his 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 podcast my name is aaron weiler also known as aaron engineered and today's episode is actually a continuation of last week's episode where we're interviewing cbt nuggets trainer keith barker and to pick up where we left off from last week i was actually talking about being sponsored by a gaming center and my brief yet illustrious gaming career let's pick right back up where we left off and join the rest of us in our conversation so before we get off failures because i expect people to fail the ie did you have any failures in lower level tests like the na the mp or did you just breeze through them you know i have my history i could look up but i've had several failures with ccia research over the years because every two or whatever they send me the email you have to research you have to take another written uh in the past and so i took it was cisco let's see about three or four maybe four years ago i was going to research and i thought i'm going to do one in a topic i don't know yet so i went for voice i think it was so i studied it took the exam failed uh studied it again took the exam failed i think i failed that three times and i said i'm done i'm not going to restart this thing and so i said i wasn't that's what i've done i'm done i went to cisco live uh wherever it was that year and they said are you a cci i said well you know cci i was a cci but uh i haven't researched it i haven't done a research and he says have you heard about the emeritus program i was like tell me more and goes well the emeritus program if you're more less than one year out you're not uh like so you should have resurveyed here you're still that one your window past that point you can sign up for emeritus status for 87 a year and you'll be a ccie emeritus we'll just park it for you and then when you want to take your exams again you can just activate it so i did that i was like okay 87 and no study and then uh so as now with this whole uh change with the exams in february of 2020 i at cbt nuggets i'm creating a whole bunch of content encore and rc and so forth and so i've been just taking those exams not realizing that those are recertifying my cci now i get i got this email like boom cci security cci enterprise all right like great oh cool nice oh and that's new for you though because now you're a ccie enterprise yeah yeah that's the the conversion yeah and i i wasn't expecting that i was like happy happy to see it so uh failures those cci writtens previously were so so hard so those are some failures too and as a a seasoned cci who had studied i was like i can't do it i had literally stopped trying on this ccn cca voice i just oh i took it three times the outside the written to recertify oh so you used voice to recertify yeah i wanted to do something new got it oh well see that's your problem right there man trying to reinvent the wheel keith if it ain't broke don't fix it man and so here's a lot of thought i took the exam i thought oh here's all the errors i did terrible and so i studied hard on those areas next exam felt like a whole different topic so uh yeah i could see that anyway yeah i have that's an interesting pivot i'll kick myself if i don't ask this and i don't know where we're at on time so how do you study do you kind of have a yeah do you log into cbt nuggets and then start learning off of there or so if they have content absolutely uh let's imagine i'm teaching something that i've taught like before i will watch my own content like every time i teach palo alto i go back to my old palo alto goes oh yeah that's how it works or big ips f5 product oh that's how that works i'm looking at my own content or this is so sad this happens more often than i want to admit i'll go to youtube searching for something press enter and it's my video i'm good no one ever has the problem looking for something and finding themselves except for you hashtag keith barker problems i tell you man what does that tell you you're looking for an answer and the only person you could find was yourself it's like those movies when someone records something for their future self it's like that's keith though he's like google 2000 like in 2012 buy bitcoin right yeah yeah for 10 cents a piece or something so the way i the way i study is um i have a subscription to safari books online and uh they have like an all-you-can-eat menu and then i'm grandfathered in one for like i think it's ten dollars a month you can have up to five at a time and you have to keep them in your bookcase for at least 30 days so i don't need more than five books at a time so i have safari books online for all the technical books uh i will dive into those first i also love i love online doc from cisco if it's cisco it's like they've got great design guides great and then uh so once i've studied a little bit i sometimes i'll look for youtube if i like i'll totally tell uh is it michael hilton mm-hmm yeah so about two months ago i didn't know sd-wan for anything and uh it came up as an option cbt nuggets she's like hey i thought i don't know it but you know what i've learned things before and i can learn this so i started searching on youtube i found michael hilton's going through building a lab and i built the lab and then i got books and i had a couple other courses i tuned into to get pieces i bought a course off udemy udemy you the you i think it's you to me you to me i i always think of ubuntu and i my pronunciation was all the windows so i just i went to pieces and parts and then i labbed it up and built it and then uh trained on it and when i when i got to the point of training people how to build their lab it was tight and you know how to set up templates is tight and the kind of templates and how to set it up and t-lock extensions and it's tight and it's like i didn't know that before so my study process is identify what i want to learn i allocate time to it read if there's some videos that are pretty good on it i'll watch those i do have subscriptions to all of our competitors i work for cbt nuggets i i personally just invest somebody told me this back at paramount back in 94 they said you should really invest like two or three percent of your gross income in yourself to develop yourself whether it's you know a gym a gym exercise membership or books or gear or software or courses don't expect somebody else to provide that for you invest two or three percent yourself so i subscribe to all i don't have a current subscription to ine uh but i still like them uh but almost every else i do that i just pay for and then i i look at those courses i do and i say uh okay who has who's got what on this topic i'm teaching and how good is it and then i say how do i make it like way better if possible and the only way i can make it way better is to take what you know the conglomerate online doc and everything else and really boil it down to if i was being taught this what is the correct approach and that secret along with problem solution guides all of my course decisions about source teaching so for studying uh find out how it works first if i find myself doing this uh let's configure this and i really don't get it i need to stop and back up and say hey you know like for ccna i i love staying in the dirt i call ccna like the underlay network and