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 dan how are you doing tonight i'm doing good how are you i'm doing very well very well that's good andy how are you sir ah i'm feeling good i'm excited for our guests me too me too don't don't give it away aaron what's up man what's up dog um i just noticed that whenever i introduce dan he gives me the mr towel but when you do but when you do it he's very cordial and i don't know if i should be offended by that i think i was a little uh i think i was taken back just a little bit because he went straight to me so yeah right yeah yeah i need him to do the uh the dramatic for effect pause you know because we use time bolt now which cuts out all of the these spaces oh crap i can pause as long as i want but that's not going to get picked up in the in the podcast yeah so there you go he's trying to cut straight into the chase uh before we cut straight to the chase and introduce our guests this evening we have some wins to celebrate congratulations to netdev2 for passing his devnet associate uh justin so he failed it seven days ago february 1st and you know we all know how the time window works right boom week later they let you take it and not only he jumped back on the horse he posted his score which is an 885 so that's nothing about an eye on that either right and put that thing in the grave killed it nice love it killed it nice nice work congratulations that's awesome yeah exactly snuck right in there that's still part of the devnet class of 2020 so heck yeah not much time left right right through the window he did uh anyway uh super excited have a wonderful guest this evening uh you could say he's one of our own because while he's not an active participant in the the podcast as a co-host he does work in the background for the art of network engineering blog uh he is the mastermind behind the faces of the journey uh everybody welcome tim bertino yes i am uh i am very thrilled and honored to be here fellas thank you very much for the invite i've been a listener since episode one no big deal okay so street cred so i think it's safe to say i'm i'm fanboying a little bit right now you you uh you can expect this stupid looking grin to be on my face probably the entire time that's okay andy has the same look i was just gonna say i'm still fine so since since i'm being honest i won't say that i lied to you guys when you invited me to be on the show but i may have strategically left out the fact that this is my first ever podcast appearance like seriously i don't even know what i'm supposed to do with my hands right now yeah so nothing okay so that being said i i need to know which of the four of you handles a bulk of the editing because i need to know where my formal apology needs to get sent when we wrap this up yeah mr laptop noted it's all good brother this is going to be you see easy easy peasy yeah don't worry later it's all right it's not like uh it's not like one of those nat geo shows where like you're a drug kingpin and we have to hide your voice and make you sound like it's really really deep you know what i mean it ain't like that you want us we want you to show off tim we want everybody to see your bright shining face so if you didn't know by the way that brings us to a good point i think that if you didn't know we had videos up on youtube guess what sometimes we do so you should probably go check that out and maybe if you're lucky enough you might see tim's face on there and you might see him doing spirit fingers slash jazz hands thank you and i told you you see i that i don't know what i'm doing i'm i'm rambling here already and i haven't even actually said hello yet so if you will you guys humor me yeah i've i've got something i've been wanting to do for a long time oh go for it man hang on i'm going to try not screw this up i got to get real close to the mic though okay howdy that was crazy you're leaving that thing i'm all right that's it you guys can have your show well it's funny you mentioned that because clearly it was almost like a it was meant to be because dan conveniently left that out this time and just rolled out the red carpet for you to do that so by all means it's eight players basically years ago backstage in the green room yeah yeah i did all right tim tim who are you man aj gave you a great explanation just give us your version like where do you live what do you do so again my name is tim burtino i am currently a senior network engineer in omaha nebraska in the healthcare industry and i'm i'm kind of i don't know that i want to drop the u word but i i guess i'm kind of that unicorn like like mr richards i have been in the with the same company for over 10 years now wow the first spot i landed after uh after getting out of school and i've been there ever since dang i just want to say that's the nicest thing anybody said to me on this podcast called me a unicorn we're all special right in our own little ways a little bit more no no no don't take this away from me he called me the unit hey to be fair i'm pretty sure that was a throwback to the first episode i think somebody dropped that i don't remember which one yep yep we definitely did no it is rare i mean there's something to be said about that certainly not negative by any means of course we love to tease dan about it but you know because it's a very it's a very i don't know i i hate to say southern thing but you know it's like a loyalty thing like the values are just different right you're in the midwest i mean omaha is a great city it's a but it still has like more values and i would say like a place where like me or somebody like andy might live where everything's just fast paced and people are like looking for the next thing at the next moment right so right you know and god forbid you guys have to go to the next employer too because they're gonna look at your resume and go holy crap this guy really must want to be here because he was coming from a play i mean right i think it's nothing but good stuff we just like to tease dan that's all but i agree it's all good so so what did you go to school for then that's that's a funny story so it usually is that's why we ask it the reason i decided to try it is because i would have been an absolute liability as a building architect and i can explain so the the high school i went to had a computer-aided drafting program an auto cool kind of program so i did that for i think i got into it my sophomore year and i rode through it to my senior year and i hit a point my senior year where i just step back and go holy crap i am no good at this and i'm about to get out of high school so and i'm kind of an indoor cat so i wanted to find something that i like the tech behind autocad and all that so i i wanted to to go to school and but i didn't know anything so andy you've brought this up multiple times that when people don't know what do they choose they choose computer science right so the college i went to offered computer science and also offered computer information systems but if you chose computer information systems you had to pick a concentration they had like uh e-commerce and and web development and networking but i didn't know what any of that was so i'm like i'll just pick computer science it's got the name in it computer and i don't have to pick anything else so i went that route and i i had the same culture shock as you did andy is i got into the programming classes and the math i i failed calculus that almost pushed me uh graduating my senior year i had to take some extra credits my man uh to pick it up but i did i did stick with it i stuck with computer science but i ended up falling in love with networking they had they had the cisco networking academy there so it just it just clicked it gelled with me so i