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 she packed her bags last night pre-flight zero hour 9 am and she's gonna be high high as a kite by then her and she thinks it's gonna be a long fucking time touchdown brings around again to find she's not that girl you think she is at home oh no no no she's a rocket girl rocket girl burning out a fuse out here alone and she thinks it's gonna be a long long time touchdown brings around again to find she's not that girl you think she is at home no no no no she's a rocket girl rocket girl burning out of fears out here alone and she thinks it's gonna be a long fucking time and she thinks it's gonna be a long long time welcome to the art of network engineering i am aj murray at no blinky blinky and i am joined tonight by almost everybody in the in the co-host panel damn it dan uh damn it dan no dan's taking care of his boy we can't damage him for that yeah you talk shit when i'm out here you can't talk shit on dan well when we know that you're not here for a legitimate reason we don't talk shit on you it's always a legitimate reason yeah we'll decide that we'll be the judge of that andy how are you ah i don't know i'm trying to recover from that um i i am good i took my four-year-old daughter to gymnastics tonight it's the first time i've been there there's nothing cuter than a room full of four-year-old little girls jumping around doing gymnastics waving to their parents so that was really nice that's awesome yeah work has been going well i had a win this week and um really enjoying my time with the family i kind of re-prioritized and uh i'm less crazy career andy and more like you know just just generally crazy handy paying attention candy just yes i think we've talked about it i i get a little i get a little tunnel vision sometimes so got pulled out of that and got a little more bounce now and uh feels good excellent good i'm glad to hear that tim bertino at timbertino on the twitters how are you doing what's going on everybody things are good uh the theme around here lately is books we've been reading a ton it's so cool like well i'll just look over on the couch and like one or two of the kids are just staring at a book it's just it's really cool and lately my our oldest has been getting into the harry potter thing so we'll we'll read one of them and then she can watch the movie and then read the next one i think it was um who did we have on nick russo he he mentioned that of you know a big part of reading is is it forces your brain to come up with these images yourself um and then i think it's kind of cool for her to do that and then see what the producers of the movie thought the book would look like so kind of compare and contrast so it's been good it's been good how are you doing nice i'm doing well i'm doing well uh similarly to andy i've been uh reshuffling the old priorities and i've been having a good time doing it um the the things around the house uh for for the kids right um my son loves to crash things and uh we we showed him the slo-mo video capabilities of our iphones and so he loves to crash stuff and then watch the slow-mo video he gets a huge kick out of it and then that's adorable he's he's learned too that like if he talks he sounds funny when the video plays back before he'll zoom the car he'll sit there and like yell something and then i got some great videos on my phone from that so and then other than that it's a whole lot of mario kart if you're not aware mario karts if you're playing mario kart on the switch they've released eight additional courses that they're gonna like release out you gotta you gotta buy pass and then they're gonna release them over the course like the next year or so and they've already dropped two i have mario kart on the switch so yeah yeah what do i have to buy i got to buy something in addition to this there's a booster pass there's a 24.99 booster pass and that will give you access to all of the new courses that they release over the next year or so dlc yeah all right nintendo yeah so who's his who's his character who does he drive uh yoshi excellent yoshi i'm shy guy i like shy guy big shy guy you know who i i'm um yeah that's her name i'm i'm the blond girl did you say the princess peach did you say the blind girl yeah peach characters of mario the blonde girl okay i like the blonde girl she is in another house go away oh my god aj that's great to hear man shout out to parents like to be present right i before i went to gymnastics tonight my wife said now listen you might not want to have your phone out because the first time she was there she said the lady next to her the mom was like hey you know your daughter's waving to you and my wife realized that she was looking at her phone and our daughter was in the room trying to get like her mom's attention so like now since we've been there it's like all right phones away pay attention and so tonight i i was just present and i watched her for 40 minutes and she probably looked up i don't know you know 15 times to like smile wave and be proud and i would have missed all that if i was just you know yeah like doing nonsense so it's it's effort to put that distraction down and be present but it pays dividends right absolutely absolutely yeah good stuff and lexi how are you hey i'm i'm all right you know i'm getting through the hummingbirds still haven't visited me and i'm i'm pretty bitter about it but i'm getting through give him sugar if if anyone's not aware i've been trying really hard to get hummingbirds to my house and it's not working so i'm really sad about it it's a struggle they'll come but eventually they'll they'll come they're a block away at somebody else's house and you know eventually they'll figure out they need to branch out a little bit hang on is it going to cut down that tree i was just thinking as much as i might want to touch so hold on is the uh there's always hummingbirds in it and i don't want to cut it down with hummingbirds in there that's really sad they can't always be in it don't they leave they're always in it i'm not kidding every time i go by every time i go by which is every day pretty much you should walk over there with like a lawn chair and just sit on there like the sidewalk at their tree like just stare at their birds i have gone for walks and runs and i've stood there and this person's like right in front of their front yard watching this happen and at one point i actually met one of the people that lives there and i was like sorry dude like you just have a lot of hummingbirds and it's awesome and he's like yeah i know last summer there were like 300 of them i couldn't walk out the door like he doesn't appreciate the hummingbirds so i'm over here like give me give me some of them i bet there's hummingbirds crap all over his lawn yeah but it's so tiny like it doesn't pro it probably evaporates before it even hits the fuck they're so small they're like they're like this big they're like you know nose size they're so tiny hang on though is it the hummingbird thing that's driving you to want a dog oh that's just that's just my life being empty too real a dog will a dog will fix that no i no no no no it's just it's just we've been you know we've been we've been in this house for a while my older dog she died in