot people just reach out and say hi hope you're doing all right and i mean i've never met wheezy right but just such a nice guy and so kind and just reaches out um that that that means a lot you know what i mean that's the kind of people in the community i think you know yeah overwhelmingly just really kind people i i have to say you know you get a lot of i'm on twitter a lot more than anything else but you know in parallel to this right a lot of the people in our you know in the it's all about the journey discord are on twitter as well and and i you know we're in a space where you'd expect to see a lot of toxic behavior and things like that you know we get a lot of people on twitter as well that just you know share netent knowledge without expecting anything back you know and they just get excited about teaching or helping somebody learn something and that's just so pure and wonderful to me i feel like the netting community is overwhelmingly just one of if not the best you know community for learning out there because we're so supportive in general yeah i'll echo that about twitter i uh emerged onto twitter for uh earlier this week for an issue that i was troubleshooting with a customer trying to peer bgp between cisco router and uh nsx i know about this much about nsx i've done a lot of vmware throughout my career but i've never touched nsx and we were having some peering issues and you know i briefly kind of described what was going on what we're seeing and i got dozens of people responding uh did you check this did you look here did you do this and and it's just like wow this is this is awesome can you tell us the issue or is it top secret like the rocket chip counter it's it's not top secret uh so i again we're trying to bgp pier with uh it was actually a pair of catalyst 4500 x's uh with a tier zero nsx edge and um you know it's a very standard basic ebg ebgp peering uh and what was happening was is you know it was it wasn't coming up well yeah sure go ahead take a shot what do you think what do you think there's so many pairings and repairing the loopbacks nope nope or was appearing to the director all right i was going i was going multi-hop yeah okay yeah a lot of people suggested that now we're going direct direct on the interfaces and we would actually we actually took a pcap on both sides we saw the tcp session established we saw the cisco side send the bgp open and then immediately the other side responds with a tcp reset what does it all mean basil so so the nsx router had a no solicitation sign on the front door i sent them packing yeah so was it a config on the nsx like why why would it send a why would it shut down so the the bgp process was running but there was a misconfiguration and and what what it was was is there was two different interfaces assigned to the same bgp neighbor so it was trying to i believe anyway it was trying to send the peering traffic out the wrong interface uh and somehow i i don't know exactly what's going on i don't know i can't begin to tell you um but what i can tell you is that earlier today we tore down the entire b2p configuration on the nsx side and rebuilt it we got the first interface configured and the bgp appearing came up like yes yes nothing like that feeling then uh the the consultant added the next interface for the other network and the other data center and everything went back down and we're like well wait a minute uh so he had to do a bunch of stuff with uh v-necks and a few other things and we finally got everything up and going in in the end so good stuff what were we talking about again well you reached you reached out to me looking for help right yes you reached out a lot of people engaged yeah i know it was it was very engaging a lot of people just like did you check this did you check this and i'm like i don't know i don't nsx i didn't i don't i they were the customer was using a different uh partner for the vmware piece uh so it's not stuff that i had access to and uh and so yeah everybody was asking me all these questions i'm like i don't i don't know i do nsx i love that i reach out on twitter way too much for answers to questions instead like i try googling a little bit and i'm just like oh this is so annoying i just fire off a tweet kevin myers had a really good guess in chat firewall rolls blocking port 179. that would yeah that's a good one right hey we definitely threw that out there to the to the vmware team is there something going on in there i mean we're seeing you know mac addresses in the arp tables we can we can get icmp back to the the other interface what's going on here uh but no it was good stuff and you know again appreciate the community for shouting out things for us to take a look at and uh you know because again i had no nsx experience so it was nice to to get a few people that were knowledgeable and say hey check this check that and actually you know sent that back over and said hey have we looked at these things but it's it's stuff like that that makes you appreciate the community at large and um i i have a few other notes here i think we should dip into one of them is a rather long-winded email from our very good friend manny i'm gonna have to try to figure out how to summarize this one uh so while i do that does anybody else have any notes uh from from our fans that they can share with us oh we had at least one no i had one anything on twitter well well while lex is looking and while aj is summarizing manny's novel um semi semi-related i i haven't asked aj yet but uh someone pretty known in the community on twitter reached out to me the other day um wanting to start a podcast and it sounds like a really good idea i think it's it's got legs and they asked if you know we could hop on a quick call just to you know help point them in the right direction work out a couple things and it just that felt really cool right like uh yeah they reached out to me and i told them like well listen aj built most of the infrastructure here so tell me tell me what you want to do and maybe we could pull him in if he's available but it just was a feel-good thing right that somebody reached out for some help and and i know we'd be more than you know willing to