this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring you information to expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome to another episode of the art of network engineering don't you guys love that intro music so catchy just gets me going bumps me up i know i i love that when we were trying to figure out what the intro music should be it was just kind of this unanimous like oh yeah that's it that's the sound that's our podcast right there good evening i am aj murray at no blinky blinky and tonight on the panel we have dan at no tweety tweety nice but we're gonna roll that poll soon and we're gonna see what uh what dan's social media future looks like right dan i vote for how he packed it i look howdy howdy packet yep however you say ospf with a total southern twang although i guess they all have a hello packet so it doesn't have to be ospf specific andy how you doing i'm fantastic excited to be here just doing jumping jacks before the show i'm all pumped up i could tell talk to our guests i could tell yeah man how's the encore studying going it's all right i sat down for an hour the other night trying to study spanning tree and i just load spanning trees so don't we all it wasn't all that successful and then i had to do some spanning tree stuff at work which was more fun so spanning trees has been in my life this week trying to get away from it and there it is turn around yeah i can't get away from spanning trees so it's good you know i've started again so yay process is underway excellent andy at permit or no no no i'm sorry i'm sorry andy at andy laptop permit ip andy andy if you google permit ip andy andy you'll find all my stuff on that page are you like the first the first hit if you google permit ipnd there's just there's five or six results and it pulls up all my stuff or is there like an imposter until i get my website up and make it easier now you don't have to announce both from nip andy indiana on google you'll find my stuff excellent excellent and i am super excited tonight for our guest her name is shala although you might know her better as gifted lane good evening charlotte hey how's it going super excited to have you on been uh following you for a very long time as have lots of other people and uh i'm super excited to learn more about you tonight so again thank you so much for joining us yeah thanks for inviting me so i'm gonna cut right to the chase because i gotta know where did gifted lane come from it actually came from my husband like one day he so he's actually a music producer so he's a creative as well and anyways he came home one day and he's just like you know what you're like gifted lane because i was drawing so if i'm not tinkering with tech stuff i might be sketching something painting whatever and he's just like you're always doing stuff so he's just like gifted lane he's like you don't fit in one box there's several things that you do nice very cool i like that that's really cool i saw he got you the the street sign too to go with it that's really cool too he did yes excellent so let's uh let's kind of start where where are you where are you at now well what do you do what's what's your your current place in in your career yeah so i'm actually working for i like to think of them as a tech company but we own a lot of the cell phone towers across the us and so that's that's where i work uh and right now they have me doing kind of like multiple roles-ish right now i'm actually doing a lot of like support and like special projects right now support and special projects so what kind of if you can uh shed some light on what what do you mean by special projects are they like top secret special projects or so like one of the ones uh i have the chance to kind of help out on is where we're trying to i won't say trying to but basically we have a sd-wan project that we're working on and so yeah they have me getting into that so i can you know get back into networking because basically i took a break from it yeah but what flavor of sd-wan are you playing with so we're doing a cisco sd-wan so that's why i'm starting to study for ccnp i've been trying to go full-fledged learning about sd-wan so that way i can understand it so that way when we have our meetings i actually know what they're talking about and i can actually provide feedback so yeah i'm still learning all about it yeah it's it's uh it's a lot to swallow there's a lot there for sure and i mean it's it's super cool though and it definitely changes the way that uh you know network engineers manage their weigh-ins for sure and you know it's it's kind of about time too we do everything is so decentralized like it used to be everything funneling through a central location whether it's a headquarters or a data center but now with cloud and multi-cloud and private cloud and this cloud and that like everything is just all over the place and so it you know sd-wan makes a lot of sense today yep so wrapping my head around that which is which is nice now is that cisco viptela you know i think so okay because i've heard them mention it okay yeah so viptela was an acquisition i want to say it was in like 2016. um and then you know they're they're kind of slowly going through the rebranding phase to just cisco sd-wan but i think it's like secure sd-wan by the teller or something like i forget how they do it but yeah like i it's there but it doesn't really get mentioned but i have yeah so i'm just like okay so how far you say you own cell towers i'm sorry jay when you say you own cell towers do you lease them out to telcos like a verizon wireless sprint yep okay small world i spent two years at a knock watching cell tower yeah i work for comcast knock and we ran a lot of the last mile between the nmscs and the cell tower so small world i probably monitored your towers sorry aj no go for it go for it yes it's pretty cool because it's interesting going from where i was to where now i'm working with the company dealing with stealth powers is like a whole different world and that's a great segue into where were you where'd you get started so i actually got started for one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world and basically i was the office admin and i became like the tech go-to person everyone like if they had computer issues software issues they're just like hey just go to charlotte she sits on her floor she could take care of it and anyways when one of our senior i.t people decided to retire the vice president was like hey do you want to take their role and i was like sure without even knowing what the role was but basically i became like i knew she was our senior i.t person but it wasn't until she had to start kind of training me and doing some hands-off that i was like oh wait no i'm a network engineer like what's happening i have to keep her network