00:00
This is the art of network engineering  where technology meets the human side of IT.  Whether you're scaling networks, solving problems, or shaping your career, you've got the insights, stories, and tips to keep you ahead in the ever evolving world of networking.  Welcome to the Art of Network Engineering podcast. My name is Andy Lapteff and I am joined  by an old friend that I met in an NFD. might've been my first NFD. Remington Loose, it's so good to see you. How are you? Hello, I'm well. How are you, Ian?

00:28
I was at another NFD after that one and I didn't see you. I'm like, where's my buddy? I thought you were... It's okay. Will I see you in April at the next one I go to? I don't know that I'm signed up for April, but I'm going to go in 26. As long as it's not the 24th. That's my wife's birthday. I'll talk to Tom and see if I need a friendly face out there, man. I need Remington. Now I'm on the other side. Remington, it's great to see you. Thank you for being here. We are also joined by Josh Morris. Hi, Josh. How are you? Hey, I'm well. Thanks. Longtime listener. First time caller.

00:58
And Rem, by the way, has been trying to get me to Tech Fill Day for three years now. So maybe you'll be stuck with me this year instead of him. Oh,  You should come. I was a delegate once or twice. And then the last one, NFD 40, I participated in, I was on the vendor side.  For a guy who likes to speak  on a microphone, it was so scary in front of a room of people in live street. Like this is so much easier because it's recorded.

01:21
I would love to see your friendly faces out there. So the reason that we have Remington and Josh on here, Remington and Josh work at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. But when I met  Remington at NFD and we started chatting, Remington, I was joking before the show and I probably shouldn't say this if my previous employers are listening, but I feel like a lot of my jobs in networking, like I used to work in FinTech, right? I make wealthy people more wealthy, know, keep the money thing going. And that's been a lot of my career in tech. When I met you, you told me about your job. So.

01:49
I'm not going to try to explain the awesome, amazing place that you work at. Tell the folks, you know, where you work and what you do there. I'm Noshin Luce. I work at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. My official title is now a strategic architect. So I help try to coordinate what we do in the networking space. Yeah, I know, fancy.

02:07
along with other parts of the infrastructure, which includes  trying to help support our research community, as well as all the other major parts of St. Jude. And so when you talk about St. Jude, lots of folks are familiar with the clinical component. That's the thing that you see the most  generally in commercials, but um we've had a major impact on the research side of the house as well. And that's the research part of Children's Research Hospital, right? Really improving the cancer survival rate along with other catastrophic pediatric diseases, which is really what we're focused on. So.

02:36
Every day is something new and different and exciting. And because of the variety that St. Jude has, both from a clinical perspective, a research perspective, and then from like a hospitality perspective, we also have now education component and a global arm. And so there's always something new and exciting going on. It's lots of innovation, lots of excitement, lots of new challenges. And I'm fortunate, I get to work with Josh. A big part of the reason I wanted to come to St. Jude was

03:03
for the mission, like you said, and getting to help out with that idea, but also because the people that work there are great. And Josh is one of those people. Like I came to work alongside what was at the time a customer.  St. Jude was a customer of mine originally.  And uh when I looked out in the space and tried to figure out what I wanted to do next, they were at the top of the list and I was fortunate to get to land there. So Josh, thanks for accommodating me.  How did you wind up there, Josh?

03:29
Through a friend, actually, I like to think, like Rem said, I was part of getting him to St. Jude, but there is a third member of kind of our cohort that is a longtime friend of mine that encouraged me to come to St. Jude. So I was in financial industry at the time and that's been 14 years ago. So things have changed tremendously in 14 years. I wish you could see the campus today versus when I started, you wouldn't recognize it. Every minute's been great. How many sites are there? I was reading something about.

03:59
all the places that you guys interconnect. Are you able to say how many sites that you have that you have, you know, networked together here? It's a network engineering show. You might be surprised that I would say one. So we're one really large campus. And so if you think in terms of a three tier network model, we would have 12 or 13 kind of distribution points, right? Or 12 or 13 major buildings. And then each of those may have smaller

04:27
branches that peel off. But yeah, it's really one big campus. We have a more  limited WAN than I think you might expect a normal hospital to have. guess I didn't mean how many campuses, but I'm guessing that there are multiple buildings  connected to each other that constitutes a campus. So is it a bunch of? Yeah, yeah, I'm guessing it's a bunch of buildings. And so before we get too nerdy, I guess into the architecture,  and you mentioned something I wanted to bring up, Josh, you said you were in the financial industry. So

04:56
I want to lean a little bit into the St. Jude mission and I think why it  resonates so deeply with me and  honestly anybody with a soul.  How does working at St. Jude compare to like the financial industry? Do you feel that it's more fulfilling just at a high level? Oh, 100%. Yeah. You know, the bottom line for us  is generating data, right? It's not generating dollars. And we are successful when we're creating knowledge and also

05:25
you know, helping sick kids. And so it doesn't really get much better.  I don't have to worry about, as you said earlier, you know, lining some wealthy person's pocket. Yeah. It is very noble and we're happy to come to work every day. Yeah. It's so amazing. Sorry. Just like,  you know, I was  similar, right? In that I didn't work in FinTech specifically, but I supported a lot of different customers. I've been in a lot of different verticals and it's awesome.

