The Art of Network Engineering
Join co-hosts A.J., Andy, Dan, Kevin, and our guests as we explore the world of Network Engineering! In each episode, we explore new topics, talk about technology, and interview people in our industry. We peak behind the curtain and get insights into what it's like being a network engineer - and spoiler alert - it's different for everyone! For more information check out our website https://artofnetworkengineering.com | Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram as well @artofneteng | Co-Hosts Twitter Handles: A.J. @noblinkyblinky | Andy @andylapteff | Dan @HowdyPacket | Kevin @adjacentnode
The Art of Network Engineering
We got a tour of ORNL and hung with some awesome friends!
Here's what we've been up to so far in Knoxville!
A big THANK YOU to:
Knoxville Technology Council
Opengear
Alkira
Rodefer Moss
Find everything AONE right here: https://linktr.ee/artofneteng
This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast. In this podcast, we will explore tools, technologies and talented people. We aim to bring you information that will expand your skill sense and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers. Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering. I am AJ Murray at Nooblinkey Blinky and I am joined by a full house this evening. Literally Across the table is Tim Bertino. He is at Tim Bertino on Twitter. Tim, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm having a great time and, as anybody probably would have guessed, we're at a live event, so I've been drinking.
Speaker 1:Well, you do that even at live events. That's why, sure, let the cat out of the bag.
Speaker 2:I've been having a blast. It's been great to see everybody. I can't believe the once again, two years in a row the amount of people that have traveled to come hang out with us. I mean, you all realize we aren't that cool, right? No, we love it. I'm having a great time. It's great to see you, aj, and the rest of the crew Awesome.
Speaker 1:And across the table is Andy at Andy Laptef, how's your air tag there?
Speaker 3:I'm good I got a call from the wife that the dog's apple air tag on her collar has been freaking out since I left for this trip. We're over here before the show started, trying to figure out how the hell to stop it. It's like can you fix this? I could try.
Speaker 1:And I love that, like a room full of people is helping you do that yeah shut out to Chris Denney what?
Speaker 4:else help was it.
Speaker 5:And Nick Nick and Chris Denney help me out. It's like the tack of air tags. You two may have saved my marriage so thank you.
Speaker 2:Beyond that, I'm great.
Speaker 3:It's been a fantastic trip. I can't wait to talk about some of the cool stuff we've done, like what's it called Neutron bullets.
Speaker 1:Neutron bullets we won't give it away. Is that the technical term Right next to the what was the other technical term we learned there?
Speaker 2:The fancy do, the fancy do Hickey.
Speaker 5:I gave it that name, by the way.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 5:It is in the scientific dictionary, all right.
Speaker 1:Trademark All right, that's the thing Right next to that is Dan's face. Yeah, register trademark Dan Richard, and I am very excited to welcome Alex Perkins at bumps in the wire. Alex, it's so great to meet you in person. I've been editing your your face here for a while editing your face. It's great to hear you.
Speaker 4:Great to see you. Awesome to be here. You know I drove in this morning. It's awesome to meet all you guys in person. It's it's been a while. I never thought I missed Asheville, literally. I moved to Asheville a week after you guys had the meetup.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5:That's bad planning on your part.
Speaker 4:I was there like two weeks before scoping out a place to live. Oh man you guys came, and then I moved.
Speaker 2:Way to take ownership of that. Alex, we appreciate it.
Speaker 1:You're like come on, honey, we got to go, we got to go.
Speaker 4:This is awesome.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome. And the one the only had a packet, dan Richard, how are you doing, man?
Speaker 5:I'm doing good, aj, how about yourself?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I'm doing great this. This this week has been awesome, like we were learning about neutron bullets in one day and then, and then. You know, today. This morning we went and toured a like a studio's, some of their video and audio networking and what and that was very impromptu.
Speaker 1:We'll get to that in a second, yes, but it was cool so I have to. I have to say that we are joined by a group of people here.
Speaker 3:Hello people, I know, Eric's back there.
Speaker 1:Where do you go there?
Speaker 5:he is All right.
Speaker 1:They were all trained to be very excited to be here, no, but we really appreciate you guys making the track out, coming and hanging out with us. It's it's so good to see some of you again and meet some of you for the first time. We really, really appreciate you coming down to hang out with us.
Speaker 5:Hey, I just want to throw out there that they get to live shows.
Speaker 1:I know, I know Right.