jump in and and help them out so uh you know just people helping people right it's it's really cool well gerard said a little while ago this community has been such a blessing and phenomenal outlet to helping everyone on their journeys it's incredible nick says this community and podcast has made me fall back in love with learning networking again and push myself to learn new things you guys are all amazing oh thank you it's very sweet dave says agreed to nick the podcast has done a ton to really ignite a passion within me and i thank them all so sweet that's awesome that's yeah that feels good not trying to toot our own horns here we're just like happy that the community is around in that yeah yeah you know this is about the greater picture right that's right yeah it's it's not it's not you know we didn't do anything to facilitate the community like we started a discord and it was supposed to be a study group and it's turned into so much more than a study group it was the unintended consequences of of what we you know did by by starting a podcast right like we didn't set out to do these things these things just happen so it's it's not even something that we can take credit for i don't i don't feel like i can take credit for this anyway i don't know about you guys um it's just stuff that's happened that's unfolded yeah that's why it's like it's a community it was built by everybody not i mean if we need somebody to take credit i will but i don't think it's you deserve it andy i thought you might back me up on that thing right so so while uh while aj is is practicing reading in his manny smooth voice um can i can i steal the show for a minute or two please please please yes i want to uh i want to talk about something that i have learned from each of my podcast co-hosts so there are many things i picked one of of each of you um i'll start with aj aj i what i really learned from you was um that it's okay to slow down and that you don't have to it's good to take ownership of things but you don't have to assume responsibility of every single thing um that's where you can lean on others and you can really show and and display boundaries of hey i'm willing to do xyz but i need x amount of time this is how it's going to be um and i really learned that from you because early on and and even now i mean you do everything you do everything on the business side of the podcast you've you've organized everything and for a long time you were just going going going and i know that you would never say this to the audience but you know this show really consumed you and it took a lot of cycles in your life and you were able to realize that and say okay it's time for me to it's time for me to slow down these this is how i want to do things these are the boundaries i'm going to set and i really respect that man and it it really opened my eyes because i wasn't necessarily doing that on the podcast but with other facets of my life i felt like i just had to be heads down andy you and i have talked about this multiple times in fact in our um mental health number two episode that just dropped earlier today lexi and andy and i were talking about that is sometimes you just feel like that if you don't have your head down doing something quote productive then you're you're wasting your life and you're not being an asset to society and that kind of thing and that's completely untrue and and with how you carried yourself as this podcast has grown and and really shown that hey we need to take time for other things in our life even though we're trying to make this thing successful that was that uh that meant a lot to me and you were really uh a role model and example for that so thank you for that i learned that from you well thank you thank you tim appreciate that um for dan dan's not here but i did want to say something about him um dan kind of taught me how to be a better listener and be better at relating to people uh it was really cool to see dan in his element at uh at the asheville event he really you know moved around between groups of people and and talked and he did a heck of a lot more listening than talking he was just really trying to absorb um the stories that people were telling he you could tell that he really respected that people made the trip to come see us do a show hang out it was really cool to to see dan uh really interact with people um lexi yours is kind of a two-parter um i've learned from you all although that i i i can't say that i always model it because i'm i'm not as courageous as you are but i've learned that sometimes and when i say sometimes i mean most of the time or all the time oh boy it's okay to be direct and to not beat around the bush when you're trying to get a point out there or get a question asked because i have found myself being someone who's always trying to trying to please everybody and make sure that nobody's mad at me or nobody's upset with me and what i've really no i'm not saying that you do that that you go around pissing people off all the time but i'm saying it i do do it she she does she does but i've really learned that from you that that sometimes not only is it okay but it's necessary to just be direct be forward say what you need to say and whatever happens happens now i know when you do those kinds of things you're always being respectful i'm not saying you go out there and just tell people i'm not it's okay you can you can tell the truth but uh but i i really appreciate and respect that from you thank you tim and appreciate you agreeing to join us earlier this year it's been nothing but good things and i think everybody in the community and on twitter can agree with that and if they can't hurt yes all right andy oh andy's i can't say on the air andy as much as people may not agree with me when i say this um i feel that i've learned a sort of swagger from you and and what i mean by that is ever since this show started and as it's progressed i've i've really respected how you carry yourself and how you speak publicly in fact i've kind of tried as this show's grown and i've been on it i've i've found myself kind of trying to model how you communicate and how you you know just flow through these shows so i've