september last year so it's been a while and i you know i'm i've always had either a dog or a parrot and i've been deciding between dog or like budgies parrots or something and i think a dog if i were to get one or the other i'd have to pick a dog probably and i just yeah i've just really missed the animal companionship don't the pirates live for like 50 years sorry parents yeah for like 50 years they'll live for a long time but but yeah my aunt has a my aunt has a parrot that's like 50 something years old it's ridiculous yeah i i don't want a big parrot because they live forever and they're like they're like having a two-year-old for 70 years so a two-year-old that never grows up and throws tantrums so you don't want a big parrot but the little ones the smaller ones and budgies they're great they'll live you know they'll still live a long time depending but budgies are maybe like 20 years and that's not so much so when you get back from asheville you're going to start looking for a dog i don't know i don't know i i have to convince my partner first you know he's like he's a little he's a little ambiguous on it so we'll we'll see but i'm sure when i randomly come home with a dog one day it'll win his heart oh that's great that's great all right so recall a few months ago we uh we first sat down with lexi and uh she informed us that she was starting a very exciting new job at blue origin and so uh we talked to her and and said you know you've landed in seattle you've been there for a little while now let's give a big update on how things are going for you that's this uh it's very exciting new new uh opportunity yeah it's awesome in a nutshell it's awesome um i started mid-december so you know three and a half months almost four months are you still doing onboarding training too like i am i can't catch up with all the trainings no not like official onboarding um but i did have a lot at first like the you know just like hr stuff and is that what you're talking about yeah like today i spent an hour and a half learning how to not be sexist racist or steal things apparently i need a training for that it's a really good use of time stealing things i don't think i had a don't steal like training i think it's just like implied you probably shouldn't i'm laughing because andy works from home so it's don't steal anything stole my wife's heart no i just i i those there's those corporate trainings just make me nuts because it's common sense to me like yeah it is but for some people it's not and i think they have to say like you shouldn't hire those people but i digress well yeah if you could tell if you could tell ahead of time with auntie it wouldn't be a problem right like it's called screenings need a stronger background check background three so three months so before before we get into the job i mean this was a bit of a move right can we talk about kind of the cultural differences between where you were versus where you are now well i don't want to say you know i first of all let me just preface this with you know i started out at ibm that was my last position i had some i when i started ibm i was not qualified for the job they took a chance on me i didn't have a single certification or any work experience um and so ibm will always have like a place in my heart because you know well and the people there right like the the manager who hired me and and you know most of the people there like they they have a special place in my heart so i gotta say like um it's a big it's a big change because obviously the work is is a hundred percent different i would say there's nothing very similar um do you think blue origin took a chance on you yeah yeah yeah i think they did but i might always feel that to be fair i might always feel that way about any future jobs but um i mean yeah i you know you look at that job wreck and you see like you know all of the perfect wish list things right and even though you know like a lot of us now we we realize like that's just a wish list and that's just their ideal person you know unicorn or whatever and so still apply for the job you can still do it well if you don't hit every single one of those points right but it's still like you know um i i still think about that sometimes right like i i did not fulfill all of those requirements for this job wreck so um you know it's it's it's been interesting how's the barbecue in seattle i know texas is known for their barbecue it's like non-exis i don't even know if there's any barbecue here i there's a lot of teriyaki places which just means like apparently kale is probably meat and in no i i haven't even seen a lot of it's it's it's meat cooked in like a special sauce with served with or on rice like a lot of the time teriyaki it's just a lot of people walking around and like flannels and jeans and long hair there's a crunch thing still happening well so let me just let me just tell you i don't actually live in seattle proper i live in this tiny little um like more rural area it's called black diamond which i think sounds badass let's just talk about coal though but um so i'm not liking i'm not in seattle proper seattle proper is definitely like what you'd expect i think um which is very cool but very expensive um and very flannel and long hair like you said like you know is it super different than what you're used to like from where you're from and where you've lived well super different from houston um when i lived in austin not so different it's just colder here for sure but um yeah i like you know we chose black diamond because i'm i'm really big into like nature and like hiking and running on trails and stuff and uh my partner gets to work from home so we wanted like a nice house we didn't want to get like a an apartment in seattle because that's really all you can get for like our budget right so for the same budget or honestly probably better than what we would have gotten in close to seattle we got this awesome rental house and it's pretty badass that's that's sweet did your partner have to change jobs i guess yeah so okay no he he he's a saint he he followed me across the country he had to quit his job yeah wow because because andy and i know you have opinions on this and i agree with you for the most part like they they just wouldn't they just wouldn't let him work remote he had been working remotely completely for like two years during the pandemic and they would not let him work remotely um because his partner like got a new job right even though he was working perfectly fine remotely without going into the office they had a mandate eventually that said you know two or three days of the week you have to come into the office and if you don't then you have to resign wow so that that was too bad but you know he credit to him he's he's awesome and you know he came with me so and he got a much better job i have to say he ended up getting a it worked out for him very well so i'm really seeing there i don't know if i'm allowed to ask you he is no that's fine he's he's in cyber security so so i mean there's jobs right like oh yeah a lot of times yeah it seems like he didn't have to worry he was worried at first and then he started putting feelers out and then he was not worried anymore after that so it worked out so he's a keeper