i stuck with that and decided that that's what i wanted to be when i grew up so you went through college yeah wow so just to just let you know i think we've just become best friends because before i went into it i was thinking about doing uh like building architect and whatnot right on so that's that's really weird though i don't want to throw another wrench in the spokes but so was i because tim that story is identical to mine in high school no we had we yeah we had autocad uh i mean it was it was 1999 right we just got it and the year before so they did it every other year that's how how little they had like occupancy so but the the off year would be like my junior year and that was like just a legit on the board with the t-square the number three pencils that's right first okay pencils exist and we actually had to draw like an entire like 20-page like house plan like front elevation wow you know you know that just every plan you could possibly think of but you got to make up the house so it's cool but dude i think we there's something to be said about that right so it's like uh like did you play with legos a lot when you were a kid yeah yeah lincoln logs yeah yeah the same same we're all in the same boat all right that's cool so it was a hell of a backup plan by the way did you get your ccna in college no um towards the end when i was about to graduate i i wanted to give it a shot and so that was in 2009 2010 and i i wasn't ready for it but i tried to take just the composite exam because back then you could have taken icmd1 ic and d2 okay i took the composite exam just just failed it miserably but i did have an incredible opportunity in college is it was a small school or is a small school it's growing though and the i.t department the help desk and desktop support was supported by almost 100 uh part-time workers and they were all students full-time students so there was one full-time uh employee on the help desk and desktop support and the rest were students so i got an opportunity to join that team and i was i did that for about three and a half years and that was absolutely huge for me uh to get just it experience desktops printers all that and got yeah an introduction into networking too so that was huge so how long did you do that for was that during your your schooling there or yeah i think i started my second semester freshman year and i did it through graduation okay so what what is that like two years three years uh it was a four year school four year okay okay gotcha so you popped out at school with a degree just not the ccna but you had the degree and the now like almost general i.t generalist experience too right so even though definitely even though while you were in school you found a passion for networking you were also doing what everybody is going to call the crap because anytime you touch a printer that's crap and we all know it crap crap crap crap crap crap um so yeah uh thank god you found the passion for networking because nobody wants to deal with printers and fax machines for the rest of their life or get stuck with voip um so so you're you graduated college what degree did you have when you graduated college i did finish with a bachelor's in computer science oh good for you man i think the i think the biggest difficulty for me with programming concepts was that i felt that i was going to have to dedicate a lot of time to it and and i just wasn't doing that i mean that's something that needs repetition you need that constantly going through your brain and i wasn't doing that i wasn't doing it justice so i i was able to focus on networking take all the networking classes and still graduate with that that cs degree and i i got really fortunate too because with the job that i got um right out of school it was like i graduated on a saturday and i started there the following monday so wow wow yeah very fortunate you didn't even want to like take a week off and i don't know maybe go to the beach damn earmuffs maybe go to the beach and enjoy yourself no i think they were ready for me to start before i was able to so wow wait when did you apply to this place then it actually took a while um i actually almost forgot that i had applied i it had been multiple months and and one thing i actually did the thing that recruiters and uh counselors will tell you to do is when you apply for something what do you do you follow up follow up baby you get that that resume at the top of the pile and i got it got a call kind of out of the blue at least a couple months later and went ahead and uh and interviewed for it and it it worked out i would say so yeah you literally transit like you put in your two weeks notice at school you know like like graduating or not i got a job on monday suckers you know was that a similar job tim kind of like a journalist so i i really wanted to get into network infrastructure right out of school um but i obviously didn't have the real world experience and it was i'll say much easier or maybe not much easier but there were a lot more opportunities out there for uh end user computing did you get the test that's i'm sorry did you get the touchdown working in that school job that you had i did okay i did um i got into some some cisco switches some in fact they were at the time they were running uh cat os it was even before uh ios so yeah some big 6500 chassis so i got a little bit of experience but but really not enough wasn't enough to get to transition directly and you did not have your ccna at the time either right no okay so that begs the question what what made you want to get it then i mean you graduated with a cs degree and then because like i'm looking at like the feedback loop right like so anytime you do something are you getting punished or rewarded right like what makes you keep going and for you it's like i felt like you just kept getting rewarded so why go back and punish yourself by getting a ccna so i i wanted a a network admin network engineer position and i felt that that was the quickest way to to get me in that role i had a director at the time that uh he was very hands-on with the employees he'd reach out to you ask you you know what your aspirations were and he would work with you so he asked me what i wanted to do and i said well i want to get into networking and he basically asked well what are you doing to get there and i said well i'm working on my ccna i'm doing the icnd1 right now and he said well come tell me when you got it and we'll talk and i ended up getting the the i passed the icd-1 so i got the cc ent and they ended up expanding the network team and uh i applied and got on wow so that was nice did that like light of like so the second he said because you'd you'd failed the composite at one point right so i mean yeah you'd already kind of been through the experience but like when he said hey come talk to me when you get the ccna did that light a fire under your ass or oh huge yeah oh huge see so what's that what's the time gap between him saying that and you getting it if you say it's less than a week i'm i'm gonna just kick you off the podcast i i think i was already preparing for it um but i i can't remember i'll tell you i have had throughout my career i have had an on-again off-again relationship with like with ite network certifications um because mainly because i feel like i pour my heart and soul into it and when failure hits man that that hits me like a ton of bricks i feel like i'm getting better at it you know we're me and certifications we're on speaking terms again i think if it's uh i think in facebook terms i think in facebook terms it's it's called uh the relationship status is it's complicated we're working right now i'm working toward encore right now and it's going well i will say i don't want to get too