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 happy new year fellas how you doing whoa oh my god i forgot 21. i forgot my little thing that makes noise what does that thing called annoys noisemaker oh yeah yeah what we should do we love things that are like named what they are like it's that thing the ice maker thing is when i met my is that like a version of a onomatopoeia yeah that's exactly what it no because then it would be called like bowing on my first date with my wife i told her i liked her wrist thingy she looked at me deadpan she's like you mean bracelet i thought it was gonna be a watch that was gonna be and she still married you she's still married and she's married he'll do dan how are you doing i'm doing great man how about yourself i'm doing very well very well happy today i missed you guys the future 2021. yes it's been a while since we recorded yeah yeah you guys totally stopped talking back you guys like dropped off i thought we weren't friends anymore everybody went life got busy for a little bit yeah oh my god are we breaking up andy how you doing i don't know breaking up baron i kind of got ghosted a little bit sounds like it sounds like it if anything the boys are back in oh yeah like i i i swear andy if you google if you google what aj did to you you know what it's gonna say girl he don't love you that's what he's gonna say the answer girl he don't love him maybe he's just not that into you he goes at him yeah oh it's not you it's me that's actually true it really is andy i decided to go a different direction oh god but yeah here i am still be friends can we be okay two weeks later aj midnight you up jesus well we're gonna have to edit the fuck out of this one aaron how you doing f word no leave all that in there uh i am swell thank you so much why don't you ask me that again so we can cut that out you don't have to cut everything out just because you're running the show it doesn't mean we get to cut everything out come on right yeah it's like hey aj i want you to run this one okay and like aj starts asking a question hey go ahead and cut that uh yeah he's like i screwed up there let's try it again aaron how you doing i am doing fantastic thank you excellent so much for asking excellent as we alluded to before it feels good to be recording again we went through a very long period of time where we didn't have to record we did a wonderful sprint throughout the month of october and months of october and november and uh you know we kind of created a stockpile and uh it was nice to get through the holidays without having to worry about recording and everything else that goes on during that time of year but here we are we're back this is the first episode of 2021 and to kick things off i thought it would be appropriate if we discussed goals you mean like you kick the ball in and that's what you get oh no aaron i don't sports ball look at me you don't sports ball i don't you're not us of course you're not a sports baller how are you no no i'm a network engineer yeah you are yes you are you know what don't let anybody tell you any different especially me that's right i'm not the only one you may think i only upgrade ios is on routers but i do more than that i crashed i crashed them as well i crashed i call the time i call tack ten minutes after that too i called one sure yeah you call them you could only be so i like a good safety blanket so yeah me too i like a good blanket period to be honest doesn't really have to be a safety blanket dan i just like a good boy i got one right here i get that you know the kind that are like like light like in weight but also somewhat like heavy if that makes any sense have you guys tried to do uh the new weighted blankets dude those are great those are great because supposedly it's supposed to help with anxiety um but it's like being hugged that's why yes yeah i don't have one but i i need to do i need to do that i'm glad you actually said that my my wife i have one but 25 pounder it's beautiful 25 pounds yeah yeah did you ask for it or she was like i got to chill this dude the hell out it's probably a sweet combination they're like does this does this come in 200 pounds i'm trying to crush this i need something more my size you know i'm really trying to get them to shut up the questions the questions in amazon are like will this prevent my husband from getting off the couch the next the next comment mine already doesn't get off the couch to answer your question i was not talking about sports goals uh goals okay that you know it's the beginning of the year everybody kind of does this what what are you going to set out to accomplish in 2021 uh yeah and you might take some time did you accomplish what you thought you did or would in 2020 uh and so you know all all on the table personal professional we can even talk about our plans for the podcast not that you know we have any wink wink no nudge just kidding we have so many ideas you guys don't even understand what's coming down the pipe right now like there's so much stuff that's going to blow your mind therefore we can't tell you because we don't want to be the ones responsible for exploding your brain so you're welcome what he said what i said remember that um i don't personally i love the new year thing you know like we talk about new year's resolutions or whatever i like new year's i don't i've never have i guess used it as like a a demarcation point i guess the best way to make that i knew you were gonna poo-poo this i knew it no that's not what i'm doing every single like cliche in the world that we talk about aaron's like you know what i got a problem with i think you should always be chasing your goals and not just once i knew it was coming i bet if you look at uh aaron's social media we'll probably see a hashtag new year new me somewhere in there old year old me or new year old me is basically the same no i let me finish before you think that i'm poo pooing chuckles so so yeah i i've never used that because the time that i've tried when i was like you know 17 or 18 i was like all right new year's resolution you know at that point in my life i probably just made up some arbitrary stupid anyway like like i'm not gonna get in trouble at school you know what i mean uh whatever it was but like you're right though i i always kind of have it in front of me so the fact that like the year's turning is is i would hate the reason why i was doing something to be just because we took another trip around the sun you know what i mean right because like i don't know i also wouldn't want to wait for that day to be like all right now it's time to go you know like what if i want to start right now like you know what if i want to start on christmas so do you also not celebrate your birthday if i had my way no i would absolutely not so i mean i'll be you know i'm being a smart smart you know there's something to be said about the ticking of time and and marking off milestones but i think you revealed something deeper is most people don't keep their new year's resolutions yeah so and part of what our goals are maybe do we have any tips on what we've done to try to not be most of those people that say they're going to do something and don't because that's it i try to specifically not use new year's resolutions and just more you know us i see what you did there that makes sense but we're doing it as our first january episode so here we are so i mean so yeah yeah we're just sort of lying through our teeth is what it is um yeah i i've never used that like that um i could talk about our goals and just not achieve them so let's do that well here's another here's a yeah because here's a strategy too so so this is just something that just popped into my head so you know like the hashtag you know new year new me and damn made fun of me for doing that but i i don't think i've ever actually done that but maybe out of a maybe as a joke right like maybe i gained 20 pounds and i was like new year new me um but if you create like 30 goals or like new year's resolutions whatever the heck you want to call it so if you say you correct like 30 of them and you don't do 29 of them but you do one of them isn't that still a w totally yes you get what i'm saying so like why make one if the odds are you're probably not gonna follow through anyway why not just make as many as you possibly can to increase your odds of getting a successful new year's resolution as opposed to just training yourself i'll tell you i'll tell you why i was just so right you know 10 minutes before this i was googling doing my little episode research and i can't find it now of course but there's some kind of science of goal setting and achieving goals and i forget the name of it but have i think i think one of the techniques is eliminating all goals but your primary goal because there's some kind of scientific thing