oh yeah good job the man followed me across the country that's not love i don't know what it is he's awesome yeah yeah i'm really glad i don't know if i could have taken this job if he hadn't come with me to be frank like i don't know if i could have done it so i'm i was very happy and i'm still very grateful that he did that very so can we circle back on how you found this job or i think it's the reverse right didn't it find you yeah so i um i when i i don't know if anybody remembers or paid attention to this but when i first like started my twitter account last summer in 2021 um i had in my bio like a silly little kind of a joke toggling that was like yeah andy yeah um how to get a job at nasa or something right there you go yeah i said y'all know how i could get a job at nasa and it was it was a joke but also like serious because i had i know that you can obviously like there's network engineering careers at nasa or like nasa adjacent right and i thought that was really cool that's always been something in my periphery on my radar and so i had that in there and um after a few a little while i don't remember somebody messaged me and he was like hey i don't work for nasa but i am in like aerospace and if you're interested in some of the like technologies that you should ma that would be a good idea to like learn about and get into if you're interested in that sector then you know here's here let me know and then he and i had a conversation that was really great about some of those uh different protocols and technologies and i hadn't heard of any of them right like we were talking about tte time triggered ethernet earlier um that was one of the ones that he pointed out to me um and i i read up on it like there's not actually i couldn't find a whole lot there's like a wikipedia you know entry for it and like a few other things but not a whole lot um time triggered either that is fascinating and so some of these other protocols he talked to me about so we had a good conversation and then uh you know sort of fizzled out and then later later on months months later uh he sent me another message and he was like hey um i work for blue origin we have a job opening i think you might be pretty good for the job if you want to apply here's the here's the link and he sent me the link and and then he was like just fyi you'd have to move to washington you'd have to move to work here in kent and uh later eventually you might be moving to florida after that as well for like rocket launch reasons um so i knew that going into it and i decided to apply anyway because it's it's space right like you can't not apply for like that right yeah i mean yeah and it you know the job it looked like an awesome job i didn't think i could ever do that but i was like yes you know someone invited me to to apply i'm going to so you looked at the job description you didn't think you could do it but you applied it that way say it again people need to hear this like yes yes it's true um if you look at a job description you don't have to hit every single one of those points to be successful at that at that position so remember that so is that an internal recruiter and they saw nasa in your twitter bio and not a recruiter um it was actually another network engineer um working in that vertical yeah work working yeah working on you know somebody else who at the time was working on new glenn the rocket that i'm now working on um so like he he you know he's a much better network engineer than i am right with like tons more experience um but i i'm not totally sure i think he may have caught that i do live streams and such uh about me learning you know and so i think that might have been something that uh caught caught his attention and you're saying um can't forget i don't know that he ever mentioned the ship but uh i you know i've never had anyone say that they didn't like the shit posts or that they have a problem everyone loves the shit how could you not they're amazing they're still very informative right even though there's a lot of like you know fuck words in there so so yeah i applied and i i had a great first interview i thought it was just sort of like a screening uh you know to make sure i'm like sane and a normal person and talk a little bit about the job and what to expect um i thought it sounded awesome but like still something that i probably couldn't do so i was just thrilled to have the interview you know was that was that a technical interview at all or was it just personality the first one the first one was not it was more personality and they told me um more details about what the position would be right more of a learning it was more learning for me right um which was great and so i talked to my you know the potential now my manager and also the uh person who recruited me basically who like had messaged me and i talked to both of them and and you know i like them both a lot they're both great guys um and they just you know they kind of put me at ease like it was it was a great conversation but i still didn't think like this was gonna be something that would pan out for me um but then they asked me for a second interview and i said no yeah i uh i had such a great conversation with them and i really liked talking to them um and working at a place like blue origin is is a dream job you know for me and and so i but i kept thinking about that job wreck and how many things i didn't i couldn't cross off the list right like i i couldn't do a lot of the stuff on there so i actually ended up saying you know i sent an email to to both of them thanking them for like the wonderful conversation and for giving me a shot and for you know even considering me for the position and i said basically you know blue origin is a dream job for me in the future i like this is where i want to end up right uh but i'm just not i don't have the experience and i don't have the skill set um to to do the job how did i put it like to do to do a as good a job as this position deserves you know like you guys deserve somebody who who can is really skilled and can do a great job and i didn't feel that i was that i'm there yet right um so so then i got a reply back and from both of them and and they both said you know had a lot of nice things to say about me but ultimately it was you know we want you please reconsider you know we we will never put you in a position where you will um be uncomfortable where you won't know what to do we will be there you know we're there to help you learn um we'll guide you along the way and you impressed us a lot we really want you to work for us so please please do reconsider so you know you know i talked to my partner and at the time we were both just like what like i had told it you know he looked at the job wreck too and we were both like okay this is insane but yeah of course interview for this but we didn't totally take it seriously like maybe we actually will be moving to washington we didn't neither of us really thought this was gonna happen and then after that you know reply we were both just like so um yeah so so after after the the very very kind things that they said to me um i decided you know what like i i have to take a chance on myself and this is really really scary um it's really really scary but um i would be