05:49
when you get to come to work for a place and everyone is motivated by that mission. Like it's very prevalent. It's very present. It's very top of mind. When Danny Thomas started St. Jude, you know, he had an idea that everyone would be in the same physical place. So part of the reason we don't have a whole bunch of WAN is that he really wanted everyone to be together. He wanted us to understand and see what it was like. em

06:10
to be alongside someone who's going through a very difficult journey and to make sure that you had that appropriate sense of both empathy for them and figuring out how to help them and also that it was a motivator, right? Like you're, you're not able to abstract yourself from what is happening and that's going to really push you. And it's going to push you in a way whether you're

06:28
a network engineer, whether you're a nurse, whether you're someone who's in environmental services, like literally whatever it is that you're doing at St. Jude, you're going to interact and see patients. And that is a critical part of what we do. And it's a critical part of the culture that's been at St. Jude since  it was founded. So I don't want to harp too heavily on it, but I think that it's such a differentiated thing from, from what you're doing. So I'm going to read the St. Jude's mission  and

06:52
Then I want to tell you a quick little personal story of an experience we had with our daughter, not at St. Jude's, but I'm in Philadelphia, so there's the Children's Hospital here. And then I'd like to pivot into some of the tech because from what I can tell just on Google search, St. Jude is up to some really extraordinary technical applying technology to deliver on this mission, right? So St. Jude's mission.

07:17
The mission at St. Jude Children's Hospital is to advance cures and means of prevention for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. No child is denied treatment based on race, religion or a family's ability to pay. So that's the St. Jude mission. Families never receive a bill for a treatment, travel, housing or food. Are you kidding me? Like, no,  I just, right. I know, right. It just gets better and better. 80 % plus U.S. childhood cancer survivor rate off from 20 % in 1962,  funded mostly by individual donors.

07:46
Today, in full transparency, I've been doing a little bit of research here and there, and I tried to watch your YouTube channel today because I'm on YouTube, we have a YouTube channel. I'm like, oh, let me watch some videos while I'm making the kids lunch or whatever. And you know, there's the three minute high level thing where they have all these employees coming in, talking about the mission and all. And I'm like, oh yeah, cool, this is great. And then man, that second one that kicked in and got into a story of a girl, think her name,  I won't say her name for privacy reasons, but she's on the YouTube channel. And it was just a story  of...

08:15
this young girl, I'm already getting choked up, but her journey through getting diagnosed with childhood cancer and then her family and everything they went through. I think it was like a four minute video and I'm halfway in trying to make lunch for the kids and my wife comes down to check on me and I'm just a crying mess. I'm like, ugh, because it's so moving. it's so like children who get sick with these catastrophic diseases and the fact that

08:45
There's people like you two and the rest of the St. Jude team that show up  every day fulfilling this mission to me just moves me. And  A, I'm an empathetic emotional person. So that might be why it hits me so hard. B, we had  our daughter's eight now, but when she was two, we had a scare.  And  when I met you Remington and you told me where you worked, it's just kind of like, oh my God, like thank,  I always thank God for people who can go and do this type of work. Cause I can't get through two minutes of a YouTube video without.

09:14
being on the floor is a mess. But there's people who can handle it emotionally and go do the work that has to be done. So long story short, our daughter had a fever of unknown origin for about nine months. And if you Google fever of unknown origin, it's scary. It kept coming back and then it would go away and we kept going to the pediatrician and they you know, it was the weirdest thing. And she was our second. So like it didn't happen with our first. So there's just something going on and

09:37
She was finally spiking at 105, and the doctor's office didn't believe me when I told them, you must be doing something wrong. And I got there and she was 105, she's dehydrated, they couldn't get blood. And long and short of it is they send us down to the Children's Hospital here in Philadelphia. And they checked us into a floor, we're gonna stay overnight, they're gonna do all these tests. And they said, listen, don't read into this, but we're putting on the pediatric cancer floor. Don't get scared, but it's just where we have a bed. But me as a parent who's scared.

10:05
who Googled fever of unknown origin. I'm like, here we go, And  the long and short of it is we spent the night and I've probably never been, I've definitely never been so scared in my life. And we dodged a bullet for lack of a better term.  The next day it came back that she had mono and her little body was fighting mono all year. And so that was a relief, but we spent 24 hours at a children's hospital who treat sick kids  all day, every day.

10:30
the people that came in with food. A guy came in with a guitar, like as we're there and like the people man, like so anyway, it's not like a thank you for your service thing because that's silly. And I've talked to military people like don't say that, but  I am grateful for St. Jude for like who started it? said the actor was named Danny.  So he just decided one day like like what's his backstory that he have a sick kid and he's like we need a hospital or he was just such a great dude. He's like, I'm going to start this place. Joshua,  can you talk about like the history? Yeah.

