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 welcome to the art of network engineering where hindsight is 100 meters up to 400 running 10 gig but hey please do not look directly into the light thanks for joining us i'm tim burtino and we have an exciting episode for you this week it's getting to be that time of year where we all have lots of activities going on so helping me steer the ship this week are two different don't take that the wrong way fellas but familiar faces jordan villarreal and chris denney i can't thank you both enough for joining us tonight i i am happy to say now that i've had a beer or maybe a few uh with both of you so uh jordan we'll uh we'll kick it over to you what's been going on oh not much i mean i hey i really uh appreciate you making this call down to the miners to bring uh chris and i in tonight it's uh really really it uh i guess i i didn't introduce you properly i should have said uh network field day delegate 28 jordan yes that was a lot of fun by the way i heard that was a pretty good experience yeah you because you've done a virtual one right yeah i did a virtual one haven't haven't done an in-person one yet when the opportunity presents itself for a an in-person event take it up it is a wildly different experience to be shoulder to shoulder with with other delegates who are basically peers at this point i mean maybe different industries different titles but uh truly a great great collection of minds in those rooms now did you know any of the delegates going into it um so jeremy shulman was there who's uh i can't remember his full title and i know him by reputation more than i know him in person uh he's um an automate a king automator at mlb basically so i picked his brain the entire week uh just about how mlb does their stuff and then uh there was one other guy um keith his last name eludes me turns out he lives about 25 miles away from me so i had to fly halfway across the country to meet somebody who lived just down the road for me it's pretty funny small world indeed well that's exciting uh thanks for sharing that and we also have the infamous chris denney chris it's great to see you guys yeah thank you so much for having us man um i uh i was excited to get the call that's for sure anything new going on with you i know that's a loaded question uh just uh trying to uh stay ahead of uh everything that's coming at me and uh we i may potentially have something coming uh that we kind of announced on twitter yesterday so uh i don't really wanna steal any real thunder from uh anybody here uh jason cooley but uh this is uh we got some stuff coming guys so uh stay tuned and uh everybody can know that you're not gonna get any info from me because i have no idea what's going on over there either all right let's get into it i am very happy to introduce although chris kind of stole my thunder even though he said he wasn't going to sorry i'm just messing with you we have for this episode technical solutions architect technical evangelist author and quite possibly superhero jason gooly jason it is incredible to meet you thank you so much for coming on how are you i i am awesome i don't know about superhero that's that's uh more than i mean maybe i it's the super power balls but yeah uh dude this is great i and i'm so excited to be here and uh finally to get to meet you face to face because i know we've been chatting online for a while and i've never really actually got to to talk to you so it's pretty cool we got to do that today so thanks for having me on thank you for joining us i i do um want to start off with the author bit because i'm i'm going to steal some time real quick and thank you for what you've done on the author side so late last year i got through the enterprise core exam and it was i will say largely in part to the official cert guide that you co-wrote so thank you for that i i do want to unpack that a little more because i know if if people just look through twitter and that kind of thing you'll see people passing exams all the time and and honestly it's it's easy it can be easy to make it look easy and i i just want to say that i started studying for the enterprise core exam probably in early 2020 and i didn't end up getting it until towards the end of 2021 i had some bad study habits and that kind of thing but um when i finally buckled down uh i went through and made a whole bunch of digital flash cards and a lot of it came out of the book that you co-wrote jason and that was just a huge game changer for me so thank you for being a part in my success as a network engineer i just wanted to start off with that thank you you know thank you i mean i'm glad it helped that was that's kind of the whole reason we do these things and and uh you know brad when he came to me to even get on that project i was like i'm down you know and uh you know we had such a good role we were doing all the different programmability books and you know i work really good with brad so when he came to me with that i thought you know it'd be nice to do something that i can give back and help as many people as possible the programmability books and things of that nature they're helpful but they're they're very i mean here's network programmability and automation you know here's sda here's sd-wan when you start talking about official certification guides you you get to you know cover a lot of different topics to try to make the most impact as possible thank you it really means a lot to hear you say that i appreciate you so how many other books have you written well i know you've written the devnet book because i've got that sitting on my shelf there and i didn't even realize that you were attached to it uh the the last interview that that we did with the art of network engineering for the the youtube feed and i just happened to have the book sitting right next to me while we were uh live in that event and oh my gosh he's on this book too yeah yeah i uh it was so funny because so so the answer i guess is i wrote five other books uh other than ian core um but the way it started it was it was kind of weird because you know it all started with the programming and automating cisco networks book right it was the first book that i got on and i've told the story a couple times this gentleman i was working with at cisco said he wanted to write a book and he knew i had the service provider and at the time routing and switching and he said you know i can write a lot of stuff about programmability automation linux and all the data center stuff would you be interested in doing stuff around enterprise networking and service provider apic-em programmable you know and i had to think about it for a while because i wasn't sure if i wanted to write a book me um so i ended up doing it and it was it was like a blessing in disguise because it helped so many folks i've heard so many people come up to us and say uh you know this book was how i got started in programming and automating networks that's how i got started with programmability at all and it was funny because and i'm quoted saying this on all the devnet websites and youtube and everything like that i'm like i had to learn this stuff to write the book you know what i mean so for me i thought it was cool that i was able to teach the way i learned it so it could be absorbed easily hopefully by whoever picks it up you know and that's kind of how i try to do these books so i mean it started off with the one and then brad came up to me he's like hey man you wanna you want to work on the ccie ccde evolving technology study guide say that five times fast um and and i'm like nah man you know i think i'm done you know because i it's a lot of effort to write a book so i was like i don't i don't i think i'm done and he's like well it's going to be a three chapter ebook would you be interested in writing you know the programmability chapter and i'm like okay twist your arm right and that was that that you hear people get tattoos and they're like oh they're so addicting i don't know uh but uh very similar when you're writing books right so then all of a sudden i did too with this guy and then he's like hey do you want to write ian core and that was the book that you referenced earlier and i was like dude why do you keep doing this to me you know i thought i was done and um but i'm like yeah absolutely so i did the programmability chapters some of the insurance stuff and the dna center and some things like that in there and it was a blast i love it and you know you when when you hear folks tell you that something that you did helped them that's like the ultimate goal i mean as you all know you know you don't get you know gold bricks of money for writing books you know what i mean um so it's really just to just to see how many folks i can help because i remember when i was going through all this there was like two or three books and that was it like land switching routing and you know there's like not a whole heck of a lot of them you know right doyle doyle's uh bible the tcpip you know volume one did it get and then you're like how do how do i do all these things so then as as as i got into writing and which i never thought i would the idea was i'm gonna