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 it was a cold and rainy day in the city and i was the only one out in the beat in the force they told me this was a cold case and that i was a rookie for chasing it my missus reckons it was consuming me changing me into a different person eroding all that which i had been known for i took a long swig for my cup of joe bitter but it did the job just like me i guess i knew i could find him i knew that those drop packets were out there somewhere just waiting to be found i swear this guy by the name aj was at the center of it all but i just couldn't pin it on him yet they called him blinky no times but the reasoning behind that is another story for another time he had a band of other thugs in his group too equally hard to shake down drop day to dan and i p andy andy he was ahead of security they call him the gatekeeper because it's up to him to decide who gets permitted and denied to their events oh and the goofy one timmy ross can't miss him from a mile away not sure that he really did anything though if the other guys were smart they'd never tell old timmy what was going on countless interviews with these goons and for what there was no quality of service there were no logs there sure as heck weren't any netflows to chase maybe the boys in my sweetie were right but hey this isn't a science it's an art the art and that art is network engineering i've been holding my laugh forever nice job very nice lt tim ross from the packet police department packing police i like that all right i am aj murray at no blinky blinky he is dan at howdy packet dan how are you doing tonight howdy aj you doing good i i am doing well today was the last day of uh oh okay i'm sorry let's do that again my brain went backwards there damn i'm glad you're doing well i thought you asked me i'm sorry about that what's new in dan's world uh i'm trying to build this thing because some parts coming in look at that i'm gonna have a new editing rigs here soon pc build sweet how many cores say it again 16 oh my god hyper threaded 32 threads yeah max max max clock what's the max clock tell me again i think it was 4.9 it was 4.9 um i don't know what this is turning into aj i don't either it's going to be a beast of a machine that's all yeah that would be nice for video editing for sure because yeah you're going to edit everything from now on good job dan it's now your job i'll take i'll take that on you know all right well he is andy at andy laptop and at permit ipaniani.com how you doing andy hi i'm good i'm i'm very happy to be here we had soccer practice tonight big deal all right all right yeah we were at the playground we were at soccer the four-year-old gave zero poops about having to be in bed by 8 20 so i could be here on time so i apologize for being i apologize to you guys and my guests but you know they seem to know when thursday night comes around because they're like nah not tonight dad not tonight yes and last but not least we have tim burtino tim at tim burtino how are you tim i'm doing well aj i i gotta give credit where credit is due that intro was written by river in the discord so i will throw that out there if anybody has any intro ideas hit me up because my creative wheels could use some help so the crack in the armor is showing now you're finally running out of ideas and hiring writers you made it a long time without help so nicely nicely done all good things come to an end right it's okay to ask for help that's that's that's the story there that is the premise of the show yep you've got uh jordan saying he's on it so jordan's the idea man oh yeah i think we need to hire him as like a permanent writer for us because he has some really good ideas 100 that might have to happen yeah we you know all the zeros you want jordan well right when you say higher that that you know somebody might think there's money tied to that so just it's a loose term that's true very loose term right now very very loose term favorite fortune jordan we do have a guest this evening but we will get to her in just a second we got some wins to celebrate andy can i get a go scream all right lots of winning this week i'm i'm very excited for all of these people so uh ray 6220 passed the aruba certified mobility professional exam congratulations ray kaiser clark staff sergeant clark uh passed the ccna congratulations oh big one nice one big one mikey mikey got a big w with the jncis enterprise okay the jupiter network certified uh specialist internetworking specialist in enterprise so congratulations nice awesome emma kudka michael kutka pass the az 900's congratulations that's nice right there good job j.r cortez 25 past the jncia junos congratulations another juniper win dj ninja nz pass the fortinet nsc 4. that's a big one congratulations robin c our buddy robinson passed the comptia pen test plus and he did it while wearing some a1 merch yeah i saw that his picture that he posted that was awesome that was awesome that was awesome and big congratulations to alfonso they dropped in the winning channel earlier this week that they accepted a position as a field network engineer at an msp and this is their first network engineering job congratulations awesome everybody excellent in the winning channel uh two new patreons joined us this week so congratulations or no not congratulations congratulations to us good job aj good job aj thank you to andrew and natasha for joining and supporting us at the art of network engineering we appreciate you thank you so much awesome appreciate the support guys thank you may i please love that sound love that sound hey a1 fans aj here to remind you about nordvpn.com nordvpn will help secure you wherever you go i use nordvpn on all my personal devices whenever i'm out about i just go into the nordvpn app hit quick connect and away i go nice and secure don't have to worry about prying eyes anybody looking at my connection if i choose to go work from a coffee shop locally or you know even while i'm traveling if i bring my personal device devices i will use new vpn to help keep things safe and secure i'm using nordvpn right now and there's no degradation in my signal everything looks good when you guys watch us on the live streams so i can't say enough good things about nordvpn they have some great additional services included with their vpn product they'll scour the dark web for your credentials and see if they've been involved in any sort of hacks or anything and then if they have they'll let you know and you can go change your passwords and do whatever you need to do to help keep yourself safe and secure they also have a mode that will block any websites or ads known to possess malware and they just have general ad blocking anyway because you know who wants ads as i record an ad anyway if you want nordvpn and you do go to nordvpn.com forward slash t-a-o-n-e for the art of network engineering and you can get a really great deal 73 off two years plus four months free so again that's 73 off two years plus four months free of nordvpn if you forget that url just go to nordvpn.com at checkout you can use the promo code t-a-o-n-e for the art of network engineering and we appreciate your support as well as nordvpn's support of the art of network engineering podcast now back to the show all right i am super excited for our guest this evening you probably know her on twitter as track it pacer uh please welcome lexi thank you so much for joining us lexi hey everybody thank you so much for having me i am super super stoked to be here this is wild yes i still can't believe you wanted me on here but i'm i appreciate it very much yeah well we appreciate your time and we we really appreciate having you on the show um so let's let's start it off um what do you do uh where do you work and you can share as much or as little detail about either of those as you can sure sure yeah um i work as a network engineer at a large uh cloud service provider uh yeah that's and i study in my free time you know just trying to get through it i'm working on my ccmp right now halfway done so excited to have that horrible experience behind me i should say you study you study publicly as well yeah yeah that is that is why i study publicly i'm terrible at studying so i'm just trudging through it trying to get trying to get my first uh attempt at the nrc test done by the end of this year we'll see if i can actually pass it the first time now have you taken your encore yet yeah i took encore last year and somehow miraculously passed that it kicked my ass it kicked my ass off yeah yeah were you able to pass it in one attempt or two yes that's the miraculous part yeah one attempt yeah i i was but it was it was a tough test i have a question yeah so how did you study for encore because someone on this panel that's not going to name themselves has been studying for their ccmp for about seven years so when you're beating yourself up that it's going to take you a year so how does someone who passed encore as quickly as you what's your what's your study what was your study strategy was it just like ocg videos and that's it yeah so uh it was a lot of stuff um it was a multi-pronged approach right like i i started with i always start with the ocg because for me at least it's a good foundational bit of knowledge it doesn't have everything that's going to be in the test as i've learned the hard way uh it's not the like total like the bible of the test necessarily but it is a really really good you know foundation delay so i start with getting through the ocg which for me can take anywhere from like three months to 12 months you know depending on how fast i'm doing things and how motivated i am so i'll start with that while i'm doing it a little bit i'll watch some videos if some things don't make sense to me or if i find some like typos in the book which sometimes happen fathers i do know i know it's crazy they have some typos in there uh yeah so i i'll i'll look at white papers in between a little bit i'll watch some videos um but mostly i just try to get through the ocg first once i'm done with the ocg with encore i was um struggling towards the end of the ocg and so i ended up i took out a subscription to cbt nuggets which i do you know i i like cbt nuggets a lot because they'll you know explain or