that all your goals compete for your time and attention and yeah much like i found myself in recently like i wrote one two three four i have five goals i want to achieve in 2021 for my career okay and then i read this thing and i'm like well if i don't do one like i've been working on my ccmp forever right and if i don't finish that if i get into automation and i get into junos and i get into cloud if i'm studying three completely different areas of technology in 2021 there is some science i'm no scientist and it was just a quick google but that may undermine my ability to achieve any one of them because i'm now swimming in you know four lanes instead of focused on one so i i don't know yeah well so for me um i mean i don't know i i'd feel kind of bad if i made 10 goals and only made one of them you know so would you feel worse if if you did if you did one goal and you didn't achieve it or would you feel worse if you set five goals didn't achieve four but got one i probably well i don't know i mean i've never done what was so going but yeah like what's the weight i'll tell you no i'll tell i'll tell you exactly what the one is it's the one that you would have used by itself had you just picked one all right all right you know what i mean okay so i'll use andy as an example here scotland ccnp 2021 ccnp yeah all right say that's my one goal and and odds are like you said it's gonna compete for my time or whatever so if i know that that's gonna happen okay just hear me out here if i know that things are gonna compete for my time and ultimately it's gonna fizzle out and i'm probably just going to narrow back down to where i was anyway if that's what the research says right why not just allow the game to play out right do you know what i mean like let myself get distracted knowing that there's light at the end of the tunnel and that these distractions are actually gonna motivate me to stay focused on something because i'm gonna get so frustrated that i'm all over the place that eventually i'm gonna kick myself in my ass right and i've had a lot of people tell me that over the years dude focus do one thing because you know what the the industry we work in there's always some new shiny thing that we got to do or so too many yeah too many yeah way too many that's the problem i think that's i think that's kind of my my thought process on it is like if i if i was trying to say like i want to get this cert this or this or but you know like we were saying that one cert is the one that we really want i feel like you know a page or two in on the other search i'm like wasting my time because that's not really what i want to get i want to get the other one so i don't know i because i've tried doing that before and then it's like i feel bad about myself if i didn't get you know those certain goals in um especially if i put too much on my plate and then i just get stressed out and i don't even do any of it well that's what i'm saying so like if you let that get to the point where you stress out and then you go screw this and then you just start back over with the original cert that you were gonna do anyway like you know what i mean is it isn't that a good like moment but like don't you feel like that would be more powerful to you than it just randomly being january 1st oh yeah you're talking about like getting stressed out and then getting pissed off and then being like all right all right reset now i gotta do it right yeah i see what you're saying i i think for me um you know we set there's different levels of goals right like the overall goal for andy is ccnp by 2021 right or by the end of 2021 but underneath that there's more goals that work up to that one goal like hey knock out this many chapters or knock out this certain technology or whatever the case may be right yeah and so for me personally let's say i don't achieve that one goal the ccmp right i still feel like i've accomplished some stuff because you learned even though exactly right like because when you when you learn the concept you kind of got to grasp on it now and so i feel like you've you've knocked out some goals along the way right so it's not a complicated fail out here well okay so you're saying that goals you knocked out goals that you didn't even know existed basically yeah i guess so yeah unless you wrote down like each module in the ccmp and you were like this is a goal of mine and maybe that should be the goal maybe the goal should be take each module make the goal the module not the not the whole thing because we look at it as like a whole that's when it that's when it really gets real right and you're like oh god that book's so big you know i mean there's no small id books we all know that um yeah so when you're looking at it you're like man so so you earlier you said like hey if i have like 10 things and i open up a page and i'm like and i'm like man i shouldn't be reading this because i'm wasting my time because i should be doing that other thing right here's why that's interesting to me we're assuming that when you picked up the book that you quote unquote should not be reading that the only other choice was for you to pick up the appropriate book right when in reality the choice was probably more should i pick up a book period or not just so happens you picked up the wrong one according to what like you know the goal setting philosophy right and you read a page you were like ah just wasted 10 minutes of my time whatever it took it took time away from that the point i'm trying to make is that like ccnp never had the time you can't take the time away from the ccmp that never had it you know what i mean so if i'm if i read like let me just give an example if i have i'll say devnet that's fresh in my head so let's say i'm going to study for devnet and i haven't finished my ccnp so i'm like so i'm going to do both at the same time i pick them both up i get halfway through both and i'm like man i shouldn't have been reading that devnet that whole time because that was time that i was allocating towards ccmp but wait a minute that's not the true story true story is this i could have been studying for the ccnp would i have been we don't know that could i sure what we really mean to say is that when i was reading devnet i probably should have been doing not that what what the alternative is i could care less about the point is i could have been doing anything but that right but but i did make the conscious decision to pick up and read the devnet book as opposed to opening up facebook and scrolling endlessly for 10 minutes and watching a cat video at least you're studying something and learning something i so so aaron and aj who has more certs right now because i have a question wait hold on i know this is going to be a pissing contest that would here's here's why i don't have many and you guys do so like let's say aaron as an example you're the cert guy you have 10 certs and aj has nine let's say to me you're somebody who i would value their opinion like how do you study like do you study for three certs at a time because if you have 10 certs and i have one i may want to do what you're doing as opposed to spreading myself too thin or if you're studying three things at a time and achieving all those certs then that might push me down the path of like all right maybe i multitask really really i think what you're what you're saying is that no matter how anyone does it of course you're going to trust with somebody you know i always say stuff like this like i don't take tax advice from artists you know like like you guys know how to search so i think your opinion matters exactly exactly but exactly that's exactly what i'm saying so but at the same time like i'll listen right um but how do you do it how do you and aj do you guys study one cert at a time that i'll let aj answer his version of that obviously i'm not saying the answer is bible truth but just as the conversation what do you guys think exactly exactly i i'm gonna say that that i don't have any sort of rhyme or reason as to what and when and why i pick something up however when i do it's the exact same scenario every single time are you focused on one at a time no not necessarily okay that's what i'm saying there's no reason a right reason as to why or when and where i pick something up you might jump around yeah exactly but the point is that this is any goal right like we've heard this a million times like it has to be quote unquote smart you know uh has has to be measurable is the most important letter in that acronym right which is small which is time right like when are you going to do it is that time but but but but measurable right like what is the success and so basically you can't just make a measurable like let's say you were going to bake a pie like i don't want my measurable to be the pie is delicious what i want my measurable measurables