write it in such a way that hopefully it could be the second you pick it up it's almost like a how-to manual versus a really dry textbook so dedicated i appreciate that easier and easier as you continue to write it it does to a degree so i guess what i can what i mean by that is that if you sit down in a session to write say you're working on one chapter and you want to just get down and write some topic once you start yes it gets easier in that session what doesn't seem to get easier right is that you have to keep doing that 10 hour session over and over and over and over and by the time you're like in week three and you're like this is a year-long project and you're you're typing at starbucks and your butt is numb because you've been there for 11 hours and you only get so many free refills on peach tranquility tea and you're sitting there like oh my gosh i gotta get out of here that's where it kind of gets strenuous because i think the the hardest thing for me that i and i've i've said this to a lot of folks is that i have a hard time having a timeline or a deadline on being creative that it just there's something about because you're create you're trying to come up with something you've never written this book has never been written right that's why we're writing it right so you get that or it feels like you're you know you're not being forced because you signed up to do this right but it almost it it forces you i should say to start thinking about things like oh well man it would have been nice to go outside today it was 80 degrees i could have clicked it to click it click it to click mac dictation and you're talking to your laptop and all this other stuff you know so it does put stuff into perspective i would say that what does get easier over time is the ability to when you sit down to kind of just jump in because that was the thing that was the hardest for me when i first started my wife told me she's like you know what forget formatting spelling just just start throwing throwing up on the keyboard essentially what she said where you just start thoughts just streaming out don't even worry about punctuation nothing and i did that and then as you're doing it i found that if i'm telling a story or if i'm trying to explain a product to a customer as i'm telling that story right you're envisioning what it's what exactly you're you're doing right i mean this is in your brain you know how it works so you're explaining the use case or the business outcome to the customer so i try to do the same thing when i'm typing because at that point you're just like i'm explaining it and then i can go back and put it in the proper the user can the user clicks this you know that you know types this command or whatever because then once it's conversational i get it out and then i can just change a couple things so now good chris i i'm sorry i was going to say i could imagine though that there is no just you know just calling it in that day right like no halfway in you know if you're going to sit down to write like there's no just i'm just going to put something there and just come back to it right because it's got to be so detailed and you also have to know that somebody's going to be using this material and and basically hinging their entire careers off of that material and also people are going to be checking the material as well but you know you got to be 100 percent anytime you sit down to type yeah yeah absolutely and i think one of the other things is that if there are days that you sit down and you're like i'm just not i'm just not feeling it it is better to get up and just go don't force it so when you force it you just you find yourself like using like fluff and i'm not a big you know yeah fluff kind of guy so you know you want to be to the point i'm explaining it and the way i look at is i'm i'm explaining how to do something to somebody through words on on you know in the computer but by doing that instead of it be a reading as you know i have a checklist of something i have to do it's very it's more conversational hopefully it flows easier and because i remember reading books when i i first started out uh uh i think the first networking book i got was the cybex ccna study guide kit by todd lamley i don't remember that red and black old school i mean this thing the book was like you know that thick and then it had this virtual e simulator that was that was included with it and um and todd limely i thought was was was pretty decent a lot of writing a lot of this stuff you know so i would i would find that i would go through some of his and and you know they would make references to like movie quotes or movies in the router names and stuff like that so i try to inject things that are fun try to make things that are a little bit more different and unique now understandably it might not be accepted everywhere so i have to make sure that you know if i'm making it making a little movie reference or a joke or something like that that it's it's universal and everybody can understand it um but it's fun because you you you find yourself writing what you've what you've been thinking and what you've been showing folks and when it finally comes out and you hear somebody say i used this to do x y and z and it helped me you know you're like wow you know my my my numb butt at starbucks for you know 11 hours a day for for months at a time was worth it i wanna i wanna add on to that because i think it's really important for uh consumers like us of this material here what what you have to go through um to put this material out because it's it's so beneficial for us like i i i don't know how you went through those exams when when there wasn't much material because i had your book i had all these different video courses including cisco on demand learning at my disposal when i went through this and both exams were still difficult um so i can't imagine how how difficult it must have been for a lot of people before a lot of uh you know the quantity of this material was out so yeah thank you so much for for putting this together and all your co-authors because it really does help absolutely yeah absolutely yeah you know one of the things that i think is kind of interesting about that is that when you're when you're trying to do something to help folks you want to try to make it as broad as possible and so you can you make the biggest impact as possible that's that's kind of becoming my theory because as i wrote the initial book it's very like i said it's very focused sda very focused as you went so as i can if i continue to write that out there because it's been it's been a it's been a lot of writing that it would be to try to make the most impact and broadest help as possible you know like wendell same thing with wendell when he does the ccna stuff right the idea is just to try to help as many people as possible to the best of your ability and so i think that's what i'm that's what my my method of of writing is going to move in towards or move into i should say because i just think that you you only have a certain amount of hours in a day and all these books i was still working a full daytime job at cisco while this was going on too so it's you know you you want to prioritize that to try to make the most impact but also still spend time with your kids and your and your wife you know so i think that's that's kind of if there's any advice that i could give for aspiring authors would be it's okay to give to the paper right it's okay to to take the time out and spend spend the however long you need to get stuff done um however just don't don't put yourself so far into the paper that you can't realize you have other things you gotta do because i have done that too so there you go yeah i do think that's that's definitely a struggle i think balance for anybody um especially people that are are very career and education minded um really struggle with because it's so easy andy has talked about it multiple times it's so easy to to become so goal or goal oriented where you just put your head down and then you look up and so much time has passed and and you really need to take time for mental health and and make sure you're taking care of everything else in your life um so i i do want to spend some time um learning about your your experience at cisco but i'd like to first kind of throw it back for for people who don't know your story jason can you kind of start with uh with what really got you into network engineering or even just technology in general absolutely uh so i owe it to my best friend so there's this gentleman named luke kalin uh who i've known since i was 13 years old i believe um yeah he was 12 i was 13. and his mom was a computer analyst and she would do different things like work on this is back in the day of windows nt uh windows 3-1 3-1-1 for work groups dos 622 like you're you're back into like dip switches and jumper settings you know that's your you know back in the day you know visa isa you know what i mean you know not the stuff you hang your tv from you know so you know when you're when you're so he got me into all of this different stuff and he would steal his mom's books which i thought was kind of fascinating