running so that was crazy and it's for like ships that move all the way wow in the ocean it was crazy guess you don't get seasick um not anymore i went through a whole drawer of uh saltine crackers and it was a big drawer wow so so i'm i'm just trying to wrap my head around this you're you're working as an office admin a senior i.t person retires and they're like hey do you want to do this you you seem like you're into tech stuff and so exactly what happened it was there uh a team of network engineers or other i.t people or was this just like a really small i.t staff it turned out to be really small there was three person that went down to two people and then i became the new third but i became team lead i became network engineer slash administrator slash desktop support slash you know executive management's right hand person so it was a lot wow did you know anything about networking when you took that job that's the best part for me um first let me say when i the first two to three months of taking this role i needed hugs from you know my boyfriend who's now my husband like every day after work because i had not even logged onto like a server before because i didn't need to right that's wild you took a job you probably weren't completely qualified for but you had kind of a technical acumen i guess right yeah and it was known i was just like you do know like once i kind of got into it and started talking i was like you do know like i have like zero experience with this like if it's application support you know desktop support that i i can do but i was like this is something completely different and dealing with that on ships is something else because that's where i had to deal with like satellite connections learning how to get on board a ship like just crazy stuff wow wow so just so many questions are going around in my head right now because you said you worked at one of the largest oil and gas companies and i'm i'm somewhat familiar with oil and gas i used to work for a manufacturing company that served the oil and gas industry and so i'm thinking like there's tons of like oil rig platforms and like you said there's ships there's probably branch offices all over the place and this whole thing ran off of a three-person i.t staff for the part that i worked in yeah because since they're so large they have like you know there's a whole like massive i.t team but for this one particular segment the part of the organization that owned and managed the ships carrying the oil it was just a three-person team wow i mean still that's that sounds like a big undertaking for a three-person team i i can't reiterate enough i need it hugs were you panicked in the beginning when i started giving you things to do and you realized oh my god yeah i was yes instantly i was just like charlotte we said we were going to do an easy job which is why i took like office admin which is like crazy and difficult in its own right but i was just like i said we're gonna keep it easy and simple but the moment he asked me i jumped at it because i always wanted a professional i.t role um back in 1990 something when a cable broadband came out i remember i wanted to be the person that gets called when the internet's not working and i didn't even know what the role was at the time so that's awesome so you have an interest in tech right you're curious yeah you just you like it you dig it yep so that's that's cool that you just got answered one of my questions so you're an office admin but you you know you always wanted an i.t role so there was always some sort of like genuine interest in getting into the i.t field oh yeah i just didn't know how to go about it because actually when the time came when i was in high school and my parents were like okay it's time for you to go to college because they set money aside for it so i didn't have a choice but to go um one i was supposed to be the second brain surgeon in the family but no pressure yeah i did my pre-med and i was just like i don't like this so they're like well you need to figure something else out my second go-to was to be steve irwin yeah that is a close second right there i wanted to just like travel the world and like you know watch and observe animals in their habitat whatever my parents were just like absolutely not you're tiny you're gonna get hurt no they're like you're tinkering on computers all the time go to school for that and so i ended up going for my bachelor's and computer information system and they worked as a graphic designer because i didn't like it but that was because they had me doing more so like normalizing databases and all this kind of stuff but networking that's that's something that i've always had fun doing i just didn't know it did they touch on networking and cis like is that a class you take or not i wish they had i would have like came out the gate as a network engineer it would have been great so so they approved of the uh the network engineer desires yeah yeah yeah yeah because by the time i graduated and kind of started figuring out what i was going to do for a role you know computers became like the big thing and they were able to see the money in it and i'm like see i'm like i still doctor on patience it's just when something happens to mine i just put it in a new body you know and i prefer that you know if i had to make an association of network engineer to either brain surgeon or steve irwin i so there are a lot of days where i feel like it's more steve ordering because you get called in to like ask somebody ask you for help and then you you go like all right all right show me what you're doing and you're just like what are you doing like yes yes here's to it definitely more uh watching the weird creatures as they as they do go about their lives yeah wait so there's i'm sorry there's just like because you're making me think there's like some experience i've had where is something simple about well this isn't plugged into an outlet so start there there's no power like what are we doing amateur hour it won't turn on i don't understand well it's not plugged in i mean well and then they plug it in oh my god it works yeah it's surprising it's so shocking who's the brain surgeon oh my uncle wow yeah so that's how that went and i was supposed to be number two um my my parents my grandparents they had me in like these medical summer camps like from the age i was like six up until high school so that's what i was supposed to do so the message is if you're smart enough to be a brain surgeon you can just take a net end's job with no background no experience no education and hit it out of the park it's not that hard of a career if you're if you're smart enough to be a brain surgeon oh my god yeah i would say by like that fourth month i knew what i was doing i was keeping the ships online because they were going