far off the beaten path but i will say the recommendation from this podcast i think you directly aaron were the first person that that really shone the light for me was the space repetition concept and yeah yankee flash cards that has been night and day for me i thank you so much for that it's been incredible okay so let's stop right there because why don't you then since you're doing it and you're implementing it why don't you share with everybody that's listening how you're implementing it and maybe just kind of like a rough outline because sure i'm going somewhere with this because so how i set up my auntie cards is much different than how aj does right or andy or even dan so i want to hear like how you do it i get questioned all the time like hey should i put these all in one deck should i separate it by you know what i mean so walk us through your little your your strategy so i i had to pull up my my notepad i i have a study plan which is something i did not have in 2020 oh whoa back up then what is the study plan share share share share share share i am kicking myself for not because i i spent a lot of time in 2020 going through uh encore material and i really other than than doing some really good labs i i feel like i don't have a lot to show for it because i would hit topics and i'd go on to the next thing and it may be a month since i looked at the last topic and i wasn't really doing any kind of review which is where the flash cards come in so sure i've got a uh i've got a seven-step program here oh boy it's the first step denial because that's what it is yeah so hey hey that's it's funny it's funny you say that though because because uh the like the the on off part of like the the studying too with with the cards and and you know how how do you put those together with the study plan they kind of go hand in hand the study plan is gonna hopefully is gonna keep you from drifting and having that that quote unquote breakup that you keep having but i think another part of it like at least from my perspective when you're when you're studying like that and you're studying for something and you don't have a plan uh your brain is gonna do find the easiest subject right in no sh in no way shape or form are you gonna pick up the ipv6 section and just read it for fun right you're probably going to go to something cool especially an encore there's lots of cool shiny stuff in encore right like bgp everybody wants to know how that works right i mean it's the entire internet so like teach me more teach me more and then you're like do i really need to go dive into like you know what i mean just i'm picking on iv but you get the idea so having a study plan is huge so so share the study plan and the cards how you how you in conjunction you know finkel design horn together how and where where and how definitely so what i'll start with is uh from the flash card concept i do break it up um in decks by either official cert guide chapters or topics at least i'll at least group together like topics so what i'm doing right now is i'm reviewing uh each ocg chapter at a time and i'll create flash cards on the way and the flash cards that i'm creating are a combination of the uh did i know this already is which aaron you have have brought that up multiple times that they're huge and then the key topics key terms anything else i deem necessary and then i'll do the the key topic review that the book tells you to do and then uh i'll shift to key terms for that chapter create cards off of that uh and then the command reference as well creating cards and then i'm fortunate enough uh work has been so kind to get us uh cbt nuggets as well as cisco on-demand learning subscriptions so i hit those topics uh that i did in the ocg and do the cards and all that good stuff and then at the end i do uh labs as necessary so i start every study session with anki no matter what day i start with that i get my cards out of the way and go in so do you go so so because anki so if you haven't for some strange reason downloaded anki yet the way it works is it basically tells you when you should be reviewing those cards so as an example if i opened it up today and the spaced repetition formula was telling me that i don't need to look at those for another five days it's not going to show me those cards so that's what's so great about it so every time you open it up and you have multiple subjects like that what ends up happening is that you really don't know what card like you could have one card from one deck 10 cards from another deck but if you think about it and put them all together like you're also interlacing at that point too interleaving right like and you're like putting pieces of the puzzle together in the background but also i love that strategy because starting with the anki cards because there are cards that you've reviewed before because you're about to go through the material and create new cards so you're reviewing material that you already had before so obviously in there somewhere at least one or two of those are going to be like super easy quick w's for you right and you're like hell yeah i'm feeling this i'm feeling this because like that gets your confidence up to like dive into something that maybe you didn't want to dive into before just kind of like as like a like a deep side relief before you just jump into it like hey i know how to learn here's the validation for that let me just jump into some new stuff now yeah i agree i mean you nailed it and another thing that i took from you aaron was uh one thing you said is when you're putting those cards together make it difficult on yourself yeah um the anki platform is set up in a way where building the cards and and doing all that and going through it is an easy process so that part's not hard but if you make the content make yourself think and talk through it that's been huge for me yeah no i i it it's like one of those things where if you see someone tell them about it because they do not i don't care if you're in private school or public school i don't care what country you went to school in they don't teach you how to learn it should be step one right teach you how to learn and then and then learn and it seems fundamental i know but nevertheless so you clearly you didn't do this for the the uh the ccna studies right so have you noticed a difference now like there's it's hard to gauge right because there's there's more stuff in encore obviously it's professional level but i don't know they're kind of the same in that you know it's new and it's fresh and that type of thing so what what differences have you started noticing now that you have like a plan and a strategy um now that i have a plan i feel much more motivated to get up and do it and it's easier now um why is that another um because i'm not just going through content i felt like i got to the point in 2020 when i was quote studying but i was really just going through the motions reading um because i knew i had to read the chapter i knew i had to watch the videos but like i said i left it at that i wasn't going back i wasn't doing anything else so i mean that that's been a pretty big difference um and content-wise yeah there's there's a lot more in-depth stuff so i actually took i i got the ccna twice so i got it um i finished it first time yeah in 2013 and then it expired in 2016 so i got it again in 2018. oh wow so i know i'm working on on course yeah yeah so this time you decided to just kind of get back through it so i've noticed that too it's like people often will learn their lesson when when the cert expires they're like not doing that again oh yeah it's easier just to to to ride slowly year after year right like you don't have to get assert every year just like just be working towards something and