this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore keys technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information to expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome to the art of network engineering i am aj murray and we have got a full house tonight i am super excited yep let's uh let's go to dan i haven't talked to dan in a very long time dan how you doing man how do you aj what's new in dan's world uh i successfully migrated or not migrated but imported into our mso and pushed to our secondary uh our secondary data center so i have officially stretched a fabric now wow stretchy fabric yeah i like it that's awesome that's how i'm going i was sweating a lot when i hit the record button and pushed it because you know there's a deploy to sites it was just like i said my little prayers crossed my fingers and clicked deployed to sights and uh it it did it so so then is this is this aci is that what you mean aci yeah yeah aci so you have one aci fabric that it resides in two different data centers is that yeah so that it stretched between the two different data centers yeah okay wow that's awesome good job dude that's big andy how are you doing hey uh i haven't had any bees in my office for a while but you know what oh okay but you know what i do have i i got maple the biggest jar bottle of maple syrup today from my main man pots and pans aj mary 100 pure maple syrup from vermont i thought it was whiskey yeah it would be a much different show tim if this is yeah so there's no bees but thank you for my maple syrup yes yes i'm really thrilled and uh if anybody else wants a bottle let me know i'll be happy to send you johnny isn't that gonna attract the bees well that's what made me think of it tim you know okay maple syrup could be the problem but i'm good aj thanks how you doing good good so so a little back story so um i don't have the particular mug on my desk but my wife uh bought she she had custom yeti mugs made with the art of network engineering logo on it so i shipped one out to uh andy aaron and dan and i i made my wife and i made we made a little vermont gift basket it was so nice to put in the box there was chocolate mr chocolate there's some vermont stickers there was uh maple syrup maple syrup and andy raved about the maple syrup and just like if you think that's good let me send you some other stuff uh so so dan uh tim and i don't wanna announce our guest yet but if you're interested in uh vermont maple syrup at its finest i am more than happy to to send you a bottle and i don't know if it's a philly thing but i've been consuming the crappy high fructose corn syrup with caramel colorings here my whole life once you get some real maple syrup it's a game changer oh yeah it makes sense it's like good for you you know it's so good and like i was telling eddie like that stuff is so good like my wife and i put it in cocktails like it's that good you do what yeah we put maple yeah i mean it's a vermonter but like i told you guys about the beer and putting syrup and beer right oh yeah yeah yeah yeah try it do a farmhouse sour with some maple syrup or uh really any kind of syrup i guess but like i like a blackberry syrup and man very nice and they wonder why they can't get their bmi down tim they wonder why they can't get rid of their they're putting maple syrup in everything man that's where all that weight came from it wasn't staying home all the time it was because every time i got to go with something i covered it in maple syrup how are you doing tim we got to get to our guest how you doing yes yes so uh aaron is out this evening and tim is joining us once again tim how you doing i am well thanks i don't have any uh big aci button pushing winds but we do now have a finished patio on the back of the deck so my wife is happy and i now have another spot around the house to uh partake in my favorite hobby so there you go no maple syrup but did you build it was it your doing no no no you paid somebody to do it but we took it we i said we had it done we took the deck down but i have to ask because if i remember correctly does your backyard have a fence like the patio area because when when we talked in your episode i thought your favorite hobby was your four kids no no the the hobby i'm referencing now uh has to do with in taking certain specific liquids uh via glasses or and or bottles oh so funny story so i i was trying to search discord for something you had typed out once i just said what was that thing that tim was talking about so i searched your username and the amount of beer pictures that you post is really cool it's a lot but it's really cool what did i say i mute all channels in the discord except for encore and adult beverages yeah i like it this time next year we'll be having tim's intervention on the art of network engineering hey thanks for giving me at least a year though i appreciate it we'll all get our notes tim i'm andy and i care about you yeah tim it makes me angry okay that's probably the longest intro ever let's get to our guest this evening i am so excited yes uh tanaya is joining us this evening tonight how are you doing hello i'm great how are you guys thank you so much for for taking the time this evening yes thank you thanks for the invite absolutely excited absolutely so let's uh let's dive in right from the top um who who are you where are you from currently and what do you do right now i'm tanaya pretty sure everybody knows me from twitter um i am currently well i guess now forever will be maybe not in colorado oh yeah uh when did i get back here last august july august where did you move from where were you going from uh cali pasadena area arcadia how could you leave cali if i ever get to cali i'm never leaving have you been to college that's what i said i was there for eight years okay i love it there but um coming back here makes me uh brings me back home okay oh okay all right i've been gone since 2004 so it was just time to come back yep yes very nice and and what do you do now for work um network engineer at at two places excuse me oh yeah are you working 80 hours plus a week um yeah hold on before we go when you're studying before we go any further it's very important do both employers know about each other um yes but you you hesitated it kind of got messed up so it's not what we originally planned and so i don't yeah i don't know if they like the new schedule i have but ah wow i did tell both about each other when i originally started you're working two full-time jobs yeah wait a minute no i didn't work of last year too hold on andy work together here it goes dan i know it's coming and he's going to ask you how in the world do you do that and study for your ie so wait do you have kids yeah i do here we go have four wait a minute no no no no no this is 80 hours a week um like between two and five i don't get up at three every day though uh maybe five i've been getting up at five so what shifts do you work do you work day shift and then you go to like swing shift the the schedules were staggered at first some days they merge so it's like in the middle of my first nine to five i'm starting a second job till that's over but wow you know the end of the day starts to slow down so it's not too bad do do uh meetings get like absolutely nuts um some days monday it was like back to back and the last year that i did two jobs just the one time so i've gotten lucky but i also i try to control my schedule as much as possible so yeah are they like you kind of have to right yeah you're service providers are you in an isp or two isps or um isp and uh 911 dispatch center okay okay wow oh very cool that's an intense job right yes are you taking calls like are you worried okay i'm just doing networking just i see stuff thank goodness but i keep my my door closed because i don't like to listen to the call yeah right right wow so can you can you kind of explain what that's like from a from a network engineering and operations standpoint i mean that's to me i would think that's nerve-wracking because i thought it was it's not a normal network that's that's uh life-saving calls happening there it's um i'm getting used to it now it's been nine eight months nine months but at first it was really nerve-wracking because um i was scared to touch anything i didn't want to take anything down yeah and it's hard i can't do updates or maintenance because there's no maintenance when the word 24 7. right exactly so it's really hard but um after a while you kind of get into the hang of things and once you learn what what agencies need and how things work you can kind of work around certain high call volume times or uh i don't like to say slow time there's literally no slow time but the least amount of calls you can mess up the of course the better so so when do you do upgrades and stuff like 2 three in the morning okay three to five it depends on the day like a tuesday and wednesday uh three to five is good sometimes a thursday five to six is all you have is that quick have you had any hours no we're near weekends or anything um not that affected any phones good okay very good yeah and the one we did was a failed switch at one of the sites but it was um our radio network that's that's still bad because that's what we need to get to the patrol cars but it wasn't as bad as you know incoming 911 calls or transfers between us and other agencies so wow