down constantly and then it started going to where well now they're only going down like once every few months and then by after year one i got things normalized to where they were only going down like once a year and when it went down it was weird and so that's when i was just like i need to be a network like something i know what i'm doing yeah i'm i'm good at it so and it was all satcom i guess right yeah yeah and that's and that's spotty right just by its very nature a bird can pass by a cloud can pass by um sometimes there's you know with ships there's certain things i can't talk about but one time we had where this one particular location the connections would just drop and so finally i had to make so many phone calls to figure out you can look on google there's no indication but anyways there's like secret like silos and stuff and so the signals are just blocked is it also known as the bermuda triangle or like seriously it's just it's crazy one time we've had drop connection because we assumed the queen bee landed on one of the satellite domes and then like all the bees came so we had a hire oh wow a local beekeeper to come get these bees like off and i mean it was like the sound of death oh my gosh that's crazy that's crazy yeah yeah president sent you out there with some bee spray that's where that's where like when stuff like that happen i'm just like all right so this doesn't fall under my roll like i'm the network tech person this these are animals i'm not steve irwin i didn't he had a chance he had a chance no it make it makes for good stories though when i was a cable guy i used to get chased off the ladders 30 feet in the air by like swarms of waters coming out of nothing you know cable lines on the yeah good times no thank you no thank you no no so at what point did you decide to go for your ccna so what happened which is funny this is five years after i've become a network engineer slash admin um i decided you know what i found first i found out what the ccna was because i didn't i didn't need it i had the job already i found out that there was a certification for that and i decided oh i'm gonna take this and like kind of i guess prove myself to myself that you know i can do this and plus my mentor who helped get me trained up i should say that too i had a mentor so he passed it of course you know to keep his certification so i was like i'm gonna go past it too so i will say that um if you're starting out and you don't know what you're doing if you can find a mentor like you need to do that yeah definitely helpful so you know why go it alone i mean there's plenty of other people that have you know either got the ccna or have been in career for a while and you know but why go it alone when you can get some good solid guidance some good advice yes and take notes like if you find a mentor and you're asking them questions and stuff don't repeat the same questions like take notes and then build upon the questions you've already asked so that way they don't get tired of answering your question so did you work with cisco gear on the daily is that why you kind of decided to go for the ccna or did it just kind of have like a you know a kind of name for its own so that's the funny part so when i first started out we were using different equipment like it was not cisco um i'm not gonna mention what it is because it's kind of laughable but anyways play school my first switch we ended up switching to like cisco gear and so cisco was like i've recognized the name i know what it is um but i didn't really go into depth about the company or anything like that but once i figured out what the ccna was that's when i started digging deeper and deeper into what cisco is and the certifications and stuff like that so it was something i worked with that was it was was it hard for you to pass or you just like studied for a week and knocked them out i i studied i okay i legit studied for a good i i tell people this all the time i legit study for like a good two months and i did pass it in the first try nice but um that brain surgeon thing aj now did you do the single test or did you do the two tests i did two tests because i got scared um one because right when i'm like okay i'm gonna take this test that whole expiration deadline came out and then everyone's just like oh no if you take the first one it's gonna be crazy but in hindsight i feel like i could have just done the one test and that would have been nice but you had like five years experience right by the time yeah you were studying for this yeah yeah like i wasn't just like completely green so it's just like things were kind of clicking for me i have physical equipment so i would tinker on there which was most of my twitch streams it was me basically breaking stuff to just really get an understand for the theories that i was i was reading where it's just like well you're telling me this is how this works so let me see if i can break it to make sure this is how it works and i understand it so you have a physical lab yeah yeah and why did you decide to go physical was that like recommendation from your mentor no i went physical because working with the ships i touched the equipment so much every day it just felt right to me to where i was just like i want to like have this at my house and like completely set this up as if i just i have no clue what i'm doing and go from there as well as being able to break stuff because at work i can't break stuff i need it right work and this is something i get beat up for so let me ask you on the spot so do you feel that you learn more working on a physical lab than you would have in gns3 or eve i do thank you i do first let's start with gns3 i i get asked this all the time and it's the same answer um i went to install that and it has so many steps i just stuck with packet tracer and my physical lab so packet tracer was been for when i wasn't at home and then when i was at home i have the physical lab sometimes i had notepad like i would be standing like waiting for food open up like a notepad app on my phone and just practice command interesting that's a good way to do it i like that yeah repetition right yeah what kind of uh what gave you the idea to to put yourself out there on twitch and and share your journey with everybody i remember the exact moment i i was at lunch at my new at my new job that i had started this was what 2019 i guess and so anyways i was at my new job at lunch and i just randomly started practicing subnetting like on paper and i was like man this is so awesome because at work i would just use calculators but now it's like let me make sure i could do it on paper it was interesting to me i posted it on on instagram and next thing i know a lot of other people liked it and so i was like wait are there like people out in like the social web that