Speaker 5:That they're six. That was super exciting. That was that was.
Speaker 2:that was such a pity Woo.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Well, thank you, I appreciate that, chris. Thank you, I welcome it so all right.
Speaker 1:So let's see. The last time we recorded a little episode for the K tech connect event. We were hypothesizing about what we were going to learn at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Thursday for frame of reference. This now Friday evening. So we're going to kind of go through what we talked about and learn from, or an L, yesterday, and then we'll talk about what we did today and we'll talk about what we're going to do tomorrow to cap this thing off.
Speaker 1:So yesterday we went to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We hung out with Daniel Pelfi, pelfi, pelfi, pelfi there's an R in there, daniel Pelfi. He's a senior network engineer over there. We're going to be interviewing him tomorrow at the Five Summlet Cast Event and Daniel took us through the whole area. We got to see some really cool stuff, learn more about his job as a network engineer there, and we were also joined by Katie, the media chaperone. She's in charge of media there for the laboratory and she was just super cool. She played along. She's in one of our TikTok videos where we're trying to hype the event, and it was so funny because I'm pretty sure when I originally talked to her she said you can't go into the data center and record stuff, or they have the supercomputer. I'm like, okay, you know, that's cool, makes total sense yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So we're standing outside Frontier, which is the fastest supercomputer in the world and has been for the last like 18 months, and there's like a landing and you can look into the data center and they're actually changing out some nodes.
Speaker 1:And we're like can we take pictures of that? And she's like, oh, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. And so you know, we're interviewing Dan outside, daniel outside the window where you can see Frontier behind him. And then all of a sudden, katie's just like okay, we're going to go in the data center now. We're like what, no big deal. So that was really really cool to see Frontier up close and we got some great video, good interviews inside the DC with Frontier, and we're going to post all that on a YouTube video. What did you guys think? What was your favorite part about yesterday?
Speaker 5:Yeah, that was awesome. So when we first saw Frontier I was like all right, you know, they were spitting off the different. How many exaflops to?
Speaker 3:just looking it up Was it one, one and a half to 1.21 gigawatts, no no 1.102 exaflops, which is 1.102 quantillion operations per second.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so they were saying all that. And then I asked her if it would run Doom and she said, well, mostly, most of the time, people ask us if it will run crisis. And I was like, okay, all right, you know that's good enough to.
Speaker 2:This was right after Dan discovered and named the fancy doohickey.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah. So the fancy doohickey is a cool you know gadget or whatever it's. This it's kind of like a table with this little arm that comes up and you can put a blade in that arm and it will raise it up vertically and then you can raise the entire thing vertically to slide it into one of the chassis. So I've seen server lifts before. You know, like it's just a flat lift that you can kind of crank up, but I've never seen one like this before where it actually took the node and put it up vertically and then they can slide it straight in.
Speaker 5:So that was actually kind of cool, Honestly. You just see that I've never seen one of those before.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I haven't seen that either.
Speaker 1:So I'm trying to remember. Did they say there was 42 nodes per cab Right?
Speaker 2:I don't remember, but it was.
Speaker 3:I forget the number, it was huge.
Speaker 5:So there's four GPUs in each one of those blades, right, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:There's a crap ton of blades in each one of those racks and I don't know it was 35, 40 racks. I forget what she said, but they're enormous.
Speaker 5:Enormous amount of. Was it like seven rows?
Speaker 1:I think it was more than that.
Speaker 5:Nine rows yeah, Something like that yeah it's not 9, 10, 11 rows, something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we walked in like what's a supercomputer? What does this all mean? Right, and even with XFLOPs it's like what? But the best description I heard of it was they called it a time machine.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:Which really got my attention and the way they framed it was you know, this is all like math and code and like crunching numbers to try to like figure out science or medicine, or like a virus thing or like Right Astrophysics stuff. I'll never understand, yeah. But they said you know it could take. I don't know, it could take 10 years for a room of the brightest people on the planet to like figure out a problem when you feed it into frontier. You take 10 years. What was it like down to like I don't know like days
Speaker 1:weeks yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so that I really like that time machine so they can make progress so much faster, right?
Speaker 5:So what was the one thing that they were talking about, where they, for one year of time with them, was like six or seven years at something else, and I can't exactly remember what that was. I'll have to ask Daniel Was it the other supercomputer Like?
Speaker 3:the older one or something. Yeah, maybe Was that it yeah.