11:00
Go ahead, Ron. Danny was not yet a successful and famous actor when kind of the impetus for it starts, right? And so he actually was praying and St. Jude is St. Jude Thaddeus, who's the patron saint of lost causes in many Christian denominations. And so he basically went and said, hey, I won't say made a deal because that's probably not the right way to phrase it, right? But he basically said, hey, if I end up being successful, I would, I want to pay it back. And when he became successful, he then went and

11:29
talked with his spiritual advisors and said, hey, what do need to do? You what should I do? What's the right way to try to do, keep my part of that commitment? And the determination was that they were going to open a children's hospital and then they selected a location and they selected Memphis for that. And so that's really it, right? And in the sixties, when this started, right? So you kind of talked about the 20 % childhood cancer was basically almost always fatal, right?  And that's the primary pediatric catastrophic disease that we're known for, but there are other things too.

11:56
sickle cell anemia and some others as well that are harder to say coherently uh to a microphone for a non-scientific person. But  yeah, so uh he basically decided he was going to do that and he fundraised and used his fame and his  success in order to try to continue making it a place where children could come and get saved. And at the time, palliative care was really the norm in that space  and we really advanced it. mean, I won't say that it's just St. Jude, obviously many places  children's

12:26
hospital in Philadelphia, I believe it's commonly called CHOP. And we have a partnership with CHOP in exchange data and do things research-wise. So like I know about CHOP, but setting that aside for a second, you know, that's kind of the story. And it's been that way since it was founded and it continues to be that way today. And we've been at the forefront in a lot of ways on IT perspective and everyone has an experience that they can kind of speak to that works for St. Jude. I know Josh has had some interesting ones in 14 years. Josh, you want to share one? Yeah, I actually do have a good one. So

12:55
I started in August, early August, 14 years ago, whatever, 13 and a half. But I remember it was the week after Christmas, right? And I think we all know that that week is usually pretty dead around organizations, right? And all of a sudden somebody comes running through our office. anybody here? Anybody here? Does anybody know how to use an Xbox? I look out of my cube, I'm like, I have an Xbox. you know, I know how to use one.

13:24
And, uh, you know, was on the network team and I can bring this around to tech in just a minute. So he's like, come with me. So I go with this guy and we, head over to the hospital, which is, you know, a five minute walk across campus. It's not bad. And I didn't know what to expect. But I go into this room with this young man. He was, you know, 15 probably, and he had just gotten a new Xbox game for Christmas, wanted to play it. And we provide Xboxes and consoles  in all our patient rooms. The game wouldn't work.

13:54
Right. And so it turns out that we had some firewall ports, I think that were probably blocking the online play of this game. so I was able to say that security, man, it's always security. You know, nobody likes security.  Yeah. So not only was I able to  help him get online and play that game, I stayed with him for three hours and we played together and just hung out.  like he, you know, he was jaundiced and in pain clearly. But

14:24
Like he really seemed to enjoy that time we spent together.  And so did I. Like, as young in my St. Jude career, like that's helped shape kind of, you know, how I go about my day. Like it still  impacts me, you know? And the camaraderie between staff and patients is part of our fabric. We're encouraged to visit with patients and families. In fact, we have one cafeteria on campus and it's for everybody. Everybody mixes together, patients, families.

14:51
staff, and we eat together and we live in community there. And it's really, really nice to be part of that. But I told you I'd tie it back to tech and I can do that. I think you go to a lot of places, right? We as consumers go to a lot of places and you'll find that guest wireless is a lot of times an afterthought, right? That time with that young man, it was actually a turning point for me because I helped re-engineer our guest wireless solution after that point.

15:21
We were some of the first people that I remember, again, this was 13 years ago, we went full open Wi-Fi on guest Wi-Fi. Back then it was still a lot of  captive portals and authentications, right? PSK. But we went full open  with some constraints, obviously, right? Segments, segmented networks and security controls and things like that. But it was a really big deal. Our CISO was getting pressure from other CISOs, being like, what are you doing? Right? And,  and still.

15:50
To this day in my office, have  a painting that uh a patient at St. Jude made.  it said, you know, normally the sign would say home is where the wifi connects automatically, right? Well, our guest wifi is called HopeNet. And  so it says home is where HopeNet connects automatically. And so I still have that hanging in my office. you know, guest wifi again, is typically an afterthought, right? But for us, it's a critical service. It means so much  and I'm happy we can provide that service for sure. Yeah. I guess your patients could, is it okay to call like...

16:19
People, patients, are they residents? Like, I don't even know if I'm, yeah. I can only imagine  emotionally what they're going through and physically, right? And then you're just trying to get a little bit of joy and then like, and have the damn wifi. So just what a great example of how you can create a better experience for your users or your patients,  right? Especially when they need it most probably, like just, you know, I just want to feel like a kid for a little bit. And the fact that you were able to do that with and for him, Josh, and then, you know, do it for the future patients is just such a...

16:46
the impact that you have that you can see directly. And what's beautiful, I guess, is now nobody will even think of it. That's one less point of friction or constraint that'll hit a patient. Like one less thing to be like, oh, this too, you know, like just come on in, we're going to take care of you and you know, get on the wifi and have a good experience. Yeah, it just works. That's what you want in tech, right? So that's what I want. I I can't,  I talked about this not too long ago with a friend on an episode that there's a particular hotel chain I stay at and it takes me an hour to get on their wifi.