he would steal his mom's books and read them and i'm like okay so i'm hanging out doing whatever i was doing and he calls me up he's like you got to come over here man i've got this computer and i want to build it and i want you to come over and help me build it i'm like at first i was kind of like what are you talking like i'm 13 like what you know what are you talking about so i go over there and we we build this this computer he has all these different parts we put this computer together and we end up tr we tried really hard to get linux on there for for many times there was linux uh it was called like slackware i think it was way back in the day this disc we tried so hard to get that to work we could not get it working but anyway we built this dos the 622 uh wind uh dos box and then we put windows 31 on it and then uh we would just play with it now we're using qbasic and starting to do a little bit of programming and qbasic and if then go to and all this fun stuff and uh i was 13. and what was crazy is you know i didn't really do anything worthwhile programming you know wise back then it was like i made a circle appear and then i figured out how to go back to the line so if then go to uh and then i made it open then it just kept opening and disappeared open and eventually it was just like this i got it to do that and uh i figured out somehow i don't know what it was somewhere in the book um and i still have this book it's actually uh i think it's in the closet right here but i have the original book that he taught himself q basically oh wow i kept it um and in there somewhere you can tie the pc speaker to whatever it is you're programming so it just whoops i thought it was the coolest thing in the world man it was a circle and a siren i was dude i was i was rocking you know and uh that was where it started so that was that was my first intro into it was because him like pretty much stealing his mom's books and teaching himself and then teaching me and then you know next thing you know i ended up going to school when i was it was like can you remember how old i was it was 1997. i went to this uh vocational school to get originally it was uh cna and novell for uh for certified novel administrator if you remember that three uh no 411b was the one i ended up going for but it was just getting out of three into 411b and um then before then it was the a-plus certification and the my it was like a microsoft mouse user certification or something like how to use excel and powerpoint and word and all these things so i went to school for these things because they didn't teach them at my at my school this is what i wanted to do i didn't have the best trajectory in school i got booted out everybody knows the story on that one and i wanted to do something with my life that i enjoyed and and that was it so i continued down that path and then um right when i was getting out of that that uh vocational school my friend luke said have you ever heard of this thing called cisco again like this guy second time he's he said hey man look at this i'm like no what's cisco he's like dude it's like linux and dos but it's like a separate operating system and at the time i was like i loved that you know command line kind of approach to things because it was so foreign and i was making stuff happen based on what i'm typing and i just thought that was this the coolest thing ever at that age you know so i was like all right well let's let's take a look at it i want to see what it's all about and then i found out it was kind of based on linux so there might be a little bit of similarities to the operating system and then i'm like well i guess you know i guess i need to figure out what i want to do and they said well there's three certifications you can get there's a ccna a ccnp and then a ccie and at the time that it was all over the place these folks were advertising this it was great a ccna will make over a quarter of a million dollars a year ccmp would be about 375 000 a year and then my buddy goes dude you don't even want it he's like he goes you know what cci's make oh my god he goes more than the president and now back then back then in the 90s as funny as that sounded i'm like dude that's the one i want i'll i'll get my ccie right you know what i'm gonna get my cci i'm gonna go work for cisco that is exactly what i said 1997. i'm gonna show you something okay i can't laugh i'm gonna get up for a second shit i told him i wasn't gonna laugh this is too funny we're just laughing at something else right just to give you an idea tim made a funny face of where i was when i started this mess this is me in a complete zoot suit wearing wingtip shoes ponytail gosh way back in the day look at this dude that's all is that that almost looks like it's from 17 years old is that from godfather wait that's 17. yeah i was 17 years old holy shit i wish i had that kind of style at 17. no kidding i wish i had that kind of style exactly so i still have the suit which is and the shoes actually um but it was it was just i we had this thing where like you got to dress up for for your graduation okay i possibly bought that didn't i i bought this suit i thought this was the coolest thing since sliced bread man it was all i was looking i was looking good i was a godfather back then before i even knew i was not it was even the same was it the same friend that introduced you to uh to dawson to cisco that introduced you to that styling look please say yes this was kind of boring for me it was just a weird thing but i do got to credit him to also getting me into metal so he was the one who got me into uh metallica and megadeth and all that when i first started so metal dev ops wouldn't even have been a thought you got it there it is if you didn't tell me check out this uh this song this is fade to black by metallica and that was that was where it started and uh it was funny because we we kept on and he's still he's still now he's doing security at a big cisco customer it's a large law firm he's doing security and he's doing fantastic and he loves cisco security and it's so funny because we both stayed in it he was doing more network server administration things like that webs web design things like that then he got into uh cisco security and poof uh and now he's just he's loving it so i'm so happy for him that we both stayed in i.t and we're still the best of friends since since we were 13. so see i think anybody can do it i guess with the message for you out there pick up a book learn how to program a circle and there you go you know the next thing you know yeah it's not a real circle if it doesn't do that i gotta have the audio right it's got to do you know i think uh i think that's a great segue too because i think it's easy for for people to potentially i don't want to call it a trap but i'm going to call it a trap to to fall in a trap of thinking you need to pick one thing and become hyper focused and and you can't leave the box um because i think there's there's a lot to be said for range and and uh breadth of skills so to know that you can learn different things jump into adjacent or even non-adjacent areas and and don't necessarily have to completely start over because there are organizations out there that will um really reward you for the skill sets that you have have gotten over the years because so many things can can transfer into adjacent technologies and and just having those those different uh skill sets really you know expand your mind and help you you know apply thoughts in in different avenues so i i'm glad you brought that up jason you know one one other thing that goes directly with what you just said that i think is is vastly important is that you when you do these different diverse things you gain all this experience that makes you the person that everybody wants around because you know how to do all these things now granted sometimes the side effect of that is you do 92 jobs i do 90 i have 92 bosses bob you know um but you do run into these situations where you become valuable and they want you around because you have that diverse skill set and you can do all these different things so keeping that in mind is it's not it's not bad to you know diversify i think it's it's brilliant to do that the other thing is to just know that you may they may ask more of you and but that could lead to a positive thing but just no one no one to pump the brakes if it's if it's important boundaries yeah boundaries that's it yep so can you can you step us through uh the early days of your professional career oh man it was it was so wild and different i i love it because you know i started building and selling computers with with my friend luke there when we were just at that age right around 13. and um we started selling computers to different businesses it was super cool we were it was old school like i want to think one of them was like a pentium 233 and somewhere i have the chip i still have a chip off of one of those the original pentium 233 mmx i think it was um and it was so so cool to have these we'd build these computers and then we'd sell them to these different businesses and whatnot and it was very sparse though because when you're i don't