then you just never forget right and again anki's huge for that because you could just leave those decks in there forever and go back to them whenever you feel like it like even even at work you're like i could just brush up or like let's say you were gonna go interview at a new place it's like you know they're gonna ask you oh what layer of the lsi bottle does this fall into it's like oh well well well chuck i'll say that it's uh that's layer zero because i'm out of here but yeah that i think i think the the cards thing is did you pay for the um the 20 bucks for the the lifetime anki thing are you still using the free version i'm still using the free version see there you go folks barrier to entry zero must have actually you don't even need a cell phone because you can download the desktop client which i absolutely wrote that's what i do is i i create the uh the cards on the desktop and then uh i typically uh i typically pace back and forth i got to get my steps in sometime during the day so i i usually walk when i'm actually doing the review and that's on my phone so it's so awesome it syncs great i've never had an issue you have an android yeah yeah it's free on android which is pretty sweet heck yeah oh okay maybe that's why yeah yeah interesting so do you use anything else like uh or have you used anything else like uh the boson like the netsim or i'm i'm getting ready to invest in that because i have gotten highly ridiculously good feedback highly recommend awesome all right i'm on it we have a link on our website have you been to our website before i mean at this point we might as well just rename it to timbertino.com you can keep the logo jerk hey you you guys are the ones letting me practice whatever nonsense writing i'm doing on your website so well hold up now because that's that's a good that's a good point so we've we've recently and you're to blame for this now uh you're to blame for this because i i got on a rant like four or five months ago where i i convinced half the chat room to to start a blog right like you scared the crap out of me when you yeah sorry boy but hey check this out it's all because of you and and like i laid low for a while after yeah wait a minute wait a minute why maybe maybe you will change your voice yeah was that was that creating too much work for you people were trying to get tips and tricks from you or no just uh you you had a you had a video chat with with a bunch of guys and you were just i mean it was all positive reinforcement yeah man i was like this guy is serious if i stay quiet he may he might not yell at me yeah it was this was the one where he was yelling at him saying is this amateur hour what is that picture on your linkedin what are you doing oh look i was you know part of that like obviously that we're making it sound a lot worse than it was like the tone was no i was not shut up i was trying i was trying to help i was trying to help and i was like you know it was more of like a a like a a big brother approach which is not good because i do that to all my friends too and i've actually had conversations with them about this like i like to big brother them a lot i'm like you know what you should be doing but it's because my dad did that my entire life and so like i'm just a victim of him doing whatever that he did and now i do it so hey look at me did you see the did you see the results though right but no no it was all good but that's what was so cool about it because because like i i had a feeling everybody that got in that chat room they wanted me to do that to them you know what i mean because i agree they were on top of them they were they were a foot away from the mountain yeah and they were ready to pull the trigger they just they just didn't they just didn't know what to do and they just didn't need they didn't have the reinforcement you know because it's it's a it's a strange thing to do even explain to like your normal friends or your family like hey i'm going to start this website and they're like oh cool what are you going to talk about like oh you're going to be a blogger like you know it's like the first thing they think is like you know some instagram influencer which i mean clearly none of us are uh dan doesn't even have an instagram i don't think he's he's under the radar um but point being like hey we we're not like that we're but i think what people think of when they hear stuff like that is instantly like oh yeah you're probably trying to sell me something or you do something but like no we're we're believe it or not folks genuinely trying to help people out there i know shocker it doesn't make a whole lot of sense no we're not getting anything from it either like this podcast we just love doing it so we're just going to keep doing it we don't need to get paid but yeah i was in there like just really kind of doing stuff that maybe i would have hoped somebody would had done to me in that situation if i you know i was in that situation and need that yeah i just like and not even like a push just like the last little nudge you know what i mean like they had done all those just they knew what they were gonna do nobody was like jeez what should i write about everybody was literally like hey i i want to write about this i want about this one right this or this i mean it was it was a great it was a great like just impromptu meeting but yeah it was a lot of stuff like i was kind of just flying all over the place like hey your picture needs to look like this or you know i'm just trying to hey it worked it's pretty amazing how far the discord servers come and yeah there's people there we broke a thousand yeah and the fact that these kind of things happen tim how did you get involved with the discord server because yeah how did you do that for me i was in the study group and there was a slack and then a trade like is were you kind of in that group of he was definitely an early adopter yeah okay so with that um one of the reasons i got involved so early or what i thought was early uh was because of your guys's enthusiasm so i listened to the first episode i wish i knew who retweeted it because i didn't know any of you guys at the time oh cool and somebody retweeted that there was this podcast starting and what it was called and i thought it was cool name i'm gonna check it out so i threw it in my feed and i listened to the first episode and i went on the the website and i emailed um the art of network engineering email address i'm pretty sure it was aj aj replied within an hour and i'm like whoa this is cool all right i'll join this thing that might have been our first yeah that might have been our first email right aj has no spam folder he's answering everything that that guy who uh is asking for five thousand dollars so you can bail the prince out and you're gonna get a million bucks we're talking to him too the podcast pulled you in that's that's oh yeah okay and it was so cool so um that's a big thing that drew me in is that that aj was all over it yeah come check it out here's the link uh and i got onto the discord server and within like a week uh i was having conversations with aj and aaron and probably not even two weeks into it uh aj's asking if i'll write stuff on the website i'm like dude have you ever seen my writing but you know it ended up working out so i i think enthusiasm um and actually talking the walk that you guys do is was a big draw for me yeah and you jumped right in which is awesome i really love the faces of the journey i've been you know oh my god yeah yeah just kind of explain that real quick for the listeners what is the faces of the journey so first off i blame that on you guys uh before i really met you guys and got to know you guys in the the discord community i i was i've always been very