that's nuts that's intense yeah so it sounds good how long have you been at the isp now um what is today oh three weeks almost three weeks that's right it's still brand new so so i i just have to say like that that used to be my barometer at past jobs when i would get like you know really stressed out or or bad things would happen at work but it was always at least nobody died and you don't have that working in a 911 dispatch center yep no yeah it's really intense because if it's not the 9-1-1 calls it could be um what is it called anything that has to do with the courthouse or jail or officer patrol cars and their accesses certain things from the cars it could be uh body cam stuff it could be a lot so it's not just the um incoming calls you know so it's not just like the 9-1-1 it's like the entire like municipal body yep okay one county reaching another county or court to jail or anything like that house drill cars to servers you know the little uh laptop where they're looking up our plates yeah yeah i gotta make sure that stuff is well you know if that's down for a little while right how stressful was that job when you first started like that when i first started i was really yeah it was really stressful just because i was scared to break anything sure yeah and um i don't know maybe i was maybe out of eight for like my first month because i was just scared to touch anything i was yeah yeah what drew you to that to that position do you just uh do you just thrive in high pressure situations or um i feel like i do work well under pressure very nice teach me i'm working on it it depends on how many things are broken so you know you you weren't always a network engineer right i mean should we turn back the clock and yeah you know what yeah what were you doing before i never know where to start with this but you know where we don't have to go all the way back to high school yeah where would you start telling your story like what were you doing before networking for this i ran a fitness business okay and um three years i was a manager at gnc i was doing that alongside of training my clients okay okay so you've got a personal trainer you're running a gym like okay i did everything i trained people i ran i did meal prep i would make competition suits trained people for competitions anything in the whole fitness room and you competed too right yep wow do you still you know do the fitness thing compete i do i can't wait to get back on stage i didn't compete all last year yeah i was focusing on the thirds and ia stuff and getting back i'm in it but this year well i keep saying this year i'm definitely going but it's already made what got you into fitness i mean have you always been you know into health and did you play sports as a kid i mean how do you get into that i did play sports as a kid but not i don't take i didn't take it as seriously as my son does now or like my husband did when he was younger um it was mostly because my dad wanted me to so i used to swim and track tennis but it was only because my dad uh trying to make me venus and serena but um when i was 20s late teens early 20s i did nothing i was not into fitness i didn't care about it at all the last time i lived here was 2010 and i didn't realize how fat i was so i seen a picture of myself and i was just furious and embarrassed and i ended up losing 50 pounds and then my neighbors started asking for help and one of them were like you're really good at this you should do this all the time i was like okay and i literally uh enrolled in a training class like that next week and then i got multiple certifications in that and then um i applied to a gym and it was funny because it was like 10 o'clock at night and i just did it just because i was bored i hadn't even finished my cert yet and the manager called and i looked at the phone like you're still working and he was like um come see me tomorrow we chitchat for like five minutes and he was like come see me tomorrow then he hired me wow shit yeah as a trainer awesome yep wow and then i was killing it i was her top trainer for like three months in a row i was bringing in like five thousand plus impressions military life we ended up moving so i just started doing my own thing wow so instead of going back to the gym well i tried to go back to 24 hour when i first moved to cali but they wanted me to drop all my clients and at that point i had like 50 and i was like no way and they were like you either get rid of your clients or make them get memberships here and i was like fine i turned down their offer so i gotta open my own private gym i got a question so why do people need personal trainers is it i mean oh i can tell you that one well i got these tiny arms andy well like you know i i i get that you're like a coach like is it mostly for motivation or like accountability like oh i gotta go and um is that and just the knowledge some people literally don't know um how to read food labels or what's in their food or how to track calories what a calorie is so it's not just a workout plan you're teaching them nutrition yeah my first two weeks it's not even a lot of working out it's just teaching you how to have healthy eating habits how to read labels how to shop the grocery store things like that it's all just nutritional education my first week or two that's really that's gotta be really that's gotta be really refreshing to the customers too because they may come in thinking they're gonna work their tails off and and you say well let's pump the brakes let's let's fix some other things first so yeah that's really cool most of the time ever i'm gonna say 90 percent of the time 95 percent of the time and that's over my last 11 years doing this um people don't make progress because they just don't know anything about nutrition they can work out all day and never ever make any progress wow you'd be surprised i struggle with portions i always have i mean yeah that's almost everybody yeah yeah and i guess it comes down to discipline right like i know what a portion is as your fist protein whatever but that's not what winds up on my plate right yeah like yeah it's your discipline and just i guess that you just really have to yeah i have to try to stick to what's what's necessary i might have to get a trainer because i've been fighting dad bod for years now and i am not i am not winning this battle dad you should try out this t-rex bod how do you transition from i mean you're running gyms you're running the show you got all these clients you're making a ton of cash for them five like whatever you said 5000 a month or whatever like yeah did you get out of that how do you make a transition from you know super bodybuilder to like a tech person um i always was the tech person i went to school because i wanted to do something tech and i ended up getting a degree that was mostly focused on software and web development but i didn't like coding so keep hearing a recurring theme here you come to the right place yeah yeah i'm still waiting to find somebody who likes coding i haven't met them yet yeah me either we're in the wrong twitter because they're not on the library where was this chronologically were you in school during the gym stuff before after that was before okay so was 2004 through nine and then you got done school and went into fitness um no my plan was to do anything tech in the marine corps but that didn't happen and after moving so much and quitting so many jobs just the fitness thing was perfect with our lifestyle and my schedule yeah did you go into the military no i did not get a chance to okay turns out that there is an age limit for officers and i was too old and then once i got my age waiver there's a dependent limit and i have four kids wow huh i had no idea yeah he didn't know that so couldn't get into the marines had a degree in tech wound up in bodybuilding am i there so far like what when is so how do you go from degree bodybuilding to like at some point you pivoted to tech yeah for the job when gnc closed 100 stores my store got closed i transferred to another store for maybe two months or so but i really hated it me and the manager just didn't get along i was a manager who liked to train up my team and i really cared about the clients um it is just a retail store but people come in there for real help and i liked helping people yeah and the manager was just like sell self-sales and he didn't care so i didn't stay there long huh why did they close a bunch of stores i don't remember what was it i don't remember making money yeah yeah and the strip centers they were mostly strip centers those were costing more to keep up and they were bringing in so gotcha i i think it was just a strip center thing locations and the size of those stores so you just wound up out out of work at one point right like everything i still have my clients i was still training while i was at gnc so i just went back to training but that only lasted a few months and i was like this is the perfect time to get back in 19. so um i started training part-time june 18 yeah 2018-ish and i went to barnes noble and got the uh ccna 200 125 cert guide there you go and i've just been studying and laughing every day since wow yes so we're literally almost every day since too so where did you land your your first job in was it like a help desk was it did you go straight into networking or help desk out of msp at msp you