lying if i said i didn't want to do it and so you know my partner and i talked it out a bit and he was like you know what you know i support you if you want to do this you should do it and so i i went for the final interview and that was the more that was the technical one yeah how intimidating was the technical interview for that job it actually so it preparing for it was incredibly intimidating to me because i was just like i'm just a ball of anxiety anyway but how do you know what to prepare right like i never know for technical interviews that there's such a wide breadth of information that a network engineer you know is assumed to know you never know what they're going to ask you this was different this was different it was not like a quiz which i really appreciated it it was i worked very hard to prepare for it but it wasn't like you know okay uh quick tell us the bgp finite state machine or whatever it was um it was not intimidating in the interview because everyone who was there like was a very positive presence and i could tell you know they wanted me to succeed and they wanted to listen to me and and you know they took it very seriously um but i could you know it was good vibes in the interview i have to say i have two questions was it in person and how did you know what to study so it was not in person um because at the time i was living in houston texas right and so they're all well some of them are in kent um somebody else was i think in like california but um so it was on it was a teams call and um the interview was actually they gave me this information ahead of time a couple weeks out and they told me what to prepare basically and it was i don't remember exactly i don't remember all the details but it was basically like talk to us about your experiences give us specific examples of you know and walk us through technically what you did how you figured it out things like that things you had to troubleshoot problems like that so i you know i went through my history at ibm and some of the like things that i had trouble shot as a knock engineer um and obviously like sanitize them so there's not like any you know proprietary information in there but um you know i went through some of the technical issues that i had had to work through as a network engineer and i i made like a powerpoint and had slides and i walked through in i think it was like an hour or 50 minutes or something presentation that i had to do and i walked through each of these different situations and occasionally someone would ask me a question i would answer it but that was the meat of the interview technical technically technical wise i guess you had to prepare like a powerpoint deck huh yeah they they didn't you know it wasn't required but it was like you know heavily suggested maybe a powerpoint would be good it was really the point was just to walk through troubleshooting and and different issues you've seen and how how your thought process is when you're working so it sounds like they wanted to see how you think right how you go through a problem it reminds me of like my comcast snock interview i didn't know a lot of the stuff but they kind of prodded me down like i didn't know much about bgp at the time but like okay well it you know they so they helped me a little bit they gave me more souls yeah just to see like okay well if i were to tell you this what do you think and and it's interesting i like those kinds of interviews i feel like those are more like constructive and they want you to they really want to know the things that matter right which is really how you think not every single fact you can memorize we say your mind works right because you could apply that mind yeah to rockets right exactly if you did it at ibm yeah that's really smart yeah so it was actually you know it was stressful to prepare obviously but i actually really enjoyed making that powerpoint in the end because i now i have like a solid you know in case i need it in the future i may not but like it's an i have a nice looking solid representation of the things that some of the technical issues that i've trouble shot and you know i've looked back on it like the other day just because i was cleaning out some files and stuff and you know i had this nice like warm fuzzy feeling like oh i've done that you know i've done those things it's cool so uh yeah so it was that technical part and then i talked to a few different you know leads on the team and the manager um in separate little interviews after that wow yeah and for some reason they wanted me to work for them still after that so did you get an offer that day or was there like a lag between uh i mean i didn't get an official offer that day but i got a okay what's going to stop you from working for me so it was yeah it was really really awesome um so cool it was yeah definitely the best interview experience i've i've had for sure did you like jump up and down and scream when you got like the official offer like i mean this is like such a cool job right yeah i mean well it was i think i think i had that going on in my head when you know my manager was like okay what's going to stop you from working for us because at that point i realized like oh shit oh my god oh my god oh shit it's actually happening um yeah so uh but yeah i just after that i just you know sat back and it's like well i guess it's happening i just say what what was that like to when you finally got that word that it's like okay i i guess i'm moving across the country now i mean because you had been in texas a long time right yeah i mean i'm from i'm from texas i'm from the area that i was living in at the time and um i don't have a problem look i'll be honest i don't have a problem leaving okay texas all right but you know god bless the lone star state but also like it's okay um so and and washington is a beautiful place and i knew that and i knew i wanted to like you know i'm i don't want to be stuck in one place forever so i'm cool with moving the hardest part was just like i my parents are still there and you know leaving them was really difficult uh just you know just cause i love them and you know yeah i miss them so so that was that was a little hard how excited were they for you because i we don't have to say but i happen to know they're they're pretty educated smart sounding people and like to see like hey i'm going because i mean we know your history you've told it like you were at that terrible law thing and like it's just sucking the life out of you yeah like your journey's been amazing they've seen me at the worst you know in the worst jobs in unsafe situations at times they've seen me do some stuff that you know or work in work for places and people that were not great um and they were just really really stoked they were stoked for me with ibm first of all um and they're just beyond excited for for blue origin yeah um my dad especially at one point he was like i told so-and-so that you're gonna go work for blue origin they didn't even know what blue origin was i couldn't believe it so yeah they're really proud and it was um it's really nice to have that yeah my god i want to ask how scary day one was but i feel like i'm asking too many questions here like the interview sounds intense right but then like oh