the basic protocols the dirt i love staying there and that's what my youtube channel is primarily focused on is helping people just starting with the basics perfect um so if somebody's configuring like you know gateway load balancing protocol and they they've heard of an avg but they don't it's like study a little more first and then lab it up to reinforce and that's what i do with all the technology so two weeks ago i started off with the email security appliance the web security appliance and umbrella okay three products that i have never uh i just told somebody a day ago i'll never admit what i didn't know but anyway here we are i never own so much yeah yeah you guys so i've never used them i mean i heard of them so i got eval licenses from cisco go through the front door right ask for the eval license got it laughed it up set it all up and then i created courseware for score security core for that and uh i had no idea umbrella is so amazing do you guys all know about umbrella i don't know oh yeah yeah nope not me no i don't so let's imagine you do a dns request and you're saying www.myfavoritesite.com dns responds with an ip address yep what if that site's malicious do you really want dns to give you the ip so you go to it absolutely not probably cutting that off as soon as possible would be great well open dns can do that and cisco bought open dns and that's now called umbrella oh see i didn't know that okay yep and so you have you have the free tier we can point their dns servers that'll cut off a lot of malware sites and malicious sites but if you subscribe you can then set up policies and say no these categories these apps and so forth it's amazing so i laughed it up in my home office here i was like holy shnikers that works so when it works and then i then in the course it's just one set of videos i you know talk about what it is how it works what is a policy how to create a policy why it's needed and then demonstrating it working and then encouraging them to get hands-on practice so um i i i totally forgot what question drove all that but so so i'll i'll tell you where how do you study this will actually probably yeah this will probably help uh not just in your brain but like kind of where the why is because you said keith in particular you're like yeah well i like to break it down like this so let me just help for a second uh i'll break down where andy's head is so andy is the type of dude that likes to plan you know we talked about that but he also likes to pick people's brains to figure out what the secret sauce is right because especially someone who has two ccies like that's impressive on top of that you teach content right that you know there's a lot of stuff out there that you've taught so and you love to stay in the you know the the blocking and tackling we'll call it right the the uh the shock troops of the ccna world which i love that too um so knowing that like what's what's the secret for getting you from i just got my ccna to all the way to ccie especially when you have six kids or seven kids is it all right the most important thing if i had to take one thing away is it the scheduling is it the uh the how you study like the mediums in which you use is it the lab like what do you think's the single most like crucial thing to your study good thank you for the question so times are going to change and resources that are available to an individual are going to vary widely right based on where somebody is in the world or what what resources they have i i am going to i'm going to hide behind the statement of if the how or the the why rather if if you're if a person's motivation to get it done is strong enough i this is this has been true for me forever if my desire and my why this is important is strong enough i'm going to freaking figure a way out how to do that and and that's that's what's been my secret is that um scheduling time is important there's tricks you can use uh such as you know setting small goals and making sure you meet them and commit to others all those you know you can atomic habits is one of my favorite books about getting stuff done uh but i would say that the most important aspect is the why it's important to you and i i used to have a like a written page goal that i wrote that said i keith barker and the date was 10 years from now i saved this i still have this is my oldest thing i possess i think and it says i keith barker on this date will blah blah blah blah blah blah and there's no magic there i want to just tell everybody that i don't i'm a super critical thinker these days i i think that people there is luck and i think the harder people work the luckier they get but if we stay focused on our goals that i i probably will never get to impact a billion people that's okay but it it's still my goal you'll probably come close to be honest i don't know i if i can if i can honestly say that i feel like there's a million people that's a lot of people whose lives are just a little bit better and this podcast can help with that journey yeah i'm i i'm going to leave a happy person really it will it will i promise you because you've said you've even just like it's funny because in your vernacular there's tidbits that you don't even realize you say anymore probably but i was like picking them up like for instance first of all the they go through the front door first thing right like you know analysis paralysis just go to the front door man try that first like you didn't you didn't call just call them it's not that hard uh yeah the other thing too is like you've said this twice i've learned before i can learn this and it's like so very nonchalant it's like because clearly you haven't learned that before because otherwise you wouldn't need to learn it but you have learned something before so i can do it again i mean like we popped out of the womb and and you know learned how to breathe you know like it's you know how to eat like everybody knows how to do that it's like we can learn something else if you learn how to eat you can learn how to do something else it's not that hard also i always keep in the back of my head some person made this so let me just give an example you see you mentioned glbp somebody invented glbp sure it may have been a group of people but i can promise you that all those people sitting in the room are not any smarter than all five of us sitting right here right they may have more experience they've been doing it longer but they're not any smarter you know that that's like a that's just like a thing that will hold you back if you just keep thinking everybody's smarter because you're not stupid so uh that's such such good gems that you were dropping you didn't even realize you were dropping them have you guys met peter lepukov no who's that no some people are smarter than us i'm guessing peter's some some people are yeah so peter peter de poukoff i worked with him at ine he's got four cci's he's uh incredible um i don't anyway i i'm not detracting from you from what you said no no you're right though i mean there are obviously right but they are definitely you knew his name there it's an exception to the rule you know like the guy was the first and last name right now i totally get that like a good example do you know who uh micheline murphy is i don't okay she if you go