17:15
just because of the captive portal and the thing and you got to go here and I got to use airplane mode on the thing for the phone like it's this whole ridiculous thing and maybe I'm doing something wrong but then there's other places I put in my last name and my room number and I'm in  you know and again I'm it's not that big of a deal for me whatever but like yes for for people who are

17:34
going through some really significant  health challenges just to be able to use technology to help them in any way possible, I think is a beautiful thing. I could stay in the touchy-feelys forever and I'm hoping we can weave in and out of it. But  if we pivot a little bit, I guess, to some of the technologies that, again, I did some Googling and there's a bunch of things that I'll probably never understand. So Remington and Josh, I'll kind of leave it to you. If someone were to ask you, what's some of the coolest stuff that you're doing with technologies right now that  enables customer care or helps experience or helps your research folks?

18:04
Because when you say research, you're like working on medicine and cures for things, right? Like that's what research means. Yeah. I guess there's a ton of tech there too. So I'll, leave it to you. You guide the convo, but I'd love to hear what you're able to talk to, you know, about with technology and what you do. the research space, yes, we have a 20 plus principal investigators are called PIs. And so they work across a whole bunch of different disciplines. Right. And we have a variety of research, whether it's pure scientific research.  like

18:29
pure what you would kind of think of as academic research, meaning understanding fundamental science, like how does protein kinases work in the human body to  specific translational related research to clinical related research. There's all kinds of research. The description I try to give her people is humans. understand things when we can see them like our eyes are probably our most powerful. oh

18:48
differentiating sense between us and many other species. And so we got to be able to see it. And so when you think about, can we see it? It's a variety of imaging. And that means genetic sequencing. means microscopy, meaning like a microscope that you would use just like you did in science.

19:03
and all of that, the same advances that have happened in your cell phone camera have been happening from a scientific perspective. And so  one of the favorite things that  I got to do when I first got hired was to interact with a lot of the research community and learn about what they do. And anytime you interact with a researcher at St. Jude, it's an interesting experience. They generally hold more degrees than  you do. And that's when I say generally, mean,  there may be a few special network engineers in the world that have a PhD, but.

19:31
generally not more than one and certainly probably not a PhD and maybe an MD and a whole bunch of other degrees, right? So these people have been in school for a really long time and they know a ton about their subject and when you can get them talking about it and how it relates to what they're doing, it's really amazing. And so one of my first conversations I was talking to an individual and

19:47
The instruments that we're using, some of them are purchased from vendors, right? So we get to experience what that's like. Like everybody else, you buy a package solution from commercial off the shelf and you get to deal with whatever that looks like all the way through to some of our newest imaging stuff. You know, we're building the instrument from component parts. And so these folks are writing software, compiling software, putting components together to generate something, and then trying to figure out how to support that from a network and infrastructure perspective. But this particular individual was explaining to me that we were getting one of these early, really

20:17
prototype machines. there was basically no documentation. So when we asked like, okay, well, what ports do you need for this to work? Like, what does it need from a networking perspective? What can we do to this thing? And the answer was like, we don't know. And they don't know either. Like, we're just figuring this out, right? But it was capturing from like,

20:32
seven different angles cells that were dropping through it. then basically when you identified a particular set of cells as you were interested in, had this little ticker and it would move cells that were of interest between into a different vial. So it would basically drop into like a little test tube. And then we take those test tube cells and we'd send them off to where our sequencing environment is. And we'd run those through sequencing. And then we'd recombine the data into multiple omics to be able to figure out like, what is different about these particular cells, right? And so we're trying to tie together two different vendor systems that's got high speed imagery,

21:02
there's lots of files. And so we're talking about some of the data sets are in the multiple terabytes, you know, that they want to move back and forth. We've got workstations that are massive workstations. And, you know, you get into how do we move data? How do we transport data? How do we look at data? How do we secure data? Like all these sort of fun things. So we push the boundaries a lot, I think, in the

21:23
campus networking space. And so I'll kind of hand it to Josh to maybe talk a little bit about like what we've done in that. we're one big campus, right? So we've got these patients and all the sort of touchy feely things that we just talked about. How critical is Wi-Fi? Up through high speed microscopy with very fine related images and streaming cameras and genomic sequencing and even more. So our campus has become this very weird access network that's not like any other access network you've probably heard of.

21:51
Yeah, that's amazing. I have two quick questions before we jump to Josh. So like, as you're talking through all this, you know, different vendors, I'm thinking like interoperability integration challenges, even requirements, like, so everything you just described sounds intense, all the stuff that that research guy who was the out person was doing. So I'm guessing there's your technical organization has to team up or work with these folks because like, like you said, there's this new thing. We're not sure what ports it is. We're not exactly sure what's off. Like we're creating this.

22:21
as we go or maybe it's a brand new thing, like you're on the cutting edge, right? So it's not a standardized thing yet maybe. And so I'm even fascinated, like,  I wonder, and I know that I'm walking a line here, but I wonder like how you figure out what the requirements  of your technology stacks are, right? Like, what do you need? Like, okay, we're gonna have high, know, high, we have these huge files from imaging, great. So we're gonna have big files, we're gonna need, you know, jumbo frames and the.