any any any service where they're explaining these concepts to you in like a video format and it's a little bit more simplified and less of like that dry text that's in the book right so um i combined that knowledge with like you know reinforcement from videos um started taking you know i take boson practice tests um once i feel like i'm a little bit confident in the material i like to just take myself down like five pegs and just like you know make myself feel like shit for a little while for not knowing the material well enough it's boson is great for that um but it gives me a good like starting and that is a good thing right like it gives me a great like starting point for okay these are my weaknesses um i need to work on these and then i go back and look in detail at each specific thing that i might you know that i feel like i didn't get with the practice test that i don't understand i just drill down drill down drill down and as that test date approaches as i'm feeling a little more confident my test you know practice tests are doing better a little bit i then think about like okay rote memorization flash cards port numbers things like that um and then i use i'll use a little bit of reddit as well like some people who you know will post their experiences you know general experience with the test like hey there's some of this stuff like wasn't in the ocg focus on you know this general area right is not in the ocg but you know look at this part of that cisco test outline and make sure you know that i will take pointers from them uh it's a combination of a lot of things did you study for encore i did okay uh it was it was pretty sporadic but it was you know it was like early 2020 when i started doing that um and it was not as like i don't know if i'd call my streaming streamlined now but it was a lot more sporadic and a lot like i don't know just just me talking at nothing and not being interesting so what would you say it was it was start to finish from when you started studying to when you passed test oh my gosh well so i think i started studying seriously for encore in feb march 2020 uh it took me a whole month to convince myself just to like start uh february to march but yeah march 20th yeah yeah march 2020 until i passed it in september 2020. oh good for you that's incredible thank you thank you so i was feeling pretty bad about it to be honest it takes some people like three months to pass it but we're all different oh geez nothing to feel bad about at all um i want to go back to your use of the boson so excellent use of the boson i feel like a lot of people that i talk to um they they for some reason wait to start using the boson until they feel like they've gotten to the end of their study journey but just before they go take the exam and i think that you know your the way you explained how you use it is get it up front get it early figure out where you're at in your your encore journey that way you know like yeah sure it feels like shit it knocks you down a peg but it it lets you know like here's my knowledge gap here's my focus areas here's what what i have to to learn to get to to the end right to be prepared to pass so uh i just i i love your explanation on how you use that as a tool and not just like an endgame right and that's some good science space stuff too right like peter brown from naked stick was telling us test yourself early like even before you read the content because it'll actually allow your brain to recognize it later like oh that's what they were looking for and it kind of creates this the stickiness so i just jumped back into encore recently and i took my first boson practice test this past week i'm not going to tell you the score but we had lots of work to do but it was awful like i you know that's the point yeah it should feel awful if it doesn't feel awful you're not doing it right thanks so good yeah i'm doing all right they're catch their catchphrase all right so i wanna i wanna go back so so what what got you into networking as a focus oh boy uh i so i got into into this field like later in life uh i did not most of my life i i i didn't know how computers worked or that networking was even a thing um it took a really long journey from like you know i i having a degree in english literature so i i started uh flailing around after college please if you ever want someone to proofread i am a stickler for like grammar spelling anything excellent yeah but yeah i know i i i for a long time i just didn't think that i was cut out for the anything in tech uh so i never even considered it i also like i said i didn't know that networking was a thing until i was like 28 years old and then you know uh what happened was i you know i had a pretty unfulfilling career i was working i just sort of felt into it i was working uh my last job that i held before working as a net network engineer was um i worked for a non-profit uh which which was you know noble work don't get me wrong it was a legal aid nonprofit and i was organizing these um we called them legal clinics so we we helped uh low-income individuals and families access uh free or heavily discounted legal services uh by way of you know we had these attorney volunteers who would volunteer their time to take on cases pro bono um in the legal clinic specific uh excuse me specifically in the legal clinics that i organized we would um have the attorneys sit down in blocks of 15 minutes with people and give them you know listen to their issue and give them legal advice for free just right there on the spot really quickly um so it sounds like all of that like was it was that a fulfilling job like yeah fulfilling is a word that describes it but there's a lot of other words as well unfortunately when you're working it was a small non-profit very small um and so we didn't have a lot of funding the the pay wasn't great to be honest and that's not all i'm looking for in a job but i was living in austin texas at the time and austin's an amazing city but it's become a pretty high cost of living area recently so while that transition was happening for austin as it became more and more expensive um i was you know being paid a very low non-profit salary and i just um i in the end i couldn't take care of myself um i also you know some of the legal issues that i was hearing day in and day out were really rough to hear we only did civil legal stuff right so didn't hear criminal cases but you know you go some days when i ran the legal clinics it would be like a 13-hour day two days in a row um and you know i i was doing like translation spanish to english and back and forth for clients and attorneys who needed that and that was mentally draining and then if you if you have to sit there for a 13-hour day i would set up organize run and translate during these legal clinics it was exhausting and some of the cases were just like you know we had victims of human trafficking come in and and not know what to do right so to sit there and like and like listen to those stories um and look i'm i'm a privileged piece of shit right like i i have not had a difficult life um so for for me to uh and i don't want to um i i don't want to make light of any of these stories like they're people stories they're not mine i don't own them but you know it it did something for me to to take in people's you know trauma in this way through these legal clinics and it was really uh rough to hear these stories over and over and over again eventually i found that i was just exhausted on like every level physically mentally emotionally um so at one point yeah and on top of all that like i could barely buy groceries that's what i was gonna say to do all that and be broke like it's one thing to be you know tortured emotionally like that but no you're making a difference in the world but then to not be able to pay your bills after all that hard work and emotion sucks right yeah and and on top of all of it uh you know for every like one person that you can help in a non-profit there's like 15 that you can't help and yeah and they're you know they're desperate for help so they're gonna ask over and over again and it just it's uh it's very difficult you can't save everybody and that's one of the hardest lessons i had to learn um doing that working that position um i grew up a lot i worked for that nonprofit for three years i grew up a lot doing that um which was good for me but it was a really rough time and so finally at one point i i was so miserable that like i set a reminder in my calendar you know on my phone and i was like look this is really hard to admit to yourself when you're like you know i was i was 27 ish at the time it's really hard to admit to yourself that like for you know all this time i i've had a career that i really am not that passionate about i don't like it i want to start over like that's a really difficult decision to make so i set a reminder of my calendars like in three months if i'm still miserable i have to quit i have to leave um so three months went by i was still miserable and so i you know like the privileged piece of shit i am i called my parents hang on i i think it's good to set boundaries even if it's with yourself i mean setting boundaries is healthy i mean it set you on the path right and you stuck to it it would have it would have been easy to have that alarm go off and go you know to change your life is the hardest thing right and like that's basically what you were getting to was like yeah change here and that's hard and scary and so you know good on you for taking it yeah that's not an easy thing yeah i i appreciate that it was um but you know it i called my parents and i was like i've made mistakes can you help me you know can i there's no choice in my life no i know and you know my dad for six months in my 30s i mean we've all had those you know a lot of people had those periods in their life were like wait this all sucks i need to like reevaluate and make different decisions you know i was so ashamed of it for a while okay um until you know as i've started talking about it in recent years like most people i know have had to live with their parents in their like late 20s 30s 40 you know like people do it all the time so yeah i recognize now there's no shame in it i like to joke about it only but no there's nothing