my god when you start day one like before we jump into day one like holy for anybody listening like lexi can you just kind of like give us the 101 like what's your title at a high level what do you do oh yeah okay yeah so my title is not network engineer actually it's i'm an avionics integration engineer um and avionics is kind of a broad term so it means something slightly different at various companies is what i've sort of come to learn um so it's it's like an elect a blend of like aviation and electronics right so if you just sort of think in general of like okay the electronics involved in aviation except we're applying this to spacecraft that's that's a good sort of like way to think about it in general right so my my role is is i think it's so cool and i just hope i can like do it well but it's um so we have a raw so i'm specifically working on one rocket we have a bunch of different business units which is our different like you know we have like new shepard the other the rocket they've already launched a number of times now and like first human flight with shatner well i guess he wasn't first human flight but he he was on one of the new new shepard launches right like that rocket has its own like team dedicated to it new glenn similarly um has its own team dedicated to it and so i am one of those people um so i work in the avionics department on new glenn but i'm on the networking team specifically dedicated to the the vehicle itself you know we have we have networking people obviously at blue origin like enterprise networking we've got networking people on the ground um for like launch launch things that are like ground related not not you know with maybe talking to the vehicle but not actually on the vehicle and then you know i'm on the team that is on the vehicle um wow yeah so my role is is to help boxes talk to each other on the vehicle essentially you know anything anything related to so what you said you're on a team that works on the actual vehicle is it a handful of people is it a huge team well the new gla new glen in general the number of people that are like working on new glen is a lot of people i couldn't give you a number but you know like it's everybody from the people who manufacture the parts to the people working on the radios that are on it the people who work on the various different types of you know like proprietary types of boxes with their own software you know like we have a team for basically every type of box that's on there um yeah i mean it's it's so my the networking team is actually very small though it's it's me and two other people wow uh for for the vehicle itself yeah so you better hope you got some decent chemistry there oh yeah they're great they're awesome yeah i'm very lucky there i have an awesome team jordan the chat's asking uh what kind of networking gear gets used for for that purpose so are are these custom networking boxes for the vehicle or are you buying you know off the shelf uh so i can't i can't this is your favorite phrase already but i can't give like details about what's on the rocket fortunately it's netgear yeah just all things your switches yeah if you think about what you might have to deal with on a rocket like on on the vehicle itself um that you don't have to deal with when your stuff's just sort of like sitting nice and snug in a data center um is very different right like you have to think about how hardened are the boxes like that you know you have to have hardware that can withstand radiation you have to have like protocols working on there that can also withstand yeah yeah not just security hard and actually physically hardened yeah yeah they're gonna get this shit shaking out of themselves during long yeah right like yes there's there's a ton of vibration there's a ton of heat and then a ton of cold right like you have you have the extremes of a lot of different physical things going on so you know if you think about that you know some some places with their spacecraft might do like custom proprietary things some might like hire vendors to do specific things for them some might just use straight up you know switches and routers that are from you know whatever vendor like it just depends on what your rocket's purpose is and and and how much i guess the purpose isn't really it's part purpose and part like what what how far is it going to go up there like what's it going to do is it going to be in space for a while or is it just going to sort of go up and come back down is it going to like go up and stay up you know like what's what's going on i was going to say i don't want to know the length of single mode fiber it takes to break into the earth's atmosphere that's what i was i was just going to ask and you're obviously going to tell me to go to hell well no like so you know this is this is sensitive right so just tell me if it's so what i'm thinking of is the rocket is self-contained and it's got stuff has to talk to stuff right so to me that sounds like a land so like the rockets basically all local it's a rocket network for sure and then the wan is like some kind of wireless magic that talks back to earth or satellites or because it has to talk to something else yeah um i mean the communication is for no no details but yeah but the communications for example like somebody in the thing talking to ground control i mean that is that traversing the network is that something different and you may not be able to answer this which is fascinating to think about in general i can talk about like in general i think it's really fascinating to just sort of like because i actually don't know how a lot of things on this rocket work so i would be speculating anyway like who designs the network right like is there a network architect that designs this yeah right there is a network architecture yeah right that was going to be my question is it your team directly that that gets to find the requirements and select whatever gear it is that's going on or is that happening within another team how does that work well that that was the the person on our team who's the architect yeah that was his role was to he you know he had um everybody on the everybody with boxes on the rocket right like every team involved kind of has a say in a way because all their boxes are going to be talking to each other and every one of those boxes has their own sort of things going on and so how do they communicate over the network it's sort of a give and take between the networking team and all these other owners of of the boxes you have to sort of like you know make the peace between everybody in that way which is really fascinating to to watch happen um it's definitely a collaborative effort it's not just like one per you know we have a network architect who who knows the networking things and really guides it but you have to have input from all the other box owners because not one person can know everything yeah that's kind of what i wanted to ask there's just there's so much gear on there even outside of networking so it's a big collaborative collaborative effort how often are these teams like are you sitting in meetings all the time i would think all these people got to be talking constantly to make sure this all works yeah i definitely have to communicate