to be is like is the consistency the way i need it with the dry ingredients did i mix the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients was that good that's a check in all right we're good there that's a w you know what i mean so like they like kind of like build on top of each other so i could be cooking a chicken at the same time you know what i mean that as long as i'm doing the same thing with the chicken that i'm doing with the pie then like that to me is the consistency but isn't there also science that multitasking is a myth that we really only do one thing it absolutely is right absolutely i mean that's and i'm not undermining what you're saying at all just you know no you're right i got to finish this ccmp and at the same time and this is another topic i was going to wait for but here we are i have a goal i want to finish which is my np my employer has a different goal that they want me to jump in and work on i have to be the cloud guy next year so so again here we are i have a goal it's personal at this point i want to finish my mp it's ridiculous because i've been doing it so long and i still don't have it but now i'm going to have this other competing goal at work they're paying me i get that they're paying you yeah right so is that do i drop my mp for another six to 12 months and get started up in a couple of cloud providers you know it's not a question that you guys have to answer but it's where i am with my goals it's a question i can yeah sweet i can answer anything just fyi and that goes that goes for anything that anybody wants to ask me in the audience so if you're listening i can answer anything and i'm not going to say that it's going to be an answer that you want i'm just going to say that i can answer it so you might not like it well did you ever answer the question do you study one thing at a time or do you like do you study for one cert at a time or you jump all over the place i i answered it but not in a direct way it was an iron answer um yeah it was it was a closed question sir it's a yes yeah it was and i still gave you an opening come on man i was in sales you can't pull your crap with me gotta admit it was impressive okay um it's your thing i'm like you do but i'm talking about you're going back in dude one of you guys it's like hey how many certs at a time should i study i'm like i don't know you want to bake a buyer are we baking pies or chicken all right so aj let's pivot to you what do you do because aaron's not going to answer let me start that by saying i never thought that i would be the guy that would have you know certs all over the wall right like i i never planned to do that i had a couple in mind that i wanted to to get and achieve like when i started 2020 i wanted to get my np and i wanted to do devnet and i did want to explore another networking vendor so i had the knowledge but not to the point of getting five certifications um i was tasked with getting five juniper certifications because of work uh and so i did you know i had to do what i had to do um did you drop any personal cert goals because of that were you in the middle of something when juniper came up yes okay so i had just finished my np i immediately started it on devnet because that's what i wanted to do gotcha and uh i was asked to go do the the juniper stuff and so i i stopped definitely that went and did the juniper now now luckily like between the the jncia and jncis devops there's enough of like overlapping right between between the two so is there a reason you dropped it to focus on juniper is that just how you operate why did you so multiple the juniper stuff was time driven i had to have five juniper certs before the end of september okay and it was like the end of july when i passed my np right and so i had like eight you know august and september to to get the five certs if you weren't under that timeline do you think you would have would you have kept devnet going in tandem yeah okay yeah and one doesn't pull your focus from the other you can do multiple circuits right like if i got a question hold on sorry aj just because he brought it up a couple of times i'm curious so like where did you hear don't take this wrong way you just know how to talk so i don't think you're getting mad uh where did you hear that like you could only do one thing at a time it's science there is no multitasking that's true that's very true there's no moles you can only do one thing at a time exactly so why not on monday do one yeah tuesday do the next right to your point i use because because i want to be no i i hear what you're saying i used to work in a multi-vendor shop and it was confusing as hell jumping between junos and ios yeah yeah so you can you can do it but it's mentally taxing and you're like you're putting the wrong man in the wrong okay so i'm trying not to make it harder on myself by ah aha there we go but see you're all about make it hard but no no no no no but a good way though i am but that's a good study i've been doing that and it's been helping but i i don't want to spend another three years trying to get my mp because i was all over the place with all this other stuff because i made it so damn hard for myself like what do you think just get it automation your mp azure aws and juniper and you're wondering why your mp in here you know what i mean just just go get it get what which one your mp just go get it even if work says you got to be the cloud guy next year yeah just go get it all right look dude uh here's some i'm not trying to make this about me it's just that's where i'm at with my no you no no but i you you are you are the dude we'll all agree here you are the dude that this episode is for okay listen like i'm sick and tired of being the the guy who needs to take that the wrong way i mean like seriously like i mean that i mean that in the most constructive way possible because because you are the one that is the most curious about people's methodologies and things like that and you like soak stuff up like this like you you soak the the how up like a sponge right but if i tell you if i told you when i started my ccnp you'd smack me in the face i know when you started your cc i've been working on it so long it's it's that it fell off it's embarrassing like you know i know i know you you couldn't even have got it in sir apocalypse because the like your switch test like fell off the radar it takes three years for that to happen by the way folks this guy weighed at least three years for that that is well over a thousand days nowhere is it published that you had to pass all three certs in three years it wasn't published that's true but everybody knew it except me right because you don't get a certification you just get a passing test you know what i mean that's why i blew the timing of it that's my fault but yeah uh yeah i'm actually kind of pissed about that we can move on by the from the problem anyway no no no no you're good you're good you're good i i like i like the the stuff you brought up because i just always something like pops into my head when i think about like why things are difficult right like okay so here's an example like when i was like 17 i hated going to work i would wake up i'd probably sleep as long as i possibly could i'm like gosh guys i just want to keep sleeping you know we all went through that phase right like we're like uh dude i just don't go to work i like roll out of bed it's like am i showering today am i not talking today and i'm and i kept thinking to myself like recently why did i hate that so much like why was that like causing mental anguish you know what i mean like why why am i feeling a certain way about going somewhere and doing something like what makes something hard you didn't you know what i mean this might be i'm guessing you didn't like my job that's my game i mean i worked like a pizza place like the the point would be like you know maybe somewhere along the lines he didn't love it right yeah yeah yeah but but no i think at that point in my life is is and this is the point i'm trying to make is it like we all kind of like have this idea of like what hard is right no matter what it is it's like i look at guys playing baseball and i'm like to me when i see that i'm like that actually does not look hard it is hard but it doesn't look hard it never looks hard when people know what they're doing and they're doing it right exactly exactly and so like what's crazy too though is that if you somehow knew and this is something that i've been trying to do for like maybe three weeks now just because i've been like hyper aware of it because i remember one of those episodes i was talking about like decision points i'm like oh you always have these decision points you could choose to go one way or there right it happens all the time well i got to thinking about like why is there a decision point