i'll say i'm practicing my andy swagger i i appreciate that i really respect that from you oh you just you just made my the nicest life anybody's ever said to me that being said don't fly to yourself i've been drinking he does have a swagger i never would have thought of it in that terms him but that's that's what he just andy's got a flow to him that yeah he does i if if i feel like i'm carrying myself somewhat well in one of these shows i feel like i've had to really prep and think about what i'm gonna say and andy andy can just roll thoughts um off the edge of his tongue and that's i think there's a talent and a skill to that so i don't know if you practice this andy probably just stands in front of the mirror all the time and just practices the timing of this compliment is really nice tim because it was just a couple days ago a guy chris on my team said publicly that i talk too much so we're calling you out chris yeah so so the fact that you know you you like my communication skills i appreciate maybe i'm just not surrounded by the right people yet over there you're an honest communicator andy i i think we all appreciate that about you very much not a lot of people are thank you tim and the fact that you don't think people would agree with you tim on that is a little um i'll have to dig into that later tim is the only one that believes it everybody thinks andy's an asshole but i think he's a great communicator you might want to be careful who you surround yourself with there andy i think you're right um and i didn't want to end this without uh bringing up aaron um aaron was a huge part a big focal point in the show a big reason why this show really took off and got legs and i feel like what i learned from aaron really was confidence i'm i'm naturally a fairly timid fairly awkward person and uh listening to this show and getting to be a part of this show when i got to be a guest the first time aaron really just for anybody that has listened to the show and knows aaron um even if he doesn't think or know that he's doing it he just kind of really pushes off this this aura of confidence and that really hearing him just kind of taught me he's like hey you know why can't i do that why can't i be more sure of myself and artistic articulate myself as i screw that word up on a uh on a podcast so i aaron i don't know if you'll see this but uh i i really appreciate what uh what you helped me with there thank you well said tim well said all right i'm gonna i'm gonna take a shot at this email uh i'm gonna figure out how much time i got left uh i i want to start it by saying you know we ask people to to send in notes uh uh of all kinds right you know about the community their experience uh podcasts everything uh and and manny sent in this memoir um and and i'm not joking it's it's several paragraphs long it's it's a very beautifully written essay uh and i'm gonna have to try to pick out a few uh pieces here so um he says the biggest thing i can say this podcasting community has given me is also my most prized blessing the friendships and the bonds have been forged uh all of the co-hosts are beautiful amazing souls the additional friendships like tim mcsee taylor mike uh his boss who is a part of the community and and how manny actually got his his new position at uh where he works uh david a aka the coffee emperor and so many others are just icing on the cake then having the collective wisdom and personalities of this community with also a growing presence from uh the ladies the women of network engineering it's an amazing uh blessing uh so he he goes on to say the a1 podcasting community has been an enlightenment to my journey my career and my life from the bottom of my heart the depths of my soul thank you and thank you all for uh being you and welcoming not just me many others to the platform he ends the email by saying uh this beautiful quote in spanish that i'm not even going to try to say do it no no no it's going to sound awful if i try to say that in spanish uh but he translates it for me at the end and it says may god bless you all and thank you for the incredible group it's a blessing uh for many of us so uh thank you so much manny uh it's been wonderful to watch your journey it was a pleasure meeting you uh down in nashville uh and you know we're very thankful to have you part of the community as well i love you manny thank you a really sweet email yeah it's it's beautiful that emotional yeah doesn't he say at the end like if i made you emotional mission accomplished yeah yeah yeah mission accomplished manny manny's good for that stuff he's really good for that that's so sweet um we also got an uh a video sent in uh by ethan jackson uh he sent in a video for i think it was our 50th episode when we asked people to kind of reach out send us questions and thoughts and stuff like that so it was really nice to hear from ethan again um ethan expresses how thankful he is for the community because it's allowed him to connect with other network engineers and i.t professionals not just from around the world across the internet but even locally he's he's gotten to meet a lot of network engineers locally in his backyard and collaborate with them it's helped him achieve a lot of new you know recognition in his career he's gotten some certifications he's uh taken on some new roles he said you know when he started listening to the podcast he was just you know tier one or for alert uh like you know engineer just a regular old engineer right but now he's a senior network engineer for for an isp i think it is and so he's just he's killing it he's doing a great job and he said the motivation and the support he's gotten from the community is what would help to get him there so thank you so much ethan for sending in your thoughts on this stuff this has been so much fun uh it's it's amazing you know tim i want to go back to what you said about the whole balance thing and and and this is i i'm feeling the itch man um what drove me to do as much as i did for the podcast was the community when you hear comments on stuff like you changed my life here's why and it's just it does something to you right like if something that i have ever said or done has helped