passionate about my job but it's been mainly kept to myself and um and people i work with and i've always been kind of focused on the tech and then i met you freaking guys and all of a sudden i'm doing the happy hours and i'm writing stories about people i i don't even know who i am anymore no hopefully in a good way yeah okay hey i'm here man i'm here tim 2.0 so the the faces of the journey what i wanted to do was um i wanted to step away from the tech and really show and highlight people that are doing it and um i got into it thinking you know we were just going to write about people and then as we wrote about people and the people we wrote about and the stories that are coming out of this is i mean i'll say i have had what i'll call the if there is such a thing the traditional path and i.t um so getting to hear and see and write about all of these people and their stories um just across the board is so cool and it's it's been really rewarding for me too and and i really hope that that people uh that we write about are getting something out of it as well so how are you how are you doing that then like do you so you have like a little phone call with them and kind of get their backstory how do you do that i think the very first one that i did was with uh our buddy gerard yep and uh with him i did a video call and then i was talking with aj and i kind of wanted to streamline it a little more and we ended up doing a template so i i send uh whoever writing about a template they'll fill it out they'll send some some pictures so we can uh have that on the site as well and then i'll write it up and send it back to them make sure it's okay and and then publish it nice seriously you're basically interviewing people like have you ever do you have a background an interview like i don't think it's the easiest thing in the world to do right it's not i'm not i'm not what you would call a people person all the time so was this your first foray into like you know getting people's stories out of them yeah i'll say so yeah yeah yeah because you've done a hell of a job it's it's yeah i appreciate that it seems i i assume that you know you were a writer in college and you messed around and got you back into your into your writing passion because it's just so good it's i really enjoy it no i i appreciate that and i will say as a person i i look for win-win situations whenever i can so yeah we're writing about other people we're getting their stories out there but selfishly it is helping me uh work on writing so it's it's been a win-win that's awesome yeah those are are far and away the most popular articles on our website like we you know we we post like uh something tech related on on monday usually right like we'll have an article from aaron's blog or my blog or or another blogger in our community in our discord community that wants to share an article with us or you know andre he's come to me and he's like hey i want to write about this and so you know he's using he's he's not like a blogger in his own site he's a blogger for for us and he uses our site as his platform which anybody's welcome to do by the way um and so we got the tech article on monday we got the podcast release on wednesday and then most times on friday we'll do the faces of the journey and you can clearly see in the stats like you know i can go back through and just look like oh there's one that's the tim spike right i gotta get back into it it's it's been a while right well i don't know i like i like that some of the people you've interviewed have actually now turned around and written articles on the website too that's like it's almost like this like uh like a pyramid scheme right where it's like five people no but it's but it is and it's like it's helping everybody just like you know getting in the in this the server being like everybody start your blog but like you're doing it too it's just like people see themselves maybe they normally wouldn't have and they see themselves being written about and it's like i am somebody you know so if you think you have like a good like reach out to tim by all means if you if you get like a really cool story or a unique story and honestly it doesn't even your story is unique i'll just tell you straight up i don't care who you are your story is unique um just reach out to tim man if you've got something to say you want the world to see it then i'm sure he would love to write about you i'm not volunteering him for work but oh definitely i'm always just getting you to do more work for free pro bono man so um i want to change gears a second i know i've already i've already been the overbearing guest and i appreciate you guys putting up with me but if you don't mind i i'd kind of like to uh turn the tables a little bit sure and i i've got some i i'm such a goober man i took notes i've been reading off my notes here i should give that away so uh like mad libs i do i do have a i have one question for each of you guys um if you don't mind if we can jump into that yeah yeah so i will i'll start with uh one of the millions of people on this planet who have a better beard than i do dan oh wow that's the first and only time he's gonna hear that sorry that's that's definitely true so dan howdy howdy howdy you've you've obviously got your day job right and you're you're married i think you've got you've got at least one child right yep one kid okay one kid and you've also you're also a professional photographer mm-hmm yeah so i'm gonna throw an andy question at you oh heck here we go what is it what do you what andy knows andy's practice and he's practically asking it for me so what do you do on a daily weekly monthly basis to maintain some sort of balance in all the facets of your life hmm so uh okay so we've had a couple of guests on here who have who have talked about how do they balance and then we've also had in the discord we've had some people in discord talk about how they balance their their life and um one of them he was talking about his wife he basically gave like um what was it like a like a free pass thing right uh oh yeah yeah yeah i was like a get out of jail free cards you can be like hey you're not studying tonight yeah yeah yeah and i was like dang that's a good idea you know like now i'm gonna go ahead and go out there and say like i have not been studying like the past month or so um so there's that but uh but whenever i am doing that study path i i was like you know what i i need to do i need to adopt that but i also so when i get i get off work roughly around 4 30ish or so and until pretty much seven o'clock that is my family time so i i block that out i don't try to do anything other than family time stuff there good for you that's awesome so that's kind of the balance on the family side and then my my business like photography and stuff uh one of my partners he is more in tuned with like the social media stuff so he kind of deals with that so i don't have to deal with that too much um i i'm more of the like i show up shoot edit that kind of stuff uh you know i work on getting clients and stuff but um so that's kind of the balance there i don't have to do a whole lot of overhead i guess you want to save for that okay and then work i uh i would as much as i want to say i leave my work it at work that doesn't happen i do take that home with me so everybody uh every once in a while like if it's if it's like i don't know nine o'clock or something like that my wife goes to bed pretty early um so after she goes to bed you know i might i might tinker with some work stuff that needs to get done anyways um but i don't feel like i'm i have to right it's just more okay i just kind of want to work on it um so i don't know if that like answers your question or not um it no it does you sound like you have