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This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast.

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this podcast to explore teams, technologies and talented people. We aim to bring you information to expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers.

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Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering podcast. I'm your host, Aaron Wyler. With me I have Andrew Lapteff. That's his name if he's in trouble, but most time it's just Andy, because that's what normal people do with their names when they have one that you can short. They shorten it. Hi Andy, how are you sir? What up, Aaron? What up, dog? I think we're all pumped up, woo. Woo, yeah baby, it's just us again. The dynamic duo. So hold on. We need like a superhero team name, or like a tag team name. So my name in high school and college was Lap, because I was Andy Lapteff.

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and everybody's names had to be something in the end. Did you have a nickname? Yeah, I did and I don't know that I can say it. Come on! Is it a curse word? Is it fail? No, no, it's really weird actually. All right, I'll give you the backstory. Hold on, hold on. Before you tell me, the reason I bring it up is you introduced me as Andrew Lapteff. So I was Andrew going up.

01:20
Then I became Andy, which I never liked because Andy sounded like a little kid's name to me. And when you introduce yourself in sales as, hi, I'm Andy, it sounds like Mandy, a girl's name. Hi, I'm Andy. Okay. Look, I'm Mandy. That makes sense. So I started to dislike my first name in sales, so that reason. But then in high school and college, I was Lap, and I'm like, Lap's pretty cool.

01:42
That was pretty cool. But then I kind of went astray in college and went off the deep end and was a goofball. So I tried to reinvent myself later on and I was Andrew for a while. Oh, yeah. So you got serious again. I did elongated your name. And then after a year or two of Andrew, I'm like, I'm not Andrew. What is going on? So this guy back to Andy. But there's like people I've met in my life that like knew me as Andrew. Oh, wow. And they're like, yeah, I've. Did you dress different? Probably. I don't know.

02:11
You know how you go through like stages in your life, you're like, I'm gonna try to reinvent myself or like, you know, change things I don't like. So yeah, anyway, that's why. They're like, Andy, you've changed. You're like, Andy, I haven't heard that name around these parts in I don't know how long. What's up, Andrew? I'm like, oh yeah, we met during 2007 to 2001. You're like, okay, play it cool. This guy knows who I am. When I was somebody else. So I need to know your nickname. Okay, so.

02:37
You know how it goes, right? Like you're in PE class and everybody's like picking the teams, right? And so- Is that physical education for those who went to private school? Yeah, physical education. We just called it gym. PE. Gym, yeah, gym, PE, whatever you want to call it. So you know, like in junior year I had like weightlifting and PE and like I tried to like group them together so I didn't have any books and like I didn't have to do anything basically. It was like, it was the total slack off plan. Like-

03:05
I was destined for great things clearly from the kickoff. Although I do remember taking a crap one time at like 9.30 AM. This is great. Because you got to remember, you and I went to high school in the 90s, right? And so I was walking to go take a crap because I had Jim, P.E. and this is kind of weird. This actually has nothing to do with the nickname, by the way, which is even more weird. We're about to get on a weird path because you just

03:34
Showers and I went to an all boys Catholic school. I mean things are really weird. Oh, yeah so I this is actually this this story just gets even more beyond strange, you know what I mean because the reason why I even had to go to the bathroom was because I Was it was like I just got into school, right? It was like the first hour like that's what you call it all right first hour, so then first hour and

04:03
I just had to go, hit me like a ton of bricks, right? Like it's emergency time. And you know, there's like very few rules in high school, but one of the rules is just don't crap there. Do you know what I mean? Because you're only there for like five hours. Well, for the record, this is our second, this is you and I second time doing a pair off with you and I. And we talked about poop. And we talked about poop early on in both of them. So that's why you're my kind of dude, man. We're already into the poop stories. Well, in our high school, we didn't have doors on our.

04:31
So all boys Catholic school no doors. Yeah, I'm telling you we could get as weird as we want here But this is your story guys. That's already weird. Yeah, so no, I mean the only part about me taking a crap Well, I was lactose intolerant. I am lactose intolerant. I didn't know it at the time. My mom did though, but she had no Trepidation whatsoever like buying me cereal for breakfast, which is like, what are you doing to me lady?

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Like, you know, I go to school every day and I'm like about to explode. And so anyway, I'm on, you know. It was a different time, right? Like. It was, it was. I feel like kids, people are a lot more concerned about all things kids now, like. Yeah, gluten. Just, you know, you just ate what your parents bought in the 90s and if it hurt your stomach, tough. It wasn't no soy, it wasn't no like, there was some, there was some pills like you could take, but God dang, those things hurt. Like.

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They just cause the stomach ache. Cause look, if there's a reason why it's making you do that, right, and if you suppress, the chemical reaction still happens. You know what I mean? Like, I started this out by saying, like I basically tried to do as little as possible in high school, but you know, in science, I did learn that like, hey, something's, there's, you know, a state change happened, right? Like gas to a liquid type situation. Or, is it gonna?

05:51
Sensation what? So you go to the bathroom and what happens? I go to the bathroom and it was like in this deep crevice of the school which is great because it's the safe haven right? Like you know what I'm talking about every school had a safe haven and I'm walking to the safe haven and there's a freaking $20 bill on the ground Dude it was 1997 like I I can't emphasize enough how much Yeah I can't emphasize enough how much that $20 bill got me cause like gas was like less than a dollar

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What town are we in? Are we in Chicago, Florida? We're in Illinois, Southern Illinois. Cause 20 bucks in Illinois in the 90s is different than 20 bucks in San Diego in the 90s, right? Whoa, yeah, for sure. I'm just getting us around to this. That was minimum wage here. Sorry, it was a lot of money and where you were was even more money. Anyway, that's actually an unrelated part of the story. But I just thought about that cause I thought that was so cool to this day. I thought that 20 bucks was, hey, sometimes you just need to be more like me.

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I think finding $20 is freaking rad, because it is, right? Enjoy that $20. I think I just figured out your nickname. There was no toilet paper. You wiped with the $20, and your boys called you Money White for the rest of high school. Wow, dude. That's actually genius. No, I didn't tell anybody that I went to the bathroom. Therefore, I couldn't tell them how I found the $20. So up until, I don't know, now, it's been a complete mystery. But no, so you're doing the thing where you pick teams, and you're like, I got this dude, or I got this lady, or I got this cat.

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It got to me and it was these kids that were like, I think they were a year old of me, because they would do junior, senior, PE, right? So it was always freshmen by themselves, sophomore by themselves, then junior, senior, PE. So I was a junior, these guys were seniors, and the guy just looks at me and he points, and it was this group of friends, like they were just, they kind of knew who I was, like they knew I was like a bit goofy, but he pointed right at me, and the teacher's standing right there and he goes, I got hot buttery nipples over here.

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And so yeah, that was- For some reason it fits. I can see that. Like, I don't know why. I don't even know what it means. No, me neither. It fits for some reason. It's like a drink, right? Like you get a hot buttery nipple. Like I think it's a shot somewhere. Like, you know what I mean? Like a mixed drink. Yeah, but do you think like 17 year old PE high school kid knew that that was like, all right, you just- Oh no. So hold on, hold on. So did you carry yourself with the same kind of confidence and air that you carry yourself today? Like-

08:15
Was he going for that? Like this dude just walks and talks like he's the man? No, not at all. I mean, well, also thanks for thinking that I have this like air of confidence. It's more just like blissful ignorance, right? Which is what it was at the time. It's completely oblivious that people are probably laughing at me and not with me. You know what I mean? I'm just like, I don't care. I guess I just didn't care, but it was- It's a wonderful thing. It went over. It is a wonderful thing. To not care. Right.

