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 and maybe i should say welcome to the art of cable guy engineering because this evening or this morning if you're listening bright and early it's just myself and you the friend you never knew you had andy laptop hello andy hello aaron so here's what happened uh no one really shares in our uh i don't know how do you put this like in our in our uh disdain or has mixed feelings about or uh how would you put that so like about being a kid yeah because it's like i'm good and a bad thing i'm salty that's awesome i'm sorry i mean if you get i'm not i'm not okay so good we've got two sides of the fence here uh we thought it would be very beneficial to explain to everyone out there because i think this is you always see the tip of the iceberg right where like two guys talking about being network engineers uh i'm not special so if you thought that for whatever crazy reason uh please let that thought exit your mind immediately uh andy i'll speak for him he's not special either in fact i have a very i okay well i think you're special um but we have a very similar path because uh we were both cable guys at one point which i i don't think it's a typical route and the reason why i say that is because i know the people that i worked with at the time and i like i know where they kind of ended up and and to be honest with you most of them didn't really last in the job for more than six months to a year right would you say that's like a typical thing uh you know believe it or not where i was working there's people there really long time and they're still there okay so so that's the opposite so i will say that there are what i call lifers there and talking about dude i worked with a guy this is gonna be the craziest thing you've ever heard i worked with a guy he'd been there since before i was born okay so he's already been working on cable longer than i've been alive his initials were tv come on that's awesome he was born to be a cable guy he was boy he was born to be okay okay but if you think about where he started in his career and how it progressed like we weren't doing voip internet digital cable like he was doing 50 amp cascades you know and chasing down you know channel five right i'm not gonna bore anybody with that kind of garbage thing yeah the the the point i think that that we want to kind of bring to light i guess is the best way to put it is look it depends on who you are as to how you deal with the situation i personally thought it was great andy did not but the one thing we could both agree on i think is that it did get us to where we are now in spite of all of those things right and i want to i'm hammering this because i know there's not a lot of cable folks out there and in fact there's been some cable folks that have reached out to andy and i directly in regards to this because you know they felt the same too and they probably felt like they were alone as well but it's strange we beat up the help desk so much because that's the entry level position but i'm here to tell you jack there's other ways to do it and i will say this the most beneficial thing that i got from working as a cable guy as crappy as it was you know you're running wires and doing all these things is i got layer one experience that and i had a little bit before that like i was the guy that just put connectors on cat5 that was just my job right and then i moved up to fiber oh but like i have all these different like hands-on physical experiences now most of them may or may not have been when it's like between zero and 10 degrees outside while i'm learning all these experiences okay well you know it comes with the territory right or in the right paint or thirty or in there in the rain on a pole try not to get electrocuted oh gosh and it's the cold and your hands are like bumping into it so i i gotta i gotta wonder like what possessed you to apply at the cable company um so this is a good episode because it'll be your piggyback off of the dirty jobs yeah yeah and and the crux of that was really hey here's all the jobs we had and it kind of got us to where we are so um i worked as a frame attendant for verizon just running lines for circus oh that's right yeah so yeah that was kind of like my first technical job but it was a temp job it was a summer hire and it turned into like a year's worth of work but at the end they couldn't keep me because it was a temp job so um i a few months before i knew that was ending i'm like well you know i wanted to work for verizon because they paid their people better than comcast of course yeah i just couldn't get you know they weren't hiring at the time union stuff whatever was happening so i i applied to comcast i'm like you know what i like this work it was kind of my first foray into it like all right this is cool and i think i can blah blah um but comcast took a long time to get back to me so i was actually cleaning grease traps and unclogging clogged urinals at restaurants before comcast called me as i was waiting to hear them so it was a step up you know when i say i'm salty and i want to talk trash i mean i'm i'm half jokingly saying that but right right i needed a job i really loved what i learned in tech and verizon so to be able to work at a company as big as comcast and the fact that they were going to teach me i mean you know we spent months in class full-time five days a week being taught and paid like yeah in the field out of field in the field learning out of the field in the field shadowing going on your own job like that or a company invested in me like that so nope yeah so but that's why i applied because i i like tech and verizon wouldn't hire me on full time and and comcast was hiring you know so how about you uh why did you apply dude everybody's gonna think i'm bananas but i wanted to work at the cable company since i was 18 years old okay okay so i graduated high school in uh the year 2000 cue the little conan o'brien uh yeah gosh are we gonna get in trouble if me just if me i don't know copyright he doesn't i would love to have conan mad at us that'd be cool actually me too but i also just like dated both of us by doing that so but anyway so i graduated high school and uh this is the craziest thing too it's like my dad bought a cable modem i can't figure out why because he's not like a technologically advanced type of dude like let me just tell y'all i gotta call this guy to to help him with the dvr to this day like i was facetiming with the dude and he was on mute for like 10 minutes straight trying to talk to me and all i could see was his lips moving i'm just trying i'm just trying to put that out there so you can get a better feel of who this guy is so we get a cable modem you know mind you it's 128 down right uh but still that was the uh silver package at the time right yeah yeah heck yeah but this i had gotten it right before we graduated so this was like 1999 so you got to think docsis had just came out and i was like in high school and i'm learning and i've always felt like this so if you're around our age like basically anybody that's under like what i would call like the baby boomer era we've been growing up in the weirdest time like technology just period is the same age as you right and keep that in mind because it's still super young right now so so if you think that it's too late to get into you are absolutely wrong it's still a baby like just think about this still a baby now is the time to do it anyway soapbox um so i wanted to work there because i thought it was so cool that um i was really into like video games i'm like wow this is cool like my internet is like so fast how the heck does this work like i have to know and i you know it's magic exactly right it's magical it's basically i still think that right right but but to get to learn the magic it's like that's what i wanted that's exactly what i wanted like i don't understand how people figured it out like it's hard enough expanding it like who created this out of the i don't know i don't know i think it was the aliens but anyway hey no i'm not gonna disagree why only because