finds this interesting like it's not just me and it just kind of went from there i just basically started posting pictures of what i was studying that day so so it started with pictures and and so at what point did you well no no let me back up a second was this at the uh at the oil and gas company or was this a different job this was all a different job oh okay this is all a different job so because the the funny part is i literally decided to take my ccna after i uh left my role as a network engineer so i did it backwards you still did it you got it done so so i i guess what are the what are some of the other positions you've had uh since oil and gas and today um so i've had what was it i did systems and then i went to desktop support and so i took like a step back it was i'd had network engineering um baptism by fire so i just needed a little break time for it there weren't enough hugs to get you through the job anymore and so i was just like you know i'm gonna take a little a little break and then i'll get back into it and that's what i'm doing now so now i'm working you know maneuvering my way to get back into networking so i'm taking my exams i'm helping the network team out anytime i can whatever small task it is so it's like they know me they know my name they know i'll work and get stuff done and then you know i could like go that route very cool so so going back to um instagram and twitch at what point did you decide to take the social presence to the next level and start live streaming your journey what would happen um first from ig people would start messaging me they had questions stuff like that and it was good discussions and so i started doing like a global virtual study group for ccna and that was fun i had a lot of fun uh jeremy chara actually randomly kind of popped in to one of my sessions well he asked what yeah there's like a clip of it he was just like hey i like what you're doing like you know and i was like yeah come on and surprise everybody we love you and that was fun and then all of a sudden oh i was watching someone play zelda on uh on twitch anyone who knows me i'm a huge zelda fan they were playing they were playing as a speed run and i was trying to figure out how to beat this one part and so i was watching them and then i was like can i like live stream me studying and then i could answer all the questions people have and stuff like that in real time and that's how that happened and yeah people will be up with me you know from like 6 p.m to like 2 a.m they're like studying with me well no wonder you got it done in such a short amount of time you're studying for like eight hours a night after you get home from work yes i also gained a lot of weight that i had to burn off this like past three months oh yeah because you get home from work and then you're sitting around at the computer doing the twitch stream i'm like doing the twitch stream ordering mcdonald's you know eating big macs and french fries at night i'm not cooking dinner so yeah put on some some pounds it happens it happens it happened to me man i i have put on covet 19 for sure i uh so many people yes i i was going through a really awesome weight loss journey last year i was so proud of myself um i started last august me and my wife we both jumped in together and um in like six eight months i lost over 50 pounds and i felt amazing it was great uh and then kova 19 we're stuck at home it's winter time we're not we're not going there we're not doing anything and you know one thing led to another and so i got my work cut out for me but uh it's it's gonna happen it's gonna yeah yeah yeah so what what was like i mean obviously jeremy's stopping and so like kind of a crowning moment uh kind of some recognition that what you're doing is is a great thing but what other fun moments did you have while you were studying for the ccna and sharing your journey with people really the people just reaching out um i don't i can't tell you how many discussions i have on linkedin through the messenger app on there um through uh twitter through the discord server i run like that it's just talking to people and just being able to just kind of share you know what i've done to help someone else out where it's just like this may not exactly work for you but this is what i did so here's some things to think about you know so i think giving back to the community right yeah i think that's the most fun it's just the engagement and keep in mind when i was working and networking with the three people team it was kind of like me being on an island because one person they took care of all our in-house software application stuff another person was hardware and then there was me that did networking exchange cyber security like all these other things so i didn't have really any outlets to just like geek out to people about like my friends my husband they're just like i don't know what you're talking about so understand that my my wife's a nurse and i don't get any medical jargon or anything like that so we just talk chinese to each other that's funny it's it's so funny how that works like i'll be having conversations with my wife about like you know what we did and i and i tried to like take some of the layers of tech off although she's very tech savvy in her own right like she she sold tv she sold cell phones she got into tech for quite a while but then apparently i just hit this point she's just like aj too many details too many details and then she'll be telling me her work story she works at a credit union and uh you know she starts fdic this that the other thing i'm like honey honey english english i don't know what you're saying exactly so what's what's uh what's the plan now are you working towards your ccnp yeah so i just started legitimately studying for ccmp just last week and i started back streaming so now it's live streaming ccnp are you doing the encore yeah and then do you know which uh which other exam you're gonna take yeah i think i decided to go into enterprise the thing was is part of me wants to do security but through the company i work at now i'm also getting more in-depth with cloud and cloud is actually kind of fun so i have to figure that out which uh cloud are you working with right now the only thing i've i've touched really is azure actually are you liking that but i i like it it's starting to make sense because i've always known there's a cloud but i don't know like what's going on with it you know i kind of have an idea of you know the hardware that's in it but making it all work and what it really is i'm getting more versed in that and it's pretty interesting yeah how do you like the um what do they call it like they're it's like tabs or whatever you know as you click something it everything shifts to the left basically i have no idea but i know what you're talking