there like what is what is it that i'm avoiding that's hard by doing something else right and i and i could never pinpoint it it was like oh i just don't want to do that okay so then why don't you want to do that like i could never come up with an explanation there's there's literally no explanation so if if the decision point was this just to go back to like a couple of episodes ago like my exact examples if my decision is to pull up facebook or my decision is to pull up my anki web like you know cards my flash cards why is it that the anki web card seems hard like what's hard about that it's not i'm literally facebook it's not hard i'm literally sitting in a chair you get a dopamine staring at one and not the other that's that's exactly it right instant reward that gives you no long-term payoff so so with taking exactly what you just said what you're really saying though is that the flashcards aren't hard it's just that facebook is makes me happier right so it's not like the cards make me feel happy or sad or mad or angry or whatever it's just that facebook makes me feel a little bit happy therefore it makes the cards look bad because facebook equal good right therefore it's instant gratification versus long-term goals versus versus what i'm trying to argue right now which is a a neutral state that we're calling hard but it's not hard it's hard because we're comparing it against something else we could be doing which is exactly what you were talking about earlier when you say like i opened or dan was saying actually when i open this book i i should be doing something else but no no you should be doing exactly what you're doing right so like then what is hard what is hard there is no heart when i think about it things are hard to me like uh laying concrete uh destroying concrete i've done that right it's very hard same same asphalt equally as hard although somewhat lighter so how do we get down the hard rabbit hole because it was ccmp or cloud because and multitask what i'm saying right because what i'm saying is usually what's going to win out if you have a contention because you're like you know the deal you know what i'm going to say here if there's a contention you know it's going to win out it's not going to be the hard thing right it's going to be the easiest thing it's going to be facebook every time so it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if it's facebook in the in the ring or not or five juniper search well ccfps would have been easier before this damn sir apocalypse and all this new crap i gotta know but which which uh which almost all three of us uh didn't make the cut which was freaking wild um skin of my teeth but you know aj right behind me that's why i know that it's now been almost a year since apocalypse when you were originally trying to get it that now is the time to shine my friend yes so what are your guys goals because i don't want this to be about me we've i i bitch enough on this thing where do you guys what you want to do dan dan let's see let's hear from dan i want your i want to hear dan's goals uh my goal is for andy to get his ccnp in 2010 are you going to get your ccna no i'm not i'm probably not going to get it and you probably don't need it right i don't need it no right um and i don't need my ccmp no well see me i probably will try to go for the ccnp uh this year i i've already started studying but i had i was working on another company i got that up and going now so i'm gonna focus more on the ccnp but i i think for me like what we were kind of talking about at the beginning of this episode i don't try to say like oh i'm gonna get that you know new year i'm gonna get this whatever you know or that's not that's not kind of how i am i i kind of like to do more long-term goals like for me it's like you know if hey by the age 30 i want to have this much in my bank account or by age 35 i want to be at this place in my life right and so i kind of i kind of do that with certs as well um do you do that and then like like your example with the money thing do you do that and then just reverse engineer from there because because that goal was like something i was saying earlier that was like just very like ubiquitous right it's like i want it would be like somebody saying like i want to be rich but what makes it measurable is saying i want a hundred thousand dollars in my savings account right so that's much different than saying i want to be rich by 30. so then do you take that like let's say that it's 100k like do you take that and like then figure out the steps to get to there or do you even go far well so it's more of a um like i make decisions on okay i'm not going to get this this year because i want that to go towards this right or like or spend money on this because i want that money to go towards this goal or whatever the case might be and it's kind of funny actually in my case um if i set something like that i will usually knock that out way before my goal um just because i'm thinking about it right like oh i need to i need to do this because of that kind of thing um omnipresent yeah there you go but unfortunately you all command it doesn't do that yeah no kidding say oh search don't do that yeah search search don't work that way no it'll be nice i knew guys who worked at verizon and they got i think it was i don't know it was five or ten grand for each cert they got like that would be yeah a lot of places are like that yeah right i mean mine is it's funny because aj's rolling his eyes but he's the one that's getting he was the one who's getting paid to study for his juice and stuff so you really can't say anything over there well i'm not getting five or ten grand per sword i can tell but dan at the right company dude certs do do that dude yeah you think hey you think aj has a lot of certs now wave some dollar bills in front of my face and i'm gonna be like aj who yeah so so for me if yeah if i was getting offered you know 5 or 10 grand to get a cert yeah i would probably be like aj over there and have this whole damn ceiling like just full of search right here yeah you know but you know where i'm at currently they just they're not very interested in paying for certs so do you know why i want to get my ccmp dan because if i get fired from this job i'm going to need it yeah that's the only one that's another thing that's the only reason right now i'm trying to contingency well it's because yeah yeah because i would need it if i hit the job market a guy with an expired ccna in five years experience may not look as good as the guy with the ccmp and five years experience yeah i guess well i can tell you for me i like living on the edge a little bit more so living on the edge yeah we yeah everybody knows you as a wild child yeah try to find out what car race you used to do yeah oh yeah this guy's wild man so are you just actually where is protection are you just kicking butt then in your in your business that you start like is that your main goal i mean you you do great at work you know what you're doing there and yeah so 2021 is your other business well so i think the reason why i like i stopped on the ccnp again was because that's bringing me money right yeah my my other my other company is bringing me money right and so i was like you know what i need to focus on this and get that knocked out and so that's that's why i stopped on my because my ccmp if i if i go get it tomorrow i pass my ccmp that's not another dime in my pocket same yeah you know and so actually actually it's like minus 300 out of your pocket yeah exactly technically now if the circumstance changed right like let's say andy your example like if i lost my job well that ccmp might be some change in my pocket right there because i got that paper but oh yeah yeah yeah but i'm not i'm not exactly worried about losing my job so um it the company it's because the company i work for right it's a very old school kind of traditional company and people work there for like 40 years so that's the only reason why i'm not really worried about losing my job um they don't do like downsizing or anything like that they've never done that so it's kind of interesting it's kind of interesting how there's different nuances to the goals because ccmp for me is insurance long term in case i lose my job but then this cloud stuff is to show value in my current employer so the goals are kind of and that's also insurance too man i mean well totally yeah yeah you think it's insurance but there's nuanced i mean i'm not doing it for any more money they're not going to pay me more you know so that's funny is that architect i'll get paid more but it's not going to be any time soon but maybe that's the long game dan like you're working on that business it's your long game it's going to make money for you and your family that's kind of how i see my career path and all these certs