wrong with it i just felt really bad about myself for doing it at the time sure because it felt like a huge failure um that like i had gone through you know six seven years of of a career that i sort of fell into but that was a career and it it wasn't working for me so and then you're definitely going through english literature you never dreamed that you'd be in that kind of job right where it was so difficult and and not everybody can do every job like i have a my my buddy's a cop and he's a great cop because he's kind of a sociopath nothing bothers them but but we need those people right and the reason i say that is like my dad was a cop and he's like me sensitive and he feels everything he's an empath and he lasted about 10 years and got out because what like you're saying when you see all this difficult stuff every day if you have the personality for that to be able to keep it at a distance and not take it at home great and thank god for those people it doesn't sound like you're the kind of person who can you know you're absorbing that and it wears you down and so you know it's good you made that change so you moved home how'd that go yeah well luckily my parents are saints and amazing and they were incredibly supportive and i realized there are a lot of people who don't have that luxury in life and so i'm i'm i'm thankful every day that they let me do that because it really saved me in a lot of ways um so i moved back to i'm from the houston area so i moved back uh within with them and in the time that it took me to like quit my job and and get things organized in austin and then get moved back i uh i had a plan i wanted to have some kind of vague plan at least to like what i'm what am i going to do about this because i need to reset my career essentially so there's a really nice community college near by my parents place and i thought i'd just take a look like maybe i'll get an associate's degree in something that like i've never looked at before and see how i like it so you know my first thought was well of course i need to be able to support myself so uh i'm you know going to be looking at careers that probably you know pay a little bit better than the one i've been in which is many careers admittedly uh so i looked at things in like finance and you know political science and all sorts of stuff and then of course tech stuff in general was one of those things but of course you know throughout my life i never really thought that i was up to scratch for doing any of that stuff um and why is that you said that earlier too and i had a similar feeling most of my younger life which is why i want to point it out why did you feel you said earlier you felt you weren't cut out for tech so when i was a kid uh i i was exposed to not a whole lot of tech stuff but i had a lot of friends who were like building their pcs with like their dads and you know i'd go to lan parties and things and i've always liked playing computer games for example right and so uh you know i've sort of been in that arena but it's very different liking to use technology and actually liking to learn about it and how it works under the hood and all that so um all of my friends who started at an early early age building pcs learning linux doing all that kind of stuff uh programming they all at this point in my life when i was reassessing my career and all throughout my 20s it felt to me like if because i hadn't started really early i was never going to catch up and i i didn't have anybody ever approach me and be like hey you ever thought about building that pc you like to play games on let's build you a pc or like hey did you know that networking is a thing this is how it works or you ever thought about programming um it just didn't seem very accessible to to me and i felt you know i as a woman in the you know within the last like five ten years like i have passively absorbed there's been a lot of like effort to get women and girls interested in coding specifically right and so i'd passively absorb some of that over the years but um i just always assumed that because i didn't start early on it um i wouldn't be able to to have a career in it um so that changed when i had to admit to myself that i was starting over completely and there's nothing i could do about it when i took away that like well i've got a good enough career now so i'll just stick with that once i took away that sort of like weird miserable safety net um the world opened up strangely um yeah that preconceived notion that i'm you know i've started too late and i haven't been brought up on it kind of was limiting a little bit i guess right yeah yeah and it's still you know it still was an obstacle for me throughout all of this and it still kind of is in my mind i'm gonna admit but um once i had to admit to myself like i am starting over i can't do anything about it this is just how it is then i didn't have a reason to put it off starting you know starting over so if that makes sense totally yeah yeah so i i when i moved back i enrolled in um so what i ended up doing was you know like i said i sort of passively absorbed all this like um effort all these efforts to like get women and girls into coding i was like well you know maybe i'll be a programmer let's let's see how it goes uh but i want to learn some general stuff because i didn't know anything about how any anything i can't stress this enough i didn't know anything okay so i enrolled in uh i forget what the exact like name of the degree was but it was like an associate's degree for like general i.t studies right at that community college uh and there were three courses that i had to take as like introductory requirements for that it was uh introduction to computers which was really cute it was like hey here's what a computer is and here's how to use excel and word and here's pretty ways you can make like tables do stuff and then the second introduction class was intro to programming which was a great class uh the instructor was wonderful she was she was awesome we learned c plus great and then the third class that i had to take around the same time was introduction to networks and i had no idea what that was but it was a requirement so i'm just gonna do it uh so uh that turned out to be the class that it it changed my life um my instructor was a woman who was actually around my age and had a very similar story to me she had a degree in something that wasn't you know stem related in any way and she had started a little bit later in tech and she was you know working for a big brand name company and she was just an awesome instructor and seeing her up there like i know this is probably a bit of a cliche at this point but you know representation is important and like being taught in a class by someone who was close to my age also a woman like spoke like me thought like me um was so like it made such a huge impression on me like hell yeah i can do this all right cool let's do it you know um so when i finally took that class and learned like oh my god this is how the internet works it was like my mind was just just blown yeah just absolutely blown uh it was i and i haven't lost that feeling totally still like it still blows my mind that stuff works this way uh and that that this is like vgp is like what keeps the internet together like this is how computers think this is what an ip address means i never knew you know i never even thought about it so all of it just every time i learned something new it blows my mind so let me ask you something real quick yeah uh so do you think you're saying you know like having a woman teacher do you think that inspired you to start doing some of the stuff that you've been doing where you're doing like these little video clips of you talking explaining something right you know or absolutely like you brought up bgp i i think you you made a video the other day talking about what one did i'm pretty positive was you that had a video about bgp that was basically saying how it was was it russia or something like that they were injecting routes uh that was not me that was she networks but she had a great video you know what it's fine because she no she's she's awesome i started over again hang on hang on i gotta i gotta step in here from the chat from the chat you got the quickest turnaround dan chris chris denney said great question dan and within two seconds from great question to damn it dan until you relax all caps too great question dan damn it dan you ruined it jordan thinks we need to restart the whole episode that's yeah i'm sorry i'm terribly sorry it's totally cool it's seriously not offended at all she's she's awesome and i after finding her videos like it was just more reinforcement like this is awesome we need more ladies doing this um and that's a great video i actually i i was really proud of myself because watching that video i was like yes i knew about that i read about it i already knew i'm something i'm a professional um no i i think it's so important and and uh it's not the main motivation i'll admit behind like my videos because literally the main motivation why i stream is because i cannot sit still alone without somebody or something holding me accountable i cannot i every three to five minutes when i'm just reading on my own i get up and take like a 20 minute break doing some other bullshit and it's like just focus just focus so if i'm if i'm streaming it keeps me accountable i can't just get up in the middle of a stream people are watching you have that too yeah yeah really i resonate with you so you're speaking to me yeah like oh that makes me feel so much better so walk us through that what is a what does a stream look like you start it and you start studying you study out loud how how long do you it's just shitting all the time it's it's just bullshit no it's a it's a it really is though i mean i i so i've structured it a little bit better now just slightly because now i have like the actual book you know what i'm reading and some of the diagrams that i'm looking at right there in the stream so you can sort of see it uh but yeah i literally this is how and this is how i go through the ocg which i'll admit is not like how you should only study for the test and only this way but this is how i get my foundational knowledge down as just getting through