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It went over very well, right? So basically it was a hit, immediate hit, right? Like everybody had the reaction that you just did. That's a long nickname. Hot Buttery Nipples. Well, they started calling me HBN. That's what I was gonna ask. Or HB, they would call me, or they'd call me buttery. Like the dudes would see me in the hallway, they'd be like, what up, buttery? And so it'd be funny because like, they'd be like, buttery nips, or like hot and buttery. Like they called me hot and buttery, like all the time. And I thought it was,

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This is the first time I've actually thought about this in like a really long time. It's actually making me laugh. It really is. So the best is that there's zero context, right? Even when you tell the story, there's no context, like, or a legitimate context. But wait, what did the pooping have to do with hot buttery nipples? No, the pooping thing just made me think of when I was in gym class and I like, you know what I mean? Cause I was in gym class when this all happened. I was waiting for the callback of like, and that's. No, no.

09:38
No, HBN. No, can you guys imagine if social media existed back then? Like my handle, I would have screwed myself for life because I would have made myself hot buttery nipples on everything and I would have never gotten a job. Thank God that social media didn't exist when we were coming up. That YouTube didn't exist. The last thing I needed were all these embarrassing life events because a young kid who doesn't give a crap. I mean, no.

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You know, you're overconfident, you're cocky, you're goofy, you don't care. Like, I do not need those kind of things from that time of my life documented in perpetuity. Like, nah. Exactly, yeah. It doesn't need to be in the Library of Congress, right? I'm glad that you and the listeners don't know a hell of a whole lot about me certain points in my life. Like, same. This is who I am, I'm a network guy, here we go, yay. You don't need to know. Here we go, yay. All the... Well, I want it, because like, you know, this...

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Us being in this industry, I think, is, you know, it's not strange, but it's more kind of unique in the fact that it didn't really exist to the extent that it did back then. So the fact that we're both even here is just kind of weird to begin with. You know what I mean? Right. But I wanted to ask, because we've been polling the Discord server and just kind of pinging folks around, just saying like, hey, what would you guys like to listen to? I don't think...

11:03
Jokes was one of the things, but you know what? It should be. When you get just, it should be. And when you get just us two, guess what? That's what you're gonna get. So when Dan and AJ are feeling under the weather, you're gonna get poopy lap and poopy hot buttery whatever. The hot buttery nipples, baby. Oh man. That's just how it goes. I'm never gonna not get away from that now. I love it. I do too, it's funny. Wait, does your wife know about this nickname?

11:29
You know what? I don't think so. I was just thinking that like when you said, I don't think so. So does she listen to the show? Because my wife doesn't. Periodically, yeah. And my dad actually did once too. And he was like, I have no fricking idea what you guys are talking about. I have a lot of people in my life that listen to every episode, people that aren't technical, old, young, whatever. But I cannot get my wife to listen. And she, I think she only listens if she knows that like something got mentioned about her. You know what I mean? She's like that. She's like, what were you guys talking about?

11:59
Well, we're talking about her now. Maybe we'll get her to- Talking about her now. Yeah, we need another download. We just hit, should we announce our big number we just hit this month? Yeah, go for it. This is usually AJ's territory of wins and stats and all that. He tracks all that, this is his baby. I believe the month of March, 2021, when do we start? July? What's that? August, September, turn around, and then turn around, and then turn around, and then turn around. June? June. March, June? We've done this what, eight, nine months, something like that? Yeah, something like that. So March, this past month,

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is the first month that we hit 10,000 plus downloads in a month, which is amazing to me. So it's like an average of like whatever, 2,500 downloads an episode for the four episodes. It's crazy. Yeah, so just shout out to people listening. And I mean, obviously we want more people to listen because we love the show and we love the feedback, but we haven't done anything out of the ordinary. No.

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for that to happen. So it just, personally, it feels really cool that this is some organic thing happening. We're not paying Facebook ads, we're not doing all this master plan, linking in with other podcasts. So anyway, that felt really good when AJ told us that yesterday. Like, wow, 10,000. And I appreciate people taking an hour out of their week. Because that's precious time. I know people have families and stuff. I think we have a really good podcast for like, because like when I'm,

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If I'm studying or something, I like to have the lo-fi, chill hop thing going on in the background. Let's say you were at work or something. I think it's a cool thing to have on in the background because it's topical. And we've obviously had a lot of cool people on here too. So shout out to all of them. The list is insane in the amount of people that we've had. I feel like. And they've been able to share their stories too, along with the website and all the faces of the journey stuff that Tim does.

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all the contributions from like Gerard and folks like that. Like it's just, it's just like, it's turned into something. Like, and I think it's turned into something because of it's the sum of its parts. You know, I think people see a lot of themselves in us, which I hope they do because we are them, right? And I think the one thing that, that maybe folks don't see that is good to bring up is, you know, we do this because we care. And I know that sounds wholesome and you know, very like,

14:20
Mr. Rogers-y, but I just realized people might not even know Mr. Rogers is from- We'll put it in the show notes. We'll link it to Mr. Rogers. Hi, neighbor. I don't think people realize that we also take a week out of or an hour out of our week, often more, to do this. I'm not including you or myself doing any like

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audio editing, video editing, and then all the social keeping up with that AJ does. And you know, it's just like, there's a ton of work that goes into this. And you know, I just want people to understand that we're doing it not for anything. We're doing it because like, we hope that folks can relate and, you know, again, picture themselves in our positions.

15:13
You know, I encourage anyone else, just like I did with the blog thing very early on, like, start a podcast, y'all. I mean, I'll listen. You know what's cool, too, is I love doing this show. Yeah, same. And there's a lot of other things I do in my life on a daily basis I don't necessarily love. I'm just doing things. You know, so yeah, like, it is a lot of work and it takes a lot of time sometimes, but I love this. Like, I had a hell of a day today. I've been super busy. The kids are home, blah, blah, blah. I got a sinus infection, just getting antibiotics. I mean, I'm not at my best, but...

15:42
I really look forward to like, yeah, we're gonna get on, we're gonna kick it and you know, so yeah, it's my wife said the other day, like do you think more people are listening to podcasts this past year because like everybody's stuck at home and maybe, you know, I'm not saying that's behind like our growth, but I know I've been listening to more. I'm just, you know, you're around the house. I usually listen like walking the dog, doing the dishes. Yeah, kind of passive. Yeah, like, yeah.

16:08
That's kind of what I was saying, right? Something that's in the background, just ambient noise. There are subjects, I caught myself kind of halfway through that too because there were some episodes that we had where, like okay, so Brittany for instance, she's a recruiter, that was kind of one where it was like, okay, hold up, I might need to take notes during this, you know what I mean? Or some folks like Keith, where they're kind of giving like their...

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their tidbits of how they would do it, or you know what I mean, just like gems or morsels, I guess, that you could find in those different. Here's another thing to mention to people listening, like you said, start a podcast, write a blog. This was a happy accident. Just we met online, we started a study group, AJ said you wanna try this thing. There really isn't this master plan of.

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You know, I don't know call it what you will like luck synergy fate whatever. Yeah, there's no endgame, right? There's no like hey, we're trying to quit our jobs and just do this full-time. There's no like hey, we want us we want us Sponsor to pay for everything. There's none of that. It's just like let's try to help Yeah, so you never know I guess is what I'm trying to say like, you know I had no idea when I said yes to this that we'd be having this much fun and

17:25
I'd have, I mean, this is, I don't want to call it a hobby, but like, I really enjoy doing this and I really enjoy the feedback. So I didn't mean to step on you, you were getting into the topic and I was just thinking of AJ's announcement section. Well, no, it was actually a good segue because like you were talking about, and there were some wins too. Obviously AJ is way more in tune with that. I know some folks, oh, I think somebody got a job, Casey Vivaldi, I think is his name in the Discord channel. Yeah.