said yeah okay did you get your ccna to get that job because you had a did you have a bachelor's in software web development um computer information systems cis right yep but did you need a search i had had net plus at that time and i did net plus to get familiar with networking because i didn't really know anything about it i just knew you know sql and programming languages stuff like that so so with your background at that time how did you how did you get that job right like how did the interviews go what what drew you to that position um as hard as i've been studying and labbing for the npni that's how hard i was going on netplus and i they also have a who was it that sells a uh netplus simulator i was on that thing for hours and hours just redoing configs and i think i went through all a couple hundred labs over and over at least two or three times try to really learn how and why to do these things so i can kill it at the interview because my resume was i'm not trash i had only had two real jobs and um i didn't have anything to put on there so i wanted to make sure that when i started applying places i could speak to what i was doing it's nice that's smart was the ccna prerequisite for the help desk job that you got um it wasn't um i think it was on their posting but they knew i didn't have it yet so you like networking you wanted to get into it and you knew that ccna would help open some doors maybe is that kind of why you went after um i borrowed two books from a marine he was he's basically an engineer for the marine corps and uh something in that book triggered me to google something and ccna came up and something come to you and that's how i fell on those guys and i originally um created my cisco account i tried to do the route switch mp and it was like no you got to get n a first and then when i was reading through those i was like let me go back to net plus and start from the very bottom and then work my way up get that foundation in there right yeah because i i figured i thought i would remember some things but i yeah i didn't learn any of that stuff when i was in college so i started with the net plus because it was a more broader overview and it was very neutral it wasn't so tailored to cisco so how'd that help this uh interview go that your first tech interview it was and i it was really nerve-wracking i felt like i did terrible and it was funny because the ceo company owner was a small company he he interviewed me he kept saying it's okay calm down so i must have been superheroes he was like you're doing fine calm down i did you tell him to calm down he was like you're doing fine calm down it's okay calm down oh gosh well i must have been really wired but i felt like i did terrible and i was annoyed because i felt like i had labs so much and i i knew how to configure everything that i was upset when i couldn't answer his questions but the problem was is i spent all my time labbing and learning ccna stuff and he was asking me things from a plus and things inside of a pc and i was going to ask you about ram and all that crap processors and i was like that's not in my book because i've heard that about help desk jobs a lot of people get like a plus right learn like all the hardware so yeah i wanted to ask you why you were studying so hard for network for the help desk position but i guess because their posting said network administrator okay and then once i got there it was right right a bait and switch yeah that's that's not your fault they're nailing you with hardware questions and you're like yo let's talk about subnetting and bgp yes that's exactly how it was they literally had an open pc on the desk and they were like what is this and i looked in the box like a computer i was like i don't know and he was like what is this what is this what is that and i was like that's a fan and i literally didn't know what the pieces were i was like i thought you were going to ask me networking questions excuse me when are you going to wheel in the routers here right now did you say that tonight did you tell me yeah and i was like i can draw a network on the whiteboard i was like i do that kind of stuff and i was like i'm sorry i don't know what's inside of my computer i use it to do networking stuff right so smart that you pointed out your strengths right yeah i just told them i was like i wasn't expecting you to open up a pc and asked me questions about servers and vmware i said i don't and i just i explained him coming from fitness and i was studying networking stuff and he they must have just felt like i could learn it because then they hired me but what you felt like you bombed it they thanked you and shook your hand and you left and are you like um actually they was like stick around for lunch we had lunch okay and during the lunch i um the questions kept coming back to me and i remember uh telling the manager and the ceo i was like let's do a redo i said i do know the answer to this question this question i said but you were throwing acronyms at me and and a lot of alphabet soup and i've been studying for n a and i was not thinking and i was like i do know what this is i do remember this and i have done this before and then during that lunch they said explain to me why like i'm a client why i should upgrade from windows 7 to 10. and then maybe that's what did it because they were like okay and after lunch i felt like we changed the environment a bit okay and i've never been invited to lunch yeah you were doing something right i mean they wanted they wanted you to stick around right and see they were like we have lunch coming you want to have lunch and i was like sure wow so they offer you the job on the spot that day or did you go home and they called um they called me like two days later okay were you surprised that you got the office because i didn't know any of the questions knew nothing about vmware i knew the fan inside of the pc and i like i was like that's a fan power supply like i couldn't name anything and it was really funny because i wasn't expecting any of that and then as much as i used computers she's my entire life maybe since seventh eighth grade you would think i could answer more questions about windows and updates and no i knew none of that stuff well and you were you were also kind of under under pressure right you thought you were going in for a network admin position and you're getting questions about you know an open pc case i i would have been a little nerve-wracked too if i walked into that situation yeah i would ask if this was a joke you know like i almost did i almost did because it was the opposite of what i expected i almost did because i was like this was weird i thought i applied for the wrong job or i was at the wrong place the first 20 minutes was really weird yeah wow yeah and they were like um i had googled the company and the ceo and i seen a video of him uh interview on youtube and so i kind of used that to taylor smart my interview and i was just like i don't know when i felt the interview started going downhill because they put the computer away they was like okay well let's move on to something else and they handed me a laptop and they were like how do you do this or if i asked you to do this how do you find that and it was like doing things in control panel and stuff that i i had never done before yeah and i think the entire time i've used a computer i think i went in my own control panel once to add a printer in my entire life at that point so i just i felt like i really bummed it i literally couldn't use a computer and i've been using one my whole life so it was really weird so you were like get me uh you were like give me the console cable find me a switch and i'll show you some stuff yeah yeah when i felt like it was going downhill i brought up some of the things that i saw the ceo talking about in this interview and then that's when i pointed to the writer and i was like i thought i was going to make a network with vlans and ospf and stuff and i was like i can do that so you did yourself they did they had me do that they asked me they gave me a um like a criteria and they were like draw a network that has this this and this and we need this many computers and i need this this and that's when i i uh so hang on i started drawing everything out how long was this interview oh i was there an hour and a half maybe okay oh wow yeah it's pretty long so that escalated quickly yeah yeah it really did because i was at first um i made before i gave myself like five quick seconds to keep feeling terrible and that's when i was i was i hate saying i get aggressive and i get mean but that's when i kind of got more stern like this is not what the thing said on indeed i don't know anything about vmware so you lean into them and you're like yeah this isn't my fault man you guys yeah that's funny i complained about that for like four months my first four months and um again because i was just doing things that wasn't expected uh managing active directory and the hi the manager the it manager or help desk manager he gave me a task and halfway through it i'm googling how to do it he walks by and he's like how come you don't know how to do that it's a basic script and i went like this and i was like and i all i could do was just breathe and i just started fussing like that's not what was unindeed and this is what my search is that's what i can do