on the cisco forums at all she's huge into data center stuff and she was kind of like you she went through the front door she was a lawyer she was like one of the first people that we interviewed on this podcast because you know we see her everywhere like what is her story we got to know so she was a lawyer she decided just like you it's time to pivot so what does she do she decides that she's going to go into data center and just like service provider you know once you get to a certain point it's like you're on your own so she basically just like you said went through the front door so she goes through the front door and she goes right into the cisco forums hey who does this and everybody's like ah we don't know like that so she finds the product manager within cisco almost like she works there and she's she wrote some of the dna center like not dna center but data center and dna center stuff and she was telling us stuff that we had no idea about she's like i researched couldn't find it so i decided yeah let me go to product and help them write it so now she's in like cisco white papers just from going through the front door you know that's awesome that is awesome dude stories like that just like you know it just helps especially listeners it helps them tremendously because it's so much easier to find an excuse not to do something than there is to do something and if that's all you have like just look at the examples that you know are out there like keith you you weren't you weren't always a trainer you could have fooled us honestly like that's why we ask right it's like how long have you been doing this it seems natural like tell us what tell us what we're missing here but you know you don't nobody's super human we all just see the tip of the iceberg no one ever sees that that what's going on underneath it right so aj you've been awful quiet dude you okay oh i'm fine you're just soaking it all right you guys keep stealing my questions i tell you it's like aj's like this keith kid this keith person this keith elder elder won't stop talking well no no i'm loving it and then the more you talk the more i learn until you said you were 56 aj was 90 sure he was older than you anyway so that he's probably still thinking about that he's like wait a minute like i was half expecting him to come out of nowhere and be like so wait you're 56 like an hour into it when uh when keith said uh 64 you know born in andy was over there going mm-hmm yeah okay they they like they like to call me the old man of the group here so i appreciate your presence he just likes the that's about me for an hour there's a lot there's a lot of value with the wisdom and age and experience there's that's definitely true our brains don't work as fast i get that mine does i'm trying to speak for myself my brain does not work like it did 10 years ago or 20 years ago it is definitely slower so i just have to compensate by trying a little harder and spending a little more time uh i would put one more tip that worked for me as far as getting from ccna to cci i used to back in the day there's a thing called a check and uh i would write out a check to a friend for a amount of money and then i would say my commitment is this week i'm going to do x y and z and if i don't this check is yours to cash now i would use cash uh 100 make it painful five dollars may be painful for some if uh if five isn't up the ante and say i'm committed to doing this this this by this weekend if i don't do it you can have that money and then is that friend gonna follow up with you with love no that friend is gonna follow up to you and say did you do it where's my mom then yeah and then if you so i've i've done that myself more recently with saying um um is my crutch word it never makes it to my cbt nuggets videos because i edit those but when i'm on a live stream every sunday i do a live stream at 10 a.m pacific for absolutely 11 a.m pacific on sundays uh i do a cahoot quiz we have a few hundred people show up and do ccna questions they're fun and then every saturday at 10 a.m i have my office hour on discord which is all free people show up and they're studying ceasing i have questions but when i listen to those back on the streams i just want to kick myself for my arms really because i know i know better mayan is like here i say you know a lot nick made me i have a piece of paper on the wall that says don't say you know i thought it was i thought it was john no so for things like that if i am trying to work on something i can take the cash and give my wife i i with my wife i'll say here it's 100 bucks during this next live stream if i say uh one time it's all yours and i've i've never not i've always lost that money oh man so i'm working on it i bet your wife likes that that exercise huh we've heard you you've been talking for well over an hour and i don't think that i've heard it um yeah i don't i don't think that's bad i'm not being nice because it's conversational this is conversational so when i teach at cvt nuggets i'm actually doing this as well i'm focused as if i'm talking to you but in a live stream this just creeps up on me i'll be reading a comment and like uh stop that but don't you do you think that that there's an element to it because i i feel the same way so i went to school i was just like you where i was i lasted maybe a semester but the only difference was that i went to school for radio broadcasting so you talked about the guy being in the pit and how ruthless it was you know he's just yelling at you for that that's how it was like on the air and we had to do exactly that i had to take the tapes yes they were actually like tapes old cassette tapes and we had i guess they were called promos or something but there was always an element of who you are as a person i'll give you an example my first training job was a little awful because they didn't really like me and that's really because everybody wore cowboy hats i don't look like a guy that wears a cowboy hat so i'd love to see that though yeah i stand out like a sore thumb and it's it's pretty bad but i don't think they liked me because i used the word dude a lot but what i found though is dude is part of who i am and i wasn't putting it in places where i was using it as a crutch so for instance dead air i love dead air it's so powerful it's one of the most powerful things you can ever learn just being silent for a few seconds like you were giving us the cliffhangers earlier like that was cool so me saying dude was a problem to them but it was for different reasons i always had the ums and i typically do like a thing where i say right right right like but i i say right it's annoying i hate it but and i'm surprised i haven't done it right now but so having that like in my vernacular i always felt like oh geez dude get rid of the dude dude like here i just said it like five times but it's part of me it's who it's who i am so is there an amount of that though that's just you and talking like a normal human because when it's flowing it's flowing no matter how many times you say um or i say dude you probably won't even notice it you could be at some point you could be a little bit over critical to yourself so do you ever find that too like is it necessary to get rid of every single um uh no yeah so are you a big lebowski fan