17:51
He just became a trainer at an ISP, right? He did, which is a big step up for him. It's awesome. And then Tanaya, she got a job at ISP as well. Like shout outs. I know she's been looking for a while. So, and you know, and they both deserve it. Like we know them from, you know, from talking on the side and stuff, but they work hard, they know their stuff. And it's so nice to see people, you know, that deserve, you know, a step up promotion, whenever you're gonna call it a new job. And it's funny, cause it just,

18:20
It's almost like you see the folks that are asking the questions, right? And y'all, if you haven't been in our Discord server, please come in, it's such a welcome opening. I see when folks enter the chat and the warm welcome they get just by saying hi and introducing themselves, that's not typical. Because I've been to other places and I'm like, I am never saying a freaking word. These dudes are gonna jump them. I was just gonna say that. Even the Discord server, which again, it's just this free resource, a community of people.

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I've heard a bunch of people like, yeah, I kind of was over at this other networking discord server for a while and it kind of got a little weird and I got out of there, but yeah, you know, whatever, like I'm not talking trash and anybody, but like just all the feedback we get is like, this is a great place. It's safe. People are helpful. There's no nonsense. Like, and again, that's a happy accident. We don't really like we have some rules we try to, you know, if you're in there asking for money, yeah, but people have been pretty cool, which is just another kind of nice little happy accident. Like, I don't know how this has all happened and come together, but you know.

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AJ started it, here we are, and it's been pretty sweet. Yeah, no, I agree. And again, yeah, like you said, it's just a byproduct of just people just being cool, honestly. We have our prison guard slash wizard slash vizier slash network engineer Carl kind of hovering in every channel, helping people. I don't know where that guy finds the time to do it. I just don't. But he's got two cents.

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for every single thing you could bring up. It's amazing. And it's not crap, right? No. I have crap for everything. I'll comment on everything and half the time it's just crap. Carl, he's a wealth of knowledge. Taylor comes to mind too in the lab channel. I was in there the other day whining about something and they just quickly jumped right in, started helping me, giving me all kinds of good ideas. I was just trying to get a couple CSRs and Eve to pull a DHCP address

20:14
You know, they just jumped right in and this is like, Aaron, like an hour and a half, I can't get an IP on an interface. You just popped into the Discord channel, right? Yeah, I'm like, what am I doing wrong here? And within like two minutes that you just reminded me, Carl and Taylor jumped right on. Like, yo dude, check this, check this, what are you doing, blah, blah, blah. Taylor's the server guy, so he's telling me to check the V-switch security. Carl's like, you know, doing the troubleshooting. Yeah, just take it down the stack, check your interface, whatever.

20:42
As it turned out, I had my Edge CSR that was connected to the cloud that is connected to my LAN to pull the DHCP. I configured the wrong interface on the CSR. So Gigi2 was connected to the NAT cloud and I can't quite hear Gigi1. But this was like an hour and 20 minutes of like, why is it that I'm doing DHCP debugs? It was like, just stupid. I didn't see it in the draw. It said Gigi2 in the drawing,

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And that happens a lot, like with troubleshooting, I feel like everybody says, keep it simple, have a structured approach. It's so hard though. I always go like, well, because it can't be the interface. I'm not an idiot. Right, no, I know what you mean. I mean, that's what my mind tells me. And then I'm jumping in all this deeper stuff. Like what's going on? I'm debugging DHCP and do I need a IP helper address? All this nonsense, which is the same crap I did in the T-shirt exam three times and failed. Like if I just had a structured easy.

21:38
So that's something I'm working on, is just the structured troubleshooting approach that when I get a call, this is what I check. Well hold on then, because that brings up a good question, because going back into your career, you worked at a knock, and you do less break fix, but now, but before, that's all you did, right? You guys had tickets, they came in, and somebody had asked us this in the Discord server when you were talking about topics, so I think it's actually a good segue. So.

22:07
So you're saying like hey like cuz just now right now you're saying I need to And I just want to make this very clear. So I'm gonna I'm gonna reset the scene here. So Andy or Andrew depends on when you met him call me lap Lap the lap meister. So at one point you worked in a knock your whole job was to troubleshoot Yeah, your whole job was to figure out problems and it fixed them and back back up a step from that cable guy. Okay

22:34
Cable guy, all troubleshooting. All troubleshooting. I was so good at troubleshooting. Like a couple of years in, the beginning I stunk at everything, but you know, and the art of network engineering, right? Like the art of troubleshooting, when you look at the ticket on the way there and you almost get this- You start thinking. Yeah, and you can almost get this intuitive sense, like, all right, I see the problem. There's water in the drop. I see it, yeah, water in the drop, squirrel chew, there's a suck out somewhere, or like the phone keeps going out, all right, there's a short, I gotta pull everything off and start checking lines.

23:04
Yeah. So there's that art that I think just comes with experience and seeing it enough. I would agree. And so I know we're about to jump in the knock in the rest of my career, but like in my job- No, that's part of it. In my job now, I don't feel like I have enough experience on these big, to me, overwhelming systems and networks and global blah, blah, blah. Like there's so many different pieces of it. You know, cable, you knew what it was, right? It was always coax, it was low end high, and it was water, it was squirrel chew pull out like-

23:33
You knew the six or seven things to check for at every job. You know, replace the drop. It's probably gonna fix 80% of your problems. Nobody wants- It does actually, the statistics say it's 85%. Okay, yeah. When I, so I had a guy train me coming up and he replaced every drop at every house and he had phenomenal numbers. As soon as I started doing that. I mean, that's how I had like a 3.7% repeat rate because I replaced every drop at every house when I didn't see the new hang hook things that they had when it was the old-

23:58
The drop hanger? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just did the wagon wheel? Right, exactly. And the drop hangers were out for five years when I started, so I knew that drop was at least five years old, probably longer. And you go up there, it's dry-rotted, the braid's exposed. I mean, this is getting cable nerd, but. Yeah, but basic stuff though, right? Like, it's like, hey, you start to think, and I'm guessing that when you got to the knock, you had a reintroduction, just like you did day one, where you were like, oh crap, I'm in over my head here. But.

24:26
you would see similar tickets start to come across, right? So like, I think that a lot of people when they first start somewhere, like it's extremely overwhelming because you don't know. And there's no amount of schooling or certifications that you can do to prepare you for any specific job. Unless like you were, honestly, actually I don't know, unless you're like a car mechanic or, cause even a doctor, they make you do like a residency and stuff because that's basically them giving you a job with.

24:54
out the full responsibility and being a doctor is just troubleshooting too, right? It's the same thing. And not only do you not know when you start, but you're surrounded by people who do know. Good old fashioned imposter syndrome. It'd be emotionally more palatable if you were surrounded by people who didn't know too and you're all like, Dirk, I don't know, let's figure this out. But yeah, you walk in, I mean, even as a cable guy, like all these people knew what was going on and I'm like, oh my God, dude, like.

25:23
I spent three months in school and I still don't know what I'm doing. Like, you know. Yeah, I'm spending four hours on this job trying to figure out what's going on when all I needed to do was replace the drop and I could have been done in 15 minutes. Yeah, yeah. No, we've all been there, but smarter not harder, right, is what they say. But you can't get the smarter part until you've, honestly, most of the time it's when you screw it up. Right. Like then you're like, well, never doing that again, right? Yeah, and you know what day-to-day a cable look like and we've talked about that. And Nock, day-to-day wasn't.

25:52
all that different from the field. It was just, that was- So how hard is it? Just give me a, and I never worked in a knock. On a scale of one to 10. So you start out as knock engineer one, right? So how many tiers were there? Was it three, four? Was there like a senior guy? Yeah. Is that loose kind of, I guess? There were a few tiers, not a ton of tiers. It was very, so like, you almost needed a CCIE to get tier two. Like I was tier one. Like they didn't want to pay anybody.