about yeah i i don't know if i can get past that it it's just so different for me yeah so that is something i'm trying to work my brain towards and so now i'm kind of trying to reach out to like different people i know who do cloud every day as well as the cloud team at work to try to you know pick their brain and i guess find another mentor where i'm just like okay what is this cloud business like what is it have you been doing any like powershell scripting with the azure or just straight up like in the in the dashboard type thing it's more so dashboard i have done some powershell but it's kind of like where they're like hey here's the script you know put this in and this happens so yeah you know it's like okay yeah it happened great you know but i don't really know what i'm doing oh yeah did you take the azure fundamentals class i i was i was checking out your gifted lane.com azure 30 day challenge you were doing so how how was that i'm i need to sit on that check it out was it helpful yes it was and it's free through uh microsoft like they actually gave really good information i have a whole one note where i took notes uh because yeah the company was just like hey we're gonna get you guys to do this challenge so i was like fine and that's when i started going you know what cloud is actually kind of fun so if i could do something you know cloud mixed with networking that'll be cool and there isn't like a cloud ccmp right like for a specialty exam what would you even take you know what i mean yeah exactly exactly so yeah so do you know like for your second exam you're gonna go like advanced routing or have you gotten that far figuring it out my my gut tells me about advanced routing just because like routing and switching that's my heart right that's just kind of where it all starts so yeah that's about as far as i've gotten with figuring it out you're not doing enough of the sd-wan stuff at work to want to go do the uh sd-wan specialist i keep okay so at the beginning of the year i was like gun hoe where it's just like okay i'm gonna do sd-wan and i'm gonna go down this track because it looks interesting it looks like something important that you're gonna need to know type thing yeah and then as i start learning sd-wan i'm just like it's a lot yeah yeah it is there's so many things going on i don't know if you guys feel this way but like sd wan and and automation and cloud and yeah there's just there's so much coming at us i don't know it i don't know if it's because the cisco certification track just renewed and changed or if it's just where the the industry's actually going now but it seems like things they've been talking about for years they're all kind of hitting it once yeah yeah it's it's hard to pick one you know i i was going to go for sd-wan and then i kind of got pulled into cloud and exactly talk to somebody at work who's like yeah i think you should go in the cloud that could be your niche and you know but then before that it was automation like oh well you know i should really do that so it's it's so hard i feel like i kind of have add right now of all the different technologies being implemented and which one to pick and learn and see that i i'm right there with you andy like i i i get you know just overwhelmed by all the different channels that you can go down um but like right now for me like data centers kind of my my focus i kind of like that a lot um but i i don't know if it's like one of these things where like okay let me do let me ride the data center uh train for you know a year or two or something and then maybe go ride the cloud train for a little bit i just don't know how i want to you know attack that uh but right now i'm definitely i mean i guess we just dabble right like i mean you could you could spend a year or two just doing sd-wan just doing automation and then you're not like even like you've said aj how how wide you know the the n and the n p are now i mean it really seems like and a lot of stuff you read you know in the industry and trends and stuff like they're really looking for more generalists like you know a little bit about everything but you don't have to be the super expert in any one thing so maybe that's just the direction it's going like just touch a little bit here and there and try to get you know a little bit of knowledge on everything i don't know but don't you think that's kind of a trend um you know in in it in general right like you know an oem announces this hot new thing and sd-wan has been out for a number of years but the you know when it first came out people weren't jumping on it like yes they went like do we really need to do that like or you know oh that sounds interesting but you know i'll wait till the first you know service pack or whatever you know like when microsoft releases a new os you don't jump right on it you wait until sp1 drops and and all the bugs are shaking out and so now here we are years later and the the bugs are shaking out of sd-wan and people are starting to say okay hey yeah this does make a lot of sense we are adopting a lot of cloud or a lot of sas or whatever the case may be and so now people are jumping on it it seems like all the bugs shook out all at the same time yeah well now cloud you know cloud is good and stable and so is automation and so is sd-wan and here's some other stuff well sd sdn enables automation and so all of this kind of came out at the same time like oh we can we can software to find the network and the network is the way on the lan and you know everything in between and so uh and now it's just that's the driver yeah now it's just i all kind of come into fruition all at the same time so yeah totally totally overwhelming and and there's a lot going on and so um i i've had to really think about like how big do i want to take a bite here you know am i going to go like anaconda and try to like take in that whole deer or am i just going to kind of like nibble away at this thing and so as exciting and as hungry as i've been sometimes i've had to like take a few sets back and kind of like you know pick my lane what lane do i want to be in and then you know i i like data center i'll dabble with nexus saltable with a little bit of aci i don't go like terribly deep into it but i know about it i can you know get in a lot of trouble when i start playing in there um but for the most part i try to stay in you know my lane which is you know enterprise networking and i i really try to focus on sd-wan so um but there's no harm in dabbling in exploring and that makes sense maybe what you're doing in your career can kind of drive some of what you're you know studying or where you want to go in your career you know it could also be another i i wanted ask you shala just selfishly because i just started studying for encore as well so what do your study sessions you