then oh yeah okay so i'm that's my father i'm the dude that's a great show i have some fun sometime when we're talking privately i'll tell you about my original exposure to that show and what was going on in my life at that time it's a good story for another time here we go here we go but so uh when i'm trying there you go there's my uh so in training when i'm doing training i'm pretty focused and there's not a lot of odds there there's some there's some expletives that i cut out that's for sure like if i'm doing a demo and i'm getting to the the climax of the demo just to be clear and then it something doesn't go well like oh you know but as far as like an um there i'm not too worried about that at all yeah i think too that that my brother who works for ibm he's a career ibm guy uh he's my he's three years my senior and so he's been there for like at ibm for 30 plus years working there and he had a training session one on on teaching styles and they had three different trainers three different teaching styles this goes back to your comment and about you know leaving in our personalities they were all significantly different teaching styles but all of them were rocking amazing and that's because they were all engaging huh so people people are going to forgive a or a dude or whatever yeah they're going to forgive it in a heartbeat because if they're engaged they don't even know that's exactly it and so i'm i'm with you there so i don't know that my eyes are too critical it probably will cost me a few hundred more dollars with my wife yes i'm sure yeah i'm actually scared that you mentioned that to you how do you engage a camera keith are you pretending that you know you're speaking to a person absolutely yes yep so if if i was teaching some topic whatever it is and i was all by myself in the studio all alone i would literally as i am well you're here so i don't have to visualize it i would visualize that i am talking to you and it's like i i lab something up i'm all good i practice it a few times take off the lab coat and be like this let me tell you about xyz in fact i would do a problem solution it would go something like this you know if you need to blah blah blah the solution is simple we're going to bam here it is and i do it as if i'm talking to you with a little extra energy like keith on a good day and and that's how i do it i i used to have pictures on my walls of various students okay i don't do that anymore because i i can visualize it yeah just like this for the stream so so every i'm giving away my secrets here but you guys are all down here on the screen i haven't taken my eyes off that lens maybe for a few seconds ever yeah that's because i can see you like you know my in my eyesight i can see that your expressions micro express you know sort of and i get if like if you start going like this i'll notice i'll notice but the key is i'm looking in the camera just out of habit after doing this for years okay so that brings up a different a different thing in my head because you've been a live trainer before and you did it for quite some time i think just kind of doing the math in my head the differences clearly are that right you can gauge the audience so it's clearly a different challenge to do it when nobody's there do you find that you do it the same live like because you you said you still do some cisco live stuff how different are the two when you're doing them okay have you ever heard of a a mosh pit with punk rock or anything like that oh yes i've been in one i'm like i'm a human monster okay i've been in a few of them that's that's my opinion of cisco live when i'm teaching a session it's just crazy great so the energy's up 70 or 80 of the people who come there already know what i'm gonna say because they just came to see me which is so so rewarding right it's like all these people they want us and so it's just like a party it's like a reunion nice so i teach live it's like a part i i have it i have it planned don't get me wrong i've got it segued i know what the problem is to get to here and what i was you know this part in that part so it's very well planned it's well rehearsed and whoever my co-partner is or i'm teaching with we spend the night before going over the whole thing yeah and we don't go very word i'll say something like okay your segue to this is this topic he'll get like this i'll say yeah you don't need to say it just be aware and that way it's still fresh just like for this podcast and the stream that we're doing or however this is going to be delivered we didn't have a pre-show we didn't sit down and say tell me you know like i'll ask that during the live event so it's like a party so teaching live you have the people there we can interact with them i can see that john or sally or amir or ibrahim or whoever it is i can see they're struggling with something and i can elaborate but training live although it's great probably in an in 45 minutes to an hour's worth of training i can probably get the same benefit to the learner in about five to seven minutes if it's just well thought out well introduced and use an analogy like sort of like if uh if you what sport aj what sport do you like golf great so if i was going to teach a golf uh something we use a golf analogy or a technology it'd be something like you know some of the challenges when working with a layer two protocol like stp is like what's better it's a lot like golf lower scores better and you can't forget that it's like you can't undo that you can't unring that bell so i would weave that in at the appropriate time but if we use like and we take something that they know excuse the mic there something that they know and we link it to something that we're teaching them that increases the learning process so i got you uh when i'm teaching i just like think what is like for subnetting i just thought how would i like to learn this yeah and what are the steps i need to take and so i created this course called subnet saturdays i took 11 saturdays on youtube i put in a playlist for people first what is an ipv4 address all the way to variable link subject masking and somebody who goes through those 11 videos can do it it's amazing so um so you're saying so i forgot the question again no no no it's all good so so what you're getting at though is that what often happens to me at least this is my experience from also being a trainer at one point was in a live environment especially when it's casual-ish as in like please make this more of a discussion than anything you end up not getting to what you were trying to get to because things you know you do have to field answers and it's okay to say yes great question we're gonna get to that in a minute or great question beyond the scope of this right so that those things are inevitably gonna happen when you have a live audience so being able to cut that out and i think that's why learners are so adept or maybe apt to going towards uh like a smaller chunk like a smaller video because i'm the type of person that just i want it quick and dirty man the shorter you can make it the better let me be the one that asks for more you know like i never go to the buffet everybody does this everybody goes to the buffet and piles are played up first plate not me i go i sample just a little bit of everything and then i