a plan which is than my 2020 was preach but uh yeah so that's kind of how i balance that i guess awesome awesome so let's shift to aj oh boy aj you had what i will call a pretty incredible 20 20. i i will agree with you hold on stop stop stop always people always talk crap like i'm some like pompous jerk and listen to this guy he's like tell me tim tell me something i don't know look at the scoreboard man aj knocks this yeah i know he does he does but and and i know click on that shit sorry go ahead go ahead go ahead tim that was great it was good so i don't know if you guys know this or not but aj is kind of a big deal yeah yeah we do now daddy daddy aj over there is there another idea in this podcast that i'm not aware of that's a big deal you mean in addition to the fact that he created all this tim is that what you're doing right yeah that was no small feat exists because of him and he kicked butt in 2020 with search but go ahead tim sorry so i think the guys just set your stage here what uh what would you say was your most memorable or favorite accomplishment or thing that happened to you in 2020 and keep in mind you met me in 2020. by by far and away the podcast so much happened in 2020 um that it's it's hard to i don't know it's it's really hard to like put into words that like my full emotions for for 2020 but 2020 for me will not be the year that it was a pandemic it'll be the year that i met some amazing people it'll be the year that we started a podcast that uh it's the year that i finally got my ccnp like so much happened personally professionally um it it was an epic year and and i will not disagree with anybody who says that now a lot of stuff had to fall into the right places for for that to happen and you know there was definitely some blood sweat and tears it was all very worth it but you know my favorite thing is the podcast you know like going to to these guys and saying hey i got this like hair brained idea and and not a single one of them you know batted an eyelash and said like yeah let's let's try this you know and you're all still here yeah yeah now here we are this is this is going to be uh episode 31. uh we just hit 41 000 downloads we're we're going very quickly towards 50k and i'm super excited about that um yeah and then you know professionally personally like things are happening uh in the background because of the podcast that uh hopefully we get to talk about soon but uh maybe not i don't know we'll see but yeah definitely uh the podcast um in 2020 was a crowning moment and let's not leave out you got like seven certs at least um i mean you got five supers your ccmp your devnet associate right i mean that's seven so if if you count like those those are actual like certifications right but there's there's actually a number of other um if you work for a partner you have to do all of these like salesy related certifications um my myself and taylor are top in the company because between the two of us we got 30 different certifications oh my gosh yeah and you know like some of these things are you know online you know self-paced video training you got to take a quiz at the end and you get all these like different starts but they're certs that count for something for the business like because we went and did those now the business qualifies for whatever and it's a necessary thing that we had to do so uh yeah it we have our our company-wide meeting this week and and you know taylor and i were highlighted drink some of this i can imagine dude congratulations about it so awesome that's i think you know aj aj doesn't get enough credit i think like publicly um so let's just do it right now he started all of this it's not discord well i know that's why i missed the question and i think it's yeah you teed it up perfectly yeah yeah like you you've done everything man you started all this like yeah i mean we're here with you but like how easy is that like all i have to do is just annoy the hell out of people for now and and you did all the work you know you got the website going i mean you know the discord like all the different ideas you've had i mean yeah dude hats off to you and on top of that doing stuff for yourself and obviously you have a family as well too so i don't want to i don't want anybody out there to overshadow that well thank you daddy aj and there's a bigger and there's like a bigger life lesson in there i think for people like 2020 was hell but yeah but that's not how you see it and frame it and experienced it so there's something there you know oh yeah you took 2020 and made it your b word best friend yeah so that's i mean that's that's a skill right there i think that i i i want to be aj when i grow up i'm not growing up you're on to something there dan all right so we got two correct answers i am keeping score sweet so wait do are you please tell me that you're asking andy and i a joint question that we can answer together no i got i got special ones for both of you oh okay all right aaron oh boy aaron i see you as someone who's very confident okay and and very sure of himself and in everything that you do and that's a compliment okay and that that's mainly that's mainly a compliment because you can do so without coming off as being arrogant and that's a skill brother well i don't know that everybody would agree with that uh thank you but uh okay it's only my opinion that matters right now no i appreciate that i appreciate it so uh you're lucky enough that that you get an andy question as well sweet i am not always confident and sure of myself in what i do so yeah what's your secret and how you do it so i think andy's kind of like salivating at this too because he probably knows the exact reason why i i am how i am so a little a little back story here for just a half a second because we're when we release these episodes we're on a time delay and tim at this particular second has not heard the last episode so there there there's a little bit of a dent in the armor so to speak that that we kind of went into in our in our last episode which if you if you listen to the podcast you heard but just to kind of let you in on on what's going on tim yeah like i moved a ton when i was a kid i'm very introverted i don't like being around people i don't like crowds i prefer to just sit right here by myself and interact with people online if i have to right which is strange when i when i tell people that because they're like oh man you're always so good in crowds and like you know you talk to people but it's just a skill that i've built up over years and years and years as like a defense mechanism so that like i wouldn't be picked on so okay like so like so dan dan's really good at just being like a quiet dude like i'm not so when i'm a quiet dude for some strange reason through my entire life like i was just getting picked on left and right so to alleviate that what i did was a i started being an a-hole and b i started being uh like a little more like offensive instead of defensive so basically instead of getting made fun of and i mean i move schools andy and i talk about this quite frequently it's like move schools like 12 times before i was even you know in high school and it's like every time you put yourself in that situation it's like interviewing and and it feels like interviewing to me it's like yup new class new teacher new new school mates you got to figure out how you're going to impress the right people if you like the show the office yeah this is this okay this is great so when the two branches merge uh the one that had that that uh jim had went to for a bit and then closed down and they merged back so they brought andy with him right and they were asking him in the parking lot you know what are you gonna do to fit in and he's like easy uh personality