i don't have an answer so quick tangent why do people go to cable modems when they had t-ones because it was cheaper because t-ones were oh yeah right oh yeah they they were very expensive thousands and thousands so just to give you an example so i i uh at the time i was playing video games uh professionally uh basically so i was getting paid and we had a gaming center those are kind of like rest in peace at this point but we had a gaming center that we always used to go to and they had a partial t1 and it was just a half t1 um which is very very slow like a t1 is 1.566 megs for those of you out there so we're talking like 800k this thing was thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for 800k andy like we're not even talking a meg right but it was everybody was in there was sharing it it was fast as heck but it was the fastest thing at the time right it's all relative but when the cable modems came out they were super cheap blew it out blew it out of the water yeah so once it wasn't this yeah it was doxus is what everybody was waiting for right so if you don't know what that is docsis is the the uh the specification that says hey this is how you carry information like data over a cable system it's pretty it's very complicated but the idea is simple you know hey we already got cables here so why not use uh the bandwidth's already readily available all we need is the technology to do it um which is the exact same reason why the cables that have been in your house the last 30 years are probably the still ones that are there and they're functioning just fine at a gig speed as they were at you know two meg in in 2000 so you probably needed to be rewired so can we do a very brief history lesson and tell people why comcast even exists do you remember because you used to teach the stuff it wasn't about the people in the charter so i did charter yeah yeah i did it at charter so so check this out so so it's so it's cool because yeah you're exactly right so there was uh a broadcast right so from a tv station all the cities had this it's just and they still do every like channel two four or five your abc's your nbc's your foxes out there they uh they broadcast now if you are in a geographical area that is like let's say out of range or lower or higher then let's say the frequency could travel like just think in your head like wi-fi or cellular signal right if i get out of that range i'm not going to be able to get anymore so the problem was there was too many people that were outside of that little range so some guy i forget his name some guy like a tower yeah some genius genius wait a minute i'm going to run wires to all those houses yes yeah so he's like why not just warn the wire from the thing to the house and so he gets his own tower right and he receives the signal he takes the received signal and and pumps it via a wire to the houses here we go here's a cable system correct i mean yes that alone is genius right and and now here we are with voip and all these other things that's nuts so your dad got the cable modem and you're like wait a minute i got the camera i had to i had to figure it out man i was like i got i got to do this i gotta do it so i did you know he couldn't figure it out so somebody had to right well he wasn't gonna he wasn't gonna tell me yeah certainly there wasn't a thing back then where you could just be like google it so they were like how old were you when that's escaping like i like high school so i didn't no i didn't get that job until i was 23 because but when did you get that like when did you get that like oh my god i gotta do this i was like 18 or so 17. yeah i graduated when i was 17. so i was like 17. so around the time you'd be making kind of a life decision of uh what do i want to do right you could get a cable and then you're like how do i do this okay i make something charter they would not hire me and it was crazy i come to find out that the shop i was applying at was a was like the only union shop in charter at the time so that's why right and then i was never gonna get in all those guys had been there forever so anyway i i eventually got the job but once i got it i treated it like such a prize because i had i basically coveted it though like your story is so much different than mine because i like and i'm probably the only person on this planet that wanted to be the cable guy right we we talk about this all the time like hey what's your first step i got all these certs i got a college degree i got nothing i got whatever where am i gonna go who's gonna hire me i'm gonna tell you right now the cable company is gonna hire you friend right look no further and if you think that it won't get you to where you need to be then we're living proof of that yeah and and i i'm not alone you're not alone like i said those people have reached out to us before i'm just throwing it out there as a like a suggestion you know if if you think that there's no other alternative and we we often talk talk about like the two different paths i'm just here to say that like i had a really good experience it taught me a lot of things if not anything how to manage my time by myself it'd be autonomous um you know i learned the city like the back of my hand you know um i got to meet a ton of cool people like i mean you're interacting with people all day every day and this is me working at businesses and residential um maybe i could go on and on and on it was it was a great job don't get me wrong but i think part of the reason why i always felt like oh man i'm a cable guy is because and again we talked about this in the last episode i think but my mom could have got me a job at bell telephone when i was 18 graduating college is a lineman starting at 50 grand a year oh man yeah and that's money at 18. and i said no yeah because i got to go to college because all my life people been telling me how smart i am and how important it is to go to college because nobody in my family had ever gone to college and i was going to be the one so i went to college now you know it was not a great years later i wind up being a cable guy but all the time i think in the back of my head i'm like you know i could have done this ten years ago at bell yeah and i did got it over here i am you know i'm 30 doing it i could have been 18. so it was more just i think my own decisions in life on why didn't i do this earlier why didn't i do what you did right like why didn't i get out of high school and get a good job at the telco so it was a great experience everything you just said though like the time management the tech the people like yeah it was it was such a good job and everybody does say where to start and help desk due to cable guy would be would be a great spot you know here's what here's why i'm going to suggest it i'm just going to give a few little pointers because if you're thinking that i don't want to climb a telephone pole look no one does okay you got to do the things other people don't want to do right like that you do that you do do you want to carry a ladder through three feet of snow to the to the pole uh let's just say that if you try to tell someone you went back there and there's no footprints you're gonna get in trouble we've all been guilty of that um so so the some of the cool things that you're gonna like come to learn a how isps work and how cable modems deliver signal from the head end i mean that's invaluable information imagine now going to a knock or or like your job like you're you're basically like in charge of like when like before when you're in charge of win right it's like okay so now like let's say you you run the wan for uh pizza hut right i've got 60 000 pizza huts out there and i've got a cable modem at each one of those and but you know how it's delivered and you understand those things right yeah so peop most folks are out of touch when that comes like that because you know you could say stuff like oh no that i know i was getting like a gig upload on my on my cable modem i'm like well no that's impossible right it's because you know you know how that like how it works because you know how the