26:20
is what it was. So you know, you needed, they had a whole thing, like you needed a CCMP, you needed five years experience, you needed like two Juniper professional certs. They had a whole thing. Now, if you have all those things and they're gonna- You could be beyond what they were gonna give you. Yeah, like they're gonna pay you less than 60 grand for all that and like, yo bro, like, you can make six figures with that out in the real world. Like, what are we doing here? You can double that, right? Yeah, but there was people there sitting bus under butts trying to climb this ladder that just seemed way too steep for-

26:49
you know, for what you were getting. But to answer your question, how difficult was it? I mean, it was difficult getting in the NOC. It was difficult working in there because I didn't know what was going on. And each shift had their own, like, each shift was a whole different job. So it was- Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm, yeah, a whole set, a different set of people, different supervisor, manager, whatever. You're doing different things at night than you are doing today. Nobody's touching anything during the day. Yeah, but night, you're just dropping.

27:14
configs and engineers wrote all night. You don't know how they work, what they're doing, and when you break stuff, you're trying to figure it out. All right, so okay, so then as a knock one, like entry level knock dude, you were responsible for what? So give us like a day, like give us like an average day. So like a ticket comes in. The average day. What does a ticket look like? What the hell's a ticket? Explain that. So you walk in and there's a handoff, which is a Microsoft Word document with 30 or 40.

27:43
active tickets in the queue being worked. So before anything new breaks, you know, the lead. You gotta get those first. Yeah, the lead would assign you, you know, 10 tickets. So you gotta follow up on all these. Or you walk in and there's a big old outage happening with 50 people on a bridge. Hey, guess what? You get to jump on this. This is what you're doing right now. So, you know, you'd walk in, you'd either be jumping on a bridge for somebody taking over in the handoff, or, you know, you get those 10 or 15 tickets, you gotta start looking at those. But we're responsible for the edge. Monsoor that we had on the show.

28:11
He was the core guy, he was inside, he was making all that MPLS magic happen. We were at the edge, so we were at an edge router that went out to a cell tower basically. We did cell backhaul. The backhaul. Right. So you got a couple miles of fiber out to a switch. So if anybody doesn't know what that is, I'll just kind of explain that real quick. So the cell phone towers that you're using, they all obviously somehow connect back to the internet. Shocker.

28:37
Most of the time it's one of your favorite ISPs, whoever's local most of the time. So even Verizon, AT&T Tower, whatever, T-Mobile doesn't matter, could be going back to Spectrum, right? They would terminate it as Colos, or MSCs rather, like back at- Right, yeah, so a hotel or whatever, right? So, okay, so you're responsible for that last mile, right? The last mile guy, so- They smile at both sides, by the way. So the last mile that goes from the Comcast network-

29:04
out to their switching center where all their switches are that connect all those calls, like Old Mile Bell, so like a CO. And then also the other end of the last mile, which is from the other side of Comcast Network out to the cell tower. The Telcos built all the network out years ago with copper, but then when they wanted to do all the cell tower stuff, they're like, well, geez, do we want to pull fiber all over the world? Like, well, we got Telco that has this stuff pulled and run along every highway and railroad anyway.

29:32
So can we just pay them for last mile? And that's what they did. So we'd run a fiber out, they put a switch out at the tower. So we're watching Spectrum. If the cell tower, if it goes down, we get an alarm, we gotta start working that. Okay, so that's a ticket. So an alarm goes off somewhere. Who generates the ticket? Where does it come from? Us, the people sitting at the NOC. So you're watching Spectrum, and when an alarm comes in, it usually had the name of the cell tower on it. Okay. What I would usually do first is go to the upstream router.

30:01
and just take a look and see what's happening. Cause sometimes it was one way traffic and you just have to like bounce auto neg or sometimes you're like, I was gonna say, yeah, yeah. If you're receiving light, but it's down, that's a different thing. Like how am I getting light? Sometimes it was a one way fiber cut where the send was busted, but the return was, you know, like different little tricks. But you get a spectrum alarm, you start a ticket, you call them and say, hey, I got something going on and you dispatch a tech if you need to.

30:28
You have read, I'm guessing, just like read-only access to these edge routers, right? Nah, we had Godright's phone. Full? Yeah, so we managed them, it was a fully managed solution. So there was an ethernet port we'd hand off to them and then they'd plug into their equipment at the cell tower. Got it, got it, got it. So then a typical, because you just had an alarm goes off like on those last miles or whatever, is that a typical, like the majority of the tickets were just like, hey, this is the alarm. What would you say is like?

30:56
the most common, I know it sucks to say this, but like- Stuff going down, right? Like at a knock, you're break fix and you're just looking, there's two levels. There's stuff that's hard down and that's easy-ish. Like, oh, okay. Now it's not easy. A cut, a storm, whatever. It's not easy when somebody hits a 200 pair count with a backhoe and now you have 500 cell- Finding the problem is easy, fixing it. Not so much. You got 500 cell towers down, like an entire city's down and-

31:22
They thought they were diverse paths and they weren't dude is that nerve-wracking for you though knowing that you're the one responsible unnecessarily nerve-wracking because what do you mean unnecessarily though because it takes 14 to 16 hours from the time that happens until the time they're splicing fibers So it takes it takes or maybe to the resolution. It's been a while Mike, but it takes TTR. Yeah, you got they got to send somebody out. They see what happened. They see what's broken. They got to stop traffic. I mean

31:52
Get a plan together. It's just, yeah, they got to get a fiber truck out there. They might have to pull new fiber. It takes a very long time for a big old fiber cut with a lot of pairs. At least it did then. Sure. So the unfairly stressful, or however I put it, was because management was up your gig. If you were working that ticket and all that stuff was down, they want you to call the fiber company and escalate every 15 minutes. Yeah, that's annoying. Every 15 minutes for 14 hours.

32:20
Like, dude, the guy's working his ass off. Like, don't you feel weird? Like calling him and being like, hey bro, you done yet? Like the worst part of the job. Yeah. And that maybe that's just a culture thing, but you know, we gotta get it up. We gotta get it up. I understand that. I know what you're paying me for. I'm sitting in here. The towers are still down. I can't repair the fiber. And we're paying this company all this money. I didn't hire the company we dispatched out. Like. Right.

32:46
If you guys want to get somebody faster, go ahead. So, you know, it's just kind of how it goes. Crap rolls downhill, you're at the bottom of the barrel. And so that was the worst part. The other kind of- So that's stressful though. It was stressful, especially for the amount of money. At the time, you know, it was a small raise from the field, but I had a long game in mind. I wasn't going to be there forever. I needed a job with network engineer in the title that leveraged my CCNA. Nice. Right, so I put up with that for a couple of years. And it was, I don't mean to beat it up. I mean, it's, you know, me and.

33:15
Comcast. It was a great experience. I wouldn't be where I'm at without it. I'm super duper grateful for the opportunity they gave me. The other thing is just, you know, if it's slow and stuff isn't down, we had all these SLA tools to check. You know, is it frame losses or packet losses or jitter? So we have this board. Somebody mentioned a Discord like tools. So at Comcast, we had this tool called Bricks, B-R-I-X. And at every site, I don't know if it was every site, wherever it is, they would install these boxes and they were somehow doing...

33:41
I don't know if they were hellos or it was constantly checking the health of the link. And then report back to this tool. If you had a blue dot, you were good. If they were other colors, you had to check. Might be a dirty fiber, might be a kink fiber. It doesn't sound like, I'll be honest, you kind of make it sound like it's really not that difficult. And I'm sure it's super stressful, right? So how many of these tickets are you doing a day then?