22:48
the most bandwidth we can and ASICs that can push it and we can't be queuing and if it delays somewhere, it's going to retransmit it and never get there. The doctor needs it at the thing. And it just seems like super, it could be super complicated. Even as you're like developing a new technology and a new machine or a new image, whatever it would be like, the scientists might not know. The person who's doing that like, Oh, well I need 800 gig ports. I need these, you know, fibers. They have to be single mode. Is that on, I guess that's on you to translate the super triple doctorate.

23:17
brilliant people working on the brand new thing to like, how the hell are we going to get the data where it has to go? What? Yeah. Like it's, sounds. So we actually had someone who's building a, a microscope, right in our developmental neurobiology and they reach out and they're like, Hey, before we go by this thing, cut fiber, do you have anything that can cut fiber? And we're like, yeah, we have, like we deal with fiber. Like, do you have this kind of fiber? And they're like, here's the fiber. don't know.

23:45
like you tell us, right? So like, we literally roll over there  with our contracted folks to help  who do normal like single mode fiber splicing on campus, right, to cut this fiber so that they can run it into their instrument for their microscope. So  yes, we absolutely have to go figure all that out. And so  that's, that's a big challenge that Josh has been working through, you know, in the access spaces, like, okay, how do we figure out what to do and the data requirements just, they get bonkers, like they get really bonkers. And we're not going to talk about vendors.

24:14
but do you get  a certain level of supports the wrong word. But  so like in my world, know, a vendor will, you can get support from a vendor. Hey, I got to build this thing. Okay, well here's, you know, here's what you need. Here's the technologies. Here's  the protocols because you're on this cutting edge medical stuff. I even wonder if the vendors have a complete, you know, here's your data sheet and here's your proto. I  I'm wondering if it's a conversation, you know, and you might not, I don't want to know about vendors.  I'm just wondering if it's, it's difficult in what you're doing.

24:43
Yes, and we do on both there and we face new challenges every day, right? And so we could not do it without our strategic partners and strategic vendors, whatever you want to call them. Like think about the big players in our space, right? And we're working closely with them to uh make sure that we're following industry best practices, to make sure that we're getting those value out of the tech we're investing in, make sure we're investigating all the new.

25:10
possibilities? So the answer is yes. uh And even  our customers, if you will, in the business are doing something very similar, right? So if we're looking at a new  research technology or clinical technology, they're in turn working with their partners to try to find what's best.  And I'll say this, it's sometimes difficult working in a clinical environment because healthcare tech systems aren't always up to date. ah Like,  you know,  I wouldn't be surprised if something

25:39
came on my inbox tomorrow that says, hey, this thing needs 10 half, right? Can we do it? Or we often get some  weird protocol requests. so- Is that based on the equipment that's out there, like weird OT kind of stuff?  It depends. Yeah, generally what you'd find is when these clinical vendors build their solution, they're going through an FDA approval process to be able to  sell it, right?

26:05
And that is a very time consuming and expensive process. so they don't want to do it very often. So they don't update their gear for years. You could be talking tech that's 10 plus years old  that you're being sold today as part of a certain solution. So yeah, it really does make it difficult. like Remington said,  you've got some research vendors on campus that are building their own.

26:31
electron microscopes or their own systems.  I think we've got a Nobel laureate on campus that built their own microscope. So we have to find ways to integrate those as well. And it's a new challenge every day for sure. How do you put that on a resume?  I  fuse fiber into  not fiber ports of microscopes this

26:53
Brilliant guy invented like resume line.  They're like, Hey, so where's the data deck? Are we rerunning a jack? And it like, there's  no data jacks. there's no structured cabling. don't need to run any cables. You will not be terminating anything. We just need to cut this fiber to length. I don't know what to tell you. Like that's what we got to do. I don't even know how long it is.  One thing I'm thinking of in your environment and healthcare in general is uptime.

27:21
Right? Like, I mean, we're all fighting that battle in networking, no matter any environment, we  need as much uptime as we can. And I know five nines is supposedly the industry standard, what three minutes of downtime a year. I've yet to meet anybody who can deliver that, including hyperscalers.  But  I'm curious.  And again, we're not, you know, I don't want to know anything proprietary, obviously, but in an environment where networks going down could have significant impact  on.

27:48
I don't know the well-being, right? Like the physical well-being of  folks. So I forget, you've worked in other places, like Remington is an example. You were a network person before, seeing you, like a non-health place, is that correct? Like a non-health care? support  health systems though. So I've been in the medical, I've helped support medical networking for some time. I'm just wondering, compared to, I don't know, financial services or a different context where lives may not be on, like when I worked in FinTech, yes, networks went down and it was terrible and...

28:18
people were upset and money was lost, but you know, oh, I couldn't run my visa at Macy's. It's like  the impact of that, right?  Or somebody had to wait a little longer for the bank transfer to happen. The  implications of  the network failing or going down at your place feels different to me. that sound fair?  It is  for sure.  I will say that nobody wants network downtime, right?  We're, think, fortunate in the clinical space though, because

28:48
All of our kind of life critical gear, I your nurse calls, your bedside systems, your infusion pumps, those are generally not on that. And so  we procure solutions where the partner will come in and kind of run their own system, if you will.  Think of it like a parallel network, right? So ah again, that stuff may be 10 plus years old from a  life cycle perspective, but it generally works.  It's solid as hell. And it doesn't get up  and it doesn't change.