know 14 15 years old with a ponytail looking like that guy you know and i come in here and say i'm gonna sell you this computer to like get out of here you know what i mean because you're you're a kid i mean we were kids uh but i think at the same time you know i don't know about you but i watch shark tank every once in a while and i see some kids younger than me on there with some pretty awesome ideas and they're multi-millionaires now right so don't don't discount the the youngins because because they're that because they're young i think the more we teach my daughter is seven she's going to be eight in november and she is all about everything that has anything to do with electronics art painting just everything science i i'm so i'm so um enamored by what like her passion for these things right and i i love to encourage it but it's not like i i don't feel like i was like you need this you know that you have to do i want her to be able to do whatever it is she wants but i really do enjoy the fact that she likes to say some of the same things that we do right so there is a place for her if if she decides to go down that path for sure and that's great to hear and um any parent out there who's it well number one just enabling their kid in general to get into any technology field bravo but to see and and to hear more fathers that are helping their daughters get into it that's hats off to to you for that thank you yeah i mean i don't hide the the fact that might kind of say i'm trying to point to this monster here uh you're doing great you got it um and um you know my little sh can't it's out of frame but she's a bunch of flowers over here but at the same time you know i want her to be able to have every opportunity that we've all had um and we all know and i've talked about this on other episodes and other other things right we all know that sometimes uh you know we don't give as best of a foot forward for for some of the women and young girls and kids in this industry so it's cool that uh that a lot of folks are stepping up especially with some of the recent events and things we've seen online and just just really including everybody and i think that especially in the it realm when you have a young girl who has a passion to want to be able to do something technical and her eyes light up like yours did when you first sat down behind whatever it was right you know or the first time you ever picked up a guitar or the first time you ever picked picked up the drumsticks right your eyes light up and i think anything that i can do to kind of just feed that fire even if she decides to go be an artist and drop out of school and doesn't do any of these things and maybe she's a singer or something it has nothing to do with that but she knows it nothing wrong to have uh intelligence in multiple different areas absolutely that's that diversity thing very big time yeah i agree gotta feed the passion yeah that's a big part of it i and that's kind of the approach that my wife and i have taken with our kids is not so much to to push things on them but to really observe what it looks like gets them curious and and just kind of take that the next step like okay you like that well what if you try this on top of it and and just kind of letting them organically come up with because i think if if they're able to figure these some of these things out for themselves things are just going to click form and they're going to become more passionate about it and you know us as parents we just got to be supportive of that and and really follow their lead i think yeah i mean the fact that that you do different things like that to enable them to solve it is a huge step i mean and that that's i didn't want this to turn into like you know father you know a whole discussion about fathers and daughters but her kids but at the same time some folks don't even take that effort so if you can actually spend the time to sit down with them and show them something i think you're you're already ahead of the pack and i appreciate that i'm not father of the year by any means but we do some cool shit but so i don't know i got a mug that says i am just oh my wife has a mug that says world's okayist mom she's trying to strive for something hey she bought it herself that wasn't a gift she and she she went with it yeah i uh to take that one step further i i didn't know my wife had this shirt but she uh she walked downstairs one day wearing a shirt that said i'ma drop the f-bomb kind of mom that that's excellent okay well i think that's going on yeah for sure you know that's a good point jason i didn't think of that i'm like hmm how many of them have uh talked about that that shirt at school okay do you know what's funny because i um i have been uh warned by my seven-year-old daughter that i have dropped a couple of words that i should not be saying and that i am not allowed to otherwise i might get my butt and i was like fair enough fair enough i will i will try my best to not do that uh anymore uh because most time you like don't think they're around or something silly or garbage bag splits open and some little and uh she she's like she's like i'm just looking out i'm just looking out for you dad i just want to make sure you don't get spanked right yeah did you just say peep and i'm like don't say pete cause you just said babe i'm like i didn't mean to say b yeah you know and then you go through that whole little thing where you're like well don't say beeper you're getting your butt and you're like oh man um if that's the worst we do yeah we're hopefully that's not too bad yeah i agree i pretend that i can hear through walls but my son he's eight he can hear through walls he hears it all right and he remembers it all too that's the worst part so jason when did uh when did network engineering enter the picture for you so it was funny because so i decided to go and start doing this uh cisco stuff that i was mentioning and i was going for my ccna and i just i didn't really have any experience networking other than you know when i was helping my friend's mom there she'd have a business that would use b and c and old school coax networks and i would help i would help them get their network up and going so that was my first parlez-vous into networking was using coaxby uh you know novell and then um it was windows 3-1-1 for workgroups was the some of the the software that their their office used so you had the networking aspect of that you had the bnc you have some novel stuff for their servers all these different clients and nds and all that stuff and it was really neat because it was super fast and super cool what i thought was super fast super cool back then right uh and then there's this thing like 10 base t zoom zoom what and and the funny thing is even after all of this the first computer that i ever owned you've been helping build i built all these computers for other folks built all these different things the first computer ever i ever owned was a 486 no 386 sx16 and it had four meg of onboard members did it have a turbo remember that and somewhere in a box i have a seagate five and a half inch hard drive that was 20 megabyte and i thought i was just i was cooking man i had a i had an old uh i think it was like a it was like a 1400 baud or 1200 mod modem i think was it was the was the the newer one that i got before that it was like 300 baht or whatever it was or 360 or whatever the heck it was and i was like wow i i thought i was blazing but uh did did it have a turbo button on it no no but it did have a key so it had this the circle key the key yeah the barrel i had they had that i don't know if that was like turbo boost um which leads i will drop this one story and then i will move off this computer because it's the funniest thing about this it's the funniest thing about this computer so that same computer right me and my friend luke we had we had another friend that uh he just he wasn't there there wasn't stuff wasn't going on right up up here up at up top you know and uh but he really wanted to get into computers so he started showing up computers and doing all these different things and um one day he he's like you guys got to come over i'm like okay so we go over to his house and he's like check this out and he he flips he flips this little power switch on on a power strip and then the computer turns out oh my god dude that's awesome what you know he's like oh no dude i took apart the power supply bypass the switch in the power supply so now i can just turn it off and on right here at the power stream and i'm like cool why didn't you just leave the toggle in that position so that was that computer so um when did that computer die uh shortly after i stole it so he murdered it uh he murdered it i don't know what he did probably because of the power um yeah thankfully the computer is the only thing that died there yeah so be careful with electricity folks coming from somebody who electrocuted himself last year be careful hey everyone it's lexi aka tracket pacer or as my co-workers now know me that little gremlin that keeps crawling in and out of the server racks i have a question for you have you ever heard of the usnua so let me throw three