definitely have to communicate there's meetings for sure there's plenty of meetings yeah i mean it's just it's just communication talking about it setting goals does everything that happens on the rocket have to go over the network so like if they need to do a burn and they press the button to do a burn does that command traverse so i mean everything everything you do right i mean that's how you talk about critical infrastructure like any possible command or anything like a sensor like sensing something and then telling another box to do something else like that is the network it's it's everything wow i i have to know lexi do you call it a rainbow like a rocket area network no but that's so cool we call it what do we call it launch vehicle network i guess oh right the vehicle network it's way more boring rocket area i know you can't tell us but there has to be redundancy right because the network has redundancy sure yeah yeah there you you still have some things that are similar right like you have to consider you know redundancy is a good one um bandwidth needs things like that um you know what kind of traffic maybe needs to have priority over other types of traffic and how do you accomplish that right space nice i love that yeah it's fascinating it's just another if to me it feels like it feels like a totally it's not completely different than thinking about it you know enterprise networking or service provider whatever but it is it is like a another angle of thinking about networking and that's really had me like i've had to get out of my comfort zone a lot because i you know i went through ccna and partly ccmp and it's like cisco you know and like this is the stuff that happens on the network and this is how it goes blah blah blah but uh like you when you're when you're doing something as inventive and innovative as like blue is doing you have to break some rules right so it's not always going to be like traditional networking like this is exactly the size of whatever this is exactly how the packet's going to be this is exactly the behavior it's it's a little bit it can be different depending on what you're trying to accomplish and there's got to be wi-fi right like if your astronauts have like a tablet or like a laptop they're working on for like research or something like they're not plugging in also so new glenn um is more of like a carrying aircraft or carrying spacecraft right so there's it's less of like the iss type of thing and more of like yeah they definitely can like communicate with the ground right but it's more of like carry loads up there and do whatever needs to be done with them um it's not going to like the space station maybe like doing load something like that yeah like whatever you know i think we have um satellite launches or something like yeah and companies do new glenn is enormous right it's going to be so big like if you've you guys just 320 shepard long just in case you're wondering andy i was googling as you were talking earlier because like so what i wanted to know like i mean these are reusable but well my real question is is like you said you were gonna have to move to florida for launches and i'm like well i'm used to the old school like you you launch a rocket and that's it the end like why are you gonna have to move to florida for one launch but now we're in like reusable spacecraft world where so you're you built you help build which is so cool yeah you help build new glenn and then you'll follow it to where it's going to launch and then you'll just be there for the reusable launch stuff right like yeah i mean i don't know my specific timeline i'm not 100 sure about i think it depends largely on the rocket timeline and yeah like i'm you know i'm not totally sure to be honest i'm just curious if the engine is like tied to a rocket like you glend your jam and that's where you're gonna be and are you like assigned to multiple rockets like out there there are a lot of opportunities for remotely working on that rocket i you know it's not like the whole new glenn team is going to go down there to see the launch although i'm sure most of them will want to be so cool but um yeah he just wants to blend in well yeah exactly if you look like you belong there tim they will kick you out it's all about confidence well i'm on whatever that i don't know if it's united launch alliance or whatever but i'm on some email thing that every time there's a launch they email me and there's tickets you can buy and like i can't wait to see launch i've never seen one yeah well when newglen launches for the first time come down to florida we'll have a party dude that's really amazing so are you are you going to be like a mission control like when it's launching like will you be in there and like that i think that's the idea right like i said it's flexible i hope so right i hope so um but that's oh my god that was the yeah that's the vision for well i don't think mission control but you know it'll be sort of like a backroom thing like okay yeah the network i'm seeing the telemetry or whatever like the network looks good i'm good if we launch you know and then we've got other people who say the same thing about their stuff um and we you know or if it doesn't look good we go okay let's we're not gonna launch today let's take a look at this thing that we're seeing right so i'm just i'm just thinking all the videos you see of like the launch teams and they cheer at every stage and everything that happens and i've often wondered like you know is it is this like are they telling them to be all excited but now i'm thinking like how difficult what you guys are doing like right everything's how much work it goes into it but it's it's just every tiny detail you have to think about like for something it's stuff going up into space right um it's it's it's so much work so every time you see a video of of of engineers watching their rocket do anything and cheering for the littlest thing that's because so much went into that little thing happening you know so you have to outfit this rocket with all the networking gear do you is there like a prototype that you get to work with first to make sure everything is going to go where it needs to go and connect the way it needs to connect yeah so the rockets the rockets get built elsewhere and they're like put together assembled like in florida where they're gonna launch but the so the hardware does that too but we you know i get we like every like we should right like everybody should we have a lab where we have uh the same hardware but not the actual stuff that will be on the rocket and that's where we you know do simulations and tests so we okay you know we call it flying fly we call it like civil it's flying the whatever like flying the lab we simulate flight so we have some flight emulators we've got things that pretend to be engines um that are set up in there and so they can you know we basically stimulate the whole rocket doing its thing and we can we can run tests we can look at latency we can do packet analysis whatever we need to do and take a look at what's going on and and get it all in ship shape before we actually like set it all up on the thing itself i just i can't fathom any of this this is just this thing tim you should see the picture i'm