you achieve something in your life that you really wanted like you're you're shitting me i don't believe you no um but it just it just does something to me and it makes me want to like go help more and more and more people and uh there came this this imbalance where i was focused a little too much on helping other people and not enough on myself and uh and other people in my life and and so you know that's why we you know i've had to to take some step back uh some steps back and build some boundaries um but i love hearing this stuff it's very motivational it's it's i think i can safely say for all of us it's why we continue to do what we do and have done for the last 100 episodes is when we hear these inspirational stories on you know you guys talked about xyz topic and it really helped me you know do something in my career uh and it's just really it's inspirational it really is so thank you all for for sending in what your thoughts and experiences have been uh these last two years uh can i just um aj i think i just want to say like this this podcast is your baby the community is your baby you are a harder worker than all of us on this podcast you have you have done so much and i know that it's consumed you at times and been awesome for you at times and not so awesome that you know but you know as you're i'm not going to speak for everybody i'm guessing this is still safe to say like we all love you and we appreciate everything you do for the podcast because you really are like in a lot of ways you are the heart and soul of the podcast so i want to thank you for everything for sure i i appreciate that but you know it we couldn't be here if it weren't for you guys right like everybody's got a role in this everyone's uh you know if it were just me talking behind the mic this wouldn't be nearly as fun of a podcast um but yeah no i i love it i enjoy doing it uh it's been nice to sit here and chat with you guys um i haven't done it for a very long time uh and it's not not you know it wasn't on purpose i wasn't avoiding you i swear i just had a really busy summer andy doesn't believe you well i was avoiding it i'm staying quiet on purpose andy's mad that i said you're a harder worker than all of us i i bit my tongue no jay we we definitely appreciate you know like like i said earlier somebody was asking about starting their own podcast i'm like we got to pull on aj because he you know he built this thing from the ground up i just came on and tried to figure out how to talk about networking you know and career uh yeah man dan calls you you know daddy aj right like this this is definitely you know you you started this and thank goodness for it and uh yeah man i've said it before this is the best part of my career like all the people we've met and the people we get to help and somebody just reached out to me the other day as a follow-up to our salary negotiation episode that she's um you know she's she's working on a new uh you know spot and wants to negotiate some salary and just hey you know i really like the episode and if you have any insights i'm looking to get maybe into a vertical you were in and it's just so nice to be able to again guy sitting in my cable guy truck praying that someday somebody would give me that first shot right and and now we can all talk to each other and people who haven't worked in industry trying to get in and um you know it's just nice to have direct contact and everybody's accessible um and i know what we might have touched on this but like my the biggest surprise that stands out to me on like what i learned over the course of the past 100 episodes is just how many paths there are to getting that first job in tech the first one's the hardest one it seems like somebody giving you a shot and and i know some of this is review we've we've said this before but my whole life from the time i failed at a computer science at temple university i thought you had to get you know a computer science degree to work with computers right in i.t that and i don't consider myself a dumb person but that's just how i thought it worked right and god all the people we've talked to it just sounds so many different paths you know every time i think i've heard them all we talked to somebody else and you know jeff mclaughlin he's like running cables and like he got a job in tech like oh my god like just every single person we talked to like wow there's another way to to get in so again community i wish i had people out there listening that might you know maybe want to get in you know they can listen to dozens of different ways where i was blissfully unaware of any of that you know two two and a half three years ago you know um for people who can't pass c plus plus and calculus in the first semester as a computer science major me i am them yeah you know i just find it very comforting that there there's an inclusion in this industry that i didn't know was there inclusion meaning you know you you don't there isn't just one way to get in um and so much as who you know right and simply by plugging into the community creating a twitter account do a little bit of branding hop it on a discord if you want listening to a couple different podcasts in the industry and reaching out directly to people like us and everybody else out there you know you bust your butt you get assert you know you can you can get in there and you know in dozens of different ways so i don't know i just think that's the biggest takeaway beyond all the community stuff like if if you're wondering if you can get into tech you absolutely can because i couldn't and i did and here we are and i've met all these other people that thought they couldn't and did and you know that lex was an english literature major right who yeah i was going to bring up my useless i am i am let me be clear i am joking that is not i consider my english literature degree very valuable that's not a sarcasm but no i had a lot of people say that though um yeah i i hope i hope um i hope that i i don't consider my story the most inspirational it's just sort of like i floated around for a while but i also think that it's probably a fairly typical story and so i hope that by sharing it both as a woman and