topics at you number one network engineering number two no annoying sales pitches and number three beer does it get any better have you ever wished you could have someone to chat with in person about network design that isn't trying to sell something to you if your answer is yes then let me tell you you need to check out the usnua the u.s networking user association is a group of fellow network engineers that like to openly chat about all things networking and the added bonus there's no selling these user group meetings are completely devoid of oem agendas that means no pushy salespeople cornering you after the meeting trying to squeeze you for that next purchase order while you're just there to get mildly buzzed and talk about vxlan or something find out all the goodness of the usnua that's the u.s networking user association by going to usnua.com we hope to see you at the next meetup in your area so when uh that was kind of your start when did you and what was it for you that that kind of triggered that hey i i think i want to make this uh a focal point in my career this this networking thing yeah um so right when i was studying for the ccna we had that uh router simulator and i really wanted to get some real equipment and that was like when ebay was first i mean first starting and i remember i went to my dad and i was like my dad was a landscape he had his own landscaping business so we weren't making tremendous amounts of money you know and i went and i said dad i i really want this thing and i printed out this this ad for on ebay two 2501 routers two 60 pin serial connectors uh there was an ad trans csu dsu oh a v.35 uh mux there's a couple other things that came with it and i was like dad i need this and then they said if i buy it they'll put in a 1924 1900 you know serious switch so i'm like i got i got to do this dude and he's looking at me like why i go well dad you know you know i've been going to school you know i've been learning this stuff i'm really i'm really fascinated by it my dad was a phone phone man in the navy and in chicago at illinois bell uh mabel way back in the day and i'm like i'm doing stuff with like voice over ip it's like the next generation of what you did you know what i mean and he's like okay and he bought me these routers so that was a lot more that was an incredible sell by the way you play you played into that very nicely dude right it was it was crazy but you know i and he did it and i you know i appreciate it even still to this day so he does this and um i go through and i start working on ccna so i get the ccna knocked out and i'm really excited because i learned a lot going through this equip the real equipment you know and i remember i remember and i'm sure you all do too you remember the first time you ever canceled into a device well yeah yep like at first you get this equipment you're like how do i how i don't do i yeah it's blinking what do i do with this thing you know and you know you can't you're not really googling a lot of stuff back then right so you're like what am i doing here and then you're finding like this manual that came in the box and it says okay take this port stick it in here and it's got the db9 connector on it and you're like 9600 you know eight and one i'm like okay okay okay and then next thing you know you hit that enter and that you see and you're like oh it's like you're in try and uh and that was that was it when i when i started touching real equipment and understanding by going through the ccna what that equipment was actually used for that was it like this switch would be because there's 24 computers plugged into this right this router is connecting this site to another site in a different state or across the street or whatever when you started putting it into that perspective and understanding truly what these devices did i think that was it for me i knew immediately when it said cisco and they said ccie and i'm like and it's like dos i'm like all right i'll do it and i knew then dude i knew then and it's so cool to see that i've been doing it for i can't even tell you how many years it's been it sounds like i really changed myself but almost 30 almost 30. dude i i'm i love how you're you're sitting here describing it though almost 30 years later and you still like your eyes lit up whenever you were talking about it like you were like a kid in a toy store just like and when i see this light up and i loved it man i i love your energy it's just true because i mean if you think about it there's there's not many things that grab you yeah i mean you know what i mean i've got a really good friend of mine wanting to get an i.t he's been doing this stuff used to study with me and luke a long time ago took some classes in high school never took took the exams never got through and actually took any of the exams and um but he's been helping me with stuff for 20 years you know this guy and you know i i keep trying to encourage him like you know dude you got this you know and he's like no well i don't have any certifications i'm like we'll keep creep cracking at it we'll get the certifications knocked out but i think i think from an experience perspective i know you got this stuff you know and one day we were talking we were on the phone for probably a couple hours and uh he's just he says well yeah we'll cloud this and something that would store uh you know cloud storage and this is that and this and it was gpus and he's just he's just going out we're just talking about random different stuff bitcoin and you know all just random stuff and then at the end of it i go and why haven't you applied for a job yet yup yup yeah it's amazing how the the barriers are out there though like and it's there's spoken and unspoken barriers and and the the level of if you don't know somebody that's going to help you get through those doors um or somebody who can say hey look that door isn't really a door just just go ahead and walk through it anyways if you don't have that person it's it's so intimidating so good on him for having you and good on you for for you know trying to push him and if he happens to watch this dude just walk through the damn door if you have that level of go ahead just go ahead yeah yeah and dude thank you and yeah i mean the guy is he's an incredible friend of mine and you know when you when you think about like what i said how i got started it was like a total i mean it was actually kind of a fluke really i mean in you know i got kicked out of high school it you know as you know from other interviews you know i was you know being silly and i got kicked out of high school and i'm like well i'm not going out like this so i've got to do something and i kind of like this because this is something that my friend was was teaching me about and you know the more and more i investigated it it seemed like the more and more everybody said i couldn't do it and i think that uh was the initial uh surge i needed to say oh yeah you know watch and because think about it in that day and age you're talking about 1997 96 95 so 95 when i you know booted out of school whatever you're talking back then and you're talking about computers and stuff internet wasn't even really a thing like this you know you're on aol and messing around in chat rooms and pepsi bots and different things like that you know but you're not i mean you're not doing anything yeah it's massive yeah yeah yeah right and uh so you're doing these you know scrolling things and you think you're cool right and it was awesome that's key but but back then everybody who was in computers when i was 14 15 was 40 50 60. do you know what i mean so when you there was this jet it's like this generational gap that was like we young kids want to do this computer stuff and all these other folks were like no way no you know it was like it was considered to be an old person's job and i think it was interesting how that changed and now how it unlocked and opened up the internet and everywhere we are today with our routing and everything we have but you know back then it was it was really hard to get into that so and and i would imagine even today you probably still have and you all can attest to this too you know folks saying you can't you know this isn't for you or especially i know women were running through it i'm sure men are are too as well this you know that you're not cut out for this or you're not smart enough or whatever it may be i'm sure there's that same type of stigma these days too as well yeah definitely when i was coming up and it was late 90s as well uh being young trying to get into networking it's it was very tough and just kind of echoing the um it was a lot of older people who were just kind of looking out the side of their eyes and who is this kid trying to come in here and take our jobs because a lot of old telephone guys who are trying to adapt to the new yeah especially going into networking and voice over ip and all that right yep yeah so i i really love to hear that story jason about how it how it just kind of clicked for you because i really find that a commonality among a lot of network engineers network admins that people really come from all walks of life they have all