34:05
Is there a lot of sitting around? It depends on the shift. During the day, the phone rings nonstop all day. Okay, and it rings though, but you're saying, cause you said you guys were looking at tools, right? And obviously if calls aren't down alarms. People are calling because people aren't happy. I know, but that's what I'm getting at. So you have an alarm system, and then you also have an SLA tool that's checking impairments, not hard downs. The alarms from hard downs, right? And so you're getting the alarms and like,

34:33
Okay, so there's no alarms coming in, and then none of your SLA tools are triggering anything wild. Who is calling you? They're Nox. So Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon. Okay. The interaction was between us and them. So Verizon Wireless is so good. Every single cell tower has backup power. Every single one of them. So.

34:59
we had the Sienna switches we were using would tell, it would send you, there's a battery in it, and it would send you this trap saying it lost power. Well, that's pretty sweet. It tells you what happened before it went down. Yay. Dispatch tech, check power, whatever. That never happened on Verizon Towers because they had battery backups at every single one. But like Verizon Wireless is the only carrier that would call in to us. A lot of times they would call us and report a problem before we knew about it, which was pretty interesting. They'd be like, yo, I'm having a problem. Then I'd look up and as I'd look up at the board,

35:28
the alarm would pop up. I'm like, how are you guys? So they're just, their people were professional, they were smart, they were on the ball, like out of all the telcos that I worked with. So that's usually who we interacted with was their knockouts. Got it, that makes sense. So I guess like maybe too I'm wondering like, okay so like when you get there and you're a new guy, like how is it they sort of warm you up to the situation? Do they, cause I'm thinking as if like I'm, well I am, I sit in our Discord server, right?

35:57
And I'm like, hey, I see a lot of these knock jobs out there, right? It's a great job. Okay, good. I'm glad you said that because I think a tendency, this is just for humans in general, is to just always tell people how awful things are, you know what I mean? But like, come on guys, it's a job. You know what I mean? Like, you're not sitting on the beach drinking a Mai Tai, so just get that out of your head already. When I had that, it's all about perspective too. When I was in the field and beating up my body.

36:26
Even the cable guy, before I was a cable guy, I was cleaning grease traps. Right, right. I had a bachelor's degree and I'm cleaning grease traps for $11 an hour. You know, yay for communications bachelor's like you. So when I got the cable guy job, it was awesome. I'm like, yeah, Comcast is a great company, you're gonna learn a ton and I did. Right, right, right. We've talked about this, you max out. So when my body was getting beat up and CCNA and da da da da da, then I got the knock job and I'm like, yeah.

36:54
So right, I could sit here and say, oh, the knock, whatever, but each time I got that job, it was, it was bad ass. It was bad ass, dude. When I got a con. Champagne and all that. Dude, yeah, when I got it, I got network engineer in my title at the knock. I'm like, yo bro, like I'm an engineer now. I can't multiply. But like, so, so yeah, great, great job, especially like you reminded me of the discord folks who were like looking for their first gig. We talked about like cable guy.

37:21
Great job to get an intro into tech. Help desk, bunch of people, great job. If you can get into a NOC, great job. Because you get to touch so much technology and so many different things. I guess like, you know, and that's all, that's perfect too. And I guess like maybe my point is that like the fact that you can pick all those different technologies, like in the NOC, there's a lot of tools, there's a lot of stuff, right? So I think in that regard, and I'm projecting a little bit because, you know, this is how I would feel.

37:49
Because I am in that situation. I've never worked in a knock. And I've been in 100 knocks. I've been in carry hotels and all that stuff. I've been at COs, you name it. But I've never had that experience. So I guess from the outside looking in, I'm trying to get more detail. And I'm trying not to be scared by the amount of responsibility, right? I do want responsibility. That's the scariest part. It is. There's not a huge difference between a cable guy and a knock guy. You're both break fix.

38:20
Yeah, a lot of stuff is riding on your shoulder. Right, yeah, yeah. Stuff is broken, you better go fix it. And if you don't, people are gonna be pissed and now we're gonna be after you because why didn't you fix the guy's cable or why didn't you fix the guy's cell tower? So yeah, and yeah, the knock was more responsibility than the cable guy, it was one house. When I'm working on a cell tower that feeds 450 people in a community, so it gets, and the money's bigger and the stress is definitely higher.

38:44
Yeah, and I think maybe like where I was kind of going with it is like, okay from the outside looking in like let's say I'm day one. I'm applying for knock jobs knocks where I want to go or That's where all the jobs are and like you did it's like I think it's good stepping stone because I think you're right there and so I guess maybe I'm trying to get more details on like what the the Onboarding experience is like because there is a lot of stuff you have to know and you can't learn any of that from a cc and a book

39:13
And because to be honest, CCNA doesn't teach you anything about wide area networks anyway. Right? Yeah. They might breathe about it for like half a second, but that's not the idea. I mean, you need to know all that other stuff before you get in the way. And it's kind of an important deal. But I guess maybe no matter where you came from, it could be overwhelming. And it's a lot of tools. You just named off a few. And people were asking us, like, hey, what are some of the tools and stuff? So I guess maybe give us an idea then. Like day one, they.

39:42
it's your first day that you gotta sit there, they don't just give you a bunch of tickets, right? There's like a process, and I'm not saying it's the same everywhere, right? There's no way it is, but I guess maybe a general idea, cause there's varying levels of people that get these jobs, right? And this is any job, I'm not picking on the knock in particular, what I mean is like, and I'll toot your horn a little bit here, not everybody's as smart as Andy.

40:06
Okay, right? Wait a minute. But also everybody's not as stupid as you Nine months in and that might be the first compliment I receive from from warm buttery nipples It's hot buttery nipples hot buttery hot. Sorry That's how you melt butter So go ahead go back into my home. I missed it. Can you say that again? My my microphone? Not everybody's as smart. All right, let's do a little asmr here. Um not everybody is as smart as

40:35
Andy Laptev. Lap, Lap, Lap. And I'll be the first guy to, you know, self-deprecate and say that I'm not bad. I know. But, but. I know, but that's, it's usually not true either. So basically what I'm getting at is, okay, so let's just say you're right in the middle of the road, Andy. That's probably. You know, not more than anybody, but. Yeah. Okay. So, so. Slightly higher than average is what I could confidently say. Like. The 52nd percentile. Just a little.

41:02
You know, I know my IQ. It's above average. It's not awesome, but yeah. I'm good. I'm not a caged animal. OK, so then they give you an onboarding experience. What's the onboarding experience like? Is it they mentor you with somebody? Do you guys troubleshoot to get together? Do they give you a list of tools, tell you to go Google stuff? Like, what's that look like?

41:30
So before I give you that answer, I just wanna tell you that I'm thinking of Cable Guy. So I'm looking at my tech career. Cable Guy, NOC, building networks for clients and then building and managing data center networks. And I think that what's, so the onboarding is similar for each of them, which we'll talk about in a second, but I think the biggest thing I could tell somebody is that the mental game,

41:57
is the most important and the hardest part of it because you do feel like in it. What do you mean by that? Handling stress, handling imposter syndrome. Okay. Handling anxiety, feelings of inadequacy. So every time you reach, right? If you just stay, again, we talked about it. I know guys who were cable guys for 30 years, they were happy, they're not reaching. They're not. Right. They're not stretching themselves, right? They're not building muscle.

42:24
Yes, they're just going, exactly. They're like you said before, they're lifting that five pound weight and they're like, look at me, I did 100 reps. So every time you reach, and maybe it's a personality thing, but I've always wanted more for myself or my family, blah, blah, blah. Where is my ceiling? How smart am I? Let me keep pushing until I go like, oh, wow, that's okay, I can't do that. That's a good mentality to have. Well, so what I mean by the mental game is when I started as a cable guy, they set me on my first job.