i told you this at the interview i've been telling you this for three months and i just lost my mind don't mess with her man and i was like this is what i said and it was after that he's like he still gave me some trouble but not as much because like you were literally giving me things i had never seen before telling me to do all this stuff with um log on scripts and things and active directory and i hadn't even heard of that stuff so i got to look up literally everything so it was a difficult position to be in right you're you're in a health desk yeah right you don't know about something like that and then you know help desk users yeah i had to like one of the co-workers i was like when i get this n a i'm out right was anybody there like did you have people that you could lean on that could help you get you acclimated were you on your own not really i was a little on my own yeah that makes it even worse i think there were seven of us total and uh not that they weren't helpful they were nice guys and sometimes they were helpful but they were also like how come you don't know how to create a script it took me almost two weeks to create a script with python that automatically clocked me in and out and i had to learn how to use python and how to do the scripts and how to run it so if we kept arguing over things like that i was supposed to write a script to reboot servers and i was going in manually and doing it and that was making the manager mad so this wasn't a pleasant experience right your first job no i couldn't wait basically this was not a great foray into the so how did you get out of there well yeah how long were you there for how long did you put up here almost a year okay it's like 11. once in a week or something like that 11 long months um i think i left two weeks before my year dates how did you get out um i feel so bad because i'm not i'm not a person who lies but i really love the ceo i just couldn't work with the i-team manager yeah and i think three or four times i went to the ceo and i was like look i know your whole chain of command thing but it's not working between us and so i'm i've been trying these are the things i've tried now i need you to intervene and it never worked so i don't know uh i was planning to go home for the holidays that year and i told them i think i'm going to move back home i need to go home and i just told him i was moving because i felt bad telling him that i loved him and his company and everything he was doing but i couldn't work with the manager yeah yeah and i seen that mean like good people leave managers not jobs that was 100 true because yeah we just we couldn't communicate yeah did you ever see him around town after that um i felt like i seen his car a couple times but i never we didn't live by each other so all right all right so what was the job after that did did you get your n a and get your first network spot i did um but i had got the n a almost a year before i left i had got it early in the um my time that i was there oh yeah i started november and i had the n a march february and march and then i didn't leave to that next december oh i guess i was there year i left december because i was supposed to go home for christmas and then i just ended up not going so were you looking for network positions the whole time i was like seven months sure seven months yeah like seven months did you have it i haven't been on many interviews but i just wasn't at the level where people needed me to be and it was really annoying because i didn't know what i was talking about but without any corporate experience so how did you overcome that because that's that's a recurrent theme on this podcast how do you get that chicken or egg kind of scenario like you know resolved i you guys see me laugh literally laugh like crazy i don't know i don't always say it out loud because different people take it different ways but for a long time i caffeinated on friday night and i stayed up till sunday night when it's time to go to bed and work for school for the week and i just laughed and studied and laughed and studied because i wanted to know every little thing every output every command every everything so i can explain people how these things work because i had no experience and i was getting really frustrated without not being able to get the jobs you had to prove that you were you knew what you were talking about beyond the shadow of a doubt because you knew they were going to tell you well you don't have experience yeah and you were going to i feel like if i could walk you through how to troubleshoot something what certain output looks like what commands to run to configure or troubleshoot something then i would be fine so a lot of labbing at that point a lot of labbing yeah what what what were you using virtual um i started off with packet tracer and then when i didn't do some of the np technologies i got uh gns3 and i have even g but i never use it yeah i know everybody does that driving in pain for those who are what it's on a laptop that i never use i use my gaming pc so that's one reason yeah but um i don't know i just i don't have any problems with this so yeah yeah so you broke don't think you studied like you studied like a mad woman you lab like a mad woman you applied like crazy until you got some interviews i guess how did you get a few interviews and just kept getting shot down um yep and a lot of big companies um for the uh cities uh a water district what was this still out in california or had you moved home okay all right and then at dxc you guys may have heard of a big company um at that interview i felt like it went really well but the senior guy he was like i like you a lot the team likes you we feel like you know what you're talking about but you you don't have any networking experience and um after i got hired and i realized the projects we were working on i could see why he wanted someone who had been doing it for a while but at that interview i kind of got really really stern and i was just like you know what i'm really sick of begging for a chance like i can do this job and i was like i get what you're saying and the things that you wish he said i wish you were able to things that he had said in that sentence i tried i built the lab in gns3 now you've seen my devices i had the 10 physicals i have begged so many people to go in and break it so i can fix it either no one knew how cause they're just not familiar with it or i felt like no one broke it enough that challenged me and um i explained to them i've had marines i've had i.t friends i've had anybody can think of try to break my network so i can troubleshoot that was the thing i hadn't had any real life troubleshooting and right as i thought he was about to end it i told him give me scenarios give me something to fix and i could tell you i can show you that i do know what i'm doing yes and um we ended up being an mpls thing and when i walked them through what i would look for in the output i would check they were like okay she knows she's legit this is awesome you know what i'm really frustrated because i think that's like my seventh or eighth interview and they were like oh you're so nice you have so much potential but no that's not what i want to hear you guys uh you got to get mad i think uh i think this is a a probably a good time to highlight that tanea has a uh pinned tweet on her uh twitter account that says discipline is more important than motivation and and you you just said that in your last 10 minutes here yeah i um i yelled that at a client once and i just you yelled like you yelled at a client you yelled yeah hey hey andy andy i don't want to be yelled at by kane no she was just fussing about how she couldn't stay motivated and i'm like motivation lasts for like 10 whole seconds like you have to be disciplined that's what's more important and i don't know we had cardio or something and she was like i'm just not motivated to do it and i was like your body literally doesn't care if you're tired or unmotivated like your results are still the same you can run the treadmill mad with the attitude or whatever you're still going to burn calories like you'll you'll still get results and i think i was really fussing at her that day and after i said that to her i ended up putting it on my wall hang on i i think i had the wrong context here because you said you yelled at a client and i thought you were talking about like a help desk no that was a fitness club everybody she yells that offers her a job so there's a valid point yeah wow i just got really frustrated and i was i was trying to sit there and be polite but um so the so the guy gave you a job though right so the guy gave you a job then after you after you described your mpls how you would how you troubleshoot it they were like all right and so they gave you the job so so what were you doing at this at this level now were you finally actually into networking or um i was still at the help desk and i i that's when i told those guys i was probably gonna stay in colorado when i came here for christmas but then i ended up getting the offer so i stayed and callie and just literally went from that job to that job friday to monday from help desk to network yep okay and it was really fun and once like two months in i was i felt like oh this happened for a reason because it was everything i needed for the ie enterprise i was