go back and now i'm ready now i go in last thing i want to do is waste a whole plate of food you know like what if i get something i didn't like so right i want to be able to find those little pieces and then i want to take more as i need it a great example too ocg i don't want to read the whole thing i'm going to employ the 80 20 principle right off the bat eighty percent of stuff does it's irrelevant in that i mean we know it this page is like a thou or there's a thousand pages in this thing right do you really need to memorize every page no but nevertheless like if you could just filter through the information and just get it as you want it it becomes more of like a like i asked for that like i'm not being like forced to you know i was like well you need to know this but you need to know make sure you write this down and are you telling me i don't have to read the encore ocg because this is great news i never said that i never said that i never said that so the the cpt videos the cpt videos are a hoot you'll love them yeah so uh so going from in person to live to uh online training or to re pre-recorded training there are benefits to live class i mean if i'm sitting in a class with aaron and we're learning about some technology aaron and aj and everybody else brings a lot of experience of the work you know what they've done to the and those stories you can't get through live training or through our recorded training so i there's some benefits also for a trainer to or for a person to get out of the office and actually focus on the content if they're taking it live physically those are huge benefits that i never want to say aren't true but at the same time those courses that i've been to are two to four thousand dollars for one week for one person plus travel and so it's not very cost effective because at the end of the day the trainee although if they keep the book they're not going to remember a lot of what was taught yeah so those are some negatives so i i teach online i'm a i want to make the best online content i can yeah and and just realize that there are pros and cons to each so here's a question because you've got lots of stuff and when you actually told that ccie story your first one your route switch story where something was punched down wrong you have a video about that i i've got i think like 300 videos on my channel yeah no because i've heard you tell that story before and okay because i remember it and i think it was in a it was in a room but it wasn't the room you're in now it was in a different room there was like i think there was a closet door behind you yes that was my other my other place so i still have that i'm just transferring everything here yeah you have to sell it yeah that's a i read that thing called where it's like on continuous momentum or whatever yeah i saw that oh oh you can't yes it's still up it's in the different camera shots oh okay in fact i can i can change the camera angle if you guys want to see that oh oh here we go now we're getting all right okay let's see if that worked yeah give us that shot that we did that's actually a funny idea because i might change my work picture to something similar to that just so when i'm not there it looks like i'm just like hiding like that's hilarious that's awesome okay let's try that one more time hold on so you got two cameras in there one's a webcam i'm assuming oh no this is not flying okay it's all good google google doesn't like you all right trust me the perpetual motion machine is over there okay so i just i just put up this new camera today i'm going for two similar cameras here and there and i haven't worked all that out yet but camera are they i've got a cam i've got a sony a6400 and now i have two of them so the ones right here it's the best uh i had to manually set the iso and the the shutter speed and the f-stop and all that but i i'm using on this camera right here i have a cam link 4k that's a device that's what i'm plugging your hdmi to that what you're looking at right here is a 20 hdmi capture adapter dongle okay from amazon and uh it doesn't do 4k but it's for what i do it's probably as good as the camlink 4k and it's 20 bucks on amazon okay hey uh andy did you hear that he's on a mirrorless camera oh yeah we got a big so dan he dan's a jack of all trades here he's a he's a professional wedding vig videographer nice yeah so he's muzzled he knows that he knows a thing or two about i mean and i'm talking incredible shots here keith and the strange thing is like he has he's got these these two people embracing and check this scene out man it's like this is this is my wife she doesn't look like this this is my wife and they're just kind of locked here the freaking sun is setting like right here and this dude's doing like a pirouette like a roundup that's not an official term that's like a ballet but you know what i mean they're doing a circle like a little circle like music going in slo-mo and we didn't know that he did any of this until like two weeks ago this is why it's so weird because it was epic it was great and we were like what in the heck why are you hiding this from us so the guy the guy over here knows a thing or two about a couple of things one's videography but check out dan move move your body for a second which way you got to show off this this just completely out of the way because i want to see what's behind you it's a mess look at how this guy built this how cool oh yeah oh nice i is that a 3560 in there no there's a 4510 right here okay and then i've got uh 3550 and i think those are 2960 or 2950s and then some 2800s uh i think those are 19 whatevers some really old ones right there and then i got some rocky care up there too but yeah that's so awesome custom-made look at that thing he's like a jack of all time but definitely a master of none so that's all of us keith keith tell us tell us one thing that you're absolutely awful at yeah we need to know yeah we got to make you human you have to be bad at something yep i i've got a plethora do you want sports related or otherwise uh otherwise actually no actually i'm gonna be more specific something in tech that you were just bad at does that exist first of all yeah yeah okay um i'm crazy not surprising anybody aaron you just stumped keith yeah so daniel you'll appreciate okay okay so i was setting up a new camera today all right all right the a6400 which is this one right here and i had both cameras back to back going through the settings and are you you're familiar with the sony menu system yeah it's pretty rough it's a and it's great there's so many great options it's like i just want one yeah so i had to call after an hour of trying to get i have another camera all the settings are there i have to just mirror it i could not get the uh it was the iso or the f-stop one or two i couldn't get it going i had to call my son okay right my son's uh my son also is a videographer he's also a programmer fantastic smart kid and it's like three minutes go here go here i thought i am the dad calling the sun how do you get the shame working i can't wait you're not looking you're not just any dad though yeah let's be clear about that you're like my dad is not keith barker like my dad i my dad couldn't figure out what hdmi input to put on the tv and he faced time to me and he