Speaker 5:But it's just crazy what these supercomputers can do in that sense. And then also with we met another guy at the. What was it? The high flux isotope?
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and so his job is so cool. But basically, with those reactors they're pulling, they are making what is it? A neutron beam.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 5:And they're and so there's different ways to like weld metals and different materials and whatnot, and so, like, one of the practical uses of it was they were shooting neutrons at that, at those welds, and then they could take the data that they clicked from that, run it through the supercomputer and they could basically tell you know, some kind of manufacturer that, with the type of weld that they use, how long that weld will last, and also like, hey, is this going to fail real quick, real quick or not, you know, and it's like. So it's like you know, like what's the difference? So on one end it's like the COVID and all that stuff, and then on the other end it's like welds you know, it's just crazy so many practical applications in that lab, like if you're like a rocket company
Speaker 3:right and making stuff that's going to. They shoot neutron bullets through this thing. There's some magic get some data on it's like structural integrity or whatever the health and so strength, and then feed that data into the frontier supercomputer and we can tell how long this piece will last? Right, Because you know you don't want to shoot like a rocket in the space if it's not going to last like through the yeah it all just blew my mind Every time anybody there talked I had the dumbest look on my face.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had to ask a question that made some kind of sense.
Speaker 3:But the nuclear? Maybe we saw a nuclear reactor. Yeah, we learned how nuclear fission worked Right. We learned what neutrons were. Well, we say learned.
Speaker 5:I listened, I heard what they were.
Speaker 3:Even the medicine.
Speaker 2:So like they put.
Speaker 3:You know, there's these rods they put next to the plutonium, whatever the hell it is that creates the neutrons and somehow Uranium Okay, they create isotopes, so like if somebody has a tumor and they want to implant like radioactive seeds to treat it from the inside out. That's part of what this place makes.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that nuclear reactor.
Speaker 3:So they're making medicine, and I was just so blown away.
Speaker 5:And then you know what else was cool that I never even thought about. But like so, what they're also doing is they're putting things inside of that to see if they can. They can withstand the radiation, right, right, and it was just like what you know, like in a season in these little pills, almost. I don't know what you'd call them a little capsule, right, and they put different types of materials and just different things like that.
Speaker 3:We have to touch on the history of the place.
Speaker 5:Yeah, right, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:So I thought we were just going to see a supercomputer and I didn't know what the hell that was. And then we get there and there's this like there's this whole wall of these really cool pictures. It shows a history of the place. It starts with Einstein and it's superimposed over like a letter. So apparently Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the President of the United States at the time talking about nuclear I don't know energy, I don't know what the context was, but he's like we have to get involved in this because I'm Einstein and you should listen to me.
Speaker 2:So you know who I am.
Speaker 3:So they created this place and it's where the Manhattan Project happened, where they created the first nuclear reactor. They figured out nuclear fission. It became, you know, weaponized too, but just how it? I mean, this guy wrote a letter and they created this amazing place and then you learn so many, like we said, the medicine. There's so many amazing applications of nuclear energy that I wasn't even like aware of. So it's just such an amazing, even just the history of the place.
Speaker 2:And that's something that they really want to advertise is, hey, we know why this facility was born and that's there's so many layers to the lab. You think lab and you think, okay, there's nuclear activity happening, nuclear reactors, and but there's just so many components. There's now the supercomputing facilities that have been there for a long time and what they really tried to drive home to us was that, yes, this was born out of what was deemed wartime necessity, but now we're looking at peacetime practical applications.
Speaker 5:Yeah, saving lives.
Speaker 2:Healthcare and you know, even down I love, dan, how you mentioned it the range of practical applications. They were doing a lot of research on COVID-19 very early and, and then we're talking about testing structural and using neutrons to test structural integrity of manufactured devices. Yeah, it's just wild.
Speaker 5:And so one thing I'm really excited about tomorrow is to dig in a little bit more with Daniel outside of that, you know, kind of the tour environment and seeing how networking applies to some of this supercomputing, because you know he brought up some cool stuff there. But it'll be nice to kind of bring him out of that and let's talk about it. You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You just reminded me bringing up Daniel. I was, I was, I was telling him how impressed I was at how smart those people are, and he had a really cool retort to that. He's like well, they're all smart at what they do. He's like but I'm the networking guy, and when somebody comes to me, the super scientist who's trying to do something like, yeah, I'm trying to send, you know, 1.2 terabytes of data through the network and I'm having a problem, and Daniel's like I know how to help you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:I didn't hear that.