know look like are you just going through chapters so like i know you're doing your study group how do you run them what are you doing so um basically what i'm doing right now i'm trying to take lessons learned from the ccna and i'm doing it a little bit different but there's a video series that i'm using of course anyone who knows me i love cbt nuggets so i'm testing that one out um i have the ocg ebook so i'm doing that and i'm matching it to the videos in the cbt video series and then there's also david bomble i uh fell in love with his uh study material or his content when i was preparing for uh the second part of the ccna and so i'm keeping an eye out for his free videos on youtube and i look at that and then just having discussions a lot of them happen where people in the discord server will figure out times to like you know do a video call or something like that and we'll just kind of discuss you know different topics we'll try to discuss topics inside the ccnp channel and so that's pretty much how i learned because i also found value when i was doing the study groups and then doing twitch we would have our conversations a lot of learning came out of it because you got so many different perspectives so when you're studying are you sitting by yourself not on twitch reading and watching cbt nuggets or you're actually streaming all of your studying it's both it just really depends on how i feel there will be times where i can be it's just me you know and i'm doing my thing and then other times i'm just like you know what i feel like i want some interaction and so then i'll just throw up a live stream and then that way we can like talk about it yeah okay more discussion it's not like the streaming fractures your attention and pulls you away from the content okay usually what will happen is as i'm like studying you know doing my break fix as i call it uh someone will ask a question and i'll be like hey you know they have an idea or a thought and then i'm like hey let's check it out let's see what will happen and so it becomes something like just really interactive and fun that's cool you lap somebody's idea see what happens yeah because a lot of people come to find out you know they don't have a physical lab or certain things you can't do in packet tracer or you know whatever and so basically i just end up doing it and so we just do it together as a group and the best part is within being live and you know not recorded what happens happens that's the part i'm scared about so has it always been that way where you know whatever happens happens or you know did you try to maybe prepare before going live and like did you did you set out to learn in real time with everybody else or did you set out to teach i set out just to do me to be honest yeah it's just me having fun learning and then it turned out you know people enjoyed that so it's really just me just geeking out by myself but i invited you know other people from around the world other geeks part of it yeah so we learned together but there are some times where i'll try something out first and then i'll be like okay i'm gonna do a live stream and today's live stream is you know this topic and it's where you know i've worked it out and stuff like that but usually i kind of reserve that more so when i'm doing uh web design because that's that's something i just know like the back of my hand wow very cool i need to talk to andy andy do you do any graphic work anymore i i might i might i was gonna go to fiverr but if if if you know i'd be happy to i kind of do that's something i've retired from just because it's tedious but sometimes you know someone can come to me with a project and i'm just like well this sounds fun and you know i might do it nice way to put her on the spot hey you know yeah you need you need website work and she says she loves that so yes i'm i'm more i'm more prone to do website work versus graphic i get asked a lot um because of gifted lane they're just like hey can you build me a website i'm like maybe let's talk about it so you've been pretty busy this year um you got your your ccna right right before the change right um you're a cisco champion yes uh and uh you've joined the the ranks of networking field day yes yes what's all that been like for you it's been crazy because i was just posting stuff on ig i really didn't expect it to go anywhere i was just like i find this interesting and i don't know it just went from there so it's been it's been fun because i feel like it's helping me figure out my my career path yeah yeah so this is i don't know it makes me feel like i made the right choice of not doing medical right you couldn't exactly post your work on uh on medical on social media no check out this brain i just took out man i just did this unbelievable surgery what are you what are you talking about talking about it uh you can twitch stream it right you know that's probably a pony i think hippa might have a problem with that i'm not sure i don't work in healthcare but you never know you don't there's a first for everything like that'll be like a new category and twitch medical like what is happening so um you did the cisco live um extra field day uh and i think if i heard right you're in a upcoming network field day yep yeah awesome any idea who's going to be presenting i do not know yet i do not know yet but i'm looking forward to it because the whole thing is like exciting i'm super bummed i got the invite from tom uh who invited me to to join you and others on networking field day 23 and unfortunately i am already booked to be on site with a customer at that time and um i tried i tried i went to my boss at the same time uh you know i tried to like really think about why i didn't go to my bus i was gonna go to my boss and and you know there's only so many of us on the team we're all already so busy with with stuff going on it's a busy time of year for us and it you know i just didn't see a way where i could shuffle my workload and make it to this networking field day but uh i told tom keep me keep me in mind keep me in mind for the next one nice but very cool i will look forward to uh watching you and the others on networking field day 23 20 23 right yes okay so what's what's next um you got the mp networking field day social media is going good do you have any plans that uh you might want to share with us um not really about the only thing i think i want to share next with people is so my first i.t role ended up being that networking role and with that role that's how i ended up like you know buying some land and building a house and so i want to share my journey with that because that's been like a whole other thing because i've never built the house before um i didn't really have anyone to ask because my family did it like years ago my grandfather he built his own houses