the ocg so i literally just start from chapter one go all the way through it finish that thing um and so it's the stream is me a lot of the time just reading word for word the text in the book and then i'll sort of like talk to myself you flavor it up though like it's yeah yeah i mean i bitch about like you know fucking cisco press when all your typos goddamn it yeah i love that you get annoyed at the content like because you know it's so refreshing to me i'm annoyed every time i open a cisco press book and when i say that to people it's like i get looked up with this irreverence how dare you it's cisco press this is the best thing in the world and i'm like this is a torture device like what are you talking about so i love that you're on there and you're just so like you know like even simple stuff like would you people put the drawing on the same page why are you gonna like that's what i was that's why uh it drives me absolutely insane my biggest pet peeve i'm i'm sorry cisco press thanks for making your books i do like them but but but what drives me crazy is like you'll have uh like a diagram so you'll have like the explanation for a diagram right and it's on the bottom of one page and then the diagrams on the next page so you've got this whole big paragraph about like figure 19-23 is you know like a dmv pn tunnel between r31 and r11 and here's all this like detailed explanation about what's going on and i can't fucking see it because it's on the next page line break plea like page break right there um or like they'll you know they'll have like output examples from like in the cli and it's cut off stop it i don't want to look at half of a routing table show me the whole thing like i can't are you kidding me anyway so that's the kind of stuff i whine about it's so good like you'll start a stream like hello welcome to the most boring thing ever put on the internet i mean that's how you start and it you know so i mean that stuff cracks me up and then you're pissed off at the material which is just great and then you're like yelling at people that are being stupid with you i mean it's very entertaining i've been studying this stuff for a little over a decade and i haven't i haven't seen content like this so it's it's part of why i've watched it in your stream well it's just it's just so honest it's crazy it's really good so and the fact that like to circle back to what you were saying earlier that that college professor and how she really made it like oh i can do this too you know i i feel a lot of the same ways as you do which might sound weird is like this white guy like well of course you don't you know but i've always felt like i started too late like i became a cable guy at like 34 like really you know with a college degree bachelor communications useless i mean i i can relate to all right humanities yes i can relate to a lot of your story and then the fact that you found her and she made it accessible like oh because if she can do what i can do it and now that you're it's not your primary focus but because you're now doing that for maybe other young women who maybe you know you you're gonna if you're not already you're probably influencing people in the same way that professor did to you so i hope so i really enjoy your stuff one request i have is can we please get off the mvpn i've had it good news buddy i finished that today it is over it is i can't do any more dmvpn with you i think it's the chapter i spent the longest on i don't know why there's a lot well it's like six protocols rolled into one and it's a lot of stuff going on yeah yeah and like look cisco press just like word stuff a little better okay but so anyway thing that i'm hearing is we need to have a track pacer version of the ocg and that would be a lot more colorful and i'd probably be excited to actually read that book uh hi here's my prediction my prediction i don't know what your plans are but here's my plans for you that you're going to be a cbt nuggets instructor someday oh my gosh because the only one that cusses oh man yeah i would love to be an instructor one day um i i don't feel like i know material nearly well enough to do that right now and i probably would need to get a ccie which you know but hang on that's what i've found is i know it sounds backwards but that's one of the best ways to learn the material i i think is to get a base and then you start teaching it i mean i teach well that's teach it to myself until it gets weird that i'm talking to myself all the time that's what i do on stream yeah that's part of what it is like explaining it out loud talking to yourself that's a lot of what i'm doing if i can make myself understand it i can make anybody understand it that's how i feel yeah that's a great question yeah you definitely need to do that though you need to make like a a uh pacers i'll make my own audiobook version so you're still living at home at this point right and your mind is blown by this networking class and this professor is like just amazing and opens up you know the world for you so what i mean what happens there you're still living at home oh my gosh instead of networking is amazing where do you go how do you get from there to here like what happens next oh so i um so the course i was taking ended up being like a cisco netacad course and she the the instructor that i was with she was going to teach you know i look i kicked ass okay so i was really good in those courses and so i i moved you know i moved over to the next the second one so there's the four cisco netacad courses basically uh at least back then this was before they did the revamp in 2020 by the way so it was kind of like the first two netacad courses where icnd1 material and the second two were icd2 materials so i i moved on to that second course uh with her um and uh got through that and then after that second course unfortunately the rest of my class i think failed out and there were only like three of us that um were were able to continue on and so it wasn't enough for her to actually teach that third or fourth course unfortunately yeah i was absolutely sad about that yeah was this a ccna like because i went through netiquette for my cna so is that what you're talking about you were going through the okay yeah yeah yeah yeah that was the program uh so so i basically got through one material uh yeah it was just just all submitted put it on subnetting was that the one with the labs and like what did you think about netacad i loved it it changed my life i i liked it a lot it was not enough to pass the test on my own when i found yeah uh how many times did you finish i i didn't actually feel it the first time but i i'm sorry you're killing me no i've been i've been miraculously well it's gonna change look i'm gonna take the nrc in like over and i'm going to fail it anyway so everybody you pass the encore which is like the mountain right is it i mean man there's not even labbing on i'm i'm worried about a narcy uh personally but it's intense it sounds pretty intense there's a lot of stuff with ellie or you don't have a lab encore was a huge challenge wait a minute i'll talk about that i'll talk about labbing in a minute i know i listened to your last episode i know how you feel the morning she's like hold on i can't i have lab access i don't have my own lab and i just haven't done it yet but yeah labbing is part of my study routine don't worry um so how did you finish your studying if the class fell apart and so yeah so i got through the material of that first ic and d1 stuff and then i started on icnd2 uh i had to buy the ocg and just get through the rest of it that way and that's when i developed like my study habits for certifications uh started with the ocg i read all the way through that one um and then uh through recommendations online like reddit has some great you know our networking rccna like they have a lot of recommendations one of those things with boson and cbt nuggets and so i ended up using a lot of free youtube videos and cbt nuggets and eventually i i really and truly believe i would not have passed the ccna ultimately if i hadn't uh taken the boson practice test they they kicked it was was reddit your first community related to networking is that how you got plugged in yeah yeah absolutely it was the only place that i could like i i had no feel for how many people were out there doing networking or what the community was like at all um so reddit is up until really recently actually was the only place that i was really getting any information from and you plugged into that community while you were self-studying for the ccna right exactly yeah and so they have recommendations on the ccna subreddit and also ccmp now too on like you know how to study for these tests recommended stuff um things like that so i i went with those recommendations and they worked out really really well uh can you briefly talk about the impact the community had on you and i'm i'm asking because when i studied for my ccna the community either didn't exist or i just had no idea because i was i was a cable guy doing this and every my whole circle around me said i'm wasting my time i'm never going to get a job and that's part of why i like to contribute to stuff like this because we i want to let people know that what it did for me right because i didn't have the support community that has become such a big thing in my life now so was it a big impact for you when you were studying at the time i i can't believe they said you're wasting your time every single one of them they're all still there by the way climbing ladders but that was the anti-community well you know he's waiting for that people get stuck right and they see you know these guys are there a long time and they see somebody trying to you know get up and out of something and that's i don't know you know whatever that psychological thing is but they just weren't excited for me i mean one or two were but i'd say the majority of the shot was like you're wasting your time this is never gonna but the community they think about you right like you know whatever whatever that is but i if you could just touch on how the community helped you in those early days because i think it's huge at least for you know newcomers yeah i i think we've we've sort of like been touching on