looking at it's almost as big as freaking saturn five like the thing that took us to the moon for christ's sake this thing is huge what yeah heavy rocket is it like payloads like it says it's a heavy actually that's a good question i don't know oh sorry because it's called it now it's okay it's just so i think i don't know i've been here for three months i don't know anything about raucous yeah it's but it's it's so big it's wild to see because like we we're all kind of familiar with like how big new shepherd is at blue and and like new shepherd's pretty big right like it's it's it's a rocket and you know it's that big reusable boy but um new glenn will be able to fit it'll be so big it will fit three new shepard's like inside of it circumference wise and also like it's as tall as three new shots like it's so big it's gonna launch payloads of 13 tons dear lord this is so cool i gotta i i gotta go work on my twitter bio hold on i gotta i gotta put i love space in my twitter bio there you go i need to get somebody's attention oh man you know it's funny i learned somebody i used to work with actually went and is working for uh spacex now so that's funny you know oh wow had to joke about it like oh we're mortal enemies oh but yeah it's it's it's exciting it's just it's very different it's very very it's it's a it's challenged my perception of network engineering for sure um and like electronics often i feel like i should just go back and get like an electrical engineering degree because then i would understand what is going on uh you know it's it's working with a lot of different people a lot of different boxes learning to speak the various languages of like different software or like whatever it is that the person you're talking to works on um oh my god software like bugs right i'm thinking like you know code bugs and routers and switches like you don't want to hit a bug up in spacey-poo that's not a good place to hit a bug spacey-poo everything just rebooted oh that's just a bug you gotta upgrade your code i'm i'm in oregon bro i'm in orbit it's a hell of an out-of-band network wow with console cables oh my god i can't tell you anything funny to hear you especially it's just fascinating i have some some fun fast facts that are approved by blue that i can read to you about excellent um here we go recent recent progress okay on new glenn we have our first seven meter fairing complete we got really excited about that actually what's the fairing um it's it's the part of the rocket that sort of protects the payload um from like the wind and the heat and all that stuff when it's going up and then at some point like you're getting up into outside of the like you're up in the stratosphere or whatever and it's time to shed some weight and so the fairing is actually designed to just like come off in a couple parts right and it'll it'll fall away um so so there's like a whole lot there's a whole team that deals with the fairing and like you have to test that to make sure it does what's supposed to like it's yeah so um we have our first stage mock-up simulator that's complete i'm trying to understand what that actually means first stage mock-up simulator i i guess so the state stages of the rockets um you have stage one that go you know carries everything up and then stage two is actually what keeps going and stage one is the reusable part that comes back down right so um i guess we have a mock-up of so when the computer tells the fairing to separate and go bye-bye that's a message going over the network right like it sure is dude all right sorry nothing happens on it without traversing the network like you talk about critical infrastructure like it's it's bonkers just watching there is a network involved watching that happening that's got to be like like tom hanks and castaway when he makes fire and he's just standing there look what i have created yeah because it you know part of part of this is like you know you get sort of tunnel vision doing your own little projects your work here but then like you have to step back every once in a while and realize like oh shit this is we're building a rocket we're human beings building a rocket right now and and we're the reason we are talking about addressing schema right now is because it's going on a rocket you know like it's it's a little i can't believe human beings build rockets i can't believe it you know still and i'm working here so man i don't think there's a cooler job like i can't think of a cooler job like i grew up you know evel knievel was cool he's this crazy guy on a motorcycle he used to like do dumb stuff and hurt himself and i thought that was cool and then i learned about fighter pilots and i thought that was cool but like working and building rockets and like you're gonna go to launches and i think only thing cooler would be to actually get to go to go up there yeah so i was wondering we'll probably go to space knowing you i would love to i would absolutely love to that would be let's think about this for a second i mean look at the exponential career growth in the last two years it's amazing right she's either going to be she should be on the rocket or in the white house i'm not sure which one but all right i mean good lord i'm i'm i'm just stoked to be where i am at this stage of my life i i couldn't be happier and it's it's really an amazing place to be working well i think it's it's just yeah and i'm not just saying this to say this but we talk a lot about with people in the community about how it's okay to to career pivot right if something isn't right you can take charge and make a change and and look i mean you're the prime example of that something wasn't working the way you wanted to you made a shift that you thought was a big shift and then you took it exponential and made another huge shift in a matter of i mean a couple years it's i you know i was i didn't know this would happen i really didn't i know i don't know i don't know how to like you know i i think a lot of people ask sometimes because they're they're secretly sort of hoping for like a secret sauce or something um i'm not perfect i am not the world's best network engineer by any means i'm not actually that like very technical i have a lot of places i need to grow and you know my technical journey um but you know sometimes you get lucky sometimes you actually end up putting your best foot forward and someone sees um i there's no question i've been super super lucky but i i will say that like the one piece of advice that actually is secret sauce is like do do take chances on yourself you know if something's if something's not working change something right like you it's when we it's when we stop doing stuff like maybe what you try like 15 times 15 different things they don't work for you but keep trying because it's when you stop trying to make things work that it really you know you're not getting anywhere then right um i tried a bunch of different crappy honestly really awful some of my jobs that i had before i got into network engineering i tried some stupid things you know i had like a like a found footage horror like i tried to be famous on youtube for a while i did that like it was terrible you know i had um a job going door to door like asking for money for like vague