involved if i can be a cloud architect in three years if you look up what those dudes make it's sick and i'm going to be able to help my family that way you know so yeah anyway goal yeah the this whole situation is strange honestly because when you have a a huge goal like that like let's say that you're because your your actual goal andy is to get a ccnp as a backup plan right that's that's the full length version of that right just like dan's would be i want to get ccnp uh basically for the same thing like oh or like because i want to right that would be the full the full story so what's strange to me though is that how often times like that is like the end location like that's z you know a to z like that's z but it's weird that a lot of the times along the way that that actually gets shifted so like an example would be all right my goal if i'm annie is to get a ccp as a backup plan but like what happens if like it's six months from now they're like hey by the way if anybody here has their ccmp uh we're giving you 5 000 bumps right it's just weird when stuff like that happens some people call it luck it's not it's it's like favors though right yeah yeah that's what they always say is like the crossroads of like being prepared and like you know being lucky so it that would that would be the situation right and basically what i'm getting at is that like i bet if you thought all of the things that it could affect and then made that list even though that there's like one thing that's important but like look at all the possibilities that it could do right this is what you wanted to do because that's the goal but what it could do is so much more because what i always see in i know we always talk about the two biggest questions in the world like should i get searched or should i go to college right but you know but also it's like the question's like sh is a ccnp worth it should i get it is the ccna worth it should i get it you know why are we always looking at things like negatively like is it good is it good is it good well it's a cost benefit analysis right there's only so much time you can devote to things i'm not counter-pointing what you're saying but it's a cost analysis like you know is it worth me spending six months of my life getting my ccna you know what i mean i think the real question for you is you know do you want it enough right right yeah oh no like you want air right like that knocks thing he called out if you wanted as bad as you want to breathe you'll get it you'd go get it knocked out you know i mean yeah it's simple as that which circles back to what you said dan the ccmp is going to do nothing for me today or tomorrow right you think though okay so that's but that's the point i'm making so the point is like let's say tomorrow all you did was study one chapter okay all you do is look at one chapter of some stuff you never heard of before you're like wow and then the next day at work they're like gosh does anybody know anything about this and you're like well uh not you though because you probably wouldn't be that confident at that point um but somebody like me i'd be like yeah hell yeah i read about that last night let's go and then i'm like i really have no idea what i'm doing but i read about it last night so let's just see what we can figure out here um but that would be like a benefit right like i get nothing but like that would be something you know that would be something that you get for doing that and all you did was study for a day just saying count your small w's don't just don't just aim for the stars you know you know break the stratosphere count that as a w you know what really helped me with my studying goal was keith's accountability trick that he pulled on us because yeah he called us out and said what are you guys going to do and i'm going to check on you next week you have to answer yes and i've been studying probably an hour a night four to five nights a week ever since we talked to him because i committed it for you it was aj's trick too of just commit to 20 minutes so it was just those like you always go longer yeah just like those little hacks but that's really been helping me do those implementation steps to get to that goal is just 20 minutes a day you know which is which is totally doable there's there's all these little hacks you know to help you get there it seems like somebody says something it clicks like all right i could do 20 minutes that's easy here we go aj yes what are you doing in 2021 since you have every cert on the planet is the answer nothing because we'll accept that actually you know what let's change this up everybody knows you're getting searched next year so there's no mystery there what do you think is the absolute worst thing that you are at so it could be a sport could be calligraphy it could be cooking like what is the absolute worst thing that aj murray does like what like what is he just absolutely trash at i mean there's so many things i'm struggling with okay no they just pick one then because i know we'll take sports for sure just in general you just suck at sports oh yeah so what is it are you just uncoordinated or i i don't know i i just i've never really been into it you know like i i think my give a damn and wanting to play sports isn't there so when i try to play sports it's just like yeah i don't really care if i you know hit the ball or if i die i you know may or may not deserve which all right all right call aj in 2021 do you have one yeah um so so get good at work as with everything else right like work has these things called mgos mission goals and objectives and it's it's four things that um we commit to and it basically equates to a bonus a quarter but it's something i want and it's something the company wants um and so you know it's it's did they come up with these or did you come up with these yes so it's it's like it's like a two-way street like there's there's some that i have to come up with there's some that you know god boss will come up with and there it's just like a you know and it's it's like some for me and things that i have to do that help the company okay yeah so um there's a bunch of stuff i'm kicking around i haven't you know committed to anything yet i i will have to soon i am interested in getting another professional level certification um i'm toying around you know devnet professional ccmp data center something like that we have some projects coming up that are going to focus heavily on sdn uh so maybe i go after the sd-wan specialist certification um so those are all things i'm i'm mulling over my head which certification is the sd-wan one i i didn't hear either of you because you were both talking sorry it's google meets for you um i was gonna say if if you pick one of those and you get it that it because you said these are per quarter if you pick one of those and achieve it does that just mean you get like an exceeds or achieves or whatever like in your rating yeah yeah what happens if you don't get it though um so usually there's like if if i don't get it it you know was i at least making progress on it like was i studying did i try to take the exam um or was i not able to study because i was 150 billable for that entire quarter you know like you take a step back and we look at like okay what why did he not succeed in that and then we even create these like you know what can i do to contribute to these mgos in in each quarter right like well there's training that i need to do or i need to buy a book or you know whatever the case may be and was i at least doing those things to try to succeed at this goal or did something else get in the way of that dude this is total compensation at its finest right here yeah gosh dang like you know salary is one thing but like everything you just named off like they're literally making your ability to get a raise based on making yourself better and they're letting you choose how to make yourself better good that's great yeah that's a great place man i love you i love it okay what were you gonna say oh i was asking uh which which certification is the sd-wan one oh th there's uh an sd-wan specialist certification for so instead of cisco yeah yeah yeah kind of like the nrc yeah exactly sd-wan version of that yeah there's a design a wireless uh what else there's like wireless implementation wireless deployment en auto then there's like the tracks that everybody forgets about like data center yeah like that's got its own core exam um ccnp uh service provider own core exam mm-hmm uh so maybe this is a question for outside of the episode aj but why would you go for devnet professional uh um versus an auto because aren't they two professional level so like devnet professional or the devnet core is like the encore for devnet professional and then ian auto is a specialist certification right so yeah is is an auto and devnet