Speaker 4:That's good.
Speaker 2:That's what I wanted to bring up too, because they're all specialists in what they do, but they then in turn, rely on each other for the mission. So what I thought was really cool was that we're walking down the different halls and the different common areas and we're seeing people just sitting at tables talking and you can kind of tell that they're talking about work. They're not just socializing, they're talking about work. So they're meeting up and they're saying, hey, meet me in the spot so we can talk through this thing. I pushed on that a little bit with Daniel tonight when we were at the event and he said you know what that was born from? And I said what? And he goes. Well, a lot of people around here like to do Pokemon go.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, so there would be times where there's just like five minutes and one of what's that called, when there's like a big grouping and it's probably raid or raid there.
Speaker 2:So a raid would happen. There's be like five minutes where a bunch of people will just go outside and he goes. I don't do a lot of that, but I would go out and talk to him. That's how I would learn what some of these other people do that I don't necessarily interact with every day. So they would meet each other this way, find out what each other do and then find ways to collaborate. And that's when they start talking in the halls and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3:It's just, it's a really interesting atmosphere and the people there like I don't know why I think people so smart that can like try to work out like cures for cancer on supercomputers wouldn't have emotional intelligence and be, you know, empathetic people. Daniel was telling me a story on the way out of Topgolf tonight that because I told him how impressed I was with the place and the people and he said you know, we're so close there. He was talking about a very good friend of his that was working on the supercomputer team and then got second past and they named one of the racks after him.
Speaker 1:It's like the Anderson or something.
Speaker 3:So, just, you know, they're just great people. They're super smart and they love their jobs in the place and like they're naming this amazing, you know parts of this amazing machine that are helping cure all kinds of human problems and issues named after this guy. Just such a sweet. You know such a great group of people, yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, welcome to the South Indie. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a pretty grand gesture, right? Yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 4:Yeah, did they say so? Do they like auction off time? I wasn't there for it.
Speaker 1:They are at least so that process is really interesting and Katie, the rep that we worked with, she said that her team helps handle that. So you basically have to. And she says it works a lot like the collegiate area, right, like where you want to submit for a grant. You're basically doing the same thing. You have to submit, you know your study and case for wanting to use supercomputer time to them and a bunch of people you know, both in general that manage the supercomputer and in a particular practice area where that studies you know from right, like if it's health or whatever, we'll look at it and say does this merit the time that you're asking for?
Speaker 5:Yeah, and then they rank that too.
Speaker 1:Right, right. And then they also have people that will help ensure that the code that they want to run on the supercomputer is optimized to run on it and they do like a number of like codathons and stuff like that, so that way they can kind of crowdsource like the best possible ways to run these algorithms and everything on the supercomputer. So it's a really cool process to learn about how they do.
Speaker 5:And what was it that was running like when the other stuff isn't running? There was something else that was running in the background.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, anytime it was available, anytime it was available, idol time or whatever like that yeah, yeah, I forget. I remember what that was yeah, yeah, so that's our goal.
Speaker 2:Right, is to have as minimal amount of idol time as possible, right. So they find creative ways to run it. And that's I wanted to key in on that, aj, is they try to provide that value add. It's not just hey, we've built this supercomputer, come use it, you're on your own.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but they have specialists that will try to help their users get the most out of it Because even the Jeff guy he does similar things right he's not involved with the supercomputer he was more involved with, like, the Neutron bullet. What caliber is that, by the way? I?
Speaker 2:don't know, but it's real big, it's going fast.
Speaker 3:I believe Katie said they don't charge for time on the supercomputer. If your project, if you publish?
Speaker 1:oh yeah, right, you can use the supercomputer at a price or if what you're doing gets published.
Speaker 2:If it's usually, if it's becoming public domain knowledge. Right, yeah, right.
Speaker 1:And you don't even have to give away your, your trade secrets or anything like that. Just if it gets published, it'll qualify for a government grant.
Speaker 3:And contributing to the common good via publishing. Right, yeah, have at it. Yeah, go ahead. Use Frontier, which I thought was going to be good.
Speaker 5:That's what sounded like today, ok.