technology works so basically any knowledge you get it's not going to hurt you unless you unless you want it to um and i just remembered as you're talking the first data center i was in was it was a cable head-end yeah it was at work so you know there was they needed me to go down and check something and i was like whoa yeah i've never been in a data center like what is this stuff like i wouldn't have had that experience if i wasn't a cable guy right like yeah nobody was inviting me into data centers no but then i got that job and i got to i'm like whoa you get exposed to that right you can expose all that you do technology and experience and time management there's so many transferable skills that you can use folks like in other words folks check this out th this is this is crazy because they should be paying cable guys three times what they did that's why i was salty that you know yeah yeah because the verizon guys were making double what we were making and i used to think like wow all right i'd be happy making six figures doing this job you know right it's not no no that's not the case but free cable hey hey we also got to dig ditches um i mean yeah no it doesn't come out without as cons by any means but i would say that the pros definitely out outweigh those because i think about all the times like okay so i at one point like uh upgraded myself i guess we'll say is like because uh at the time charter business had just came out so it's like 2006 charter business just came out they're like hey we're going to start serving businesses because we can because it's the same technology and i was like i'll do that so i got to go to businesses and troubleshoot on-prem why they were losing connectivity i'm talking wireless devices it's like the freaking dentist office and then two hours later uh i'm at the sporting goods place and then two hours after that i'm at mcdonald's helping them with their wi-fi and then three hours after that i'm on call in the middle of night and i'm getting a call from our friends over at pizza hut that i just mentioned and then sometimes you get to interface with their network guy uh-huh that's that was pretty cool yep yeah hey dude i used to do this thing this is so funny so i i everybody's gonna laugh at me for this but it's just humble beginnings y'all all right back off i was i was young i was young okay i thought i was hot stuff uh what do you mean you still think you're out it's part of your charm man fair fair um so so i thought i was hot stuff so uh i would call in and um i would get like their sl so you could order a slash 30 right like that would be your usable public ip space right from from the business section so you'd be paying like 15 bucks a month and you get a slash 30 or you could get a slash 29 and i would always pride myself because the way we would do the numbering schemes is we would always have to one of the ips in a slash 30 would always get chewed up for the gateway right so it'd be the gateway of your of your modem your modem's ip address would be the one ip so so you were left with one so slash already had one ipad i always prided myself on knowing what the ip they would tell me the gateway and i would know the plus one all right add one to the gateway nailed it okay okay but that's that impresses the hell out of your friends that you're working with like damn how'd he do that i'm like oh that's a slash 30. they would be like oh someone i'm like that's i had no idea what i was talking about dude zero zero it's comical but it's like that's just it goes to show you like how little like i was being taught at the time about that but also like the time period it was in i because i just want to make sure that that everybody knows like if you get this job like you'll be troubleshooting wi-fi like i'm talking like hey the baby monitor is going off or you know there's a microwave or something and stuff like this happens right people are trying to work from home and all this stuff goes wrong i mean you'll learn so much you get to solve problems technical problems every day so every day there was a there was a guy who his his wireless went out every time his phone rang now i don't have me i don't have to tell you what the problem was but here's the interesting part 10 techs were at his house before me yep and nobody figured it out and and andy you get to that point where it's like now because of the class like an instructor like you right you were a teacher at one point i mean they teach you that stuff and yeah uh wireless phones and the 2.4 gig you know they're in the same band and if they happen to be on the same frequency and channel but yeah so because of that training and blah blah blah i tested it and i'm watching his modem and i call for my phone to his house and as soon as this phone rings i watch the modem drop duh but but that was so like i got it you know it was so cool i'm helping them and and 10 guys missed it 10 guys that's so crazy so you're solving problems every day you're solving puzzles you're doing things you know it's i i think people in our field are people that want to be in our field they kind of like that solving problems figuring out how stuff works and you get to do that all day at this job which is really cool and you sharpen those skills you got because you're doing it over and over again right like yeah i don't i mean don't you think that there's like a certain um this is like fresh on my mind because i just took one of those uh little personality test things you know where it's like the the letters or whatever it gives you were you a sociopath i'll say oh dude what come on yeah okay some of my females no but but i was thinking to myself like like do you think that there's like uh a standard type of person that finds themselves wanting to be like in this field because there's there's a lot more stuff nowadays that that we are that we're connected to like like technology wise cell phones you know i mean iot everything is i mean your freaking thermostat is connected to the internet right so like there's so much more stuff that you're overexposed you're almost like i mean i basically am in tech anyway right because you're just saturated so like like it i guess maybe like what is the what is the the kicker i mean do you think it's like we all just like to like like to troubleshoot or we all just can't take no for an answer or we're all just curious like what is it think it's probably gonna be if you have to kneel it down if you just had to nail it down like this is it i think it's a couple we all haven't come i can tell you that i was the only kid in my family that could program again i'm going to date myself here but programming vcr recording same nobody could figure it out and i was like the family genius that's why they all thought i was so smart and should go to college because i could program a vc they didn't realize that was a buffoon i could just but wait a minute i can wait a minute this comes yeah this comes full circle though because you become the cable guy and voila we come out with something called the dvr and now you're programming everywhere but i can tell you that yeah as a kid years before i i liked figuring that stuff out my stepdad had a reel to reel again dating myself through those old school music things and playing music yeah and it wasn't working and broke and he let me take it apart and try to figure it out and i almost killed myself electrocuting myself but i think i got it working but you know there was i always had that tactile like oh i want to figure out how stuff works so i mean that job is perfect for somebody like that i think that that comes with curiosity you're not going to take stuff apart or figure out how to program something if you're not curious about it so to me i think curiosity is is key i mean i don't know i think it's almost as is as important as hustle like if you work hard and you're curious you can really succeed at what you're doing but it's hard to nail down that specific you know per personality type i mean i think anybody can do the job we had there was a title there was a type but i mean there was also