professional similar so so yeah like your professional level automation search is i guess what i'm getting at and why would you choose one over the other well that you need you need the core and you need a specialist certification so just like ccmp enterprise you need encore and then you need a specialist certification oh okay right so you you right you'd have to get devnet professional that that would be your second of the two to get this yeah yeah and so the goal like the the mgo goal for for work would be you know take the devnet core exam and not it wouldn't necessarily be become debt professional like like this year or you know this past year one of my goals was i i wanted to get my ccnp but the goal was complete encore and if i did that and only that that was enough to satisfy but look at that going above and beyond a little bit yeah exceeds a little bit check mark exceeds good job aj it's a star that's crazy i know it's it's really cool how they do that um you know that like there was a couple of other ones one of them was to be billable you know more than 70 or at least 70 throughout an entire quarter and we definitely hit that um and then there was another one so our internal company website like our intranet is called the river and um we as engineers can contribute blog articles so you know it's just a way to like highlight work that we're doing and and of course i i had a good time writing about some of the experiences i was doing on deployments i'm sure you did they're like they're like hey we got a blog and we need somebody to write for it just like it's like i'll do that so that's pretty cool dude um what about outside of work though give us the dirty man i mean we already know you're awful at sports but like are you gonna are you gonna try to improve on that or are you going to goals outside of our careers yeah what do you do what else are you doing for me man i i've got to get back to the physical fitness yep 2020 was a pretty bad yeah like 2020 was great in so many aspects uh you know like the certifications the the podcasts like for me 2020 will not be remembered as a year that there was a pandemic the pandemic will be the last thing that i remember about 2020. i i made such strides in my health in 2019 and the pandemic and the stress and you know me just not trying as hard to go back to the healthy lifestyle i did you know i can make up a number of excuses but it was about decision points right when the decision point came like do i want to eat healthy tonight do you want to crack a beer and have a pizza yeah yeah and i can tell you which way i went most nights this year and so i want to get back to that healthy lifestyle i put on like 30 pounds i got to get rid of it and get back to where i was yeah i'm with you right there uh aj because uh i to 2020 i gained weight as well so i i need to i i don't i don't want to be the person that is like all right i'm going to go get a plate of planet fitness in a membership in january january 3rd or 4th whenever monday is and uh and then be like okay by february i just don't even go anymore uh you know and random thought just popped in my head i wonder if like these places like ine boson cbt nuggets you know all these like learning resources if they have like a splurge at the beginning of the year of people setting goals and whatnot like that i never thought about that i've always heard like gyms you know they make a ton of money oh yeah but sure i never really thought about that but i bet they do yeah i would bet i would bet subscription services just in general like yeah anything on your like an app on your phone you know like any sort of like fitness app all of that heard i've heard that's why jim's charge you that up front sign up fee whatever to 75 or 100 bucks because they know you're gonna be gone in three months they hit you up front so they can get the return you know because they're not going to make the money on that 15 20 a month you know what do you think the ratio is because you know there's a number right there there's a delta a lot i mean there were there was no there's a delta yeah i mean yeah in the business plan you're in the business plan you've all seen it like 100 january you can't get a machine you know february or march they're all gone and it's back to the same schmoes that were there the whole time right do you think they use the capacity of the building too so like let's say the capacity is like 240 do you think that the total amount of monthly subscriptions they can sell there is let's just take a guess here five thousand i think they've done the math even when they're buying a building that's what i'm saying there's a number you know what i mean it's in the business plan somewhere like there's a hard number yeah for sure i don't know what it is but yeah i'm sure they are ridiculous otherwise how would they stay in business it makes no sense yeah yeah how do they stay how's planet fitness still here there's one on every gd corner but i can't even go to a blockbuster anymore riddle me that apparently there's one still in what is it oregon it's in oregon yeah yeah let's see apparently you can still rent stuff there too so do you two have plans on how you're gonna work on your health like i almost got keith in my head like okay that sounds nice but how are you gonna do that yeah so for me what are you gonna do what has always worked for me in the past is my caloric intake um counting calories basically so every time i've done that i've always lost a lot of weight and i feel good not just like having some crazy diet but the problem is is diet the word diet right or well i guess the way we use diet uh it needs to be my like how i move forward you know i don't need it to be like all right i'm going on a diet for like two months or something like that it just needs to be no this is my diet now lifestyle that diet our lifestyle yeah yeah uh and so i don't know i just need to get better at selecting what foods i eat and i think so one thing that's actually been helping me here lately is you know in our discord we have that fitness channel or whatever it's called um and a lot of you guys were talking about like meal prep and whatnot and meal prepping for me i don't know what everybody else is using it for but it's actually nice whenever i don't have to think about what i'm gonna eat i already have it prepped and everything like that and i know how many calories that meal is taking away that decision point yeah exactly yeah exactly instead of having to do the hard or easy thing it's already there so it's easy it's there yep no decision you know that's why uh mark zuckerberg wears the same shirt every day heck yeah one thing he doesn't have to think about yeah yeah there's only so much decision making fuel yeah i mean i do that with showers i only do one a week there's no way there's no way you shower is that why the paint you don't look that clean you look a third of that clean that a hat this is my safety blanket right here it's his weighted blanket you don't have to see how bad my hair is yeah does your wife make you wear that yeah she's like i swear if you take the head off in front of me i'm gonna go bananas you're moving out she's divorcing me if you take that hat off i'm gonna make you get a ccnp yeah oh damn i better keep it on yeah i know i'm like i'm like ah okay anything but that please i'll glue it to my head clear to my head no but that that's that's kind of my goal is to do better on meal prepping uh i also so it was really weird at the beginning of this year i really killed it on walking every day i walked every day at lunch and then right after work i'd walk again and working from home was like really nice about that you know uh that because because you know when you're at the office and you're like in dress clothes and stuff it's like you can't really go out there and walk now some places you know y'all some of you all uh you know work y'all y'all have uh showers and whatnot and all that stuff we none of us live in silicon valley okay yeah that is such a middle ameri you guys you guys just don't like the fact that the rest of us can get to a body of water in a relatively timely fashion yeah so don't pretend like all of us have showers in our uh break rooms because we don't oh well well in nashville they do though like nashville there's a lot of places that have a lot of that uh oh yeah they do that nashville's like the new like austin which is oh thank you new oakland look okay i was driving out of town the other day and this past uh yeah this past weekend and just from the interstate where i could see like nashville and you know going through it one night i counted i think it was like 15 sky cranes okay like i mean it's just insane just from where i was driving through you're at i could count that many and it's that's a lot of bachelor's going up yeah that is so many country