Speaker 4:So it's a lot like the James Webb telescope, which is why I brought this up. There's been a whole bunch of talks about how to have to share time. There's so many entries that they can't even like there's more demand than there is capacity. I'm guessing it's pretty similar to that. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2:What else let's see. Let's touch on some of these. So we hear about stuff like a supercomputer. That's awesome, it can do all these exoflops of data, but what are they using it for? So we heard a couple of really cool use cases. So one was very early on in COVID. It sounded like, you know, like February 2020, they were starting to get reached out to and say, hey, we think we got something here. We need processing power, we need to run the data we have. So they were involved early on. And then another thing that I thought was really cool that they've been doing is they are. They have a goal of trying to assist in mental health, for Suicide prevention, suicide prevention for Department of Veteran Affairs, and they're using processing power, super computing power, to gather and analyze a bunch of different data, to get proactive, to try to help people and like that is incredible how technology is helping that way.
Speaker 5:And one thing too. So what was the gentleman's name that spoke?
Speaker 4:The guy from lunch.
Speaker 5:Yeah, edmund McGowley, he's a PhD. He leads the AI systems for research and development there. So today we had the lunch at Chophouse and he spoke for a little bit there and he was talking about how they were feeding a bunch of data into the supercomputer for the COVID thing and they were working around the clock and he said, roughly, around what was it? Four weeks or so.
Speaker 2:It was a number of weeks yeah.
Speaker 5:That they were able to turn out whatever they needed from that right Right.
Speaker 1:I think he said they had analyzed the virus and they had found potential attack points right.
Speaker 5:OK.
Speaker 1:That they could use to focus medicines on, yeah, like the vaccinations and whatnot. Yeah so could you imagine? I mean, if we didn't have that supercomputer, we'd probably still all be in lockdown right now. Yeah right, I mean, that's a reality, Time machine.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Well, we took a picture of it before we left. There was a big sign in one of the entrances. It just says solving big problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If what we just talked about aren't big problems, I don't know what it is.
Speaker 5:Yeah right, yeah, that was pretty good.
Speaker 1:So we had a great tour at ORNL. After that we had our first event. It was a networking event at the Print Shop Brewery yeah, and so I like beer.
Speaker 5:Who doesn't? And they have good beer.
Speaker 1:They had very good beer and it was really cool. So it was called Print Shop because it was an old print shop. And so this local craft brewery had all these tap handles, as most breweries do, and they had used the letters from the old printing press on the tap handles and it spelled out Print Shop. Of course it's backwards because it's a print shop. But a lot of people are like why is it backwards? Is it because you can take a selfie and it'll be like no, no, it's just because it's a print shop.
Speaker 2:Oh, how the times have changed.
Speaker 1:But no, that was a good time. Open Gear was there they were a sponsor of that one and, yeah, it was great to meet a lot of people. Andy and I met this really cool guy, zeb Zeb I hope he hears this, andy doesn't like him anymore, I just wish I had my stuff together as much as our 23-year-old friend Zeb does.
Speaker 3:He's just killing it, he's killing it.
Speaker 1:So he works at a local company that does a lot of layer one stuff. He's a project manager now he has his electrical engineering degree. He's also a private pilot. He said that him and his grandfather went in together and bought a Cessna 150. And then they both got their pilot's license from that purchase.
Speaker 2:As you would do.
Speaker 1:And, like Andy said, this guy's like 23. He's got all this stuff going for him. It's like god damn, that's so cool.
Speaker 5:Yeah, hey, just to you know it's on my checklist.
Speaker 4:OK, yeah.
Speaker 5:I just haven't got to Dan's getting there. Yeah, I got to figure out what a pilot's license is anyway, so Jesus.
Speaker 1:Nice. So let's see, that was the end of day one for us. It was a long ass day. We had a lot of fun. We ended up going out to be go out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we did we came back here and recorded an episode.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's right. We came back here and recorded a podcast.
Speaker 3:I got to bed at like 1.30 in the morning that night. That's right, I was right, I was tiki talking Wait that wasn't that night, that wasn't Andy's so tired.
Speaker 2:We recorded an episode the day, oh, the day we got here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But, the day after the networking event we went to. We were going to go to Dan's Speak Easy. That was close.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dan doesn't want to talk about it. I was so disheartened.
Speaker 1:That red light was on and everything.
Speaker 2:Red light was on, dan had the code.
Speaker 5:I was knocking on the door.
Speaker 2:I think it was open. They saw us coming.
Speaker 1:They saw Dan coming like no, we're not letting that guy in, but the rooftop place we went, I got to go.