women as an example and it's a hard physical job and we had a woman in our shop and she was good we had a ton she was carrying an 80-pound ladder and there's 80 pound cable reels and up in the attic no problem yeah so you know you don't just have to be this dude or a meathead or a guy who likes to take things apart like if if you need a job and you like technical stuff and like me you can't hack computer science classes in college it's it's another path into tech and and like we were talking about before it's once you're in that big company i mean think of the services they that they provide so once your foot's in the door and if you work hard and you can hustle and network and try to and that's what happened for me right i got my ccna and got my foot in the knock i would not be a network engineer today if i wasn't a cable guy there's no other way i would have gotten here because i couldn't hack it you know maybe in some alternate universe somebody would tell me about help desk and i would get an a plus and go that route but i doubt it you know i doubt it too i didn't know what a network engineer i just wouldn't have no i yeah i didn't either there weren't any of my family i didn't know but because it was a cable guy we were putting devices on networks we were testing the network we were you know we'd have to call in and have them check stuff and like you get exposed like oh wait a minute and i remember reading articles too like every year whatever they'd say like the average home has you know five network devices and every year it doubles and i just remember seeing the exponential growth of networking like wow this could be a thing right like how do i and then one of the lyman had his ccna and he was telling me like dude you should look into because he saw me i was always asking questions and i you know i was always bothering them and none of it would have happened if it wasn't a cable that was such a great environment so i i don't mean to pooh-pooh it when we talk about it but um it was really good experience overall yeah i think you know just in general i i i obviously would recommend it because i had a different experience but there you opened up a whole another part of it we've talked about this on previous episodes like i always use the the term total compensation like let's just call it what it is you get free cable yeah folks okay it's like 300 if you like the services yeah i mean if you like that yeah i don't know if they still do that i assume they do but if they do there you go there's a nice batteries free cable huge benefits you got vacation i mean uh tuition reimbursement yeah you could go to college you could go like yeah i think a lot of employers now are doing um not just uh college reimbursement but certificate program reimbursement they have that so they had that tiered system too or they actually pushed you to learn more so that you can get to the next tier and make more money exactly like the ct you know right four or five and so yeah it's even in the culture to learn more and progress and continuously improve right because i mean they want to hire from within right they you know they want to they want someone who's been in the field to be a leader of people in the field and then they also want someone that was in the field that could sit in a knock and actually visualize what exactly is happening because you and i can do that we can think about like you're like oh no no this is uh i don't know where this trench i'm like oh that i know that trench it's it floods all the time anyway right like yeah or i know that i know that manhole it floods you know it's just like you know certain things about certain you know what's funny you said about being like the expert at the physical layer and as you know we've talked about people love to beat me up on our home labs aren't helpful aren't worthless i'm a dinosaur stop telling people to do that so i mean to be fair you are a dynamic i know i'm a t-rex i'm a t-rex bro it's the arms just just a couple weeks ago i mean here's why i think being an expert at the physical layer will serve you when you climb up the osi stack up the preach well so i we had to i had to get an fpc a card replaced in a juniper chassis at work and the the dc ops person couldn't get it out she she couldn't figure out how to unlock that now i have never done that in my life i've never physically but i spent five years in the field working with physical stuff so now i'm trying to get in her head and what she's saying i'm pulling up the schematic online so i can see it and i'm asking her okay do you see this thing and but i think if you've been in the field and you've worked at the physical layer you can almost get into somebody's head my dc ops remote person i was able to walk her through it she couldn't get it out and i walked her through it and and she got it down now that's her job she's my ops person she's the physical layer expert and she had a problem but beca i could tell you i work with people that just would have sat back and be like i don't know man she can't do it oh yes a field guy a field guy like yo give me a hammer come on let's we'll get it open you know what i mean like i know yeah because it's like it's got to get done i think that's a can-do attitude and you know you can do it together i love that yeah i i felt like at that point you know when i left there that also that everything was gonna be easier after that because like all the bad stuff that we haven't talked about you know i say bad stuff but it's really just uh being a human it's you gotta deal with the elements um you're outside look folks tons of people work outside there's nothing wrong with it you aren't any less of a person because you do so working outside is like i hate how there's like a stigma behind working outside and it's like oh do you want to dig ditches well guess what i dig dig ditches and i dug a ton of them and guess what they were the prettiest ditches you've ever seen when the weather because i love being outside like six months out of the year i love love love working inside early morning sunrise it's a beautiful day beautiful when i'm sitting at my desk eight nine ten hours a day here i yearn for the days i mean grace is a screener i guess but i i i'm with you i love working outside not so much all the digging and climbing and danger and and stuff but working outside is to me just where it's at yeah and we all i think people too i always hear folks are always like oh i'm like a hands-on learner or you know you mentioned earlier like you're like i'm very tactile um then that is your spot let me tell you folks yeah like like even if you just did it for a little bit you know like just to be like okay well that's not for me right but you know i guarantee you you're gonna learn something even if you just go through training you're gonna learn something the the one thing too is that there's so many people that go in there and like i'm saying that my experience was the people just didn't really last because i just didn't think they they liked it right they didn't get it and and when you get good at something it gets really easy right like so once you learn how frequencies behave and and how things affect them and how attenuation works and things like that it's like the sky's the limit you now can solve science right like you're you're a freaking scientist like i may look at the time i look i'm like i have tattoos i'm a questionable looking dude at times i get i get it okay and i i worked in downtown st louis and i kind of a sketchier area for as crime rates go um and look i i'm not immune to to being harassed or even being stood up like like give me your money type stuff yeah that stuff happens man um but you know what i i still wouldn't trade it because i learned from all that like to me that's customer service you were really i was just getting your money you know how you hear it all the time like how soft skills are so important yeah and all these network and you know like they they always want you to be able to have soft skills and be able to work on a team nobody wants the super smart guy