29:17
Like it stays static. Right. So I'll also shout out our clinicians. They have a rock solid downtime plan. Now I hate when they have to enact that right, because it's back to paper charting and  things like that, but they do a great job and we're very fortunate to have them. Now the research base is a different story with us regarding downtime. There've been multiple occasions where we would have  a disruption, whether an accident or whatever, and somebody would call.

29:47
us up or our manager, CIO, whatever, be like, look, I was running this job, this research job. It's been running for seven days and I had very specific samples from a patient in this job and it failed because the network was down for 30 minutes. And you just cost me seven days. And now I've got to go back to this patient and get another sample. And there's a financial component to that. There's an inconvenience component to the patient. There's.

30:14
the research that we've potentially lost. so downtime in the research area is a lot more difficult to work with for sure. On-call must be terrible.  I'm just thinking of my own on-call experience and it's like, know, like, oh no, Bank of America can't do their transfer to a billion dollars to the Federal Reserve. I mean, that was stressful enough, but like everything you just said, like, oh my God, it's impacting so much, right? uh Patient care and research and just people's lives.

30:44
How's security, right? I  know that HIPAA, so when I worked in FinTech, PCI, payment card compliance was a huge, that was our big regulatory thing. And I know HIPAA, I mean, forget about it. They won't tell my wife where I am when I'm getting  a vaccine at the doctor's. And I understand why HIPAA's there, and it's a wonderful  privacy mechanism. I'm kind of curious  security.  you talked earlier about the Xbox.

31:13
Obviously ports were shut down and he couldn't get in. So you mitigated that. mean, there's so many layers of security, like you have so much proprietary research data and then patient data and HIPAA compliance. You want to make sure you don't get, you know, hacked by the latest crypto scam locked door thing. I mean, do you have a,  I want to ask you a question I can't, which is like, do you have a separate security thing? Like when I was in FinTech, we had security teams that like did all that. Right. I was just the network. Dumb dumb. Um, is security  different? I don't know how to ask about security here without.

31:43
Maybe we can kind of wander into it and start talking about it.  So how do you handle  security? Is it different in healthcare? Do you have concerns in healthcare that you wouldn't have in other places beyond HIPAA? I feel like every business has  critical data they have to protect. So I'm not trying to say healthcare is unique in that regard,  but it does feel different where you're at for reasons, right? A lot of folks, again, when you think about security for us,

32:12
The first lens that people put on it is the hospital side, right? It's the last word in the name. You think hospital, you think the clinical side. So all of those things are in play, right? We have HIPAA related requirements that we have to have  and we have to comply with. We have all of the normal hospital systems, right? So you have to worry about how do you secure those? How do you ensure that they're connected so that they can provide data? And there's a tremendous amount of value in having things connected and allowing it to automatically share data, right? Everything from scales to...

32:40
pumps to you name it, right? Like there's value in having it available. uh There's value in RTLS, you real time location services related data or critical infrastructure, right? But that has to be findable on the network and that has consequences. So there's absolutely security around all that, right? We're also, because we're doing  research on that data, some of it's clinical related data. And so you have that side of the house as well. Our global partnerships mean that we have to comply with  and maintain compliance with  potential other

33:10
compliance-related frameworks, even outside of the United States, right, from a data perspective. So that's a whole other layer on top of the layers that you're thinking of maybe in there. We have a cafeteria, we have coffee shops on campus, we have a gift shop, right? And so all of those are processing card transactions. And so we have a PHI, or sorry, a card holder related kind of component that we would have to process. Most of that stuff's pretty well handled now. It's a small subset of the infrastructure, right? And you know, if you do end-to-end encryption, can...

33:36
you don't have anything to really worry about in that space. But like it's a thing that is, you know, a concern in some institutions. So you just reminded me with the encryption piece. Does your research, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Does your research facility, do you operate in a silo or are you sharing and working, collaborating with other research folks around the globe? Yeah, absolutely. There'd be security in that too, There's all kinds of secret proprietary information you'd have to gather around the globe with each other, right?

34:04
Yeah. So there's a variety of, as I learned in this process, right? Of like, you know, we get engaged from the technical side of the house, right?  We have instances where we need to move petabytes worth of data, really large amounts of data, right? And then the first question of course is always like, do we have...

34:19
like what are the legal frameworks that are supporting this data, right? Do we have the right to use the data? What type of data is this? What do we need to do to ensure that we're compliant with the data usage, right? So those are all factors. And then comes in the technical part. That sounds exhausting, by the way. Like literally, how are we going to move the data? to figure out the data. Yeah. Are we allowed to? I just have to say, are we good to go? Thumbs up. Thumbs up. Like, OK, all right, let's engage. right, so what are we moving it out

34:46
How are we going to go get this data? What is this data? How do we need to get it? How do we bring it in? How do we connect it? How do we make it work? So those are all factors just on data, for example.  So we do have a lot of different components in security.  Josh, I don't know maybe if there's any parts of this you want to jump in. I feel like I'm monopolizing this part of the conversation. But security is a major part for us. And we have a whole population of people that you've already heard who are BYOD type people that we want to provide services to.  And that includes services beyond just, I've got an Xbox.