songs and bachelorette parties heck yeah dude it's it's it's blowing up but um but anyway what i was saying working from home you know i can wear sweats or a t-shirt or whatever and just go walk around the neighborhood um so i definitely need to get back into that habit i i fell out of that habit uh but i was walking about i think it was about like three miles a day and that i feel pretty good about it but then i like i said i fell out and there we go started gaining weight so that's my that's my plan of attack the goal is to feel good yeah just just feel good i i was doing the same thing for a little bit and then uh winter came and single digits were teens and trying to walk outside i guess yeah i think i should i should also state that i hate the cold so like you won't catch me outside during the winter time so that that didn't help but yeah yeah my my times are spring when uh summer and fall those are when i'm outside yeah people always need to find something to do uh in the house here yeah i have to figure something out you'll figure something out like i don't know changing the battery and your smoke detector yeah climbing up the ladder ladder and then coming back down your your wife's like standing on your shoulders it's like like a three stooges episode in there trying to change the light it's good for the ceiling yeah and the ceiling's only like six feet high and you guys are wrong what house have you ever been in that they have six foot ceilings i don't know uh somewhere in uh nashville yeah not sure i don't know we don't even have basements here man yeah we have basements there's no walls where aaron is yeah i don't have walls that's cool huh yeah i live in rooms jail cell it's called open concept i have a really cool tv where you can see the insides yeah that's called a prison tv it's so you can't smuggle stuff inside of it that's why it's like that okay um so since you guys asked uh i don't have any goals so there you go oh you're such a snowflake come on what are your goals stop it no you don't want to achieve anything next year you've got no life because it just happens no i do actually we're just making fun of my place i want we got to move out of here because we don't have any walls so it's it's a weird time because i i want to i want to move but i don't i don't want to move for the sake of moving i want to move because we're like going to buy another place because we rent this place and it's a tough time because you know there's just so much involved right now with like pandemic and stuff and i don't know like what things are gonna look like so i i probably just gonna like hold off for a bit but that's kind of the one thing that i think about daily is like all right are you going to buy in san diego yeah all right but that's what i'm saying dude like i don't have a crystal ball nobody does obviously even like real estate folks sure but it seems to be cyclical you know every 12 years or so something changes a little bit so the prices are just so high there that's why i ask but the other side of that coin is that the like interest rates are like in the basement right now you know i mean so it's like exactly so it's like it's it's such a catch-22 so it's like oh it's just you overpay a little bit for a house because in the long run the dollar amount actually is still less you know so so what's it do yeah but you're also getting equity in a house whereas you know with rentals well the equity too yeah well the price and the prices around here like they they're still increasing a lot like consistently so we have houses here that are like 800 square foot and they're wanting 200 000 for them that's never like i mean that might not be something for you guys out west but here that's no it's never been that way like last year they were selling for like 65 000. you know now they want 200. that's how i built that's how i bought my first house it was it was like 900 square feet like that and it was gosh i mean it was under a hundred thousand i don't remember how much i paid yeah but i mean like it was times are crazy it was still a struggle to pay for andy can relate i was a cable guy um actually i was you guys are gonna love this story i uh i was such a bargainer um i don't know it was maybe 22 or 23. they're like all right well so you know this position pays eight bucks an hour and i was like well i have a lot of experience so guess what you're gonna pay me nine dollars an hour and i'm not gonna take a penny less i don't know who the hell i thought i was but they came back and they were like all right we'll do nine bucks i didn't walk around in that break room like i was kicking me out because i knew that i was making nine dollars an hour and everybody else was making eight like i own this yes i see somebody looking in the vending machine i'm like i'm gonna buy that you plebian you gotta give us you gotta give us a goal iron you can't get off of this your goal was to buy a house but you're not gonna do that but i don't know yet so my goals are continuing researching nothing nothing physical yeah i've got a stack actually i'll tell you i'll put this out in the universe right now because i think it's a i think it's a funny thing that i'm doing it because i'm doing it for no good reason much like everything i do um i'm gonna take the enterprise design test that's the one you took right aj yeah i'm gonna take that one the sd-wan one and then uh the cwna and i'm gonna try to do them all in the same day why exactly i've never told anybody about this because i just other than my wife because i i think it's i don't i do i just think it would be cool at the end of the day to be like hey i took all three of these in the same day and like none of them have anything to do with each other i guess design but like they're all pretty like segregated disciplines you know what i mean it would just be it would just it would be interesting to like interview me after that you know what i mean oh wait wait like like would i be able to talk maybe we should consider that maybe i'll do it on thursday if you piss all three of them you're going to be impossible cute magic can you imagine trying to deal with this dude after he does that no his head won't fit on the screen it's so hard i'll have to move that's why i got to move that does sound pompous okay that's fair yeah it is pompous but it's you it is pompous but but that's not why i'm doing it and and quite honestly that's why i haven't told anybody that i was doing right because how did you do it well i made a decision to study yeah it's going to be just a bunch of pictures of me like like where it started how it's going and i'm just like dead in a ditch somewhere you know like three books piled on my head i've seen your notes so are you gonna like get organized and study for all three or you just winging it um because i have you're an organized dude you know you don't we don't i read them yeah yeah i read them and i everything i didn't know i made a flash card out of so when you say you read them that like the ocgs or whatever the textbooks yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah sweet i got i got both of them um but then yeah like i literally have no idea what they're gonna test on so i like i just i probably like typical probably went way too deep in some places i didn't need to and not deep enough in places i didn't i mean but that's just does boson have a certification like are you going to do any of that no okay no design they don't yeah it i don't know about wireless no and i think they only have it kind of goes back to my original strategy which is to use the ditkas and the end of the chapter stuff anyway and for questions like i read those and then i figure out what they're probably trying to spoon feed me in the chapter and then at the end i'm like i still don't know what the hell that is i still don't know what the hell that is and so i'll just make them into flash cards do you lab stuff anymore like at this point or you just like i'm just gonna go take the test well i mean aj will tell you like how does one lab for a design exam yeah you don't right and like yeah stuff i i feel like i need to like sure but like when i got my ccnp it's like basically all i did because you know i mean you remember you took t-shoot it's like you just gotta like you almost have to like up your words per minute in some of those scenarios you know because like like that's what's going to get you to the end in a timely fashion um so it's just yeah it's just not like that for these and i don't i don't know how it's going to be going forward even because given the fact that they took out all the sims and you know are they three associate level classes like i got lost in the acronym suit are they associates are they professional another wireless isn't it right yeah that's an associate and the other two are professionals all