Speaker 4:I got my roof, yeah, your roof.
Speaker 2:It's a roof Roof for roof Roof.
Speaker 3:Do you say data or data?
Speaker 2:Nobody says data. Uh-oh Moving on it's data or data.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, I say data, but I say exa, flop, exa, flop.
Speaker 1:The exa flop center.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we were also on like a dating date that night too, remember.
Speaker 2:It's a good thing my wife doesn't listen to this show. I mean not us so I do want to what? What was that? What was the street we were on? Cuz what what's cool about it is it's it's set up like. It's set up like a really large street but there's businesses on either side and it's a really just a big common area. Yeah, had music. They had live music.
Speaker 1:We found our roof top bar Roof and it was just a gorgeous night. Yeah, oh yeah, that was great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 1:So then, today we had a lunch event at the chop house, and that's where we got to hear from the AI.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, we golly or something so funny story.
Speaker 1:I took us to the wrong chop house. Yeah, yeah, and I was so proud of myself because we got there like just before noon. We walk 1159 when we rolled in the wrong one right before me like all right, we're here for the K tech event. And the girls at the hostess they were like what yeah?
Speaker 2:we got like a birthday party sitting right here Same reaction we got from the JTV security guard.
Speaker 1:Oh, I forgot, I forgot, we went to. Jtv this morning. We're here for the tour.
Speaker 2:Excuse me, I don't think you are.
Speaker 5:Hell, you are.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I got a backup, so so tomorrow's event on Saturday we're going to jury TV. It's it's like a QVC for jury. I mean, I just thought it was like a place called jewelry for whatever reason, but it's, that's all they do right places Pretty nice. Yeah, yeah so. So we got to go see where the event is happening and it's in one of their auditoriums and studios. We got to talk to their director of, like broadcast technology, right? Broadcast engineer.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah and Derek.
Speaker 1:he was a nice guy and you know, once we started talking about like house sound, av, this, and that we're network engineers, he was just like all right, let me give you guys the nickel tour. And so we got to look at some of their studios, some of their AV tech. Dan kind of nerded out on some of the cameras that they were using there, and then he, he opened a door and you could hear that you know the fans and stuff from a data center we're like oh okay, here we go.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and then I was surprised by him too, because he was talking about VSS.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, what's funny is, right before that we asked him we're like so, do you, do you get into any of the networking goes? I'm a broadcast engineer, we have network engineers for that and then we walk over and we see a Cisco chassis switch and he just starts going all in on it. He goes, yeah, but it's end of life and we're getting it next year and we're getting it replaced and we're thinking of getting to and doing VSS and I'm like you just said, yeah, you weren't the guy, yeah, so he's been there like 20 21 years yeah.
Speaker 5:So I'm sure he's developed relationships with different people with NIT and his he's talking about like SD wing has learned a lot. Yeah, it was super cool and so yeah, but he wasn't the network guy yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was really cool. That was fun to see and I'm looking forward to going back there tomorrow to do the event. Yeah, live, simon cast. And then we came back here for a little bit at the A1 house, hung out and we went to chop house and so I brought us to the wrong chop house. I I typed into Google Maps chop house. I saw the correct address. I thought I was tapping on the correct address and I'm. My fat fingers must have hit the wrong one.
Speaker 5:Yeah but I that lady said they had four chop houses in there.
Speaker 2:I Said is to I'm like, oh yeah, there's two heroes, that she's like we have four.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I'm like oh, you better help us find.
Speaker 2:The right one, and they did yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but and then after chop house.
Speaker 1:So well, I'm glad that we got to chop house late, because that's where we sat down and had lunch. Yes, with I'm sorry, what was his name? Bagoli? With? With Bagoli, and we had the coolest conversation about AI and technology and the stuff that he works on, and yeah. I mean, I'm seriously, I'm glad we got there a little bit late, otherwise we wouldn't have had that conversation.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I don't think did any of us three, even though it was him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not, I don't think that was funny yeah yeah, I was sitting at another table and you guys went and sat with him and all of a sudden, eric comes up and announces who the speaker is, and I think one of you guys gets nudged.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we saw he had a an Oak Ridge laboratory.