someone who like didn't figure out what i was interested in for quite a long time i hope that helps at least some people maybe just cumulatively with with other stories but but you know i feel like a lot of a lot of women myself included right when i was younger think like not smart enough i don't really enjoy calculus type math and so i'm not going to be good at like computery things or engineering in any way but i i hope i hope some of this makes you reconsider that because there are a lot of like andy said there are a lot of paths into technology related careers and it doesn't have to be through like a stem degree necessarily it can um but there are a lot of other ways to go about it too and sometimes you just sort of have to find you know try out things for a while before you you get there um so i don't know if i've learned anything it's really just that like cursing won't hurt you and you can get a job by streaming yourself being dumb so no i i actually put yourself out there put yourself out there learning that that is what i've learned um for reals like get youtube out there don't be taking risks right yeah it was a total risk yeah you didn't even have your ccna and you're like oh yeah i'll take a knock job at a huge cloud company and then not too much longer you know you're working on things that go to space but that but you had to take a lot of people a lot of people might have it's scary it's unknown you had to move across the goal so you know risk favors the bold or whatever the silly cliche is like you've taken calculated risks and you know not not me saying i'm proud of you means anything but it's just amazing what you've been able to do and in a relatively short period of time like i'm you know i'm just amazed at what you've been able to do thank you right back at you andy i mean like yeah we we all have our own individual like stories of how you know we've all faced adversity of some kind we've struggled with some things and i think that we all have our own sort of little lessons that we can teach people about what we've gone through right and i think that is the power of community we can all sort of talk about what we went through um share it with other people they can learn from it maybe not make the mistakes we did or purposely make the mistakes we did because it made us better you know like we that's the power of the community in the end is just sharing that knowledge and those experiences and i i value that very very much both as someone who shares these things and hopes it helps people and someone who takes in the experiences of others as well yeah i like i like what you said there at the end takes in the experiences of of others as well so um you know we we follow a lot of people on on twitter uh and and there's one woman that i follow um i hope i don't butcher her her twitter handle emirage uh yeah to see her you know first of all she posted some really funny network engineering memes that i absolutely love uh and then to see her posting pictures of you know studying after working her non-it job she posted the other day on twitter that she had to go rack some switches at a data center she got all the way to the data center realized she forgot to switch it she had to go back get the switches go back to the data center she racked the switches she was all proud of herself and then she saw they were racked upside down i want to tell you that i've done that too i've done that plenty of times uh and it was just so cool to see her go from aspiring to be in tech and then she's in tech and and it wasn't that long ago that we just met her on on twitter so um it's it's the stories the progress like that uh it's it's so much fun to see watch and hear about um from from folks in the community yeah and she may not and she may not know it or think it but as she's sharing those stories as she's kind of up and coming in and getting into tech and and while you know at the time it may seem like a bad day because you're having you know going through those problems and everything but she's she's helping people by sharing that because she's showing people that hey i started from something not in i.t at all i'm getting into it it's not always easy i have struggles but i'm taking steps every day and i'm i'm showing that to other people it's it's really opening eyes to show that anybody can do this if you just try she's showing herself learning i feel like that's very valuable we still don't have we have a lot of teachers and teachers are very very valuable right not trying to cut down anybody who's teaching but i think we don't have as many public learners as might be good to see out there right because a someone showing themselves learning can also teach in a way um we don't just have you know we don't just want the like super experienced experts you know posting their videos out there of how to do such and such teaching about the protocol it's useful but we do have a lot of that and what we could really use is like i don't know study buddies or somebody else somebody's showing themselves learning something in a way that might resonate with other people who will learn it the same way perhaps i don't know it's it's great i've loved watching emirates you know post her story that's been like such a joy so i'm excited to see her future but yeah i think that's a great like takeaway is just show yourself learning publicly it's it does not reflect badly on you um you don't have to be perfect out there on socials yeah i want to continue to unpack that because i it really does help people because like you said lexi like having a lot of people that can teach that's not a problem um in and of itself but i know that i've sat in you know some of those video courses and and different things like that trying to learn and you're seeing watching somebody teach you something and the only thing i can think of while i'm going through that is this person already knows everything yeah exactly and i don't know any of this so it's like you're just getting that message that you just feel like and it can be um it can kind of get you down sometimes because you're just like i'm sitting through something i'm trying to learn something new somebody's teaching me