42:54
and it was a phone problem and I didn't know how to fix it. And I called my boss and she was like, dude, you just spent three months in class, fix it or you don't belong here, and hung up on me. Whoa. Yeah, like my first or second week on the job. So. Holy crap. Right, now I needed the job, I wanted the job, they just invested three months in me, I'm in the field. All they taught me was how to do bumblebees and Christmas trees into a little four pin Jackie thing, like how to install dial tone to a house,

43:23
how to find a short, right? And that's what was happening and I didn't know how. So the mental game of when she hung up on me, I thought, wow, I really am out of my league. Maybe I should be cleaning grease traps. Maybe I can't handle this job. Like, there's just that self doubt. So the mental game was, you know what? No, all that's nonsense. I'm gonna do what I gotta do to succeed at this. So I called it. Well, do you think that there's a turning point like that in that instant? Because look,

43:52
There's decision points, right? Yes, and I think there's probably one of the biggest ones that you can make, and if you can consistently do this, you'll be in a great spot like you just did, because that phone call can be crushing. It was. And I know a lot of people that would just be like, all right, screw it then, in not so many words, screw this, I'm outta here, and they would just bounce. Who cares, I don't need this in my life. Because you don't, you don't, you don't need that in your life. You don't need people talking to you like that, you don't need any of that. But then there's another subset of folks who are like,

44:22
screw this lady, I'm actually coming for her job now. If she thinks, you know what I mean? And all of a sudden it's personal, right? And you're like, this trouble ticket is not gonna define my life. And it's interesting you say that because I'll get vulnerable with you for a second and real. A woman telling me figure it out or I don't belong here and hanging up on me kind of triggered an oral pathway in my head of, you know.

44:50
My mom was a single working mother who... Oh wow, okay. So I didn't have a hell of a lot of help or attention with things because she was working 12 hours a day. She probably told you the same stuff, right? Well, that's what I'm getting at. Now I love her to death and I'll give her a kidney, but when I got sent home in sixth grade saying you're having problems with your multiplication tables, he needs help, I kind of remember getting scolded. Like figure it out, bro. Right, so fast forward all these years later. So yes, it was crushing. And...

45:19
If you think, like everybody's had experiences throughout their life that has shaped them, mostly in childhood. And a lot of times you don't know it either. Like it's crazy that you can actually pinpoint that because I would feel like- I've spent a lot of time working on myself. Same, same. I was gonna say, I don't know if I could do that, but I'd be totally lying cause I do it like every week for an hour. Now at the time I didn't connect those dots, but when I called someone for help, I was new, I didn't know what I was doing. I called for help and got hung up on and was told figure it out or you don't belong here.

45:48
I had a stronger reaction than maybe I should have or would have if blah blah blah blah blah my life was different whatever so what I mean by handle that mental game is because as adults like somebody says something to you and you flare up and you're ready to like rip somebody's throat out yeah it's not always what that person is saying it's what they represent and what they're true if you've been picked on your whole life and somebody tries to pick you as an adult

46:13
they're gonna receive the fury of your entire childhood getting picked on. Yo, I just thought of our tag team name, by the way, since you were just going through that. Therapy boys. Because I was, I'm not kidding you, I was just talking about this. So I love to bring up how I get super irritable over certain things. Me too. And it was less about pinpointing those things. But this is the most profound thing anybody's ever said to me.

46:42
And it's so stupid because it's so fundamental, but it's exactly what you're talking about, right? And it's like, is it fair? So like the lady that you called and like, hang on a second, is it fair? I called my boss for help, but she told me to go to hell. Exactly, I would have flipped out, right? And I would have been, I'm fighting this lady, right? So like the reason I am like that though, is because I'm jumping to conclusions, and that's an easy way to put it, but what I'm saying is that I am...

47:10
I'm judging the situation only from my side. I always pretend that this is the scenario. We've all seen trials before, right? There's two benches and then there's the judge, right? And I'm on the defendant's side, at least I always feel like I'm on the defendant. And I'm like, nope, it's time to fight this guy. And the judge is like, okay. I always picture the scenario and the judge is like, okay, why? And you're like, well, did you not just hear what they said? And it's like, then the judge would say to me, do you think that's what they meant?

47:39
And I'm like, well, hell yeah, it's obviously what I think, but okay, let's ask them, is that what you meant? Is that what you meant by that? And nine times out of 10, that person's like, no. Because I don't know how they're thinking, they don't know how I'm thinking. And I've almost narrowed it down to every single time that it's me making something up, right? Like some guy gives me a dirty look, and I'm like, I gotta fight this guy, right? And...

48:03
For whatever reason, and I'm not saying it's because something happened to me in my childhood or whatever, I mean, it did, clearly, but. But, hold on, we're at the start. It happened to all of us, man. Nobody's been out of it. It did, it did. But I think this kind of goes back to something that I was talking about a couple months ago on here, which was like, our days are full of these decision points, right? And so for me lately, it's been less about how am I gonna react to that, that lady calling you and telling you, hey dude, you need to figure it out. It's less about me reacting to that and more so realizing

48:33
that that's normally one of those situations where I go off the rails and I think about it. I'm not trying to fix anything. I'm not trying to jump in her shoes and feel what she's feeling. I'm not trying to get these crazy warm and fuzzies. What I'm trying to do is just, I'm trying to take myself out of the defendant seat and the plaintiff's seat, and I'm trying to put myself in the judge's seat, and I'm gonna ask myself and that other person the exact same questions, and I'm gonna see what happens. Now, I'm not saying it's changed my behavior for the better or the good. What I mean is that I'm at least able to recognize when that's happening.

49:03
And that's enough for me right now, right? Bringing it to a level of awareness is huge, because otherwise you're just reacting to every person that pisses you off. Knowledge of self, knowledge of self. I don't know if there's any Wu-Tang fan, but you gotta have knowledge of self. Yeah, bringing it to your awareness is huge. And then, and for me that's been a lot of therapy. And then having the ability to pause and think before you react. You won't do anything. Yeah, if you pause, you will stop.

49:30
Most of it dead in its tracks, for sure. And for me, that comes from a lot of self-care stuff I do, namely meditation. Meditation has slowed down my reaction time. Even if only by a second or two, before I jump across the counter, I'm able to pause and say, oh, just like you're saying, what I heard...

49:49
How I- Is it probably what they were thinking? How I interpreted it, you know, I have a lifetime of neural pathways. I mean, every experience we have creates neural pathways in our head. Yeah. And it's like a rut in the road. So when somebody says something to me, that may fall into that rut that to me is a negative experience and now I'm gonna get them. But if I can pause and say, well, is that really what they were like? And if you could put yourself in the other person's shoes, like when I'm driving, it's like, and I don't know if it's from all those years of driving for Comcast, but if somebody cuts me off or they're nuts or-

50:18
I honestly have developed the ability to be like, you know what, maybe they just got a bad phone call, maybe they're on their way to the hospital, maybe they're having the worst day of their life. I know what you mean. Put yourself in their shoes instead of, look what he just did to the great me, I'm gonna get him and be pissed and yell and scream and honk the horn and all. So, yeah, it's that pause. So, right, but you know. So anyway, there's an amount of that that comes with every job, right? Especially in entry level jobs. That's the mental game that I was.