with his own two hands i had to figure out the whole thing on on my own kind of um so i want to share that like what do you do because i know a lot of people are like i want to get into it because i want to make money and it's just like well that's cool but what are you going to do with that money you know right what are your plans right how do you maximize it stuff like that spend it wisely that was a hell of a generation my grandfather built his own house too like i don't know what the hell happened to us but you know they would just go out and buy wood and build their own house like we just knocked it down like whatever we just knocked it down i was just like good lord like it made it through hurricanes i think he built it i forget what year but it was like the 50s or something like that it's still standing i'm like good lord i was like i wish right you kind of already touched on it a little bit already but what kind of advice would you have for people that you know they're they're doing one thing and they want to jump into network engineering or or i.t whatever the case may be you know what what advice would you give to somebody that wants to make that kind of big career jump first off go for it i say that just because a lot of people i don't know how many people come to me male or female and they're just like well i want to be an i.t like you but i'm trying to like finish school or get to school and i'm like why and they're like what do you mean i was like just go for it like apply you know talk to someone on the i.t team become buddies with them and just and just do it it's great you're in school but you know and it's helpful but i'm like that shouldn't be what stops you it shouldn't be oh i don't know if i'm i'm smart enough or i have enough knowledge and i'm kind of like then why are you getting into it like if you're hungry for it be hungry for it and you know just go for it um i didn't have a lot of knowledge i took a lot of notes like onenote has been my friend since 2000 eight ish i think is so is like i i still have like all my notebooks like i don't care what role job company who i worked for there's a onenote for it i take notes i take screenshots i take pictures i asked a ton of questions um and i just got it done because yeah with the whole networking thing like i said i had never even logged into a server before um i knew what ip addresses were for but i didn't have to ever use them i had to figure all that stuff out so i had to go out read some material i found a mentor i asked him a ton of questions until a point i started piecing that whole networking puzzle together and i still have that one note notebook and i actually have physical notebooks with notes and drawings um and that's something i want to share too at some point eventually but one of my first major tasks in that role and i had only been working that role maybe five months they had me go to one of the ships and i had to put in a brand new networking you know brand new network for it so it was all new servers firewalls um routers and i've never configured those before at that point oh wow but i got it working yeah i got it working ahead of schedule which was nice and they sent me all the way across like i was in singapore the one person who could help me was way over here in houston and he was retired so and i remember before they sent me like the like two days before they send me i said okay you guys remember i've never had any experience with this before and they're like yeah but we have faith in you i i incredible i can't get over that that story that that is just a wild like there you go either you're brave you're so brave i'm i'm very risky it's just like with me building the house because most people are just like well have you ever did this before have you talked to anyone and when i say build i'm doing it as a builder owner so i don't have like you know actual like building company building i had to get all these different pieces in place because it was cheaper so yeah i'm like yeah i'm kind of a risk taker but that's why earlier i was saying charlotte we said we're gonna go for easy what happened that's incredible i'm so glad you're saying that like what you know fortune does favor the bold and i think that it really is a big roadblock it was for me too of i i always thought that to work in tech to work in i.t the only way to get in was to have a computer science degree i don't know where i got this idea from i don't know where it came from i was a cis major for you know three weeks and just couldn't hack the calculus and see plus plus that were you know pre-reqs and yeah so you know i'm 18 or 19 and that day i'm like oh okay i guess i don't get to work in i.t i got to figure out something else and yes it's it's so nice to hear you say that like just just go for it and you know if you have a passion and you want to go after it and it's really been a nice little side effect of this podcast as you know each guest has has kind of alluded to that that you know they there's so many different paths to get you know there if you want a job in tech yeah and uh yeah like i keep saying i was on office admin you know sure it's crazy because yeah i had my cis degree and i didn't know what i was going to do with it because networking was my calling but back then i didn't just have like networking programs like it it wasn't as big as a thing as it is today where i think you can go out and find like a networking track so i didn't know how to get into it like i just i didn't know and it's great that you're out there in the community and on social also you know espousing that like be bold go out you know go after it because people need to hear that i needed to hear it and at the time i was studying for the ccna i wasn't plugged into the community and i was kind of on an island and just taking a leap of faith i had a guy just reach out to me today on twitter from nigeria and he i guess found a video i did on youtube and he's i guess he's a help desk guy and he's um you know he he got like a knock you know off for like like an interview and he's hitting me and he's all scared and nervous oh i don't know and i've never done this and you know i thought long and hard about it and i asked him some questions and at the end i just said you know what man just just go for it you know you're already you're in help desk and don't let the fear stop you from going after it because yeah that that's what people need to hear that's what i needed to hear and even now when i push myself you know a bigger role or a huge project or you know whatever it is like there's always that little voice like you're not going to be able to do this you apparently don't have that voice but i kind of don't and people can tell me that i just that's great though you need to keep sharing that like just don't be afraid