and it just feels like they know everything and i don't know anything to have those people that that are public about learning something and struggling through it really kind of brings that feeling back down to reality that it's like okay people that teach stuff they're they're not perfect they don't know everything it's just they have to teach that to you so they're showing you everything they know but to have those people that are going right alongside and saying okay i'm learning this along with you i thought this about x but it was actually y i got it completely wrong you know that's it's helpful i loved watching lex study learn in public you know her first tweet i like like oh my god this is like my i love her she's amazing you know it's like i'm supposed to be studying but i'm on here creating a twitter account like however she put it i'm like yes and then i saw videos of her are fighting with the cisco press and i'm like oh my god she's amazing we have to get her like it's just so good because you said out loud what i have yelled in my mind and my you know by myself in a room reading those books just just all of it the the goofy logic and the bad grammar and the you know you got to turn 17 different pages to see the whole damn diagram just all of it right like i was like yes the worst parts of studying out of a textbook yeah absolutely but you were saying the things out loud that i had been experiencing for years studying right because we're always studying and you learning in public i found to be you know informative i learn stuff you help me remember some things and solidify some you know like the way you perceive a technology sometimes or somebody else right it can kind of make something click for somebody else oh i hadn't thought of it that way so i i really like that and um i keep saying that i'm going to do some studying in public and just haven't found the time but i'd like to start on the juniper cert track and i don't know when i would do it but i really love your public uh studying you andy yeah you should you should hop on with me sometime oh god putting you on the hot seat you must commit so i have to talk about ethernet no oh my god no anything but either nut that's only for me have we done that octopus book yet oh my god it'll never be done i'm a part two making my way through it good job but yeah please do please do some public learning andy well gang i i think this is a good good stopping point uh anybody else have anything to add before we wrap this up i love you guys love you too for inviting me love you all i even love dan who didn't show up tonight he was included in that you can and we made it to the end before hearing that that's impressive andy's been working on his self-control i have it's the swagger came out sorry you know i love i love you guys thank you a hundred episodes what a ride you know what what a what a wild trip i'm really looking forward to our next in person meet up i'd like to start talking about that with you guys and um we're looking forward to what the future holds you know i feel like we kind of got a groove and we kind of know what we're doing to some extent and you know now it's just keeping people engaged and finding interesting topics and people to talk to and and trying to balance it too right we might have like three or four in a row where it's all interviewers and we're like oh no so you know we're always looking for feedback from our from our community right like let us know if there's anything in the next hundred episodes that you know you'd like to hear that you haven't right because we we don't we don't have all the answers right we just we hop on and we try to uh you know talk some tech but let us know uh how we can you know how we can keep on keeping home but that's been awesome thanks thanks guys good stuff yeah this is uh this has been a wild ride it's been an awful lot of fun and uh you know i don't have a beer i didn't think about that but tim did uh here's to the next nex100 right thank you so much everybody for joining us on the live stream uh this has been an awful lot of fun to interact with you uh if you're interested in doing this on the regular you can check out our patreon program we stream every time we record an episode to our patreon group uh but you know it was 100 we had to we had to invite everybody out for this one uh you can check out our patreon at patreon.com forward slash art of netenge and andy's got the glasses back on ready for the outro we've worn out the batteries on the go broken goats syndrome you know i before we close out i just want to add i i know that the show has changed in that we don't read the wins uh at the beginning of every show and and trust me we all miss that um you know we we had to make a tough call and and not do that because that really delayed the editing process and uh allowing us to get episodes out in a timely fashion but i see that you know as i look through the discord um you know there's still folks summarizing the wins so if you haven't you know scrolled through the wins in a while somebody uh has taken on the duty of summarizing all the wins that have happened recently and it's just really nice to see that that stuff kind of continues on so you know just because we don't read it out here on the podcast doesn't mean we aren't seeing it in the discord and it doesn't mean we don't care we just had to make some changes to make the workflow work a little bit more in our favor so keep on keeping on with the winds and thank you so much for joining us we'll see you next time on another episode of the art of network engineering podcast hey y'all this is lexi if you vibe with what you heard us talking about today we'd love for you to subscribe to our podcast in your favorite podcatcher also go ahead and hit that bell icon to make sure you're notified of all our future episodes right when they come out if you want to hear what we're talking about when we're not on the podcast you can totally follow us on twitter and instagram at art of neteng that's art of n-e-t n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find a bunch more info about us and the podcast at art of network engineering dot com thanks for listening you