35:15
hey, you  have the following services that you need to be in attendance for uh from a medications perspective or from a visits perspective, right? Like we wanna make sure that our patients know where they need to go on our campus and who they need to see and who they need to interact with. And so we need to communicate with them, right? Some of our patients are not Americans, right? And so we have a whole language component that gets into play there and there's a transportation for them that needs to be coordinated, you know, and our campus is big as you've heard, so.

35:42
knowing where to go and how to get from point A to point B and navigating all that, especially for someone who either maybe doesn't speak English or this is the first time on campus. You've got all the anxiety that you mentioned about, you know, your hospital situation. So that's a lot of things happening all at once. How do we empower that person to have the information they need on a device that we don't control in an environment that's simultaneously packet flowing critical research, critical clinical, clinical, you know, whatever  data. It's a fun challenge.

36:11
I'd like to jump in there, Rim. Yeah, me. Yeah. So  since this is a network podcast after all, I like to think of this as a journey, right? um And I would say probably 12, 15 years ago, we were at the, the crawl stage, if you will, like a lot of people were, there were distributed firewalls, right? There were VLANs that terminated into those firewalls. And that was kind of what we did at the time, right? We had external perimeter, like the moat, if you will. And then we moved to the wall.

36:38
stage, and I think we're on the later end of the walk stage, but for us, that was deploying VRFs throughout the environment and each VRF was a zone, right? Think protected, unprotected, kind of like that. And then the VRFs would ultimately terminate into the firewall. So that allowed us to move the firewalls out to a centralized model and get them out of kind of our buildings at that point. And we also implemented some NAC-like features to go along with that. So think dynamic VLAN assignment,  DAQLs, downloadable access lists.

37:08
We're there today in a more kind of mature way and procedurally doing a lot better, but we're kind of tipping into what I would think would be more of a run state in this area. And that is going to be, we're moving towards a suite of like endpoint protection agents, right? So think of all the players in the game and we're running that. So we're getting this kind of, I would call it a small scale zero trust.

37:31
component on a lot of our managed endpoints. We're looking at some solutions that would help us do more lateral segmentation. So we want to keep this kind of VRF model, but instead of using downloadable access lists for East-West control, we want to move more towards the security group tag model where tags follow you across campus and apply a policy based on your privilege, if you will. So I know our InfoSec team right now is really big and

38:01
to  IAM security, that's a big topic for them.  I think we're right on the verge. We're doing the access management. Yeah, sorry, yeah, access management. I think we're right on the verge of moving into more of a run state in this area. And again, shout out to our InfoSec team. Our organization, and I are in what we call technical services, which controls network, app hosting, endpoint management, things like that. Our InfoSec team is completely.

38:28
separate and we're close partners with them. They own the firewalls, risk and compliance, identity, incident management, things like that. So we're very fortunate to be partners with them. just like the rest of us, do you have to play the, it's not the network game when the app owner says they can't reach such and such? And then your whole job is like, all right, we got to prove it's not us. We all know it's the network, right?

38:49
No, man. My first role was reading, like really honestly,  was reading packet captures, like debugging at the protocol level, what was happening in SMP to try to understand what's happening in these data transfers, right? So you talk about packet captures, like that's right where I was, like trying to figure out what is happening between this endpoint and a storage system.  Like where is the problem? Is it the network? Is it the client? Is it the storage system? Is it something else in between? Like I spent so many hours, more hours than I ever thought I would.

39:19
honestly learning how SMB works as a protocol  in a packet capture because that's what I needed to do to figure it out. You you talk about InfoSec and since it is a networking podcast, like let's, we'll lean in for 30 seconds, at least there, right? I'm super excited about what's happening in the DPU space. And you talked about vendors and capabilities there. Like I get so stoked, quite frankly, about what could be possible with DPUs. They give us the ability to provide really granular.

39:44
controls without direct impact to the endpoint. And a lot of our endpoints, again, we don't have control over. So I can't install an agent on some of this stuff. I can't. And when you're talking about the data flows that some of these instruments are trying to push, you know, our latest imaging group, you know, they're really interested in being able to push well into the hundred gigabits per second worth of capacity. Like you start.

40:06
you're talking whole large firewalls just for one flow and even then they can't handle the flows right so you got to come up with a fundamentally different way to approach it and dpus to me you're kind of really the only

40:17
great way to do that gives us all the security controls, gives us visibility, it gives us access, it does it in a way that doesn't impact the endpoint, they don't need to see it, they don't need to smell it, they don't need to feel it, right? It's all on us, whether that's deployed, you know, in some form of specialized switch component, or whether it's deployed directly in the endpoint. Again, it depends on how much control and access we have, but it's a space that we're definitely watching, unfortunately, the ability to manage them.