this as i've talked about my streaming tools like you know seeing somebody else struggle weirdly is so nice not because you revel in their misery or something but just just because like if you if you're struggling for a long time i had the impression that i was the only one struggling with this stuff before i got a job in networking i was unemployed living at my parents studying eight hours a day because because i have attention problems right okay this is before streaming or anything so i was like having a lot of problems just like concentrating but and it's called out and i've that's a whole other story my man uh that's a different podcast um so i was having a lot of trouble and you know you you tend to start feeling like isolated and bad about yourself when you're just sort of struggling you don't have anyone to talk to about it uh and so i and i didn't know anybody else in networking so finding out that that stuff was on reddit was like super helpful for me because it was just sort of like a breath of fresh air like you know people post their success stories with passing the tests and their failure stories and um you know be like well i should have studied a little more on this general topic and next time i'll know like that seeing that attitude seeing that other people were having you know their own struggles helped me like put my own into perspective and stay focused on what i wanted because other people are passing this on their second and third tries it's okay like there's there's nothing wrong just keep trying is the point and that really reinforced that point for me um and then of course since since finding you know the reddit community and then you know y'all's wonderful community and then the the tech twitter and and everybody around that's in just in network engineering or related fields has been uh so wonderful uh it's it's i don't know it just provides this amazing perspective that helps me you know keep my uh experiences in you know in perspective that normalizing failure is huge right like it really helps that other people are struggling i mean this whole thing came about because aj failed to see ccnp so many times that he started a study group yeah and i mean i don't want to tell you know you know your story aj but that's how this all started right it was just you were just getting your ass handed to you right oh yeah yeah so i i passed my ccna i passed my ccda and i passed the np switch exam pretty quickly i mean i failed my ccna a couple times but i passed i seen d1 took icd2 passed uh did the ccda the switch no problem um and then i started down route and t-shirt and all that and between route t shoot and encore i failed 10 cisco exams in a row before i passed encore and and along that path you know i i was always very honest like i posted on twitter like hey i've got my next encore scheduled i got my next route scheduled whatever and then i would you know post the failure and one day someone commented on one of the failures so just like it's all about the journey like it doesn't matter if you pass it doesn't matter if you fail it's all about the journey and that was like holy shit like he's right and so you know i just thought like there's so many of us out there studying there's so many of us out there passing so many people failing like why do it alone and so i created this you know study group that that i saw a bunch of other people on twitter and other social media outlets that were like you know we're all trying to tackle this thing but we're all failing like i don't know why i thought like let's take a bunch of people failing an exam and try to work together and maybe we'll pass it but because i didn't recruit anybody that had passed to teach us it was just a bunch of us hanging out uh that it all failed so um but through those conversations um you know we kind of decided like hey this this could be a fun podcast and here we are but um yeah i i resonate with so much with what you're saying because that's why i decided to like start blogging and get on twitter because i silently followed you know so many people on networking and all i saw were the ccies and the ccdes and yeah about passing and here i am failing and it's just like the struggle is real like people got to know it yeah and every exam i failed made me feel like an imposter and i didn't belong right like i failed my ccna three times as i'm trying to break in and every failure i thought those cable guys are right or like you know whatever you know we tend toward the negative right i'm like well maybe i'm not smart enough maybe i can't but plugging into a community i mean we have a channel on our discord that is just failures it's called failure plaques and it's just people posting all their failures and again to your point and aj's point it helps kind of normalize that and it's part of the process and then you learn about the science of like well it's not failing it's a learning process and then you can go back to your weak areas but how you frame it right can make all the difference between giving up and not thinking you're smart enough for like it must be an imposter or oh well everybody's failing because on social media generally it's that curated reality where everything's blissful and not all that many people are going and everyone has yeah everyone has like three to five ccies on average like okay you miss me with that all right i don't want to see that i'm just kidding no hate for that but yeah it's just you know that's all you're seeing then it's just sort of like well what's wrong with me why can't i do this so um yeah i mean to take us down the community rabbit hole but it just it's been such a positive impact in my life in this in this career you know trajectory i'm on that um when you mention reddit i'm like all right that must be where she got plugged in yeah absolutely and i loved your you know the blog post about it and everything you know when you share your story and like you know this community is is a great ah man i just i i got onto twitter just because i saw that you know there's a lot of people in tech like in general on twitter and talking about it and i i didn't realize that this was a resource that could be utilized to learn um and it's just blown my mind how unbelievably supportive everybody is um and just how much knowledge is shared just from like this silly little like social media platform or multiple platforms i guess but twitter is my main one at the moment right so just blows i was in mind i was introduced to you on twitter for whatever reason you showed up in my feed and your first tweet i knew i liked you when your first tweet was i'm supposed to be studying but i'm wasting my time creating this twitter account instead i was like holy shit i like her i don't know what's to come but yeah you're speaking to me right i remember it only got better from there right everything and anything to avoid studying i'm like yes you're speaking my language yeah anyway it was it was good so you plugged into the socials you you self-studied and you went and took the test i guess right yeah um so you know ccna was was a little bit more isolated for me but encore was not and that was my first little dip into like streaming myself being an idiot and not understanding things um and somehow i passed that you know like it just i i don't know how i did it um are we talking about the ccna or the or the sorry this was encore okay so when i was whenever you jumped on encore did you get your ccna and get your networking job or no like oh i'm sorry yeah i never went into that so i'm taking this ccna course i've gotten through the first two courses then of course sadly we had to you know i had to stop going in person to classes but i was still studying in the meantime and towards the end of that year this was the same year that i had like quit my job moved back home done all this stuff um i got a text from my instructor and like at one point she was like hey uh the company i work for has an opening in the knock on the overnight shift are you interested and i was like yes yes i am definitely yeah that's the right answer oh yeah i was like oh yeah because i'd actually heard like um that when you're at least this is what i got from reddit is like a lot of the time you know new people to networking might start out as like help desk uh which can be like a mixed bag of experiences or um you know uh there is a lot of talk about how great it is to learn in a knock specifically for now right so yeah we've got a guy here who will agree with you a little bit yeah yeah wait wait he's not deciding my first network engineer job was in a knock it was it that's fantastic awesome great place to learn right yeah yeah yeah um i had heard great things so i was like when she said that i was like hell yeah count me in i don't care if it's overnights i don't care what schedule it is just did you have your ccna i did not okay so it was no not that you needed it but like it was that a pre-wreck to the job because we we tell you today and get a job yeah okay right so you needed it i want to i want to be clear like i got in i think i spent all the luck in my entire life just getting this job i i had never had very much luck in my life and this like was all of it at once coming at me so she what she said to me was you know i know you're still working on your cc name and uh you know i'm telling my employers that like i'm telling them that they know uh but i think you have a great mind i think how she put it was like you have you have a great mind for network engineering and because i i was that annoying person in class okay who like was like hey um i have a question you know like every single second i had a question about active learning it's a wonderful thing and i could tell it was and to like bless her she was so patient with me she's so great and she she's you know to her credit she would answer it you know answer all my questions and if she couldn't answer some of them she'd be like you know what i don't know i'll look it up and i'll get back to you i mean she she set the tone for my learning so well uh but anyway she was like you know i think you have a great mind for network engineering i've i've told them everything like that you don't have a ccna yet but that you're working on it uh you know if you're interested