right wow there's specialties you demand yeah you know again it's not gonna get me anything and quite honestly the reason why i didn't tell anybody is because i didn't think it'd be that cool plus didn't want anybody to be like i think that the the two specialist exams will renew your ccnp oh shut up really yes yeah that's that's one of the ways that you can renew a ccmp you either take the core level exam or you do two specialists in a three-year period okay oh okay i'll let you know you obviously go past the cei but so should you space them out then because if if if he takes two this year i mean you already have your ccmp for of a year right yeah but honestly dude i don't know like i'm not really focused on renewing it but but if it renews because of something that i wasn't trying to renew then that's huge yeah like you know i mean it was another feather in the cap there kind of like when yeah right like just another reason to to say yes to doing that because it was a stupid idea to begin with i mean like it's stupid it's like mental just like it's like water torture right it's like i don't think it's stupid i just know it's nothing that i could pull off i'm i'm amazed that you're i don't think i can pull it off either that's what i'm saying and but that's why i'm doing it try it's awesome yeah it's like it's a lot of money right to probably like the it kind of goes back to what we were saying at the beginning of this episode it's kind of funny it's like coming full circle it's like like that my focus is like hey let's do five goals and then so like here's my point i go in on test day i pass two out of three which is still 66 and i still ended up with you know a specialist let's say two specialist exams whoa that that's nothing to back at but like i still have reason to be like i kind of failed you know what i mean because a 66 is not a passing grade uh you know two out of three ain't bad as the saying it is bad hello incredible it's incredible in baseball right yeah exactly baseball you're a star there so yeah yeah yeah so so yeah it again i didn't tell anybody because i didn't want anybody to really know that i was going to do it i just kind of wanted to do it and hopefully successfully do it and then be like guess what i did but the cat's out of the bag now so now we've turned this into a smart goal and what smart means in this context is that you can feel free to make fun of me if i don't achieve this publicly shame me do what you wish make me cry i'll drag you out onto twitter and shame you i've never seen that in the community by the way everybody that fails exams i've never once seen anybody pile on to somebody it's it's i got the idea because uh our boy netsec wheezy got that root canal and then went and passed still one of the greatest ones you should do that get a root canal and then take three exams get a medical uh procedure i got a couple things a couple of things working against me number one i have the world's most badass electric toothbrush so guess what my plaque level's down to like a negative 77 000 million and then the other thing is the last time i went to the dentist they ripped out one of my wisdom teeth because i cracked that son of a gun in half with a fennel seed on a piece of sausage that was on a pizza and that took that was like three days before my wedding so i don't really have a whole lot of good memories from the dentist at this point so i'm gonna steer clear who does who does yeah right they're not helping themselves look what they do to me they rip a tooth out three days before i'm supposed to get married come on yeah it's like being a cable guy aaron nobody calls you good news tells you they yeah pretty cool they love the job he doesn't do it i closed this out you know you're like you're on your pda you're like closing it out you're like what code do i use um i'm a badass that's what that's the code i use they just wanted to high five me customer high five me i put the most notes in that i've ever put in so customer was super cool they wanted to know if like what my sign was they offered me peach tea it was great i had a great time um i checked all their fittings it was good you know no no extra long stingers no fittings no fittings getting sucked out you guys wouldn't know what that meant but we do cool you ever tell them you'll be right back in your boat speak yeah i did only one only when i was in trouble or like in quote unquote danger right absolutely did yeah but i've only done it once i was like yeah so i'm gonna run out to my truck and get something and then i call my boss i'm like you can go ahead and close that out because i'm not going back in there no i can't talk about it i can't talk i understand same um so uh i think we're good right goals we're all good to go we're feeling good yeah 20 20 was a hell of a year i think we had a hell of a year let's do a summary though so aj what are your thoughts uh i it's gonna land somewhere you know devnet professional at least working towards a devnet professional i definitely want to sharpen the skills that i got with my deadnet associate right like i want to keep using those get better at it i'm thinking you know maybe ccnp data center i i definitely want to get another professional level certification under my belt okay so we'll see where that goes there's plenty of other other goals too but i'll just leave it as our boy manny would say side quests that's right i love that right andy what about you uh man um i would like to pass my encore at the end of january and then and then pass this you'd like to or you will well you will you know i do know you will yes next goal yeah so uh encore the end of january i know nothing about design i'm going into it fresh but if i could pass that at the end of february that'd be great and then jump into cloud in march so that's kind of my uh they're my goals first quarter yeah it feels a little overreaching but that's what i'm going to do you can do it yeah you guys might need to find a new co-host we'll be busy we'll see ya we'll see you i'll miss you guys dan what do you got all right so i guess if i had to put something on the board it'd be uh ccnp by the end of 2021 and i want to be down 30 pounds so okay i think those are going to be my two main ones right there we won't pull a dan richards and ask how much you weigh now for a reference point actually i don't know i haven't weighed myself in quite a while we use this in wireless okay i'd say i'd say i'm around 220 or something like that so you're going to lose 30 db it's a ratio using 30 db yeah so don't give us any absolute numbers um i got you that's that's i like it we're i think next year at this time we're basically going to be telling everybody that we're renaming this to the ccnp only podcast yeah because we're all going to be ccps at that point yeah that'll be cool um and then i'm taking three tests in one day and i may do it next week and i may do it the week after i don't know so i don't do it next week that's still in 2020. that's fair i'll do it the i'll do it in january you just blew our cardboard wait i i will do it after you give it away dude you just looked at the camera what did you do holy crap i just want to get that out yeah exactly maybe we'll release this episode and i'll i'll go take those tests on a wednesday so people can hear this wednesday morning and then i'll do it that day it's cool because i don't have to leave my desk now you just stay here and then deal with pearson oh i love that three times in a row like good freaking gracious i can't hear you because you told me to take my headphones off like i don't understand how am i supposed to talk to you if you tell me to take my headphones off there's nothing about that that makes any sense anyway this has been a great episode uh i've had a great year with you guys i this is only the beginning we haven't even been doing this for years so it's kind of weird to do a 2012 oh my gosh my my mind is blown and how far this thing has come yeah and and that's the everybody like has nothing to do with us at all it has everything to do with everybody that's listening right listeners fans yep everybody that was on the show um i've had some all the guests yeah yeah 2021 is going to be a hard this is going to be a tough act to follow 2020 you know um most people were pretty pissed off about it but i think we made the best time we made the best of it yeah we did what we could um so thanks for joining us in 2020 thanks we we appreciate it we do know it's all about the journey and this is our journey just as much as it is yours because you're hearing us um and this also happens to be the art of network engineering whoa whoa all right with that we're out of here see ya see you later later 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 artofnetworkengineering.com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you