go go after it your proof that it you know it paid off like keeps paying off because matter of fact before i forget one thing i want to say that i think uh my parents did a really good job at speaking to that is they taught me from a very very early age not to fear failure so and it's a hard thing because you don't want to fail and then me being you know female i tend to want to not fail i want to like be great you know because i don't want it to be like oh well you know she's a female or something like that and i look way younger than i am i sound younger than i am so i always have like where i feel like i need to be the best at everything but yeah they tell me at an early age like don't fear failure what you can do is learn from it and then do better next time you know so that's what i try to do it took me decades to learn that lesson i'm so glad that your parents were able to yeah we're able to get it in you you know early it's it's huge yeah that's that's such great advice i mean there's such a stigma attached to failure isn't there yeah and you know you go through and you and you want to like you know study and are you ready i'm not sure i don't want to fail like well what happens if you fail you know like nobody nobody looks at you differently you don't put the failures on your resume you know and and the fact that you failed but then you came back and you did it again hey that's that's great that shows that you didn't want to give up you're a fighter you know like so exactly uh i i love it don't don't be afraid to fail um you know a lot of businesses or people like look at you know fail fast fail cheap and try again you know kind of thing and so you just got to adapt that and keep going yes so if people want to join you on your study journey how can they do that so pretty much uh anywhere socially if you type in one word gift it lane you'll find you know my twitter uh the website twitch channel ig all that and all of that points to uh twitch but basically if you look for a gift in lane on twitch that's where i do a lot of my live streaming and um my study and uh there's the discord group i don't really promote it that much it's just if someone happens to pop in and join that's great but that's like another easy way to get in contact with me and where a few of us were like studying different things together i feel so bad your bot kicked me out yes what was funny because i bet i meant to flag you so you wouldn't get kicked out but yeah um my discord bot like it works yeah and sure yeah it does it does great sounds like a bully yeah well while we've been talking earlier i was checking it out and i i tried to join and the message i got when i first went in was so intimidating i was like if you don't post five messages every 30 days your butt is out i was like wow because exclamation i get it you know but i'm afraid to join it you got to be hardcore i think it's funny it's just because um i have the people that you know joined early and we're like a tight niche you know group and it's just kind of like well we didn't just want people like joining the server but they're not actively participating so it's kind of like well which there's a video about it on youtube on my channel about it when you want people to contribute it makes sense you know like bring value to them that's my life aj was lurking and he got booted i i felt so bad because there was one day i'm just like oh i want to go talk to charlotte about something and then i went to click on your discord i'm like oh yeah just just just rejoin it and i'll tag you something we'll leave you alone all right i i try to be mindful because we don't just talk tech on there sometimes people are going through like life situations and we help each other out with that oh yeah yeah i mean as much as it is like a study group it's also a support group right like we've all got stuff going on and it's great to be able to engage with others i mean i i would say that you know we started our study group like literally the week before kovid shut the world down and we got on like our second meeting and and i can't remember if i said it to you guys but i know i was definitely thinking i'm just like we're going to need this study group a whole lot more than we think and we did it was great it totally helped yeah and there are some people where you know not everyone is staying with someone and so that's kind of their outlet yeah i didn't even think about somebody to talk to yeah excellent well she is shayla and she is gifted lane you can find her as she said everywhere on the internet at gifted lane gifted lane.com on instagram on twitter uh look her up join her discord study with her get on her twitch stream she'll teach you a thing or two i absolutely know that thank you so much for coming on and joining us tonight shayla i really really appreciate it yes this up is shawler oh oh boy all right maybe i should do that again yeah andy you do that too you do it andy yeah yeah you're in the house you messed it up andy you're the one who wanted to be the host go for it did i shallow it's shallow what did i say you said it you said it twice shala i'm so sorry it's my fault i put shayla in your head in the beginning it's mine i i mean maybe maybe it's not your fault but now i'm going to blame you anyway you did so good too i don't think i have it in me to do that all over again this is great keep it in it's we were talking about it's good to yeah though you know yeah i failed i'm proud of it i've learned and i will not make that mistake again yeah because it comes from a song so song now i gotta know yeah uh what is that al green lalala so it's a super love song okay yeah see now we'll never get it wrong again see can we just start saying that oh my god it totally happened and it's almost the time of year for falalalalalalala yes interesting yeah so just try that again aj just it's dolla i think i think we leave it man it's good he said these are my twitch streams like i i fell on there and they like it nice well this will add some character to this episode for sure yeah so thank you so much sharla did i get that right yes i got it all right thank you so much for coming on this episode with us tonight it was a pleasure having you i know i've learned a thing or two uh and and so i'm sure we'll get you back again uh there's lots lots more we got to talk about i want to hear your journey i definitely want to keep following you and i want to see you get that ccnp yeah yeah doing that now but yeah i've had fun thanks for inviting me on absolutely thank you so much all right everybody have a good night good morning wherever you are thank you so much hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net edge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering dot com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you