mimicking and being like overly aggressive but anyway he goes in and he just like repeats repetiti he repeats everything like michael says in the same voice and he's like i don't know about that andy guy but i love him it just it it is a skill right and it's very similar to like um like uh interviewing because you're you're explaining yourself and you only have so much time to do it and like you have to also be like relatable and also other stuff so long story short it's it's a defense mechanism and i just put my foot on the pedal when i need to and use it right so anything that happens bad to you in your life you know it's a weapon it can hurt you or it can make you feel better and i just choose most of the time to use it as a weapon to help myself so there you go there's that i i really appreciate that answer there's a lot of stuff there i didn't know about you so thank you for sharing i should have said put the scuba gear on because it's about to get deep yeah so i may seem confident to everybody but like and and i joked about it earlier it's it's not that it's i guess i don't know the other word for like i don't i don't have a thesaurus out but like like just being uh socially intelligent right okay being able to talk to anybody and feel like they're also just like you you know any celebrity even like if you were talking to like michael jordan or something it's easy to get like star struck by that but it's like you're just a dude we're all just we're just people you know what i mean so there you go awesome man awesome and durant thank you for that though okay andy no i hope mine's easier than that one do i have to break my heart open i don't know why i'm setting it up like this i i feel like i feel like and i love all you guys but i feel like i relate the most to andy um i've got a wonderful wife who i met so um and we've got four wonderful kids so i four i i relate to andy um uh with because andy you share everything that you have shared throughout this entire series so first off i appreciate that now my question for you uh is around this so you recently picked the guitar back up right yeah been playing a little bit so tell me do you sit at home at night and jam out to the podcast theme music and hold on even even if the answer is no please just say it's a yes i've got this mental image that i don't want to lose man andy wrote that he played that yeah that's all him that wasn't supposed to come out because i'm collecting royalties and we're not suppo we're supposed to be yes tim that's all i do so i gave you kind of a bs question but i did it on purpose and i wanted to highlight the fact that you have an outlet and you are a hobby if you will uh because i think that's really important for for us is is any professional whether it be it or not that you got to find a way to get away um and that's something that i don't think i do well i don't i can't really rattle off an actual true hobby that i have other than uh lifting 12-ounce cans near my face but so i i applaud you for that and that's awesome and keep doing it wait have you seen the pictures what uh let's just say there's a ponytail involved and you you you want to talk about shredding here's what's gonna happen i'm gonna speak for him the day this gets released he's gonna he's gonna tweet a picture please promise me you'll do that andy just one picture just one picture of please of you know what you're talking about of you being a rock star sure yes thank you so much you guys are thank me later folks tim i have i have a demo i did with a band in the 90s that i'm still too embarrassed to share with anybody including this panel because i've heard well i've heard aaron's stuff and it's much well it's much better and more well produced than mine so i refuse to put my crap out there and have people be like wow dude that really sucks but you haven't heard the the the countless four track recordings from my garage with the one microphone hanging in the middle you know what i mean like it's kind of like the cert thing it's like the tip of the iceberg right i think i think you gotta have a hobby tim for at the very least mental health i just happen to over the years i have a half a dozen hobbies that i would love to spend more time in i love to fish i love photography i love the cycle i love playing music and i just have so i have very little time as you know you you have family kids career podcasters i i haven't touched the guitar you know in in a couple of weeks but um yeah hobbies are a lifesaver sometimes you know it's very it's very healthy tim you don't have any hobbies i told you the 12 hours i will say no technically yeah so i uh high school into college i did i played rugby so i did have that um see there you go but yeah since then i i stay fairly focused on work and lately um studying i mean i'm i'm putting in i try to put in close to two hours a day six days a week that's impressive yeah so i went another pitfall when do you do that morning night so so another pitfall from 2020 was that i forced myself to do it at night after i had a full day of work and i i wasn't in the right frame of mind it wasn't working for me so there was there was one time just by chance i wasn't going to get a chance to study that evening so i said well how about i try this i will uh go to bed right now it was early and i'll get up at 5. so i i've been on a pretty good string of monday through saturday unless i have some overnight maintenance with work i won't push myself too hard but i i'm usually getting close to five to six days a week i go from five a.m to i try to get as close to like 7 15 as possible and then start my day and then i'm actually by doing that i'm actually spending more time in the evenings like with my wife and and hanging out than i was when i was being miserable at night staying up late and and doing studying so it works out it sucks getting up in the morning are you a morning person like is your brain working at five in the morning it it is more than it is at 10 o'clock at night right right right yeah because that's what i've been doing at night time i'm up to like midnight most nights trying to stay and i'm not knocking it brother now you got to do what whatever it works it's a fool's errand i'm exhausted i'm not retaining stuff i'm praying that the flash cards will work someday when i cause i'm just so tired at night you know so maybe i'll start getting up at five see i think that's something i'm gonna have to try because i i mean i'm a night owl anyways but i i feel like i'm gonna have to try doing that like just go to bed super early and get up supe or yeah go to bed early and then get up early uh and try doing some studying and whatnot because i don't know just sometimes it just doesn't yeah i'm just i'm i'm beat by that time right right after work you're burning and i'm after kids and everything it's definitely and i'm going to go old-school andy on you so like i'm not going to say i'm not going to say how do you do it but so work gets in the way like i had a maintenance last night i was up till 12 30. i have a maintenance tonight when we get off here i'll be up till midnight i don't think i can get five hours of sleep and function tomorrow six maybe so like how much sleep do you need tonight what time are you going to bed because for me i'm gonna have to make a sacrifice at night going to bed a little earlier so that i can hit that 5 a.m what are your sleep needs what's your kind of when do you go to bed so at a high level what i'll start with is is what i've been saying a lot lately is you got to start with what's important to you in life and you will that's one thing that i've made a habit of not saying is i will not say anymore that i don't have time for something because if something's important to you you'll make