working with dna center and we had we were migrating 114 sites from mpls to sd-wan oh wow and it was just everything literally everything i procured and configured and installed 350 9300s and that's what was on the exam and your first network engineering job you you hit the jackpot yeah i did oh my goodness i did i was really i was like ugh is is the word unicorn in the title i was so happy that is incredible once i got in and i was like this is what we're doing went from a frustrating help desk job where you weren't actually doing networking to straight into that that's wow that's awesome and it was it was crazy because after a year of arguing with the users and arguing with the manager it was like 100 percent networking no end users really supportive team really supportive manager was completely different world one day i had a migraine or something they were like go home rest chill and i had never had that before either at gmc i had to go to work with um freaking strep throat and ear infection it was not i wasn't used to the supportive team and manager and take four or five days off you know make sure you're well that was that was different i think that's called culture yeah yeah yeah right i agree with you the users are the worst and i liked helping i didn't mind helping but it's one thing to be rude and nasty when you're calling me for help and i'm trying to help you yeah yeah and these were not like um i don't know the word these were like architects and lawyers and um there's this company a new startup they were working on um i forget what kind of technology oh charging your phone through wireless they were working on stuff like that and so these are what i felt was like high professional people and maybe those were just the worst to work with but yeah ceos that's been my experience and this one guy i told him i was like people who cook your food and i t people are the worst people to treat like this i said i have literally access to everything in your computer you should probably be a little more nice if i was a bad person you'd be screwed right now watch yourself i'm on his computer trying to help him he's yelling and screaming at me about something i didn't even do and what's so funny is at the time i used to call spectrum from help because that was the provider for that client and um i remember calling spectrum over some outage it was something really dumb he was yelling at me and the whole reason that they had a problem was because they hadn't paid their bill and spectrum shut them up and he was screaming and yelling like terribly and i was like oh that's a bad person like i'm literally in everything your whole life is on this laptop your personal your corporate i can see all your money your everything so you said something that i just want to circle back on real quick when you were interviewing for this job the guy or the interviewer said that he wanted somebody with experience and you said once you were there a little bit you understood why so what does that mean exactly because it sounds like once you got there you knocked it out of the park and did great so why do you think he said you know i need somebody with experience like was it a very intense environment you were in um it was intense we were you're working for the state of california and it was just a lot of pressure to hurry up and get things done and at one point we were doing three to six cutovers a week and those things were it was really crazy scheduled sometimes those cutovers took two hours and then just the amount of work that we were doing at one point i was configuring seven switches a day and so it was fast paced but not it just wasn't a good time to teach someone who didn't know anything like you needed to come in how to troubleshoot mpls because you still had to manage the sites that weren't cut over yet you had to know about sd-wan you had to have experience working with vendors and just because you were on your own a lot they were like here's half of this 300 shipment of switches configure them schedule the tech to go install and do the cut over wow and it was just just because the we were doing cut over to sd-wan and switch refresh at the same time and then we had an outage that brought up the impromptu data center refresh so we got really big wow unfortunately how did you how did you manage uh all that pressure and and while drinking from a fire hose and and all of that all at once um maybe i'm weird it wasn't a ton of pressure to me i was literally having a ball i was like give me all the switches see see you had a ball i would have been bawling yeah i slowed down a bit i think i was just i was super excited to be there i was one doing networking and then we were doing all this stuff i felt was super cool and we were playing with all the latest cisco toys and i was the only one who had managed dna for like seven months and i was having a lot of fun with it wow yes that's incredible i it wasn't a lot of pressure to me i was enjoying everything i was anything they needed me to do i was like sure put on my calendar until one of my co-workers was like what did he say he made a comment and he was like yeah cause you're just the queen something he said it was really like do it all and i'm just because i'm just that good and i didn't see it as that i was just like i had no problem configuring all the stuff i was like sure someone was like i can't do this it's too much in my plate i was like i'll do it i was just trying to get my hands on everything yeah and you earned that spot it was your first network gig somebody gave you an opportunity and you were surrounded by all the latest and greatest i mean you were yeah i think that person was a little resentful like i agree it just comes in and yeah yeah they don't want to hire you because you don't have the experience they give you a chance anyway because you prove yourself and then now you're trying to take everything to get the experience and you're still giving you and i shit what he said but it was it was real shitty and he said it in front of everyone and i was like that's how everybody feels so after that i just kind of took my my tickets and my task as it came i stopped you know going above to help everyone who was starting to fall behind you think it was just that one person or this was another not great culture that you found yourself then i think it was just that one person he seemed to be the only one who had an issue at first when it was almost time our department got divested and it just happened to be perfect timing because we were moving anyway um right around the time we were getting ready to switch the new company he put out an email to the entire dl and he talked about how great i did on the cut-overs and how he was shocked and i i missed and i'm mad and congratulations and so happy for you so proud he kind of changed his tone towards nice so are you so yeah okay go ahead now you guys he had also been doing this like 20 30 years and i was brand new so maybe he just hated me because i was that new puppy like bouncing bouncing bouncing around and the old dog is like like tell you get off his lawn so you're not there now right no when we got a dive acid and we got purchased that department anyway um i left we ended up coming home from my brother's funeral and i was like we need to go home and so i started applying to jobs here and so i was living in both states that's how i missed you the first time when you called i was literally on the highway in vegas right and um i was living in both states for a while and so i was finishing up uh dxc as we were being sold and doing our thing and i was trying to start a job and find house and things here so you said you got the np too so how long in between getting your ccna and the the np and did you get np enterprise or did you do the the old cc i did the raw switch okay all right and i got in a february or march and then i got mp when was the deadline february january december january the february of last year yeah yeah i did it i don't remember when i remember talking to you andy we were trying to finish up t-shirt oh man you got to be aware you got to bring that up so i i got to ask one of my old questions that i used to ask everybody because how do you do it well because i really i i i want the listeners to learn like how you did this because you're a busy person you're working you have kids like hell i didn't get the mp right i i failed t-shirt i took too long and now i'm kind of like bumping around with with the mp again like how how do you study i mean is it discipline i know that you lab like crazy that's secret sauce but like do you do you have a i failed a bunch of those exams the old route switch like did you fail any of them i felt a route the return yeah that was probably was rough i think everybody failed right least favorite i um i don't know how because i maybe you guys seen it maybe not have posted a picture where i had highlighted every exam topic and i literally went through every one till my goal is to um go over the technology until i can explain it to my kid or my grandma or something and so i felt like i could do that and um every exam the frame relay questions and those things i was i was just too thrown off and i was i don't know how so those are probably what's going on so are you are you reading the ocg are you taking notes are you doing flash cards i mean what what do you how