they'll they want to interview you so i was like uh yes absolutely um luckily i just got in at a point where this company like they had started something new uh with a new team and they really sort of just needed bodies and seats at that point in time and i just got incredibly lucky that they were willing to take a chance on me without having any certifications or experience it was just on her recommendation so i just want to stress like normally like i was not qualified for that job and i'm i'm very i'm very grateful that they took a chance on me um so when you come in did you have an idea did you have an idea of what you know what she might i'm sorry go ahead what was that any idea what it was did you have an idea of what the job was what you were getting into or a little bit like she she explained it to me a little bit um but it was a new job and so actually as i you know that's it's my i'm still there right today um i'm still working there and she uh what she told me was that it was like a new team they're still sort of figuring stuff out but they have an idea of like what's going on and what they're doing and um it turned into like it's a it's a break fix role uh on on like a hybrid cloud system so um specifically when stuff breaks my team fixes it essentially were there was there a technical portion to the interview did they ask any excessive questions okay a little bit yeah very basic ccna questions um but at one point you know it was uh it was they gave me softballs real softballs i'm i've got so lucky i can't stress that enough so i know that's not fair you took a lot of action in your life to get to that point it's not like you were it's not like you were at that you know lawyer job and that this job dropped out of the sky right like you made some changes in your life and some decisions you decided to take that class you met this instructor like i would say you took a lot of action to get what are they what's the thing like luck favors the prepared or whatever like you did things to put yourself in that situation you know i wouldn't undermine that you just stumbled upon it right you did a lot to to get there and you've been there a couple years right is that how long you've been yes i've been working there for a little over two and a half years now yeah are you still in the knock so the position is is my title is a network engineer and i do configurations and things like that in order to fix stuff um so it's sort of like but we do monitoring you know um you know we have a big monitoring board that we look at and we're it's a very reactive role we're 24 7. so um yeah i'm still in the knock but like it's it's more than just uh it's more than just like a knock monitoring job we also like you know it's like we're the first level of escalation as well if that makes sense um okay so it's evolved over time but yeah i'm i'm still there um we've still you know our department has evolved over time and i'm really like excited about the direction that we're going um because it's just you know i've learned so so so so much it's nights are generally a good shift at a knock because during the day you can't touch anything right but at nighttime that's when you can do some you know fixing party over there during the day actually it's so busy we actually do we're you know it's not preferable i guess to like do maintenances and such during the day but we definitely like we're global so we definitely do maintenances just based on we try to base it off of like when whatever region it's in whatever location like hopefully we do it when they're using the network less but it's if something breaks you know you gotta you gotta fix it um so our but our daytime is definitely busier as far as like there's more people using the network so more things break um and you're going i'm actually yeah finally um i get to move to days soon in a couple weeks and how has the uh did you say you're working nights overnight yeah i've been working from 11 p.m to 9 a.m shifts for the past two and a half years which has been it's rough yeah it was fine for a while during covid like when i wasn't going out anyway like it wasn't too big of a deal but at some point it's like i'd like to sync up with my family and friends you know and have like a personal life that's the hardest part of it you're like awake when the world's sleeping and vice versa and it's definitely it can be an isolating weird kind of thing yeah like on your days off did you did you continue your night shift schedule like you stayed up during the night or did you try to have like a normal schedule briefly i tried to have a normal schedule but then i quickly found out like that is not yeah it messes with your head so much yeah you get so tired and then you have to transition back uh so yeah for most of these past two and a half years i've just been like uh keeping keeping that same schedule um more or less you're super stoked to go to days it's gonna be like normal life now i can't stress this enough i'm so i'm so ready i've been so ready and they you know they've been telling me for a long time like you're gonna go you're gonna go you're gonna go uh and i've just been waiting waiting waiting and finally finally yeah i'm a little terrified thank you thank you very much don't be just on the phone more welcome to the day well i'm very excited you know i'm excited for the sunshine and everything and to like see see like the sunset for the first time a long time but uh i mean the daytime is so much busier on our network uh so many different things happen and there's more engineers awake asking questions and that's another skill set you can develop you know i remember going from nights to days and it was very different the pace was much faster and okay can you make as many changes though i think that's what you were just talking about there right andy i mean it depends on the place we couldn't touch stuff during the day but it sounds like you know where lexi is maybe they're they're doing a little more it it depends on what's going on yeah i mean if they're doing like a mass upgrade of a bunch of switches for example they tend to do that like it in us night time but again like we're global so if if a customer in tokyo like doesn't want us to touch their stuff during their business hours like we would probably be doing a maintenance during u.s time in uh you know tokyo so it just depends on like where where things are and and customer preferences and all sorts of things um so yeah we're real busy we're real busy so remind me was this a uh a role change to go along with the shift change oh yeah i i'm i'm getting a promotion from network engineer one to network engineer two there we go there it is hold on hold on oh yeah there you go i couldn't watch it thank you wow thank you so much that good scream it just makes it that much more satisfying so you get to go to days you get a promotion they might give you some more money oh my goodness this is good that's awesome absolutely stoked um in addition to like the good things about day shift naturally we also you know a lot of our best engineers are uh located in the us and so they're obviously awake during u.s hours and i'm i'm particularly excited to learn from them and connect with them more um because i you know until i found this community i i i hadn't connected with any network engineers outside of just like my little shifts at night uh so so for a long time i was just like i need to get on days just so i can talk to to other engineers you know who have been here for the longest amount of time these u.s people but i'm still very excited about that opportunity yeah i can definitely resonate with you on that because i i work on a very small team it's just four of us right and uh and we have different levels of skills i i guess you could say and uh you know i've been working there for nine years now and when i found this community it was like the floodgates had opened right i can ask people who have done this stuff questions right rather than just me just guessing at it and just battling my way through it yes you had only like three other people to bounce things off of that work is that right yeah and yeah exactly wow yeah uh being able to ask questions of more experienced engineers is so valuable yeah especially when it's like you know i i can see that this is broken so but like why did we do it this way like as i'm returning it to the original state it was in what was the design choice that led to it being that original state i have so many questions like that and the only people can really answer that unless you've got amazing documentation which we we do have some but we're we haven't documented all our design choices right and it's so good to be able to go to the people who did that or people who know people who did that and ask them like hey what what's up with this you know so so when you get your nrc what am i going to watch like are you going to study something else you want to the ccie not ccie don't no no no what's your name that is bonkers to me that like that's all you need for the ccie is just go take the lab after this um it's entered my mind but um oh my god i just i so i work you know i work on a multi-vendor environment and and one thing i'm interested in is like uh getting a cert from another vendor you know like juniper um yeah really interested in like jncia stuff um i there's just too many i have too many interests now to like just focus on the cisco track for the time being right i never say never but i'm super interested in juniper stuff i think it's just so cool and and also i've done a little bit of like scripting in python recently i'm just gonna ask that how much automation are you doing do you have to do i don't technically right now we don't have to do anything but you know we're we're one of the things i'm really grateful for on my team is that we've been given like an allotment of four hours a week to work on we're calling it personal improvement time so uh what i've decided to work on yeah it's it's amazing um and and what i've decided to work on in my free time uh is is python scripting uh it's been kind of like a hack job a little bit for me because i haven't taken any formal courses it's literally just uh i have a friend and a mentor at work and he's been walking me through