with all this certs who's a tool oh agreed like agreed so working with seven eight customers a day every day for years as a cable guy you get really good at i mean you're not going to last long if you're giving every customer a hard time and they're calling and complaining about you right like so i i it really really honed my soft skills and you know dealing with irate people and oh yeah it's it's very high rates yeah gosh let me tell you something i'd be irate folks 10 people came in saying i can't fix my internet like come on guys you know what i mean i'd be pissed and i'd empathize with them i i would too like and anytime somebody yelled at me i completely empathized like i never yelled back i i got it i was like i would be so heated right now too like now i wouldn't be yelling at me um but like yeah that's that's a big deal like that's happened quite a few times to me it's like yeah every time i mean that's happened to me and it wasn't justified and it's actually happened to me before and i was a little weirded out because i was like what is going on here um it caught me off guard almost like i was being punked yeah remember that show punk i thought i thought that was happening to me i was like oh what's going on here um but yeah i mean like soft skills think about this you're talking to you're trying to help an old lady like figure out how to program a show on a dvr there's poor like you might you might you might think i'm not trying to pick on old ladies but you might think that like that is like like who would want to do that but like let me just tell you when you can get her to figure out how to click on lifetime and record that movie and the light bulb goes off you might as well be teaching someone um what ospf areas are right and then watching their light bulb it's the same thing yeah i mean it really is but to your point you know you're talking to all walks of life and you're going into their house it's one of the strangest things that you'll ever do you go into someone's house you're standing in their living room in their safe spot in their zone with all their stuff and you're supposed to just like play it cool right because look folks don't expose yourself right now but some of y'all have some weird stuff in your house like and and i know who you are and you're not hiding okay you got some weird stuff okay you're not normal you got some weird stuff are we going to tell any embarrassing cable guy stories or is that go for it bro if you got one go for it because because i have several yeah i don't know if i want to go no by all means uh i guess we could like i guess we could cut it out if it doesn't look look i've screwed some stuff up in the past like i'll tell you a story that we that we used to tell all the time i don't know if it's true or not but it was like almost like an old wives tale that got just like passed down through the cable guy generations and this is uh i hope pete is not listening it's not the intent of this but no no so here's what happened so basically the point of the story is that you're not supposed to do any work on somebody's house if they're not home i mean that makes sense right like hey can i do this can i do that plus i'm not responsible for anything you got going on in your house because something breaks i don't want to be responsible for that so what happened is customer leaves this happened to you all the time you still broke the rules i did it all the time they'd be like hey i'm just gonna run the store i'll be back in like 10 minutes you're like you know you're on the ladder like running the drop you're like uh okay you know i guess i'll stay but um so apparently a guy is going to drill from the outside in into the house very typical thing so he goes inside you know checks out where he's going to do it it's the type of siding where you go from the outside in sometimes you go inside out just depends so he goes from the outside in and he's drilling and he can't break through finally gets through pulls his drill bit out and it's covered in blood oh no yeah so this is not the problem this is why it's weird this is not the problem so here's what here's what actually happened so this cat was obviously in the house the cat was in heat right so it's like trying to mate and when the cat was in heat it heard the vibrations felt it went over to the wall and pushed up against the wall so so the dude drills into the cat right it goes inside story does this have a happy ending absolutely not so does it sound like it does my story was just i used somebody's bathroom without asking dude you went to the darkness come on man come on i used to do it all the time no so so he goes in sees the cat oh what okay the first thing you should probably do in this scenario is wait for the owner to get home be like hey i killed fluffy i'm sorry here's the problem the dude put it under the couch and left oh no yeah wow so the biggest problem is that they didn't find out until it started smelling and they were like what the heck and yeah lo and behold dead cat under the couch so no no happy ending but the point of the story is a if you're a person don't leave the cable guy there alone yeah that's for sure b if you're the cable guy don't do anything without the owner there you've been warned oh my god so yeah that now again i don't know if that's true or not and because again the mo the moral of the story is is is like don't do stuff when somebody's not there which was this just something they told you guys to scare you so that you didn't work in empty houses probably i hope so i feel bad for the kids i do too because guess what i still did it i still worked in houses no i didn't kill any cats but like i mean you used to see some weird stuff right i mean like that's part of the job i think that was cool i thought that was the cool part about it it's like same with like help desks like you know they we there's all these shows online on tv that's like emergency 9-1-1 remember all those shows they still do them it's like it's just reality tv of of like people at work it's a weirdest thing to me i never understood that like we we work all day and then we come home and we turn on our tv to watch other people work it's like like if you get on the discovery channel it's like nothing but guys like chopping down trees and ticking holes who wants to watch that what what are you doing you're watching this guy sweat his ass off is that fun for you like you you had your office job you just sat there drinking lattes all day and you go sit on the couch and watch some dude some lumberjack chop down trees and almost lose a limb at your expense just so you just so you can laugh at it like come on man here's something people don't think about you're you're you're working on the road nine hours a day right yeah where do you go to the bathroom you're drinking coffee all day so so here here's my very quick story that we might cut because it might not be any good but as you were talking about working in the badlands i was working on the main line out here where all the executives lived like steve burke the nbc like oh god yeah i've been in his house right so i was out with wow just it's just the system i was in no you know so i'm in this god knows 10 20 50 million dollar house i have no idea but you know i'm running my route and i'm there it's i i worked in the places where you would knock on the door and the servants would answer there'd be like oh yeah yeah there'd be like a staff of four or five people there just something they're cooking some people are cleaning some people are like working on the pool or whatever so anyway i get there and there's nobody to talk to and they're just like oh yeah thing doesn't work and you know which is tough right because you're there and you'd like the customers having the problem to walk you and show you and like right like what exactly is going on because you're trying to diagnose i just got something on my ticket on my card i gotta go check it out so i'm like you know i'm 20 minutes into the job and man my stomach starts rumbling i'm like ooh like like hold on hold on were you just sitting