do you get it in your head i read i read multiple things multiple books from different people i read cisco white papers um i try to read and take notes and then i watch a video and then i laugh it okay and i just keep going through that circle and i used to have a really strict schedule where i can laugh between these hours read and take notes between these hours but it's not like that anymore so i'm i'm listening to uh like in e or cbt or something or even just some random youtube videos while i get dressed in the morning when i'm driving to work if i'm cleaning the kitchen or doing dishes just constantly getting it in your head whenever you can yep just listening every time and then on the weekends uh friday and saturday i just sit here all day lot because it's the only time i get to lab now friday nights through saturday night yeah you put in a lot of late nights i've seen you on twitter like just pop all night i try to wait till the kids go to bed because i'm always working or studying so six to nine is mostly for them but once they're asleep even when they're not sleeping it's nine o'clock and they're just you know i'm thirsty i'm hungry i can't sleep i still close my office door like it's nine o'clock right and i'm going to study and you don't have a problem retaining things late at night like i i tried for a year to study you know like 9 30 p to midnight every night and then i same yeah and then i'm not sleeping right and then i i don't feel like i'm retaining stuff because it's late and i'm tired i mean you obviously didn't have a problem with it um i think now i don't but i used to feel that way uh when the marine corps was at its worst and we were moving every two years i ended up just going to devry online and i first that first year was hard going to school online was really really hard and um i think that's where i learned it from because i had to do my whole four years 100 online and then we spent so much time in hawaii and i was registered at the cali to fry but i lived in hawaii so i couldn't go to campus oh boo hoo you lived in hawaii i had to do 100 online so i had to learn how to be disciplined i think it goes back to her her saying though about discipline over motivation yeah i guess it's all about discipline oh that's how you succeed you just decide i mean how would you define discipline right is it just saying no to your self and like you know how how is one disciplined i mean is it something people can learn it's a decision you make right like this is what i'm going to do that's what i was going to say you just i i hate saying i don't like this question but i get it a lot sorry no i'm just i don't know how to say without sounding like an ass just saying i don't want to be super like inspirational i'm i'm i'm struggling i'm struggling with discipline it's like okay i'll tell you what i told my sister i'm like you're 35 like either you do want to do it and you're gonna do it or you're not like i can't nobody can make you do it we can only motivate you so much you have to be like i can't watch netflix for four hours today i have to study no matter how i feel yeah yeah and so there's no excuses right it's all bs like yeah i mean even if you don't want to do it that's fine that you don't want to do it but don't half-ass it and try and say you're going to do it or you know you just play with it either do it or don't i'm going to put something on my wall i think you're inspiring me like yeah you're a you're a grown ass man you can do it or don't but stop your whining right and that's why i don't like to say it i don't like to sound like an ass and then dash tania at the bottom good things happen when you get mad so you can yell at me if you want and it might change my life you know what i mean so that's just i mean i'm not i don't think i've been motivated in years i don't care to get a bad three and do fasted cardio and most of the time that cardio is holding on to the trauma when my eyes closed i'm just walking at like a 3-5 because i it has to be done or there's been some times that's discipline yeah i'm laughing and i'm looking up and it's only 1 30 and i'm like there's no way i'm gonna make it till six i just can't but i do i literally don't stop until i'm finished you're a machine that was that was with the stuff that's with this i mean you would have been a great marine so you moved and you got a new job or two new jobs was it easy to get those was was it a lot of interviews or because you had experience it was an easier sell for you the a little bit of both i had finally had a little corporate experience where i could talk to managing a lot of deviceable i used to say a ton of devices until i got to spectrum i realized what a ton of devices really is but um i finally had experience managing large networks and troubleshooting real life things not something i broke my own self in the lab and so when i was able to talk to things talk about things more comfortably or to the business and that was another issue not being able to talk to tech to the business because i had never had to do it and i tried to like regurgitate things i've seen on youtube and heard people say that's what i like about jeremy from cbt he tells stories when he teaches and so i try to remember some of those stories that he would talk about one of his stories helped me learn spanning tree i hate a spinning tree oh but um i i i remember one of his stories and actually helped me at that dxc interview because um between the spanning tree example and mpls i think that's what got me but he brought up he said um there was an article that he read and he was like if you haven't read this article go search it up and i did and uh reading that article it helped me see the the drama that it could bring and um how to troubleshoot it so when i was able to talk about how to troubleshoot it i mean that's not nothing you could really laugh because that just kind of runs by itself so that one's hard to do right so jeremy's the man yeah that one helped so i i gotta ask this question because i worked in corporate networks like my entire career so what's what's the difference between working in the corporate environment and a service provider um man there's a lot of differences beyond just the huge sides the the technologies that i use no lie this has been the best three weeks ever so many things that i've labbed and learned are now starting to click because i see them actually being used at spectrum there are so many things that i just know or memorize or learn from laughing that i never use even at the dxc at the dispatch center it's just not needed and so it's really nice and things are literally starting to click now like the campus design forever i was like what is the point of this why do i need the core like it was it's going nowhere to the internet so i thought but then spectrum has a five building campus and now i see what it's for at the dispatch center there's 16 routers and maybe 75 network devices total and i didn't the the place before that there was two switches and so i didn't see the need and then even when i was at dxc some of the county sites some sites were huge we had 27 switches at one location but um it was like three stacks full of just a ton of switches per stack it wasn't set up in kind of like a three-tier or anything that i was reading in the books nothing that i was seeing i was staying in production i still haven't even seen eigrp and so it was a little weird you're not missing much it was weird like i'm reading and learning how to do all these things and i'm still not getting experience i don't know how to use them yeah so so what i've been a great three weeks what i'm hearing is that going the the service provider out was your way of of branching out and learning new things is is that valid um it's just i'm able to see what the book was talking about now i mean i understood why things were being used and when i lab it i kind of see it but seeing it 15 000 devices a whole other wow so why did you go to service provider why would why did you go from one side of the house to the other since back in 2017-18 that was where i wanted to be um i feel like the service providers manage the entire country which we do i'm on the backbone and so the core like everything has to get to us go through us to get to everywhere else it's pretty cool that was what i wanted i want to be part of a huge network i wanted to have all the technologies configured i wanted to be able to touch everything all the toys way back from the beginning yeah that's exactly what it was all the time and so that's why i was so disappointed with enterprise because i didn't not that i don't care and it's cool and everything but the whole sd wan and just pushing buttons and yeah let the software do everything i was i didn't like that right i know when i first started on aci i was just like oh i get to learn vxlan and isdis and all this stuff and then it's just like nope oh the computer does it all there's a checkbox that's exactly how i felt so what are you studying now i mean i know but um i have been a hundred percent on service provider core service better core awesome how long you've been studying for your ccie a year how's that going i got to we're the point where i'm really happy to be switching the service provider okay so are you are you are you going to bail from like ie enterprise and yeah okay uh two months ago i