political reasons and that ended up being work you know it was a scam and i didn't even know it right like i've had i've worked for insane lawyer yeah i just i've had the worst jobs and i just had to keep trying you know you just have to keep trying it won't always work right away um you know i didn't just sort of like have all this sort of just happen first try yeah i think it's just a story and just not limiting yourself just do things find out what you like and go after it yeah and like the worst thing that can happen you know if you don't think you can do a thing but it sounds awesome and you want to do it just do it you know and do your absolute best at it and if it doesn't work out like at least you took a chance on yourself right it it it's worth it to take a chance would you say you were in like a relatively dark spot like right before you quit that last job and moved home oh yeah absolutely that's that's why i put you know a reminder in my calendar like are you still miserable for three months later because i was truly miserable i didn't i i was in a place where i felt like if i didn't have a job that like i don't know i don't know how to describe like i i felt like i was a drain on society which wasn't true but it felt like it right because i didn't have a job that fulfilled me in any way and i wasn't very good at the job i was doing um i just i was in a really really bad place and that's the only thing that would have forced me to like get up and change careers right because it's very easy to keep going as you are even if you're pretty miserable um sometimes it does take like that extra kick of like self-awareness and okay something needs to change yeah it's such an inspiring story you know you're in a dark place like i've been in dark places too and i can't believe how good my life has gotten and when i was in that dark place like it seems to me like when you're sad and you're in a crappy place it feels like it's gonna last forever i don't know what that thing is yeah but like this is never gonna end this is my life this sucks and it's such an inspiring story that you know you made some changes and some decisions and took some action and holy shit like you're working on rocket ships now like you know if you when you think back to how you felt then right in that dark time i never would have and then you look at yourself now like wow and it's just i can do anything story to share with people seriously well thanks for seeing such you know such a light in my story i feel like i've been very very i've been very privileged and lucky you know i had again i had i was able to quit my job and move in with my parents who were supportive and we had a good relationship and they had enough money to allow me to do that right like not a lot of people have that um so i i i want to emphasize like yeah i've worked hard and i feel like i've earned you know what i've gotten but at the same time like i had privileges a lot of other people don't so um not everybody's gonna like you know you don't have to be working on rockets to feel like you've done something worthwhile right like you've like you've come out the other end of that tunnel um you know just find something that pays you pays you decently you can live on it and you feel good about yourself right like that's what matters you can look at yourself in the mirror you know you've worked hard for it and you know you're doing your best that's that's what success really is you don't have to be working on rockets just to be happy with where you are when i get my ccna was working at the knock i was on top of the world i'm like oh my god i have engineer in my title i can barely multiply this is amazing you know yeah somebody asked me um like last week or something like what my most my what i'm proudest of my my proudest accomplishment to date or whatever in my career and it like it's always gonna be the same answer forever and it's my ccna because um you know that was the cert certification that really just like cemented for me that yes i'm a network engineer i turned my life around this is my career now and and i'm gonna go places like that's there's so much blood sweat and tears that went into studying for the ccna and the reasons behind studying for the ccna and it's an entry-level cert but i don't care it's it's the it's the best thing i've ever done i'll always be like most proud of it i think congratulations lexi thank you all the hard work has paid off you deserve it and now i can't i'm not going anywhere they're stuck with me in space so listen you're not going to get interviewed again here until you're an astronaut so we're not doing that just give me a couple years that was the fastest challenge accepted i've ever heard in my life as long as riverside no i uh i'm i'm hoping one of these days they're going to do like a raffle for their employees where like every time they launch like it's a human human certified launch or whatever they have a raffle for at least just one employee who gets and i'm i'm hoping i'm hoping they do that and i win that raffle one day you all got that employee discount for space launches you know it might be a punch i asked my manager i was like is there a is there an employee discount to go up on a rocket and he was like yeah ten percent without missing a beat i was like oh okay so it's only like you know 15 million dollars instead of yes but yeah um we'll see we'll see what the future holds awesome lexi thank you so much for sharing that update and like andy said we're not going to invite you back for another update until after you're up in space uh we'll do that live stream though don't worry you'll be able to catch on our youtube channel uh guys i am so excited to see you in asheville here in just a few weeks i can't believe it's happening we've got over 40 people registered for the event we've had a super cool pop-up swag store going this week tomorrow's the last day so you're not even hearing uh this this recording uh until next wednesday when it's already closed sorry if you missed it hopefully you follow us on twitter um this has been uh such a fun update thank you so much alex thanks for having me it's always fun being a guest on a guest on your own show on the podcast right where i am the host sometimes yeah rocket woman and no but no better way to end the show right there with uh with what annie did that's great yeah pew pew i dig it awesome well lex tim and andy thank you so much for joining tonight and we'll see you next week on another episode of the art of network engineering podcast hey there friends we hope you enjoyed listening to that episode just as much as we did recording it if you want to hear more make sure you subscribe to the show and your favorite podcatcher you can also give that little bell rascal a little ringy dingy so you know when we release new episodes if you're social like we are you can follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net inch that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on that weaving web that is the internet at art of network engineering dot com there you'll find our show notes and some blog articles from the hosts guests and other friends who just like getting their thoughts down on that virtual paper until next time friends thanks for listening