tried to talk to me for a solid 15 minutes while he was on mute and i could just see his lips moving and he could hear me saying dude you're on mute unmute me and he couldn't figure it out so yeah you're not just any dad here you're you're kidding parker and you're calling yourself like if i'm your son i'm running that up the flagpole oh yeah on twitter yo dad just called me uh so i did tell them though just like for the office hour i do every saturday i i want people to come prepared right do your work study if you have questions about whatever it is let's talk about what you studied uh and how it how it works so i i told him uh hey paul i spent an hour on this as my first defense and then it took him like so that's something i'm not good at i'm not good at initially i thought i can just use this camera and you know chuck keith is a huge inspiration for me yeah uh he we actually cbt nuggets he took videography and the whole experience a whole nother level that's why i'm no longer in that white office with just if you look at any videos from like a year and a half ago it's the white background no the the sloth yeah yeah yeah he's still he's still i i was going to ask you like how did you get to where you're because you sit here and say that and but it's like you have an awesome set right there like uh okay so so the art of engineering is a lot like the art of getting a studio working i had to realize that just like going into football there's gonna be some pain and just get ready to get you're gonna have to adapt keith you just can't have everything done on cruise control so like with the cameras i had you know i had the c920 whatever it was and i had the brio which are webcams and i it took me a long time to really believe that you have to have a lens bigger than a pinhead to get the image and so i bought these that sony there and then i bought this one like this week for a second camera i'm gonna feed them both in uh so uh oh i i had to learn that i can't use the auto features i gotta tweak it so i was like okay once i agreed to that great then i my daughter who is uh she was born in 88. do you do the math on that i will do it before her birthday which is december 14th uh she's 33. thank you that's helpful so 32 she's turning 32. sorry okay i'll still double check my math yeah so in the other office it was all it was all white and she i said i need your help can you help me she's a designer she she's very creative so she bought me the the fake bricks and the paste on wallpaper and the lighting and and she did that whole thing like one weekend oh wow and so i took so my wife and i bought this house in april of last year and this used to be a carpenter i have a video on the transformation if you want to see it but it used to be a carpenter shop off the garage so i totally just decked it out i have air conditioning in it you know with a mini split and all the lighting and this is like the 15th rearrangement of this office to try to get it to where i want to be so it's just like the art of engineering though it's like some new topic learning it studying it or troubleshooting it i remember working with uh was it the department of navy or whatever it was they had some system they were putting in i'd never worked with it before and it was just a matter of okay like what do i know what kind of information i can just take it from wherever we are at and get do better and better and better that's really the secret for network engineering or life is just anything yeah be honest and then just make it better and make it better and some people start very fortunate and some people start at very unfortunate and that's life i guess the the biggest lesson is life is not fair yeah and it never will be so anybody who thinks it life's not fair you're right you're right put one in your column and then start working towards making it a little better and so people in geographic locations where they don't have an opportunity it's tough i mean half of my half of my feet the people on my channel like 5 000 people on discord and you know a few hundred people join us every sunday for the quizzes these are people that are working to make a difference they're from all over the world everywhere right and uh if i can just help them just go one notch closer and implant in them the idea that don't take this training don't learn this just for a test learn it to know it because that's where your value is going to come out so you can actually be in a i remember the first time i actually used my skills like back in the 80s to actually do something productive in a production network to fix a problem i was like i can do this and then i yeah i from what i know i can solve this problem and i just kept on growing so uh yeah anything i can do to help the general and that goes for you guys too if you're studying something that i can help with dude let me know i'm an opening yeah let's say careful man the office hour every saturday on discord is like from 10 to 11 pacific time or just your calendars and i tell people the focus is ccna but after that if there if we always have c snake questions but if people i chat with people all the time they'll have a questionnaire for me or a request and some of those call them right there and we'll have a chat and discuss it if they're if they have if they've studied something and they need clarification i'm happy to do it and and the the number one response is i'll almost consistently i can't believe i'm talking to keith the thing is i'm available i'm not hiding and i don't have uh my schedule permits me about 20 hours a week that i can devote to social media youtube and uh the office hours and the quizzes and then i spend about 40 40 hours a week on cbt nuggets content and it's not it doesn't it's not really taxing because i get to work in this really great space yeah yeah i get i get to do something i'm passionate about and so it's a great life uh i think i think you just hit on something there too um so talk about does does being in that space kind of help you feel creative and and and motivated to study physical space yeah like that office that he's in because i mean i don't know about you guys but like just seeing that that's like holy crap that's cool like how cool would it be to be in an environment like that you know i i don't know very does i'm in my laundry room i'm in my bedroom and so this is a this this is very hell i mean part of what i really like let me share with you something that's really important to me it's a trash can okay okay it's an ikea trash can it costs very little money and it's part of the infrastructure it's part of my infrastructure here and like those servers are part of my infrastructure and this computer system and the cameras that are mounted i'm tweaking still so the thing is i can come into the studio and here's how it applies to rails too i can come to the studio and i can just go yeah i know every night before i leave the studio i jot down what i'm going to be studying the next day or what i'm going to be teaching or or working on and that way when i come to the studio it's like i call it studio too just yeah straight ends like uh in fact i'll write down the topic i'll write down what resources i'm going to use like online doc or youtube or whatever what labs i'm going to attempt and then i