Speaker 5:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Polo on. I'm just like, oh, what do you do there? And he's like, oh well, I'm the head of AI, yeah it is like oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's like yeah, I'm giving a little talk here this afternoon, oh cool, no, we covered some really high level topics around Not just what is AI but but how it works and some of the Methods and algorithms that play. And then at the end we got to have a really good Q&A on. People were asking you know, where do you think AI is going, what are some of the data governance concerns and considerations? And just an excellent conversation and he was. What I liked about it was it was very upfront and says I'm here to give a presentation, but I'm here for you to get the most out of this as possible. Stop me whenever you need and ask questions.
Speaker 5:And it was it was really cool atmosphere and then he had a counterpart there. I think it was a mirror, yeah a mirror. And he, we got to chat with him for a little bit. Yep, were you with yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we got out with him a little bit afterwards Very cool he was.
Speaker 5:he was very down to earth, very cool guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. After lunch we came back to the A1 house and we recorded some content. We're doing some short form content for a sponsor. We had a lot of fun with that. So setting up the camera, mic'ing up people recording some stuff.
Speaker 5:Him dressing up. You know, Tim's a good actor, if anybody was walking by. I don't know what they would think.
Speaker 1:So we recorded some content and then we headed on over to the next event as part of the K-Tech Connect, and it was Topgolf. I love me some Topgolf. I wish we had a Topgolf in Vermont, but we don't, because Vermont.
Speaker 5:Nashville, I will, I've never been there actually, but this was my first time at a Topgolf and AJ was giving me some pointers there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he hugged her yeah.
Speaker 5:It's public. Yeah, he was helping me on my on my swing there and telling me not to. What do you call it? Chip it or?
Speaker 2:slice it, slice it, slice it, it's all in the hips.
Speaker 5:It's all in the hips, buddy, but no, that was a lot of fun. I I got to play Topgolf for the first time and it was a lot of fun. I'd do it again.
Speaker 1:We found out how good of a golfer Tim is. Yeah, it's such a dumb game, but yes. So Dan gets up there, first he takes a few hits and then, like I took a few hits and then I handed the driver over to Tim, he's like all right, and then he like he's hitting them straight and far. Yeah, well, so.
Speaker 5:I was. I was watching Tim, I was watching his process. He does some like sense a thing where he holds it out the golf club, you know, and I don't know what he's doing. But he's like he does something and then he's like all right, about to hit this thing, and then he'd whack it and it just yeah.
Speaker 2:It's supposed to be how you it's supposed to get your body pointed the right way, because I always have that problem.
Speaker 5:You're lying yourself. Yeah, I'm lying.
Speaker 2:I learned it from my dad and but yeah, I like, I like your way better. You know I'm sensei. No, I'm giving a mental sacrifice.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, it's a whole process. Is that how you start your maintenance windows too?
Speaker 2:You hold your keyboard up and like. Exactly.
Speaker 1:So that brings us to here. We're recording an episode. We've got some of our friends around us. It's a great time I had drinking some beers not sponsored so we're going to cover the logo and then tomorrow we're going to a breakfast event and then in the afternoon it's the live semilcast from four until seven.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So speaking of breakfast, scrambled jakes.
Speaker 2:Name drop yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, oh my goodness Now maybe it's just a Southern hospitality thing, but the waitresses that helped us while we were there, they were fantastic. I mean, andy yelled at one of them about his coffee cup not being full, but other than that it's been a great experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a warning. Yeah, and my hands were greasy from the cotton smoke bacon and I went to check my phone and my phone flew across the table and hit a bunch of dishes.
Speaker 3:The whole restaurant got quiet and looked yeah, and you realize who came over. Guys, I just dropped my phone. Everything's cool.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but you were like super loud. I didn't mean to do that, I'm not mad.
Speaker 3:Did I have a draw? Well, yeah, but do you know, did you know, is that how I sound to you? Yeah, it does.
Speaker 2:OK, did you realize who came over? That was like the manager. Yeah, she came over. Ok, I'll get you coffee here. Let me get you some more coffee Right away.
Speaker 3:You from Philly, sir, we knew yeah.
Speaker 2:I would just say Scramble. Jakes, that was not a cinnamon roll, that was a birthday cake.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh my god, that thing was huge. It was like the size of my face.
Speaker 3:Very good, though you mentioned the people right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3:I'm a broken record, but the community, like we are here, surrounded by people I never would have met, if it wasn't for the whole story. The study group became a podcast Got on planes to come here.
Speaker 2:Drove nine hours to come here.
Speaker 3:People drove up from other states and planes and we had Chris last year that made Asheville happen.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, that would not have happened without Chris we got Eric this year which is the Chris of Knoxville, chris.