different kinds of experiences but it seems like when they get into networking they a lot of people kind of have a very similar story that they they just kind of came upon a a cisco class or a book or the ccna or something and they they just got started and things just really clicked for him i had a very similar story i was in college i i wanted to get into technology but i didn't really know what and i went into computer science as a major because i didn't know any better um nothing wrong with it i just i didn't know what else was out there and i i went through the the calculus i went through the c plus plus and i'm i started getting nervous i'm like i don't know if this is going to be it yeah so some of that's my it is and then i uh the school i went to um subscribe to the cisco network academy and and i sat in on that and i was like okay now this stuff makes sense because you know you're really walking through the the lower layer to upper layer of the osi model and and i think it's just being able to modularize and look at the different parts of the network stack and it just really made it click and to also know that you know there there is no at least in in this day and age there is no computing there is no uh applications there is no cloud there is no anything without the network infrastructure and and to know that you're you're really building uh a highway for lack of a better terms is it's gonna sound cheesy but i mean it's kind of empowering really yeah every i mean and just the nature of what networking means i think is what i think is awesome about it right you're connecting things yep literally all it is right you're connecting things and you you have to have a network to run an application over the top of i mean applications are useless without a network you can't the only reason a network exists is to bring the user back and forth through their applications so i think uh like you said i i always like to think of it more than plum you know more than plumbing because there's a lot of stuff we can do as far as like really integrate how your approach is everything you know with everything in the network it's more than just the foundation but to your point i think what it does by nature is connects folks and then to your your other point is with the osi model you can physically see it from the beginning yeah cable and then you're on the other end of that doing whatever you want it to do right so it's very fascinating to see when you start especially if you start getting into packet capturing oh yeah for sure you're sniffing traffic and you're doing different things like that you are literally seeing it from i physically picked up this cable that has these eight wires in it maybe you made the cable which is even cooler right you can get that that whole yeah definitely definitely farm to table networking experience but then but then you know you you physically plug it in and you literally step through each and every piece and what i loved about uh getting that's the original 1900 series switch was learning spanning tree and he'd eventually get another switch and i started playing with spanning tree and the timer is a spanning tree and you know all of these different pieces you can you can literally like okay boom and it starts flashing great you know what's happening when you plug that cable and i thought that was just the most fascinating thing because you can literally explain it to everyone the same reason why you tell everyone don't hack your chrome your you know your chrome stick or your your amazon fire stick and you think you're getting away with it with all the free movies they know what your ip is they can go to the service provider and tell you exactly where you're sitting don't do it don't do it it's still illegal um but when you try to explain that stuff to folks they're like no you don't know and i'm like but on the back end you really know how that works right so it's like um and i'm not gonna jailbreak my iphone and that's kind of one thing that i've been hearing just um out in let's say newer practitioners of cloud where you've got these uh younger kids they're just fresh out of college or new to the industry and they want to get into cloud because it's fancy it's fun it's new but there's a severe lack of understanding of the just the osi seven layer like okay you get all your fancy overlays and clouds and in your whatnots but there's an underlay there that is still very much true original raw to its form networking that still needs to be understood you know on that even tim mentioned this earlier you know learning at the beginning going through the osi model and the ccna when i first started going through the osi model and then for a period of time and i don't know if you recall this but they took the osi model off of of the certification there was no i didn't i didn't i didn't realize that longest time i would i would sit and take in some of these certifications and i would look at these different exams because we helped develop a lot of this stuff and there was no questions anything about osi and you get to thinking about it well that was the fundamental piece that you needed to teach coming out of you know like that's the entry level of networking and it's not because you don't know a lot it's because it is everything oh yeah it is everything you know what i mean um and it like you said not that not that you know not that you're a novice because you don't know what the osi model is or what now what i'm what i'm saying there is that it's such a critical piece that every single literal thing in networking builds on top of it's your it's your map you're legend to the map of the networking right like you need to know that so you can know where everything fits together uh and for the longest time it wasn't on a lot of these certifications and when as we started writing some of these other exams we started adding different pieces into it we had these different job task analysis meetings about what these certifications are for are they useful what should be added what should be not added to the blueprint et cetera et cetera and that stuff came back with with a vengeance because if you think about it like just like jordan said everything up there is the same thing it's it's there's still a network it's just in somebody else's data center yeah you know even to this day and just basic osi maybe i don't start at layer one all the time but that's that's how you have to step through things or that's how i step through things that you know as a senior network engineer i'm gonna start as low as i can go on that stack because if you don't and you just start troubleshooting up here at seven um you're gonna have a bad time you know it's it's kind of like what they said the uh and i didn't take the one uh the two day cci lab but apparently back in the two-day lab they would do things like take your rj45 connector out and put like tape on it or a piece of paper and plug it in and it's it's plugged in right and they know they would go crazy look at is it was it is it apple talk is it that what is it that you know they're going through ripping everything apart and it's player one yeah so i don't know how many times as a senior network engineer um layer one got me i mean one one example that i i love to to talk about is uh it's kind of a joke but kind of not a joke i guess uh we had multiple ibm blade centers at one of my former jobs and then the back end we had these cisco c-i-g-e-s-m cisco intern or gigabit ethernet switch module right and these were the switch modules that were in the back of these blade center chassis well somebody wanted to try to do inter chassis heart beating heart beating for a cluster and they plugged in a crossover cable between two switches in that cluster well one of the projects that we were working on was going in there and saying okay some of these blade center chassis only are single homed we need to dual home everything we're probably going to put dual homes but also ether channels we're going to bring all this thing and i built brilliant beautiful plan here are all the configurations and all this if you've ever seen the back of a blade center especially one that is has like you know boot from sand and all this other stuff there's so many cables coming out of the back of those things and if you do we didn't have the proper cable management as you would imagine uh it's a mess right so we're sifting and moving stuff around just to plug in the cables for the ether channels into these switches well click the entire call center goes down uh oh i'm the one who did the click yeah click well my plan was a solid plan however somebody went in there and stuck a crossover cable between two chassis and you didn't see it because it was buried with everything else caused a spanning trigger loop wiped out the entire call center all the phones in the entire building you know however many thousands of agents just just gone boop and you as loud as those those crack units are in the data center you could have heard a pin drop man uh it was it was a pucker factor for real uh but i mean that's the thing is i think that even when you're the senior network engineer and even when