officially quit studying for enterprise so now your ie service provider you just totally pivot to that different books different videos i wouldn't even know how to study for ie like how is it like anything else you get a book there's videos the same process it's just um some things go into more detail than right what i was looking at um i had watched a video i forget cbt or it pro maybe four or five times and um watching it on i think it was ine and some webinar i found on youtube i forget who the instructor was they were talking about things i had never heard yet and i was like oh that's the ie level okay so is it like um like how segment routing replaces uh mpls traffic engineering or something like that something that i hadn't heard anywhere else yet yeah it just went right over my head so it's just more yes but it's the same process read books take notes watch videos laugh it up when are you taking that exam i mean you yeah do you got another year you think since you're since you're switching or okay another year so you got to do a service provider core and then isn't there like a service provider like specialization yep do you know what you're gonna do for your specialization yet what does this stand for spvi i think it's vpn oh yeah yeah i'm gonna do that nice it's like 100 mpls layer three layer two some segment running and this is cisco yeah that's the track you're going now and so is it is there a single vendor in the network you're working in now is it multi-vendor um yeah and i um commented on a juniper post and they gave me some vouchers so i'll be taking one of those there you go so why are you going the cisco route not juniper because you're a multi-vendor shop um just because i had already been on cisco right for so long but it was nothing against juniper because um i've used those two for the last three-ish or so years it was mostly just finishing out i keep calling it route and switch but just finishing that out was what it was about does it make you nuts jumping between junos and cisco it did again this has been the craziest three weeks it did until this last spectrum because with i'm on uh xr all the time it's the same kind of oh yeah oh yes so where i was getting confused now i'm like oh they both do that that's what that is i never got used to it when i was in an isp jumping back and forth and then i've been in cisco for so long and now i'm jumping back into a multi-vendor shop and i got to go for my juniper sp and i'm like man here we go again yeah the first week i was like i i had just everything in the um text and i was just copy pasting because i can remember yeah you're putting cisco commands in the juniper and vice versa yeah damn yeah it's like work except for i don't have to touch a lot of the uh a lot of the juniper stuff is in the back button while core and backbone work together i mostly just on the core ip side not i am on i do some backbone stuff but like backbone of the us i don't touch a lot of that not yet so so what you're saying is like the isp network's so large like they actually have a team that just deals with the core and a team that just deals with the backbone like see that's a wild concept to me that's just like everyone has just your thing there's a little crossover yeah but um how about automation are you doing anything with automation i don't because i think we have a specific team for that oh okay because i've seen some things like on emails or certain tests and like uh jira but we don't so let me it's coming they're coming for you so so let me ask this then are you guys siloed you have to be in a gigantic organization there's a little crossover but for the most part yes okay because um well i'm i'm happy the guy i just replaced liv he left to doxes um but he was kind of doing a little bit of both i don't think very long because that's what is that that's mostly cable side yeah yeah yeah so there's very little but not not a not a lot of crossover gotcha what would you tell people coming up right like you you've been very successful i mean you basically started your tech career in 2018 right which yeah that's what i went full time i mean that's it's been three years and you've accomplished a ton and you've five years total yeah and you've yelled at people that got so scared they offered you jobs and like your discipline is unmatched i mean well i i think a really key part there is is that she steered the conversation while they're trying to steer towards stuff that she didn't know she's like well wait wait wait let's let's come back over here i think it just comes from um just being super hungry like i needed the change right and so i was doing whatever i had to do to make it work and that's right i think so it's so easy to you know you get into an interview and they start asking you questions that you know you didn't prepare for and you start to get the deer in the headlights like and then you you don't it some people don't bounce back from that right like they get stunned that like i didn't know the answer then the the you know i don't want to say shame starts to set in right but you just start to feel bad for yourself because you don't know the answer and then you don't you don't fight back you fought back and that worked out well yeah and it's a lot of it comes from how i talk to my kids um i tell them you get five seconds to be scared and if they're scared longer than five seconds i know that makes me a bad mom but sometimes i fuss at them like you just get your five seconds that's it and so when i'm at the help desk thing i got a little upset because it wasn't what the posting said and not what i had been studying or expecting and i almost was like i don't even want to do this anymore but i've i had heard from everyone the whole world that i had to start i helped us even get to where i am now so i i had to make it work and i just told him like this is a little bit unfair because this is not even what indeed said and you know this is not networking this is i mean there is some networking with vmware but it was like a data replication and stuff like that i was going to be doing like it was nothing even close to what i had been studying yeah were you raised in a military family because my dad was a marine and a cop and you get five seconds of being scared a lot like stuff my dad used to tell me like um i was not my dad would always say listen you panic you die so when you feel panicked yes that's exactly what we tell you take a deep breath you start working the problem so that's what you're teaching your kids is be scared and then just make a decision that you're not going to be scared anymore and then work the problem right like is that what you're telling them yeah yeah that's they get five seconds that's it my daughter she's a poor thing she pushes me to my limits but um she's after i'll count to five and she'll still be super hesitant and i look at her like it's been five seconds and then she goes and so i'm a little intimidating but i don't want them to be you know scared and to hey you're raising strong kids right take risks or yeah on my fridge i have a thing that says um to not you know have heart tough skin i feel like they need that yeah i think that's going to be the title of this episode you got five seconds that was what went through my mind almost every interview and like literally when i started getting um people are spectrum they're so freaking smart and um everyone they've been doing this forever at dxc even on twitter my five years looks like nothing and um some days i have those days like i have to read an extra two hours because i feel like i was trying to keep up and play catch up with everyone and so that's another reason i tell myself like you get just that little bit of stuff to feel like you're not good enough that you need to keep it right i was you just i was just going to ask you that have you ever felt imposter syndrome or if you have you felt it for the time but you feel it for five seconds and then say yeah literally i try to stop my um yeah my negative thoughts really fast yeah that's i need to adopt that yeah that's secret sauce right i like that yeah yeah for real is there anything we should have asked you is there anything we didn't get to like we're getting i mean we could talk another hour if you want to but did we miss anything i don't know what is you guys i don't know i mean you got it you got an awesome story it's very inspirational oh my gosh yeah i try i feel like not like i feel like it is i feel like i want to help people uh learn how to build willpower and discipline i thought i had a good handle on that being a trainer but sometimes i just don't like to talk because i don't like to come off really asshoish or um ugh mother-in-law hates me she hated me in high school because she felt like i was just stuck up and people say i don't give a good first impression so i'm always scared to kind of talk or tell by my story because i want to help people reach their goals and be healthy but when they're like teach me how to be motivated teach me how to stay disciplined i'm like you just do it i don't know how to do that nice i try to you know keep it see that's a helpful message though and and i forget who it was but for months on here now i'm going to blame the pandemic because why not but for months on here when we started the podcast i was crying and moaning and how are you doing it and it