Speaker 5:No, no, no, Hold on a second that is an honor sir. Well, that's how.
Speaker 3:I meant it. Yeah, no, no, it's the way that it went out.
Speaker 5:Let's talk about Eric for just a little bit. This dude is the world's most interesting man of Knoxville, but hold on.
Speaker 3:We're going to have him on the show, so don't peel the onion too deep.
Speaker 5:I'm just saying that. I'm just saying that Every time.
Speaker 3:I talk to him. It's something new. I have learned something amazingly, impressively surprising. Every day I've talked to him here yeah. I'm like wait, you're the mayor too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just kept getting straight. Just wait what you'll learn tomorrow.
Speaker 2:I actually think he's undercover as something else that we don't know yet.
Speaker 5:Yeah, right, I'm waiting. I can't wait till tomorrow. Ask him another one.
Speaker 3:So this community right that I didn't have? Yeah, sitting in my cable guy truck when all my buddies told me you're wasting your time, your money, this isn't going to amount to anything. And now we're just surrounded by people all over the world who reach out to us, come physically, like people, have lives and families and jobs, but, like you know, they're sacrificing your time to like be together.
Speaker 1:And there's more people on the way. I was checking Discord earlier and there's like a few more people. I'm on the way I get in and like it's like oh my god.
Speaker 3:And it's not a pride thing Like, oh, look at us, people came. I just feel like such a sense of community.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, Like.
Speaker 3:I know, love's, kind of like all right, dude. But like I really just have this amazing sense of like wow, this means something to people. They come, they organize this stuff, so it just does. It's not lost on me that you know how amazing the community that's come together is for all of us. I met a family member as a result of this trip. Cousin David heard about the event and the podcast reached out on LinkedIn. He's like hey, we're cousins and you know he drove up here. He came up from Virginia. He's looking for a job. I even met a cousin I never would have met. He is actually my cousin.
Speaker 1:Oh, ok, I thought I was on the fence for a little bit.
Speaker 3:He thought we were this cousin and we're not and he thought my grandfather was a wrong person. But as it turns out we're still cousins. He just had the wrong guy Interesting. But as a result of everything that's happened up until now with all this stuff, I met a cousin I never would have met before. And he came up and he wanted to work at Oak Ridge. I, you know, introduced him to Daniel. Is he going to get a job there, who knows?
Speaker 5:But just networking community right Pressures on Daniel yeah.
Speaker 3:So anyway, community, just thank you. Yeah, it's amazing. This is a great experience.
Speaker 5:Absolutely A1 family reunion.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. That's good, I love it. All right, any last minute thoughts on what we've done up until this point and what's happening tomorrow? Awesome? Well, thank you so much everybody for being here. We appreciate it. We really do, and we'll.
Speaker 3:Somebody's asleep. She's like oh, I've never heard of a podcast before. What do you guys do? Five minutes, she was snoring. Take these guys in the most boring guys I've ever seen. She's up. Hey Karen, you just didn't poke her, did you Honey?
Speaker 2:Hey, I've seen that finger before.
Speaker 5:They're talking about you.
Speaker 1:All right, awesome. This has been a lot of fun. I don't think we're going to do another one of these because we'll have the event until about 7.30 tomorrow and then we got to pack and get ready to get the heck out of town. But we will release the episode that we record at the live summercast event, so you can look for that. I'm going to try to edit this and get it out ASAP, so hopefully it's in your ears on a Saturday morning and thank you all so much for being here.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Eric.
Speaker 1:Thank you, KTEC.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Open Gear. Thank you, Alcira. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Rodefer Moss.
Speaker 3:Rover Moss.
Speaker 1:Rodefer.
Speaker 3:Moss, rodefer, moss, rodefer.
Speaker 5:Moss, rodefer Moss. Thank you for everything.
Speaker 3:Thank you everyone who's made this possible.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And yeah, thanks everyone. All right, we'll see you next time on another episode of the Art of Network Engineering.
Speaker 3:Hey everyone, this is Andy. If you like what you heard today, then please subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher. Click that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes. Also follow us on Twitter and Instagram. We are at Art of NetEng. That's Art of NetEng. You can also find us on the web at artofnetworkengineeringcom, where we post all of our show notes, blog articles and general networking nerdery. You can also see our pretty faces on our YouTube channel named the Art of Network Engineering. Thanks for listening.