there and it just went you know there's like there was like some gurgling man and it wasn't like you know it was like dude are you okay well yeah so i'm by myself in this gigantic mansion all the servants are i shouldn't say servants of people working there are doing what they do and i'm in some wing of the house working on whatever i'm working on and the gurgle happens that's like dude i got 30 seconds to get somewhere you know what i mean like i'm sticking a bad gurgle now i got a choice i can go find all these people who work there and ask if i can use their bathroom which is what you're supposed to do but i i got the time bro like it's but also but also it's happening you're supposed to ask if you can use the bathroom but like what they really mean is like for number one well you know exactly they're not talking about you just going just dropping like it's assumed it's number one right like when somebody's working in your house you don't you hope that they took care number two before they showed up at your ass but i've been drinking coffee all morning and maybe i ate tacos the night before i don't know but anyway here's where the story's going so tacos i just i'm panicked and i'm just looking like if i run into somebody i'll ask but as soon as i find the bathroom it's on so i'm down and i'm down in this ginormous mega basement of this mega mansion and i find a bathroom and i'm like thank you god so do what i got wait did you blow the spot you blew the spot out yeah you blew it up so i gotta flush the toilet and it's it's not flushing i'm like oh no no don't no no no no no no you have to pre-flush dude everyone knows that you got it dude i had 30 i had five seconds by the time i found the bathroom that's four that's fair i was gonna have to call a manager because it's an emergency it was emergency so so so now i'm like oh no now the whole time i'm waiting for somebody come looking for me because i've been gone a little while so now i got the back of the toilet off and i'm trying to do some plumbing and i see what's off and i turn it on and it fills up so then i flush it hold on you have the entire toilet disassembled at this point just the back like you're in the bathroom you're in the bathroom i just wanna i just wanna paint the picture here so the toilet bowl is full of your feces you've now dis you've now disassembled the entire toilet because it doesn't okay and you're in a full panic so like yeah so so you know we like to fix things right so now i'm fixing a toilet and and a very amount very well may have been a comcast executive's house we'll never know but so i finally get the toilet working i go to flush it guess what happens yeah clog it's clogged so so now there's a new panic yeah yeah you need a plunger right now it smells like worse than a dead cat there's there's a toilet full of awfulness and i can't get rid of it so so now i'm going through their garage and every closet i could find like there's got to be a plunger in this billion dollar house so anyway that's kind of the end of my story but i found the plunger i fixed it nobody caught me and thank god no one caught you fixed their internet guy out there but dude i had i that's first of all the reason why i think that story is so funny is because i when i was training like imagine this okay just describe that exact story that you just gave except i'm shadowing you and i just see you bolt off and then i come to find you and it's you just opening the door laughing because it's just wafting out because you just devastated you just devastated this bathroom and didn't tell anybody and and i was training and this dude this this guy was one of the funniest guys i saw you like he could have been a stand-up comic like he was so wild but like he came out of this bathroom and he goes there like just i mean like the neighbors come here right yeah this isn't a customer yes yes let's be very clear about this customer is upstairs and he is he just destroyed the bathroom and comes out like it was like the uh it was like a a skit on that uh original kings of comedy if you've ever seen that like you know with like uh steve harvey and all those guys it was just like like like a scene from that like it was so funny dude and i'm like i think i'm gonna like working here and so i get into training finally and they're like no matter what you do do not use a customer's bathroom and i'm thinking in my head like what are you kidding me this guy just went bananas in this bathroom on the watch like i wonder what he does when i'm not around there's only so many public bathrooms you can find on the road like look look i'm gonna embarrass myself right now because i feel like uh i feel like it's good to be a little vulnerable yeah i'll be honest okay i have had the quote-unquote bubble guts okay like what you just described the gurgle uh i don't know if it has an actual term uh i think it's called uh like uh-oh exactly oh god um but there was no bathroom oh so so here i am were you in the woods i was i was in an alley oh now i was i was putting my i had my i had my van parked in the alley so i was like blocking the alley and uh i was putting my ladder up on the pole and it hit me and i had 30 seconds okay okay look i love that this episode has devolved into the poop hold on hold on because what i'm gonna say what i'm gonna say i know exactly where they got the phrase when nature calls folks this is what happens when you get two cable guys together talking about their cable yeah it turns into poop but it's fun yeah look at all these stories we have right like like like look i had to go and i had to figure it out and let's just say that you might as well call me macgyver at this point because i got it i got it done i got it figured out but you want to use here's some even weirder stuff did you go in there so i did behind you i did i did i sure did and i lived to tell about it i am right here in front of you talking about it i'm still here uh first time i think i've told anybody that but here's what's here's what's scary about that like this story is actually scary the the closest bathroom to me was actually two blocks away it was at a gas station again a very very uh i'll call it a desolate part of town because if you've ever been to st louis it's kind of a weird city because the city itself has a lot of just empty city blocks and then they'll have like condemned buildings and they'll have like brand new houses and then it's just it's it's very space that it's weird how it looks like detroit's a very similar city um so the nearest place that was like somewhat habitable for me to go to was two blocks away as i was quote unquote doing the dirty i hear all these choppers like again not uncommon you know it's like the the it's the cops right the flower head tons of sirens so i leave there and i'm driving and it's blocked the whole all the streets are blocked so i'm like what the heck i get to the next spot and i'm like what's going on down the street the ladies like you didn't hear three guys shot a cop at the gas station oh damn the cop was going to the bathroom right where i would have been wow three guys shot this cop drove off i mean the cop died they drove off i don't know if they ever caught him or whatever but like like boom heart drop yeah like that because if i like it's an embarrassing story like me like defecating in the alley but like that was listen to me when i say like that's where i was gonna go yeah wow that bathroom that scares the hell out of me yeah it's that's intense right so so which is why i always forget about the first part of the story like aaron you were taking a crap in the alley but i'm but i'm like hey at least i didn't die okay you know what else i was just thinking too i'll try to pull us away from poop so another skill i learned there was sales because they had this program where i forget what we were upselling but like hbo yeah like well they had different things i guess right it was like hbo and then i don't know it might be like another set top box but whatever you know you get like 15 bucks for upsells there's a lot of money yeah like it added up you