can get right to work and start going at it but it doesn't have to be like this the infrastructure could be i'm going this is this is from james clear thomas abbott's great book it's what are you going to do when are you going to do it and for how much time and if you just commit to two minutes i thought this was total baloney when i first heard it but james claire said set a commitment for two minutes of doing something and then do it if you want to quit after two minutes go ahead and quit and you won't though most of the time i won't okay so i do that with exercise right now it's 15 minutes on the cart on the elliptical and that's it i yep and sometimes i will go for 30 but a lot of times in like 15 minutes i've got all the stuff going on my head about what i'm going to teach today uh i'm done but you know what guess what somebody gets if they exercise 15 minutes every week every day of the week they get all that exercise right and so it's just like for studying identify where you're going to do something prepare yourself for it get that infrastructure set up and then just do it whether that's a table at your is your kitchen table or whether you have you know family and things going on let them know but setting up those habits and it gets easier as you get the habit to do it and i would encourage everybody to do it atomic habits is the one because i have a bunch of of those those books uh one of them is uh habit stacking uh similar but is that the one where he talks about like hey if you want to exercise uh destroy all the barriers so like put your shoes by your bed in the morning if you plan on running in the morning right yes because because you know who's really good at this and i i've known this for a while you guys don't know her it's my wife her if i turn on the light back there you'll see she's got a pile of workout clothes just sitting there on top of her shoes as she does that and she does that with her work clothes as well they're all hanging on a hanger in there 24 hours like sometimes while she's getting ready for today she's putting those clothes over like i was like this is the most insane like this woman's insane i mean i love her obviously but she's insane like who has time for that who does that and then like i'm so stupid just years of me going like why do you do that and then all of a sudden i'm like i should probably do that like i'm so stupid even though i'm the one that read the books that she's never read anything like that all right aaron i've got a question for you what are you committed to starting for at least two minutes that you've been procrastinating that's a good question um i would say so first of all you open up pandora's box i'm doing i do the same thing right like i like i write down stuff that i tomorrow's task list but i turn the page to the fresh page write those things at the top of the page and turn and i used to be very electronic uh and i've switched back to paper because the tactileness of it yeah it it helps man i like this as much as as like a digital nomad as i am like i i have the ability to do it everywhere ipads this one listen whatever i will say this one thing i don't do enough is just that which is getting up out of my seat and that's this that's coronavirus for you because i i was a gym guy every day i was there for an hour i was on the elliptical for the whole hour believe it or not i was watching probably watching something that you were teaching which is even stranger now that i think about it but that's what i did on the elliptical and but i don't do that anymore and i've just gotten out of the habit a part of it was like hey the gym's closed but but again it's not stopping my wife she's she's on a 260 day streak right now of working out every day wow and we've been locked down for 260 days right wow dang near and she's very healthy person she's a dietitian so i don't want like to make it seem like you know she's not in there but sounds like you married up yeah yeah so back to the question what are you committed to starting so what i'm going to do is i'm actually going to walk the neighborhood for a half hour every day okay will you uh text or slack or hit me up on discord let me know next week yeah yeah awesome i got you bro andy you're next oh shit no andy's is easy no no no that was his you know how you know when you get a little older sometimes it doesn't keep that happen for you really been struggling with being disciplined about studying so and i talked to aj recently about committing to 20 minutes a day kind of like what you were saying just commit and so that's and i told aj i was going to do it three days ago and i did it one of the three days so i'm i'm slipping already so i'd like to have 20 minutes a day studying how many like seven days a week or five or what five probably would be really good and what time what time would these 20 minutes show up uh after the kids are in bed so like uh probably nine pm nine pm yeah all right can i can i hold you that next week i would check up on you yeah i would love that i love it because making this commitment because it's now part of the permanent record right yeah uh everybody's gonna hear it andy yeah you're good you just give a little positive pressure and also i'll share mine with you too but not until we hear from aj and dan you're not getting out of this dan so so um you know after listening to you guys i i have to commit to getting back to uh eating better and working out because before the pandemic i was in the gym six days a week um i would go in do you know you know some sort of weightlifting something like that uh and then i would do some sort of cardio for half an hour i embarked on this weight loss journey last year and i went from 280 290 pounds down to 235 pounds yeah and uh and unfortunately now with the pandemic you know the gyms closed and then you know we were home all the time and we started making some bad choices and that just started to feel comfortable we went back to bad habits and i haven't put all of that weight back on but i've put some of that weight back on and i'm not very happy about that and i keep talking like oh i'm gonna do this and then i never do it and and so i think i'm gonna get out the gym clothes get ready and and uh you know try to go for a run here some morning or maybe do some cardio in the living room because it's starting to get real cold outside up here in vermont yep okay so i'm gonna give you is it okay if i'm tough with you right now please oh boy all that sounds too fuzzy to be measurable no no i was just about to say like like three days a week you know at least 15 minutes a day to start and then we'll go from there like i got to do something because i'm ready what is going to be the 15 though in the uh like exercise in the living room or what are you going to do if the weather's nice i want to go for a run if the weather if it's too cold outside i'll i'll work out in the living room what does workout in the living room mean uh you know usually do like some cardio there's a couple of um youtube videos that are my go-to's like when i'm traveling i'll pull those up on on a computer in my hotel room and do those well aj you rock that's awesome okay uh daniel and then i'll go too because i'm not gonna leave myself out of this party yeah we're not gonna have to i gotta