the time so i'll ch i'll cheat it right i'll say well i don't want to dedicate the time to that so i'm not going to do that but as far as sleep goes um i try to get as close to seven hours a night um i usually i've been doing the fitbit thing so i usually range in between 6 forty-five and seven hours a night so ten so i go to bed it's before that yeah i'm usually in bed by nine thirty and i'm up at five wow good for you yeah yeah i might have to try that yeah you just gotta find what works for you it might be in the morning it might be night it might be middle of the day you just you got to find what's important to you and uh and if you have a couple maintenances at night do you not study the next day in the morning correct right correct but you'll study sometime that day maybe later at night yeah because i find when i every time i get on a study roll work will get busy i'll be up nights and then i'm just whacked and yeah a week or two goes by and then i'm like oh yeah hell i gotta study again so and i'm not trying to offer as an excuse but i think you got the key to getting you know sleep at ten get up at five hit the books i'd like to do that but i'm gonna be up till midnight tonight working so i got to figure that out personally but this isn't about me tim this is your episode so no i think i think you bring up a good point though because the we know that you you always ask people because you're trying to get like the secret sauce like how what what is successful for you i think like through through our episodes of you asking that question what we've uncovered is like people that know themselves the best seems seem to be the best at it so like they wake up early because they're a morning person and then they get after it right like i can't listen to those navy seal dudes telling me to get up at 4 30 and puke in a trash again i'm like i'm good bro i'm not i'm not doing i might stay up till 4 30. you know what i mean like that's i i i don't function like but i know that about myself just like you do andy and and so yeah you just got to find time and and i think you're dead on tim with the if it's important right you will find a time to do it so tim give us please if you will since you were so eloquent with us and gave us all these amazing questions please give us your closing thoughts put a bow on this bad boy for us tell us what's one thing you want to leave the world with at the end of this episode i want to talk about community for a minute okay so community to me doesn't have to be a physical thing right uh community in my mind is a is a grouping of like-minded people that are taking care of each other they're helping each other they're just being generally cool to each other and again this is this is a message directed at the listeners of the show the four hosts of this podcast have created exactly that uh they have brought together this incredible grouping of people in the uh using the discord community it's all about the journey that server as the platform but you guys have brought all these people together and not only that but you're taking it a step further and this is going to sound corny as hell but i wholeheartedly believe it you guys are changing people's lives you are you've created this platform and you're providing people tools you're working with companies to to do giveaways i mean andy that this is the perfect example you gifted a home lab to somebody that because of the pandemic had to completely uproot their life what you guys are doing is so cool and i i i thank you and i don't have the authority to do this but on the behalf of the community i thank you and i i do it all the time it's okay yeah i haven't been sued yet and i also i also congratulate you guys because the things that you've accomplished and what i'll say is a relatively short period of time i mean was this thing even a thought a year ago no no i know i mean maybe it started up in like july yep so that's incredible so congratulations guys uh i am i'm happy to have met you guys and be part of this likewise dude like look it's a summer it's the sum of its parts i mean we appreciate the sentiment but like like we're nothing without you either so really you know it's like there's no brain here right we're we're all just acting together we're like we're just an awesome beehive yeah it's a teamwork thing what's uh like there's no leaders nobody's in charge like we're all just together getting it done helping each other it's kind of unique i don't know if i've been involved in something like this before yeah yeah what's what's that phrase that aj's always saying people uh people in glass houses sink ships i know that's not it it does it's got something to do with the right though there we go horizon yeah it's one of those tongue twisters something with water seriously guys thank you so much that is incredible we appreciate you dude no no trust us we you are you're we're we're you are why we all do this again like it's it's nothing without you and the other folks and and i think that i hope or at least i hope when people hear this now maybe they can approach you or us and you know maybe kind of try doing the blog thing or let tim write about you or you know try just try it out maybe you never know basically all i'm going to say but tim it's been an absolute pleasure man we appreciate you more than you can ever imagine i know that you know that we all hope too for the community including yourself that at some point we'll all be able to see each other in in real life oh yeah what what a concept right you know um so many habs i have to give so many hugs aj has to give that we're all looking extremely forward to we won't make him dress like santa claus um so carl was talking about a maybe a potential meet up in asheville north carolina oh yeah that's that's right next door to me yeah yeah yeah yeah cool glad you left me out of that one uh okay an east coast meet up right there for those of us over here but yeah i mean eventually we'll all get together but but the point being we're together now we've been figuring it out we're all working from home anyway for the most part and if you're not you at least know how to get on the internet because your job entails that so we appreciate you getting on here sharing your wisdom lots of cool stuff dude thank you flash cards to have the plan like your story we again i know it's hard sometimes talk about yourself but we appreciate all of that so final words last and final what are you taking the encore yeah solidify it right now nope do it right now ability go pick a date pick a date no pressure all right pick a month pick a month tim andy do that thing where you say see ya no that's me oh it's aaron oh man i screwed it up no no but andy likes it when i do it i mean i've done it in his absence on episodes i love it okay where can we find you tim yeah where can we find you social medias where are you at i know you got a site what's your twitter handle let's hear it he said he's impossible to find let me tell you yeah i am um my my twitter handle is is very unique it's pretty cool it's uh tim burtino nice that's uh and uh rtino yes thank you and i blog at medication.com and uh i i try to write on artofnetworkengineering.com thank you for thank you again um we appreciate it uh thanks to those who listened if you haven't yet smash that bell icon like aj tells you to every time um if this was lucky enough to make it on video which i have a good feeling it's going to at this point please make sure you subscribe to our youtube channel as well and catch all of the latest podcasts as well as the notifications that a podcast is coming out every wednesday from the art of network engineering on behalf of all of us good evening see ya 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