and i don't remember if it was aaron or somebody but somebody just called me out like listen you either make a decision to do something or you don't but stop coming on here and whining and crying about if you're not gonna do it don't do it and stop whining and it kind of turned me around and then we had tim on and tim said he studied in the mornings and i started doing that and then i studied every day at five o'clock in the morning for a couple of months and really started to knock it out again now of course i've fallen off again and now i got to get back on and get the discipline but i mean i i think you can really help people by leaning into them you know like listen stop your wife i don't think discipline i mean this is just my opinion but i don't i don't think discipline is something that you can teach somebody either they they have it or they you know they don't yeah you got to know what you want yeah yeah yeah i used to say um it's just not your thing and when you find your thing you're going to do it no matter what and i will say that but at some point i kind of felt like i was not enabling but like making it okay that some people are just lazy or they just half-ass so and you're teaching discipline by example to me because you're married you have kids that's a good point you have two jobs and i want jobs for kids yeah and i want to and i want to say no excuses exactly like there's no excuses you give yourself five seconds and that's it i think i think i've become soft i think i gotta toughen up here i gotta you know what i mean a little it's a little bit dandy i could have told you that and then it's a lot of just literally doing what you like um when people ask all the time how do i do everything that i do or why i just i literally just enjoy doing it i genuinely have fun laughing i love playing with my car everybody knows i like working out i just really love those things so it's not hard to make myself do it i mean some days it really is especially when i'm in prep but i'm choosing to put myself through the suffer like i'm i'm eating low calories and cardio because i want to not because i just don't have any food like i'm starving because i'm choosing to starve to get extremely lean like you can't complain about that you're choosing to yeah and you don't get overwhelmed at work right like when you go in and there's technologies you don't know and you're surrounded by everybody's smarter than you like that's what i'm trying to get at with you because the things that i experience sometimes with being the dumbest person in the room you just kind of seem to be like nah five seconds i'm over it let me work harder lean into it and learn this stuff like not anymore i used to be but now i just i let spectrum know it i said i apologize i'm going to ask you a ton of questions so i asked a lot of questions right and i i asked why a lot yeah that was another thing with that my first manager um he's the parent where he's like jenny has two apples and she gives this many apples how many does she have jenny has two apples and they're just screaming the question but not really explaining to the child how and why to answer the question when they're struggling with math and i'm a why and how person so he would be like just do this do that do this i'm like why are we doing that because that's how we do it okay but what are we accomplishing how does it work that's how we've always done it yeah that's exactly what he was saying i'm like okay but technically for the technology what is it doing not your company process not your personal what is this technology doing and he didn't explain those things and so i learned i try to of course not everybody teaches there's some gatekeepers but i i just ask i ask them anyway they tell me they don't and if they don't i ninety percent of the time will find it from someone else or google you're very curious the vendors white papers i'll find the answer you're curious you have a lot of curiosity yeah yeah the how the how and why i'll i'll i'll end with this personally because i i've been i've been when when i bring up new circuits right and new connections i gotta i gotta get it up hang across bring up bgp and block all routing and then we're just gonna burn it in we're gonna watch make sure nothing bounces before i put proud traffic on it i've done that a hundred times and the way i've always done it is with the permit wrap map that calls a deny all prefix list and i've been doing that for years i presented it to a senior guy on my new team recently and he's like that's wrong like wait what do you mean so we started getting into how why i'm like well it works he's like no it doesn't you can't and then he started showing me stuff so last night three hours i'm lab in this thing and it works and i'm like how it works and then i'm on twitter like haha look it works and this guy's like no it doesn't the the permit route map doesn't match that deny all so it's just hitting an implicit deny he said put another sequence and permit all and watch what happens and i did because i'm asking how i the way i did it always worked but not for the reasons i thought it did because i wasn't asking how this thing works i just knew it solved my problem as soon as i put that permit sequence 20 permit all all my routes got out now that would be a big old problem in production now i've been doing this for five years today and it's been working and i never had a problem but to your point asking the how and the why and digging in and understanding what's going on under the hood even though i thought i knew so i'm just i'm blown away that five six years into my career i still don't really understand on a deep level how some of this stuff's working i just know it did what i thought it was doing so being curious the how and why it's you know your discipline you've helped me a lot i've really enjoyed uh i really enjoyed our conversation tonight and anybody got funny because i just feel like i'm weird i think i've been saying that since high school one of us taneo what i really admire about you is that from my point of view you don't see challenges you see opportunities i love being challenged sure that got me in so much trouble at amazon but um i i love being i love puzzles i love troubleshooting i love doing something hard it's probably why i like bodybuilding because it's hard but i i like being challenged that could be it too i like hard stuff that's awesome excellent uh where can people find you on the socials on the socials for tech stuff twitter at taneaw is my twitter and then i keep all my fitness stuff um and car stuff on instagram but um instagram my my gym instagram is tanaya lives i like the fitness i don't know why i'm writing this down i have all of it i follow you everywhere but it looks good aj it looks like usually when i'm on just twitter and instagram oh okay all right i was just gonna ask if you're anywhere else uh blog or anything like that not anymore no and i keep saying i'm going to but i don't maybe i'll get back into it and then it was it was fitness tailored i have to start all over with the tech blog hey i got no more excuses and it's because of you and i just want to personally thank you i'm sitting i'm sitting here with a belly and my ccna is about to expire in two months and i just want to whine it i can't amy's only got two kids yeah exactly exactly so i don't have any more excuses and i want to thank you for that and i'm you know i'm either going to turn it around or i'm not but i'm done complaining so thank you for thank you for inspirational story it helped yeah this uh this definitely brings a whole new meaning to the five-second rule and i think i'm going to implement it yeah i like that kids second rule not my kids i'm talking to myself yeah it takes some getting used to it's hard getting out of your comfort zone but um it is get comfortable with being in peace you just literally have to make yourself do it one time i forget what i was doing i was training a client and eminem came on the the radio and he was like i bullied myself because i make myself do what i put my mind to or something like that and i was like oh my god and i was like yes i couldn't have said it i literally no one likes to get up at 3 o'clock to do fasted cardio why am i up at three o'clock fast at cardio just because you want it right you got to do it you made a decision that's what you're doing you just you have to oh i think i put a post on twitter it's about your passion but you kind of have to suffer really want to get to the next level whatever your suffer is it's different for everybody but yeah yeah you got to push pass where you're comfortable you hear that bill it's really hard time to suffer it's really hard to do but you just if you keep um you just take small steps and just focus a little bit at a time make a lot of progress thanks coach yeah exactly all right tell andy where to send his money to i love it well uh thank you so much for your time tonight thank you very much for joining us and you can find links to tanaya in our show notes and we will add all the notes of everything we discussed tonight any any parting words from anyone all right that's a wrap thank you so much have a good night 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 net edge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering.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