know and i'll tell you what dude i sold that i sold the heck out of those services that year or two when they when they enacted that program like hey yep that's that's you know let's let's bump it up so so it's strange you mentioned that because because look at sales okay so sales sales people always want to be in the best situation like how do i approach this person how do i do this how do i do how do i like cold call what's the best opening line you know like how do i warm up to somebody how do you how do you speak to that so what you just described is very very strange because you're going there and every time we showed up there was a problem because we don't go anywhere unless there's a problem so this is important because you went there the whole reason you were there is because something was wrong and you were there to fix it so they were unhappy exactly exactly what i'm getting at so they were they were like man so somehow at the end of the service call you're upselling i got them to spend more money you got it right this is genius it's not like you're extorting them it's not like you were like hey next time get uh cable maintenance remember that was like a plane you could buy for like 10 bucks a month if i came to your house yeah yeah yeah so it's like okay that's a whole nother thing like hey i could rewire your house or you could just pay this 10 bucks a month and then just get out you know but they were thrilled at the end of that sale they got hbo for half price for six months and they were they were thrilled they called pissed and i fixed their problem and then they got you know half price hbo for six months so and and then i got a couple bucks so there's just there seems to be an endless of skills that you can learn develop you know now you know as a cable guy i guess we shouldn't go on too long without saying so like you know i i think i've told my story enough times where you know cable guy ccna knock and then you know i got my job here so like how did you like where would you be if you hadn't been a cable guy do you think that it helped you get to where you were let's take that help desk analogy like this was our foray into tech dude how did you leverage it i don't know i don't know where i would be if like if i'm gonna play like the alternate universe path right like like it just just made you know i always talk about like the decision points in the day if i would have zigged when i wanted to zag just at one point like right there especially dude i do not know right because what happened to me when i got that job is i enjoyed it and i realized that you can be happy at work because up until that point i just had crap jobs like you know you guys were talking about on the last episode it's like we've all had those right so i just thought that that was the way it work it was right like you were 65 and you retired and you just deal with that crap for your whole life you know it is what it is right and and you can like that that's definitely a way to go i really don't know i i i'll be honest i i have very very rarely in my life ever had any sort of direction because the thought of having a direction scares the hell out of me so like when we were doing our goals episode and you know i always come on i'm like the dark horse or whatever well that's part of my personality number one but but number two like it's true i i don't really because i don't i don't get excited uh when i complete things i don't get happy when i complete things like i don't get like a sense of relief when i complete things i don't have any of that like that it just doesn't happen to me it's the human condition i think a little bit we're always striving for something and we get it and it's like that was it and then it's the yeah and it's the next thing right like we're constantly chasing something that doesn't fill whatever that is right so it's like if you just have a ccna or something like let's celebrate that like stop and stop and give yourself some gratitude if you're having a rough time like getting getting at the ccmp and it's just bogging you down just glance over at your ccna book i know it's sitting right next to you take a look at it don't open it just know that you read that whole thing and you got that certification and at one point you didn't know a single thing that was in that book right right and so maybe that's something you should think about before you go to bed i gotta see cna and at one point i did not and i wanted to be that guy or girl and i am now that guy or girl i can't believe how much i've learned since i was cleaning grease traps dude same like it just it exponential yeah it boggles my mind like you hit you hit it on the head and we'll probably talk about this in a different episode but like you know if you can be you grateful you will have a good life you you can have oh my god you can have a crappy job and be behind on your bills but if you're alive and you're not sick and you have loved ones and blah blah blah blah i know it sounds kind of like cheesy or sappy or whatever but it's not cheesy there's a problem i was a happy cable guy for a long time it was insane the best job i had had to date and i was making a good living and i was able to buy stuff and i was proud of you know of what i did you know what i mean it was i was helping people every day and i i took pride in that i loved that people couldn't solve stuff and i go out and find it and i give people my cell number because like there's people that were mad and i'm the 10th guy out i'm like listen you have my word i'm going to fix it and if i miss it you have my number give me a call i'll be back and that kind of seemed to but they're just all these little things that you learn you know like how am i how am i going to be good at this but gratitude i don't know you just said gratitude and you caught my attention no i did and honestly i i could i could go on for hours about gratitude because like i i'm guilty of it too right and look guys i'll here here's something that i want to explain to before i got that job at the cable company because they wouldn't hire me i was 20 i was 19 and 20. i wasn't even able to drink yet i was doing layer one type stuff so i was running cables in hospitals like uh cat5 cables because guess what folks at one point cat5 wasn't everywhere so i was like running these cables and at the time i was traveling i was only 19 and 20 and i was working with one other guy and he's very old-school cat um something that uh like toxic masculinity comes in to to play here and i think that's a huge problem because i'm guilty of it myself and uh basically i i i felt like i wasn't cutting it i was exhausted um i was working like 20 hours a day like i'm not joking 20. and that means all night and i'm climbing up and down this ladder on these cables and i was so exhausted and i thought basically that was my life and i was like this sucks and you know when all that kind of hits you like sometimes you just break and and i broke uh i went into a small corner of the hospital that and again this is gonna this is gonna date me um there was a bank of telephones pay phones there there's like three or four telephones there in a bank um that's what they call it folks okay they call it a telephone bank it's a bank of phones when there's more than one of them okay there's there's there's young listeners who don't know what a telephone is whipper snappers what do you mean an iphone is that what you mean you never dialed 10 10 3 2 1 have your mom come pick you up from detention okay so so i go to this like little dark corner of the hospital normally was there i pick up the telephone i call 1-800 collect the only phone number that i can remember which is my parents my mom answered and i cried for probably 15 minutes why no idea but what i will say it's okay to do that man i i was preventing myself from feeling that from like letting it out all of that and it was powerful because like you have to okay you you have to listen to like what's happening up top like like we're so logical in this business like everything is is is one or a zero right it's it's a lot