50:46
Yeah, which you so eloquently kind of got us there. So the mental game is to, for me, it's to be able to suffer. Suffer is probably a too strong word, but to be able to suffer and to be able to continue on through it, to be able to, like courage is not the lack of fear. Push through. Yeah, courage isn't the lack of fear. It's moving through the fear. Everybody who's courageous is scared to death, but there's still, so anyway, that's the mental game part of it. The real answer to the question you asked is shadowing. So when I was a cable guy,

51:16
senior guys shadowed, I shadowed them. I watched what they did. And then the more I watched, the more they'd let me do stuff at their job. And then I start to grow confidence. So did you have guys then after that shadow you? Like at the knock, I mean in particular. Oh, at the knock. Yeah, well, right. So the cable guy was shadowed. The new guys. So the knock was the same thing. When I got there, I just shadowed people. I think it was a week or two. Different people though. Right. So it was like a week or two on each shift.

51:43
So you'd sit and shadow for a week or two, and people just, like Jeff, for instance. Jeff was working, Jeff Clark that we had on, FortiJeff. He was on the day shift, and he was a lead on day shift. So he would show me what his day looked like, and here's what you do, and here's most of the calls that come in, and here's the ticket thing, and here's how Spectrum works. So it was a lot of shadowing.

52:04
There's a lot to take in though, right? A ton to take in. Even in my job now. So how do you manage that though? Okay, so you're shadowing somebody. This is what's so scary I think about the first couple of weeks is like, you know, everybody's like holy crap. At any job. At any job, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody's always like, holy shoot, don't throw me into the fire. I wanna shadow somebody, but when you're shadowing someone, it's almost more difficult because you have to follow their every move and be like, okay, well, but the thing is, going back to the art part you were talking about earlier,

52:33
I don't paint pictures the same way you paint pictures. I don't write songs the same way you write songs, but guess what? We both write songs, right? We both can draw pictures. So it's- Well, your songs people wanna listen to. They did at one point, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, people showed up. Ladies and gentlemen. Your people showed up in your shows. Yeah, but I mean, a song is a song, right? Like it gets the job done. The point was to make a song, you make a song. So what I mean is like, okay, so the way Jeff was showing you and the idea of shadowing multiple people so you can get different perspectives, the problem is,

53:03
information dump, right? And you're writing furiously, like, I don't know what to do this, that, that, that, that. It just, this goes back to what you said about the mental part, man. I think you, you, you gotta just take it one piece at a time, know your limits, and know that, know this too, that even if you're in the bottom 50% of all the people on this planet, I don't know who thinks that about themselves, but.

53:26
Hey, at least half of us are in it. So, like, I mean, the math checks out, right? Most people are, statistically. Yeah, right, what the hell? So, if you feel like you're one of those people and you feel that I'm in a room full of everybody in the 95th percentile and I'm in the 10th percentile, then- And that's always how it feels. Yeah, that's always how it feels. It's not true. It's not true at all. So then, you know what? Work at your own pace. Do you know what I mean? Like, know what works for you. Use the same techniques you did for everything else. Like...

53:55
Okay, I had a job at McDonald's, right? I ended up being the one kid in there that could work the drive-through, the front line, the grill, you know, the lobby, whatever, whatever they wanted me to do. But I did that on purpose because I wanted to know everything. And so I never felt like I didn't know what I was doing because I hate that feeling. And so what I'm saying is like, it didn't happen overnight, right? And what I would do subsequent to that, jobs after that, you know, that's like my first job, one of my first jobs, after that,

54:24
Like, okay, I'm a cable guy now. I'm like, hey dude, you know, I can figure the drop part out and I know that that'll alleviate 85% of my problems. When in doubt, switch to drop, right? So I change the drop and then if I can't start figuring, I take things one at a time, you know? I don't know how to do that yet. All right, let me work on that. Okay, I don't know how to do that yet. I can't just sit there like we both did in the three months of cable tech school and read three of these books that were like this thick.

54:52
like, ah, they had no business being that big, you know? And we're trying to soak up all, I mean, look at your CCNP book back there. It's like, it pales in comparison to that. You know what I mean? By the way, all those Comcast University books that I had, and there was a lot of them, I had them all behind my driver's seat in my van, thinking that someday I would need them to like, reference it. They sat there for five years unopened, because I'm like, I need them someday. How far am I supposed to space cable clips on the outside of a house that has wood siding?

55:21
Like the TQA guy was gonna come around and be like, oh, that's five and a half inches, dude. Sorry, the bend radius is off. Yeah, you know, you eventually gotta get thrown into the fire and that's the unfortunate part. And I'll even tell you in my job now, which recently changed, you know, I've spent, and this past year has kind of been a bad example because things were so nuts at home with COVID and all that crap in the kids' home. But I spent a lot of time trying to learn all these different technologies on being thrown in and study them and...

55:50
but it's all too much and it's all overwhelming. The best thing that happens to me now is I get assigned a specific thing to do in this thing and then I gotta figure it out. Then it's like, all right, let me jump in here, see how this works. Once I become responsible, it's kind of like what happened with automation with me lately, it worked. They were like, dude, automate or leave, not as strong as that, but I can read between- You say it's like Robocop. I can read between- Automate, punk. I can read between the lines.

56:19
I don't know how long you're gonna be here, bro, if you're not automating. So I've been through all the classes, I've watched all the videos, but two weeks ago I was like, you know what? I'm just digging my claws into Ansible and my head's gonna be down. I'm not doing anything else until I get this sumbitch working. And today I finally pulled in people and we spent a couple hours and I finally got it working. But if I didn't make that decision or if something didn't get assigned to me, if the company I work at was more soft and like, ah, we'll get there when we get there. And...

56:48
There was a sense of urgency, you know, like, do it, automate or die. So I'm like, all right, bro, today's the day. I'm gonna do this until, so for me, I gotta be thrown into the fire. You break it down, you break the elephant down into smaller parts. When I went to that house and they had 27 phone lines and a 66 block and I'm like melding down, the guy that I was chatting was like, listen, man, it's all, what do they call, ring and a pair? I don't even remember anymore. Ring and a tip, tip and a ring, yeah. It's all just, every phone line is just a tip and a ring. It's just two wires and just do.

57:17
do one at a time, and that helped me. You gotta get thrown in the fire eventually. It's analysis paralysis. You can only study for the exam so long, you gotta get your ass in the seat, take the test, and maybe fail. I was thinking what you were saying there too, especially because the people that were potentially gonna help you anyway, you mentioned the imposter syndrome. Okay, so you will never have more imposter syndrome than day one on the job because.

57:43
It's for some strange reason. It's like this human instinct to just think that everybody, you're like the stupidest person there, like for whatever reason. But I guess maybe- It's ridiculous, it's a lie. It is. It's a lie. But I would say this though, make it your mission then to prove yourself right. Prove yourself right in that, what I mean is that you are an imposter. Prove yourself right. Go to every person and try to prove yourself right. Look for proof, right? Find out, yeah, find what they know that you don't know.

58:13
That's some CBT trick. What proof do you have that you don't belong here? And I had somebody tell me that like, okay, so they brought you in, you had the credentials to get you an interview. They brought you into the interview. You interviewed regulars and technical. They offered you the job. Do you think that none of these people have any idea what they're doing and it was a great mistake that you're here? Somebody really broke it down like that and I was like. Yeah, that's actually a good point. Okay, maybe. You proved it, right? Yeah, like you're surrounded. All these people in charge, they're all dumb.

58:42
and they all made a huge mistake bringing you in. Is that really what you believe and when it was told to be like that? That's pretty cool. I was like, yeah, all right. Well, yeah, and the reason why I'm even saying is like, cause I just thought about this while you were talking about it is like, like, okay, if that's really the way you feel, then I employ you to validate it, go find, because, okay, so worst case scenario, you do validate it and you validate it and realize that you're the stupidest person there and you're just the dumbest person on planet earth.