his experiences with python automation and what their he's sort of the head of our automation effort so he's been walking me through that and he's just been so patient and and uh wonderful to learn from so i'm working you know all this year i've just been working on this one little script uh so it's taken a while uh but you know i'm learning a lot in the process so hopefully that i you know after my np i'll be able to focus more on stuff like that that not only benefits me but benefits our entire team right the more you automate stuff the less you have to spend as a team on you know little trivial things you know we don't need everybody focusing on just like swapping out cables every day you know like we can automate that right stuff like that so nice so i can look forward to you using yourself yeah yeah you can look forward to me i'm sorry go ahead yeah i i said if you need resources that we can recommend a great book for you yeah oh yeah i'll i'll take it mastering python or net networking python god i can't remember yeah eric choose it help us out here it's on this one it's on my there you go mastering points that's what i thought he's in our chat he's a patreon and he he wrote this patreon i'm a big supporter of us and it is genuinely and awesome i've read it thank you i will definitely take note of that and and grab a copy uh man so yeah i guess i guess andy to answer your question like you get to hear me yell about python maybe jncia stuff like as long as you keep yelling about stuff i'm good yeah andy's tuning in i need you know he's only he's not he's not satisfied if you're happy with it he's only satisfied if you're angry no it's the i'll never run out of it's it's it's the honesty is is what i really appreciate i'm really happy maybe you don't read eric's book uh yeah well i'll never run out of stuff to uh yell about or be angry about sometimes i run like just on spite so you know it i'll be there you gotta keep here posts yeah yeah you know what um making this has been so helpful thank you i'm making this has been so helpful for me uh i'm gonna actually do probably a bunch of them once i'm finished with the ocg and going back and reviewing things that's when i'm going to crank a bunch out i'm pretty sure because it's a it's what i'm going back and reviewing stuff and trying to remember eigrp has it come in like that's going to be the next one i'm just you know i have to go back and review that bitch i'm so i'm so annoyed because i got through ospf and bgp and now i'm back in dmvpn and it's like shit i forgot everything the timers like everything about eigrp i'm already annoyed just talking about it yes it's gonna happen so don't worry about that i don't know the the dmvpn one is pretty great i'm so glad you like that one because i actually thought i could have done that a little bit better i did it like halfway through the chapter i didn't even like finish the chapter before i did it because i was that frustrated with it so i didn't even clues like i didn't include like phase one through three or whatever you know like well it's not totally complicated and then also the um so for me it was like i was scrolling through twitter you know and i'm just like a zombie right and then i get to this one card and it says okay shit birds it's time to figure out dmvpn that's what it's like it's like the uh the um uh office meme where he's like i was like okay here we go this is a change in pace now then okay shit birds it's time to learn about the mvpn for when you're too lazy to configure a bunch of boring ass gre tunnels i mean that's how it starts it's just so good it's so good but i think for the video we should pop up like on the screen and we'll pop it up so that way people can see it and we were talking before the show and and uh lexi's not posting those anywhere so i have offered the art of network engineering blog as a place for her to host those uh i'd be happy to do that so uh at some point thank you so much hold on english literature major which means you wanted to be a writer do you write at all oh no you have a blog oh boy uh you know i've considered having a blog but i i this might be the imposter syndrome talking or something but like i don't know that i have anything worthwhile to say what are you talking about these gold nuggets that you're sharing like i'm really good at just like you know throwing a bunch of like you know cuss words into like a you know fiery sort of macro and just like you know yelling about something that i'm angry at but as far as that as far as like i feel like a blog post you know it needs to be like well thought out and um you know thoughtful and mature and like that is the opposite i guess you could say the shit posts are well thought out but that's like the opposite maybe the community needs less well thought out less reverend you know maybe we need trackit pacer out there going read my read my blog post shit birds i'm definitely i'm bored with that y'all y'all gonna learn today one thing that is shocking is you you're saying you know english uh major or literature and then the way that you say stuff on here want to use verbs hit them with that good shit i don't know if this is exactly the term that should be used formally but i think of it as code switching if you've ever heard that term not to get all you know like oh here we go academic on you go ahead switching is sort of it's not really even an english literature thing like i i just i just find it really interesting you know code switching is sort of when you uh like you you talk or communicate in a different way depending on your audience basically or the space that you're in right and so i would not call this stuff like i i don't mean to say that i'm disingenuous when i'm making the shit post is probably the most accurate representation of my brain and my thoughts at most times okay uh but so so but it's you know it's sort of like i i like depending on how i'm feeling and how the mood that i want like the words to convey and all that like i'll use the letter u instead of y o u um stuff or y r instead of y o u r like i just you know and i'll cuss if i want to just convey that i'm really fucking angry at this concept you know so so you know that's that's kind of how i like to think of it uh when i yeah here's a really uh grammatically correct sentence these bitches is dynamic i don't care aj you got to get a clip of that because that's one of those things that we would never hear dan say yeah listen we probably can't use this because it's not respectful but i don't know if a good proposed um title for the show is these bitches be dynamic you know obviously we're not going to use the b word right but i just we got to get something fiery for the i think we need a track and pacer fire bomb title i don't know what it's going to be yet yeah feel free to take from the show not going to be it's not going to be lame at one point i did an ospf post and i compare ospf to fascism so you know there's there's plenty of material that you can use oh my gosh so that's what i'm most proud of it so it sounds like you're probably going to write the title of this episode that was my recommendation yeah i'm pretty sure you have we just got to pick one awesome nugget that you've dropped so this is what what's you know not to say we got a rap or anything but like what's next for you i mean you're you know you're you're getting this promotion you're on days i mean you're just getting started you have any you know desire for a future state of track pacer or you just kind of go with the flow getting promoted kicking ass and seeing where it takes you oh man um you know it sounds kind of like that where do you see yourself in five years i tried to ask it in a better way but no maybe maybe maybe a year how about that yeah sure in a year uh well i'd like to you know i'd like to continue working on my technical knowledge like uh as boring as that is like i i don't i'm working with people with like on average they all have like a decade of experience sometimes more um and so i you know the imposter syndrome is real and um as i'm getting promoted to a position that typically like people have that much experience in the field and i don't uh i feel really motivated to increase my networking knowledge i really want to get like i'm grinding right now to get through the ccnp so that i can have that as like proof that i know what the hell i'm doing and that you know i have some knowledge in the area but i really truly want to get all of that stuff down pat eventually so that i can be better at my job you know um and you know i'd like to eventually move into like a senior network engineer leadership position if possible and you know i really have a passion for at work i really like training people i've already been training a number of people and i like to train our new people and create documentation for them i create videos and and stuff like that and and so i uh i i would like to keep keep doing things like that and i think a leadership position eventually where i can you know do that as you know full-time or mostly of what i do would be really great to teach concepts to new network engineers and new employees and such but that's just sort of what i'm thinking right now i as as soon as i feel more comfortable in my technical knowledge i'll feel better about like looking at my near future kind of projection you know i'm sticking with my prediction of future cbt nuggets instructor trackit pacer yeah do they uh do they have any women instructors at cbt nuggets does anyone know i was wondering i know that they have female instructors but i don't think that they they have any that are in the network engineering kind of like vertical for them i know that they have i think there's there's a female instructor that does i think business apps like i think she has stuff on like microsoft office and a few other things but yeah some uh network engineers someone needs to fix that and i have a proposal it's as long as they allow cursing because if they take that away it's you can still cuss but they'll just bleep it because that might make it even funnier that'd make it even funnier sometimes that sometimes that doesn't make it funnier and it'll just be a lot of bleeping for me i was about to say you'd start off with an episode vpn