think of something very simple hold on no uh definitely studying for encore uh i need to kick it into high gear so um now for me i can study usually around 7 30 at night because i got to put the kid to bed and all that um so i think i think i'm gonna try to do the same thing how many days did you say andy five or five yeah all right i tell you what i'm gonna do i'm gonna do five i'm gonna i'll be right there with you andy okay oh you guys should do it you guys should do it at the same time and text each other the to study like hey are you studying yeah like you're both are you both are you both at the same time zone uh no no yeah you're in central yeah i'm in central yeah oh it it goes down and around you doesn't it well yeah so tennessee split in indiana well tennessee splitting in half or well i say half it's yeah but anyways yeah yeah all right well that's awesome i look forward to hearing your success it's gonna be worth it yeah i mean tony so uh i have had a challenge lately with strength training my cardio is great three days a week no problem sometimes four but i've got right out in my garage a weight rack okay that i put there that hasn't been used in like a month so i'm committing two three times a week at least 30 minutes of weight training so i will follow up with you on that and yeah i'll be better for it i'm so grateful for this opportunity to commit it's like every like oh we're never having it's making us do work but we just cut this whole part of the episode just think about it though it's gonna be great because when you know we follow up with each other in a week and i have done three workouts and aaron you've done your every day five days walk every day and andy's doing uh the study and aj's doing uh 15 minutes of cardio three days a week right yep and daniel's studying for encore and i've got more muscle tone which i need at my age uh it'll be great so anyway uh sorry for putting me on the spot no no i like that what's funny about that the whole situation was first of all it was awesome second of all i implore everybody out there to do the same please find an accountability partner everybody that's listening to this is either an artist cord keith's discord or both so yeah you don't have an excuse find somebody you're hearing it more likely someone you know is hearing this as well and if they aren't make them hear it and then make them your accountability partner and inadvertently we hit a perfect time and well hey hang on aaron we can't end on this um because there's a video series on uh keith's channel that he has about improving your life yeah and uh there's like five or six videos they're fantastic videos um we obviously don't have time now to get into them uh but on on the note that you know we just went around and made this commitment i think that anybody listening to this needs to go watch those videos that's your commitment to us yeah absolutely if you're listening to that's your commitment yes absolutely how do i find your discord keith i'm googling keith parker discord and i'm not getting it yeah probably the fastest way to get there is go to any youtube video i have that's been last year okay and just there's always a link there and it's free it's an invite all right thanks sweet so so yeah that that brings up a good point too so in the show notes we're gonna put first of all if you don't know keith's at at this point you are living under a rock or your dan who just got twitter two months ago but if you don't we're gonna put all of his information in the show notes that includes the discord channel that includes the youtube stuff that includes anything else we could possibly think of uh maybe even a link to atomic habits if you feel so inclined to buy it it's a really good book i promise you got it yep um we've been doing a lot of good books around here lately so that's been cool awesome what do you have any little little uh i'm just a pun monster today you have any little nuggets of wisdom for us to like final goodbye yeah i've got one final one you never know who you might be working with again or for so just from a business perspective alone it pays to be nice and kind to everyone yeah and i don't know how karma works but i know that if you're nice to people and you care about people that it's a lot better than when you don't give a darn and so just find a reason to make sure that you're just that we are kind to everybody because the world's a hard place and if we can make somebody's day a little bit better somebody once told me imagine that the person you're talking to is going to die tomorrow and what would you say to make that person's life just a little bit better today and that's extreme because i'd probably spend an hour with that person yeah recounting their life and the great things that have happened but uh that's good coaching it's always i learned that paramount pictures from a contractor there who i admired he was fantastic and he told me that secret and it stuck with me the other thing i would also suggest is a lesson from my dad who's 91 wow and he said uh keith always do more than what you're paid for and the story that went with that which is quick i'll tell it briefly is an old old town 70 80 years ago with two corner stores one on each end of town and whenever they'd run out of supplies they would help each other they'd have their guy from store a run over to store b and say i need to borrow 10 cans of peaches they'd write a list and go back and the guy at store b noticed that the helper the kid at store a was always running motivated and he's he asked his boss at store b said why why is that kid from story always motivated and the guy said because that kid's going to get a raise and the kid said how do you know he's going to get a raise and the owner said well if his boss doesn't give him a raise i'm going to hire him and i'm going to give him a raise so doing more than what you're paid for having a good attitude is going to best serve you and then if you increase your skills at the same time it's a winning combination for a long-term success and it's also it's a good way to be happier than uh other other outlooks so that would be my closing thoughts for anybody who's interested in improving their life is do a little more than what you're paid for and be kind to everybody well yeah that's a perfect place for us to put a bow on this bad boy thanks so much i know like i i say this every episode but i also say that every episode i sort of speak for all of us here when i say and that includes the discord group thank you for coming on here because it's been like nugget after nugget no pun intended or maybe there was a pun intended after gem after gem you know morsel after marshall however you want to define that on top of the other stuff and plus you know i i think people enjoy just finding out that you're actually a human because sometimes you just look otherworldly my friend and that's a compliment so thanks thanks for your time dude we'll put all your stuff in the show notes if you haven't yet followed us get on the discords let's study improve your life let's go thanks for joining this is adrian if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net edge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering.com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you