59:12
But that whole time you were validating it, figuring out why that person was smarter than you, you found out what made them smarter, and you now know. And you can now use that, right? And if you do that from everybody, you turn into like Thanos, right? And then you have like all the freaking jewels and stuff, and you're like, yeah, let's go. And so like, you're like forming like Voltron, right? And maybe it's just a different way to looking at it, I guess, but I like yours too. I think that's a good one, especially, cause like the whole idea here is like, just kind of getting an idea of the knock and.

59:42
Maybe like not necessarily that every knock is exactly the same because they are not. But the idea is that the situation is similar and you have knock experience. So I thought it would be super helpful and I hope it has been for everybody out there to kind of just get a general idea. And I don't think it's specific to the knock either. Like we were talking about it because I think it's a good topic because I think it's a job that we've been doing.

01:00:06
We talk a lot about it, I feel like, but we don't talk about what it is. What it's like sitting in that chair. Yeah, what the ingredients are. Yeah, we talk about the pizza all the time. We just don't talk about the ingredients. And so I think it was an important thing. And if anybody has any other ideas of stuff that you want us to talk about, I know we were kicking around the idea of network horror stories and things like that, which.

01:00:32
AJ's got more of those in the past 30 days, I think, than all of us do in a lifetime. And Dan does too, he's got a couple too. Yeah, he does. I have a closing thought before we sign off. Yeah, let's do it. Which is tied into all this. So, if you're reaching beyond your comfort level, you're always setting yourself up to feel like an imposter. Always. Right, so it's a good thing to reach and wanna be better. That's evolution, I mean, that's how we crawled out of swamps or you know. So.

01:00:59
And I heard it, I don't know if I heard it once, or I'd love to say I made it up, but I probably didn't. Oh, we can give you credit here, because I'm not gonna Google it. A line that always sticks out to me is, there's no comfort in evolution. You know what I mean? The gazelle who walks across that Serengeti and the alligator comes out and takes his hoof off, but he gets away. He's gonna pass that genetic information onto his kids. Like, yo bro, not a good idea, I made it.

01:01:26
And the guy who doesn't make it through to swamp that gets eaten, well, he doesn't get to pass on his genetic code. Evolution's a thing, it exists. So you have to be, if you wanna grow, you're gonna be uncomfortable. So my key has been the mental game. How can you be uncomfortable and still evolve? Is it fair to say that you need to just be chasing uncomfortability, uncomfortableness? I can, yes, I can tell you that the more uncomfortable I become in my life,

01:01:55
The bigger my life gets, the more it grows and the more rewards I get from that uncomfortableness. It'd be very easy for me to have stayed in a very easy job a long time ago and be very comfortable and not have, you know, I had to ask my wife out on a date. I was terrified, she's 5'11", she's hot, she had her act together and- Wait, how tall are you? 5'10". So you can dunk on you. Yeah, I mean, hey, she's, you know.

01:02:24
What can I say? So I'm saying that like one of the most scariest moments I had was asking her out. It was, we just met on the street. It was blind. She didn't know me. We weren't set up. Like it was a coffee shop. And now look at you. The more uncomfortable I get in my life, you know what I mean? Cable guy, Knox, CCNA, CCMP, podcasts, whatever, whatever, you know, asking her out. The more I get out of my comfort zone and the more I say, okay.

01:02:50
this might be uncomfortable and suck and make me anxious or feel like an imposter, but if I can just do everything you just said in this episode and employ all those tools and prove myself right or wrong, I am, I'm not, whatever, life just keeps getting better and greater and more and more cool stuff coming in. So comfort is not the name of the game, in my opinion. If you want a greater life. No, so is it safe to say this then? Is it safe to say, like, just to put a bow on what you just said? Oh, here comes the bow. I love the Aaron bow.

01:03:16
The boat because no I think I think what you meant to say is is is this is No, I think you meant to say what you said, but what I think what I would have said I guess the best way to put it is like is all the stuff that you have that's worth having Came from something uncomfortable all of it like not a see that you can't name a single thing that you didn't do that you have right now that came because like

01:03:42
Okay, I always get mad. Like I see like kids get like their first car. I see like they get the first house. Unless you're a trust fund baby and that's probably less than half of 1%. Unless you're born into money and everything just gets thrown at you and you know. It's bad for you. Well, I know. I can only talk from my experience. I'd be fine growing up rich, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, same. Yeah. But yes, to answer your question, it's an emphatic yes. And the more uncomfortable I get, the better my life gets. And

01:04:12
it's definitely worth it. But you gotta play that mental game and you gotta get your head straight and you gotta be able to be uncomfortable and not have a panic attack or not have to get drunk every time it happens or not run out of the room when you're at a technical interview failing miserably and then you get the job. Both of my technical interviews I failed and they were anxiety fests and I couldn't breathe and I couldn't see half the time, it was awful. Yeah. And I got both jobs and look at me now. And then knew it. So I think the theme here is that.

01:04:40
You know, we gave you some insight on what the NOC looks like for one and maybe some other jobs as well, but it's always the same footprint. It's always the same blueprint. It's always the same scenario. It's just, you know, I would say same room, different view. Secret sauce. Right? Like, it's, yeah, it's like no matter what job you're going to, it's always new. Every single time, the most consistent thing you have about your work life should be that every time you do something, it's completely new. Right?

01:05:08
That means that you're just learning more and more and more, and then you forget more and more and more, and learn new stuff, right? And you're kind of rolling with the punches, and you don't get stuck, and all this cool stuff. And in general, there's more responsibility and more money with them, more and more stuff. More money, yeah. Yeah, the more uncomfortable you get, the more money you'll get, too. Remember that. Ooh, yeah. What is that? I was making it rain. You were making it rain? I was trying to, I'm probably doing it wrong. These are euros, too, so they're worth more, you know?

01:05:34
The British pound. Well, I really enjoyed getting interviewed by you. It's been a while. You're very good at this. I think you should have a TV show. Oh wait, we're on YouTube. We can have a TV show. Yeah, look at us, Ma. No, and I'm all decked out in Padres gear today because opening day, the first game was back in the stadiums today. So that's a momentous game for Padres. They did, we won eight to seven. Beautiful. Yeah, it was a good game. You're close to the stadium there, yeah?

01:05:57
Yeah, I'm about 30 feet away, so I get everything. No, it sucks because I watch it on TV. Can you see the game from where you're at? Can you see it? No, because I'm on the bottom floor, so I just hear everything, so I hear the stadium, and then the time delay on the TV is awful. It's awful. It's a full pitch behind, a full pitch. Yeah, it's crazy. That's a 256 qualm, bro. Yeah, buddy.

01:06:19
Speed of light coming at you. So all right, everybody, thank you for listening. I know we've been talking to you guys zero for a long time. We appreciate it. But I think the moral of the story here is get uncomfortable. There is no imposter syndrome. Prove yourself right. Don't prove yourself wrong. Prove yourself right. Set out on a mission to make sure that everybody in there is smarter than you. And then report back with your findings. And as always, please like, subscribe, comment. Do all that jazz. If you haven't already, sign up for all of your favorite.

01:06:49
podcasting like the podcatcher and you know wherever uh wherever podcasts are sold like us there and subscribe so that you'll get this fresh nice new episode every wednesday morning on the dot depending on what part of the country you're in you can probably listen to it on your way back to work we're all getting back into the offices now so maybe traveling a little bit if you just found us guess what you got a ton of cool episodes to listen to

01:07:13
Congratulations, go you. You just upgraded your life, and that's actually not uncomfortable. This is comfortable, this is very comfortable. So listen away, get comfortable, baby. We're here all night. Thanks for listening to The Therapist Twins. See ya!

01:07:39
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 eng. That's art of NETENG. 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.

01:08:05
and also a lot more news and info from the networking world. Thanks for listening.