has dynamic tunnels with that like you just want yeah bitches is dynamic yeah i'm so glad you guys are tickled by that hey do whatever you want these shit posts they're out there their public domain anyone can use them i don't i don't even care what should we have asked you what do we miss what do you want to say you know we have a platform here i mean did we forget anything is there any kind of uh if i can get on my soapbox really briefly if you don't mind um yeah we need we need more women in network engineering i know we have quite a few but we don't have enough um and that bothers me i i have a number of theories on how to do that but ultimately like part of it comes down to like the men who are in network engineering please encourage the women that you know and in network engineering if you do know any to keep encouraging them to to keep at it um because i know that a lot of when you're getting into this stuff in like college or like you're just you're taking classes in general at whatever point in life like if you're in a position where you're the only woman in a sea full of men uh it can get really intimidating and if even a few of them are not like that great to you like not you know or kind of shitty to you or whatever it can really discourage uh continuing along that path and that goes for not just network engineering but literally pretty much anything but i've i've heard it's a problem in engineering classes and just if you have a woman in your life uh who is in a tech related field or anything just make sure you're you're encouraging her and not you know if you work with someone who's a woman in your field like don't speak over her in meetings please like encourage your daughters to build their own pcs i think i you know have gotten on a soapbox about that before introduce these concepts just not just to little boys but to little girls too and encourage that in them uh we need we need this encouragement in all stages of life whether you're a child teenager adult um and a lot of that comes from like the men in our lives who who are already in this field that's that's male dominated so um i know i probably don't have to tell y'all on the podcast about this i know i'm probably preaching to the choir but um i just i just want to get that out there it's really important you have encouragement to hear from you i think means more than you know to hear it from one of us right and and you're you're you're walking the walk that's been your experience right in your life i mean i have a four-year-old daughter and i want her to be able to do anything she wants and i get pretty fired up you know thinking about what you're saying right that she may go into the work world someday and be made to feel less than or not part you know what like it just it's it's total horseshit and i'd like to think that the the ship's starting to turn right i mean i i would hope so right i haven't had your experience so i can't say that it is but the fact that there's more you know women getting into the field and yeah you know it's tough to change culture right i mean little boys are raised to like be loud mouths and to think they know it all and to take charge i mean that's that's how we're raised right like and it can be a problem later on like don't ever i was watching something the other day the sdn daughter i think her name is corey and she did this interview with these other two women in tech and they just it was like a 20-minute interview of just nothing but stories about everything you're talking about like if they go to a conference and they're all there the men don't even signify that they're there and then when the woman who's strong enough to say yo dude i'm here he goes oh i'm sorry i thought you were such and such his wife like just but there's so many of those stories that well right right but there's just so much of it like you're telling us right that there's so much of it and you weren't taught to build a pc so it's at the very least we need to hear right if there isn't the awareness if you're not out there screaming this from the top of the mountains it's never going to change and i was going to ask you how and you said you know you had a lot of ideas and well you know there's a there's a unfortunately like a lot of it is societal and that's not an easy overnight fix um like you touched on a little bit of that but you know like parents you know teach teacher sons not to like hit on their female co-workers would be nice you know like i've i've had negative experiences just in like exist i just exist and like like if you exist as a woman in a space with mostly men uh there's just gonna be problems most of the time there's gonna be at least one person always um so like you know teaching just basic emotional like intelligence and uh empathy goes actually a long way i think but you know i don't want to teach parents how to how to parent their children it's just that you know i can tell that sometimes you go into a space as a woman and uh you know the men there are not used to having a woman in that space and so it's a weird adjustment and i um you know i think i think some some people need to get used to that adjustment is all it is it shouldn't be that big of a deal but unfortunately for some people you know it can be that and that's my soapbox thank you i would say it does start at the home and it is complicated but you know i'm hoping that at the very least by talking about it right i mean i oh yeah i teach my son to hold the door and you know like if you're teaching if you're teaching your son to be a gentleman when he's a kid you hope that when he grows up he's not that schmuck in the office right and that's oh yeah hopefully my part that i can do and then a reminder from you is like build a pc with my daughter like rock on that's going to be awesome you know and she may not be like an engineer or anything when she grows up but at least like you've exposed her to that stuff right like that's really all it's part of her experience right if she's had an experience with it and it might click later it might not but to to keep it from her isn't going to help her right discover that so yeah yeah well awesome can i get back on the soapbox now dan is it my turn can i bitch about that can i kind of can i yell about something i don't know i don't know and we got to wrap up guys he wants to talk again we got to shut it down i'm just you know thank you for coming on here you you've just been um you've been a you've been a pleasure just in the community right now i mean not just here tonight but like you're i really enjoy on social media the the streams have been phenomenal i love your your attitude your spunk you know your take no shit attitude and thanks for coming on youtube on your story it's really been you know helpful some of the messages i got from you guys like stuff you said like it's never too late you know what i mean yeah you know get honest with yourself if you have to i mean these are things that resonated with me right i i started over in my mid-30s and and tried to figure stuff out and you know it's not too late we get a lot of people in the discord even in on twitter like you know hey i'm 40 something is it too late to start like not no it's it's never too late you don't you don't have to be a computer science major and get that first gig at 22 like it's not and to me like i came up thinking i failed out of computer science i've told this before but like i couldn't hack c plus plus calculus destroyed me and they were the first two classes you had to take in your first semester in computer science calculus man right so i got weeded out right i'm like okay i don't belong i can't do that i'm not cut out for tech like you said you know fast forward 20 15 years later and i found a different route in there but you know many paths to the same place and you know it's just i really like your story and it's never too late and you know i know if i can do it anybody can do it that's always been what i've tried to tell people and i don't know i've really and i really enjoyed you thanks for coming on thank you so much that's so kind of you to say and i it's been an honor it's been i'm so stoked to to be asked to be on on the show thank you so much for having me it's been great guys yeah absolutely it's been an honor having you i am so honored to get a chance to share your story and i absolutely can tell you that it will be influential to anybody that listens to this i mean you know andy's already kind of recapped it so i don't i don't need to go say it again but just what an amazing story and and genuinely thank you so much for for joining us tonight um her she is lexi she is uh at track it pacer where else can people find you uh so twitter's my main place i'm also you know if you want to follow me on reddit it's the same username track it pacer that's where i'm primarily streaming at the moment i do have a twitch account and plan to start streaming on twitch so you can actually read what uh what i've got up uh diagram was and stuff so if you want to follow me on twitch uh that's not quite up yet but it will be and i exist in that space so yeah awesome i'm definitely gonna sub to that awesome thank you all right guys what is this what is this twitch my last minute word is what is this twitch what is this twitch thing which is this twitch thing from andy what is this what is this twitch thing hold on let me set my prune juice hold on what is this which is the streaming service that's aimed at people that play computer video games streaming can i get that on my radio yeah okay get it you can get on your phone my ring a dingy on the kitchen wall the yellow thing yeah that one is all right lexi thank you so much for joining us this week as well as everybody in the the chat thank you so much to our patreons if you're interested in being a patreon and joining us here you can go to patreon.com forward slash art of network engineering or no art of net edge my gosh uh patreon.com uh lexi thank you again so much for joining us have a good night everyone we will see you next week goodnight shit birds hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of netench that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at artofnetworkengineering.com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you