that's why we like it so much is because we can follow the rules and science tells us the way things are but there are things that are happening in your life and in your head that you can't control and so you have to you have to be a part of that too and just make sure that that if you're feeling something you let it out you know talk to someone do what you got to do guys are especially we're going to save a lot of that for for i think we're gonna have to have an intense conversation about that but i just want to kind of we got a really good episode put that out there that one that's i think you guys are guilty of that too right because like 100 percent about you is like you know man up be a man like there was a lot of that stuff growing up and your sucks sucks it's kind of some socialization i guess but you know like just suck it up you know swallow hard do what you got to do be a man and dude that all builds up and it doesn't really make you a great person no it doesn't it really doesn't it actually does the opposite yeah right exactly you can't bottle all that crap up you know you you calling home and getting that crap out was a pressure relief valve if you hadn't done that you know because you were in an awful situation you were working like a dog and it was terrible and yeah it's probably not exactly how you saw your life playing out at the time but when you think about it like okay so we talk about imposter syndrome all the time right but it's like uh don't you get imposter syndrome when you're sad about that here i am here i am sad that i have the opportunity to make so much money when so many people don't have that opportunity how dare i have the right to be sad right but but it's okay dude everybody is different and and that's okay you cannot compare yourself to somebody else right like like look at look at celebrities and stuff like they have a hard time right we just don't know what they're going through so look if you get anything from this get these two things i'm somehow going to narrow this down i'm just going to make a list now i'm not i'm not going to narrow it down to a certain number i'm just going to make a list number one it's totally cool to cry and you heard that from me and so if if you want to even message me or say that hey man i'm glad you said that i appreciate it uh i was waiting for someone to say it was cool to cry or if i just look like the type of cat that just never does that guess what you're wrong i do um number two please by all means be a cable guy or gal it'll be worth it i promise listen to the cool stories we have and i was not in the field for that long i mean maybe five years total that's a long time yeah i paid my dues but you're good i pay my dues um and then the last thing that popped into my head was uh just don't crap in a stranger's house without flushing the toilet first if you do yeah make sure the toilet works man is that is that considered a courtesy flush like to yourself like i'm it's occurred like i'm checking beforehand it wouldn't have made a difference because i i didn't have any time left to find a place like it was but but yeah i yeah you know you do what you gotta do in an emergency you know what's funny when you're panicking and you get tunnel vision and you gotta like do something quickly like the thought never occurred to me that this toilet and this 10 million dollar house wouldn't work like why wouldn't it work at work was it made of gold it should have been i mean because of the kind of place it was i mean when i say wings aaron this is one of those places with like 22 sets in the house like right right like you got 22 tvs in here like really yeah and you can't get enough signal i worked in ed snyder's house the owner of the flyers he had a tap in his basement an eight port tap yep neal schmidt used to have one isn't that crazy like the stuff you see out in the street that the whole neighborhood's fed with you got enough pull dude run that right in your house yeah his modems and uh his mta used to be like uh the alarm for his mta would go off in like our tier three not like oh his kid unplugged it like people who got like fire trucks happiness or broke you know what i mean that's what broke people tell themselves to feel better myself included but yeah plebeians yeah yeah just buy a gold toilet doesn't flush that's a moral story well hopefully we help some people i mean it's another path you're you're mr you know fancy sales engineer guy i i got a pretty good network engineering job and we got our start as cable guys and i don't know if either one of us would be where we are you know without those jobs and those experiences so yep and hit us up too we love me and him especially do not please do not bother aj or dan with anything cable guy related because they do not care they get upset uh yeah that's us so if you're feeling like hey i was a cable guy or maybe you are a cable guy right now and you're just like randomly stumbled upon this holler at us or even if you're looking for a new job holler at us we love hearing stories i love hearing the stories of folks like making it or or even like hearing this and realizing that they aren't alone because they feel like they're surrounded by folks in the field that that aren't going anywhere you're not alone you could and also there's nothing wrong with staying there because you can get really really good at it and when you get really really good at it it gets really really really easy yeah and let me throw that let me throw that in there before we're over before we're done is yeah everybody i was surrounded with with the exception of the two people that i mentioned the lineman and the guy who was going for ccna every single one of my peers told me i was wasting my time studying for the ccna it wasn't going to amount to anything and i'm never going to be a network engineer every one of those people are still there climbing ladders pulling cable and i'm running stuff at a pretty big global company so you know you gotta i mean that's why i love this community it's why i love this podcast the discord server like yep you can be surrounded by people who don't believe in your vision or believe that you can make it just because they can't make a change in their life boom they are not going to win yeah they're not going to endorse you going to do that and i really wish yeah i really wish this community and this podcast and you guys were around at the time because i was surrounded by people who said you're wasting your time and i just me too you know i i didn't know if i was but i believe that you know there's a better life out there and that i i thought i could do it so you know surround yourself with the right people i guess what i'm trying to say and if people are telling you right do it if you if you're a cable guy or you're whatever and you want to get a ccna and you got people telling you you can't it's a waste of time they told me that and it wasn't it was a lie mm-hmm you know i that is very well said i'm actually not even going to put a cap on that because you did it so well sir sweet uh thank you for listening to your two favorite cable guys because we're my two favorite cable guys uh i i actually know a couple cable guys are pretty cool but thanks for listening to our rant i hope you got something out of this um please if you haven't already just hit the subscribe button um we got some cool stuff coming out for the rest of this year uh please stay tuned we've got some really cool guests um i'm gonna be giving out i think me and annie and the rest of the clan here we're gonna start giving out like a little bit more book recommendations i feel like because our make it stick recommendation is is kind of going nuts right now and for good reason i mean it's a great book so i think we're gonna try to do a little bit more at least i will uh just kind of share what i'm reading if anyone's interested and so we can we can all share in the collective mind um but thanks for listening to us y'all later see you 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 dot 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