you're teaching classes even when you're writing books and you're doing all these other things uh sometimes if you overlook the basics they will come back and bite you uh so layer one for sure absolutely get a respect layer one i have a sticker that says yeah it was from a vendor it was um i don't remember their name but they they were trying to get their cable line out they're like oh we're making cables now and they send stickers respect layer one i still have it somewhere that's awesome that might even be another tattoo yeah i'll find it and i'll post it on twitter so someone can uh use it awesome yeah really i think you both said a a couple key words there i mean it really is the osi model can can really be that troubleshooting map for for people um especially people starting out it's just an easy thing to remember that just don't forget you can follow this path to an extent and uh and really help yourself along the way so i and jason can we uh can we talk about the elephant in the room can we can we talk cisco a little bit i'll just say do i have i you never know i have kids so um yeah what what do we want to talk about cisco yeah so you whatever you you had mentioned you know you said that thing earlier where uh you said that that you were gonna become a ccie and work for cisco so uh which which happened first the ccie okay um so one one piece of advice that i will offer uh anybody who's listening um because it was a dream of mine to go work for cisco since i was pretty much 17. it took me a long time i didn't get there until 2013 so you're talking a long time uh i would say though when i got there i was surprised and shocked to find that you did not need to have your ccie to work at cisco and that i was a rarity in some of the some of the places and areas that i was in and had i known that i probably would have started working at cisco when i was 17 and that would have been it you know what i mean but apparently you got to go through the journey and that was my journey um but when i landed at cisco i was a systems engineer so i i was covering a large group of accounts and a lot of healthcare a lot of manufacturing just a whole bunch of different types of even government uh security kind of military stuff is pretty cool um and you cover all these different accounts and you get to see what makes every one of them tick and that was why i was going for the ccde for the longest time because i just thought it was it was so in tune in line with you know what i what i was doing and i had a couple bodies say you should go get that you should try for it still didn't get it but i learned so much in that process and it really it really made me a better i thought systems engineer because you really learn to listen to the customer really it's what it boils down to um and what what was fascinating to me i didn't think that was going to be my role uh when i came to work at cisco but i guess i never really thought past just go get a job at cisco i'll give a cci and go get a job at cisco um so when i had customers and i was doing this as crazy as it sounds i i felt honored you know what i mean i i felt like i am working on behalf of this customer or this company that i've wanted to work for for most of my life and i get to go and explain to all these different customers and companies and partners and different folks all about our technology what it can do for them how can it benefit them and how can i help them learn and then the certification stuff kept kind of happening with the books and creating certifications and all this other stuff and that i could mentor and help folks do that too it was like fascinating and then now my role as a technical evangelist it's it's kind of neat because i build training content curriculum for our field and our partners and we get to do gamification using capture the flag and all these cool just really awesome things just to help invoke folks to learn and i gotta say i'm incredibly lucky i feel totally blessed and fortunate that i get that gets to be my job you know um i don't have to go and design the network or i don't have to go and put the network in anymore but i did all those different pieces and i loved all of it you know equally and i still do a lot of that um but i still feel very honored that i get to be in a position that i can help other folks get into what i do and why i was like you said you know like eyes lit up very excited about what my future held you know as far as networking went and um i i just think it's so cool to be able to give that back and it's my job it's like it's like a win-win i mean you can't uh you know so i think it was the best decision in my life was to go to cisco again long-winded way of saying if you are thinking about it you don't necessarily have to wait till your ccie before you do that um so please cisco.com forward slash go forwards glass careers uh if you're interested in applying that's excellent and i i really want to highlight something that you said around the uh the ccde journey that you had because i i think that they're it's easy when you're going after certifications and you take an exam and you fail it it's so easy to get discouraged but one thing that you got to remember is that if you spend a lot of time or a lot of effort at least learning different things and you're trying things out and you're labbing and you're reading and you're watching videos and you're absorbing and retaining this content at the end of the day even if you don't get the paper that says you're certified you still have all of that knowledge and and that can't be taken away from you so i mean what what do we say here all the all the time guys it's all about the journey so just where you may feel discouraged just realize that that whole journey itself is beneficial to you yeah i mean you know it's kind of like what's the difference between a resident and a doctor right it's the parking spot nice and the pay well yeah you know everything that goes along with the parking yeah that's right but if you think about that and think that through that resident just hasn't passed the exam yet yep and then they get the page so and and i think it was hard and don't get me wrong i got knocked on my butt many times i failed a lot of different exams over the years and it every single one of them stings it stings pretty bad and you know i'm as an engineer and i'm sure a lot of folks out there can attest to this as well you over analyze things so when you don't pass what do you do you over analyze what did i do wrong why am i not at this level why am i not good enough or what did i miss or and it you you instead of reflecting you kind of beat yourself down a little bit you know and i was guilty of it too i mean you know sometimes you're just like man why what you know um but i think trying to take that step back and look at the gratitude side of things and look at it from a i know this stuff like i know this stuff i just didn't pass the exam yet and to have that approach gives you that little bit of confidence like from the ccde perspective i never passed but i'm sitting there with russ and malcolm and all my good friends and all these other folks who have passed and having wonderful conversations and interviews and everything else i just didn't pass right and then i stopped and that's again that's okay too you know i think that the big key there is that to if you're passionate about something find a way to learn it find a way to practice it i mean that at the end of the day now in this day and age virtual everything virtual labs virtual you have access to things that were million dollar pieces of equipment that you can just work on that you wouldn't get unless you're working at sprint or att or something you know so um not saying that there's no excuses but you have less excuses than we did so it's a it's a long cry from manually setting clock speeds on those external ad trans csu dsus oh yeah that was when you said it earlier it's like oh man i remember just having banks of those and having to just go down there and check your clock settings are they right do they match oh gosh oh man dude we had we had uh i worked at this isp in arkansas believe it or not for a while um and i'm sure i think they're subsequently been gone it was a small isp but they did dial up and i was in charge of a lot of the dial-up stuff we had the as5300s and as5400s and you would have modem banks and i would have to take these carrier access uh muxes and then literally for you know i had one wire wrap gun like wire wrapping all these ds3s into t1s so i can plug them into all of these these uh um as 5400s and everything i was like trying to get all this stuff going uh and you learn a lot though you know telecom you know i think is so fascinating about it is my dad was doing telecom and when i was like six or seven years old he's teaching me how to make a butt set so i can connect into the house i'm glad you brought up butts that's i was going to ask about that it's super cool right so i mean i guess don't uh don't count yourself short if you're you know just get in there and start doing whatever it is and uh you'll find a path out of it i tell you that mister so can you so what about your buddies can you uh can can you step us through uh the the role is a technical evangelist what what does that mean uh you know what it's it's the coolest title i think i've ever had um and it's just because i think a lot of it you get to tell stories and not fake stories right you know uh but you get to tell stories about journeys like why are you getting i.t i've told the story so many times uh two customers and you know the different partners and stuff as well that that want to want to engage in different ways and try to do more and evolve um but from a technical evangelist perspective it's cool because i get to talk about all our technologies i mean and from an enterprise networking perspective i should put that out there so you're talking about things like routing switching wireless um space dna spaces uh cisco dna center cisco sd-wan software defined access all of these other things right and how they benefit and value to the customer which is super cool because it all totally depends on that particular customer what their use cases are so what i get to do is not only build training to kind of educate the masses as far as some of these different technologies but i also educate our internal employees to redeliver some of these sessions to our customers and then i go out and do customer facing events and things of that nature too and what's what's fascinating is that not one customer is exactly the same but some of them might have common pain points so one of the programs that i that i work on a lot is something called the interactive test drive program which i think is super cool and if you're a cisco customer and you want to check it out it's super it's free it's super cool check it out uh you come up with the technology whatever it might be we have one called campus interactive test drive and we have cisco wireless we have cisco campus switching we have software defined access and cisco dna center and things of that nature in this test drive so customers will come and we get to talk to them about their business use cases talk about what they have going on in their environment and the entire thing is a facilitated discussion so instead of you walk in here's 350 slides me standing at the front of the room going through a whole bunch of stuff and oh when you're done here's your lab guide you have two hours to give me uh you know to finish the lab please give me a five on the way out the door right the typical lab experience right that's great um you talk to the customers the entire time the entire time it is a discussion and what i think is fascinating about that is so many different customers come and they'll they'll open up even if they're in the same competitive space and i've had many many occasions where they would stay because the biggest benefit is to hear what their peers are doing they'll stay two hours afterwards i was in singapore and i had this customer stayed like two two and a half hours after the entire test drive to talk to another customer and i wasn't gonna stop it i thought that was pretty cool you know um but you go through all these different things and and it's it's gamified so you have you know games to get folks talking to share information you talk about everybody else's pain points slide minimal you're like 20 slides for the entire six hour event and then you do capture the flag gamification on some of the demos with whatever the technology is that we talked about and customers love it because it's we listen to what they say and then make a tailored experience for them for what they want to learn and i love doing it because every single time i deliver those is like 20 different customers in this room that have totally different use cases and it's fascinating to me so that's kind of what an evangelist does i guess executive briefings and all that fancy fancy-schmancy stuff that uh i try i try to i try to you know stay more grounded with the technical but i i do have to do a lot of the uh people-person things too it is really cool to see where cisco has taken uh all of those learning uh like they've taken it out of the book and they've made it real and i've seen a lot of that on the devnet as uh devnet side as well uh just like here here's not not just here's a slide go do what's on the slide no here's a real environment for you to get into and to play with and and everybody loves gamification so it's i mean kudos to cisco they're they're definitely doing it right when it comes to that stuff yeah it's a it's uh something i'm near and dear to my heart i'm proud of you know and it you know we were all customers i was a customer before i came here and you know what folks try to sell you so it's time to change the game a little bit and listen and sell to the customers that the way that they want to be sold to absolutely well jason this is this has been an excellent time i just looked down at the clock i can't believe we've been at it this long already so as much as it pains me to say i think we need to to start wrapping this thing up um is there anything that that you wanted to go into any advice that you wanted to give any experience that that we haven't talked about already that you wanted to share that we haven't covered i would say cisco live um and and i know it's hard for a lot of folks to travel especially coming off of what we just came off of here recently um i am super excited about being live at cisco live again and seeing all my friends there's so many folks it becomes family you get there and then you get these big clicks of like 20 30 folks sitting in in a social area just talking and then then all migrate over here and then there's like 60 folks and then hey let's all go to these different restaurants and there's huge just community networking right it's the human network community folks bringing other folks together right and uh it's fascinating so if you've never been i would say go take the cheap route if you have to get the explorer pass i don't remember i don't remember how much it was like 700 700 700 and um just check it out there's so much cool it's like if anybody ever seen like the auto show where they have all the latest greatest concept cars it's like that but for geek stuff all about technology and networking and how it can benefit you and it's fascinating and everybody one of the things that i want to say is that when you go everybody is there to support you um it's there's no uh other agenda than for you to have fun and learn that is the entire event that's what it's about uh so when we go we see each other and it's like this reunion thing where you get a lot of folks come together and learn about the different technology meet the folks the human network is the biggest network right it is the most important network out there period so if you have an opportunity to meet folks meet them in person i would love to meet these folks in person too meet you in person do it please do uh and i hope to see you out there um and one last thing i guess i will drop on you is that it looks like we might be doing another chicago network operators group which i am super stoked about this would be uh our 10th one it's supposed to be our 10th one three years ago but we couldn't have it for three years um so it's still shy knock 10 even though it's like year 13. and it looks like it might be in towards the end of september so we are we're in planning stages right now take a look at shynog.org for the more information on that and twitter and all that other good stuff and i think that's it for me thank you uh jordan chris do you guys have any uh parting thoughts not really um i'm gonna be looking for you live and uh now that i know that that's happening in chicago i i'd never heard of that before i'm right outside of chicago so i'm going to be looking into oh really where do you uh well we'll talk about that later you don't want to record it it's it's a long story of how i'm in chicago okay we'll sync up offline like i live it oh man edit that out awesome as far as i go i really don't have too much to add but while i was doing some reading on jason today i found an amazing video that he has on his youtube channel uh go see it it's at metal devops but it's uh unicorns ghosts and dragons common engineering myths and it's about the inclusion into the community uh basically it's a we come in different shapes sizes colors other um skill sets uh uh backgrounds uh uh everything right there is no mold for for what we do there is no mold for who can do what we do and so if uh if you can find it uh please go find that video i'm gonna ask dan if you'll put it in the in the the the base down there so that you know we can link to it but it's a great video check it out awesome thank you for that i love that yeah thanks for that chris well for all of us here thank you so much for for joining us um if you want to see a picture of a young jason gooley looking like a 17 year old michael corleone check out our youtube channel otherwise thank you all especially our patreons for joining us and all of our listeners as always this has been the art of network engineering take care everybody 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-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