40:41
in an enterprise environment isn't super great right now. And there's a gap, of, know, visibility gap between what's happening on the DPU and what's happening on  the forwarding plane and networking hardware in the vendor space that makes it a little bit challenging to kind of understand what exactly is going on. So for us, a lot of those things, right, back to that same kind of conversation in security and visibility, we got to be able to maintain it. And,  you know, we got to maintain it in an environment where we don't have all day to just kind of

41:10
puts around to figure it out. Get it done.  We have about 10 minutes oh left and I have three topics that I'm going to throw at you and you just do with them what you will. Things I was hoping to get to. So the last three things and I guess I spent way too much time talking about other cool stuff because this sounds like too much for three topics, but you can pick one or you can hit a ball.  It's your show, Remington and Josh. Automation, AI, quantum.  because um I work in the automation space now.

41:38
And I was publicly anti automation for years because you're going to take our jobs and I'm not a programmer. So  I've come around and I've seen the value and  the benefit that automation brings organizations. And I've leaned into that the past year. So that's been a journey for me, but  maybe even a philosophy like Remington. you,  how's your automation journey? And if you want to pass on this, I understand. And I'd love to know about AI and or any kind of quantum stuff you guys are doing again, just from like some random Googling.

42:07
It sounds like there's some really cool bleeding edge stuff that you're up to in those spaces. What if I start with automation and we'll leave quantum for last, because that's probably the most exciting topic we have. Me personally, right? I've been big in the automation space. I'm kind of on the DevNet certification track, if you will. And that's been a fun personal journey, but we have a dedicated automation team and it's two folks and they're, they're awesome. We're using Ansible to do configuration.

42:35
management and we're doing terraform to do  deployment of resources, right? I would say that this is a space that we're rather immature in though.  If I think back in the history of St. Jude, I'd say for the past, I don't know, 10 years, we've been able to kind of brute force things ah with manpower, right? The growth was  not overwhelming at the time  and we were able to kind of get things done. But in the past,

43:03
I don't know, four years, our growth has exploded. The network itself has grown by 30 % twice in the past four years. We're expecting another 30 % hit this year and another 30 % hit in two years. that because of the type of requirements Robinson's talking about? just ungodly image sizes, file transfers, like... but for us it's new buildings. Yeah. And so our organization is growing rapidly.

43:31
I mean, it's held to try to find a parking spot anymore, right? But yeah, the network is growing at a rate and our team is not able to keep up from a headcount perspective.  And  our network team, they're great, truly, but we just can't keep up. So automation is a necessity for us,  but it's also rather new. So, you know,  it's been  slow going.  We're starting small, of course, network wise, we're doing things like...

43:57
Switch configuration compliance, some basic automation tasks. Swim has been a big one for us. So we've taken campus wide switch upgrades that used to take three or four months, right? To do 600 switches. And now we can get it down to three or four weeks.  Not constant time, right? But various maintenance windows throughout those periods. And so Swim has been a huge time saver. But I apologize. I'm not familiar with Swim. Is it an acronym? Yeah.

44:24
Software image management. this is, uh,  an automated process that upgrades a switch iOS or switch, you know, version. So  did you say four months down to four weeks ish? Was that the, right. Yeah. It's been big deal.  previously somebody would have to be on site, visit every IDF, know, do the whole thing right now. Now they can be more or less at home minus some of the critical areas and get it done comfortably. So yeah, that's been a big deal, but as an automation team, you know, we're just trying to enable.

44:53
our peers in  IT to do better. And  we're moving,  albeit slowly,  but I think we'll get there. that's great to hear. And honestly, from all the data I've seen, just because that's what I do now, you're right there with the rest of the industry. Everyone's  kind of trying to figure it out and moving slowly. You want to be cautious too, right? But at the same time, the benefits that we extol about automation, like you can do more with less.  You can save time, four months down to four weeks. That's so great to hear. And you're using tools that I think a lot of folks are and having a lot of success with.

45:23
The scary part, I think, is like most places have one or two people responsible for the automation. And the reason I say scary is if and when they leave, like, oh, no, what the hell do we do? So that's  that's what I keep hearing in these days. And I'm not saying that would happen to you guys, but everywhere I talk to that's doing like D.Y.I. and loving it and having great success like you are. And then the guy or two leaves for a different thing or more money. And then everybody's like, oh, God, what do we do?

45:53
It kind of seems like this cycle and I don't know how as an industry, maybe the more we all skill up, like maybe it's not just one or two people at some point. Maybe we can all kind of dip our toes in and help with the automation stuff. But  Remington AI quantum. So quantum is fun.  We, uh we do have some stuff out there. You can see it. We're fortunate that we have some researchers who  have worked in the space a little bit and whatnot.

46:18
For me, the quantum journey started, I don't know, 18 months ago or something when our boss was like, hey, we're looking into this quantum. And I was like, I have no idea about any of this.  So as usual, you start  doing searching and you kind of do the trickle effect, right? Like the just every day you're reading something new. And so this is a networking related focus podcast. And I am certainly not a quantum expert and I don't want to attempt to play one on TV, but.

46:45
I stayed at a Holiday Inn before, so we'll give it a shot for at least a couple of moments, right? The big thing in quantum is just there are a lot of different ways to make qubits, and it's not really clear exactly which method is going to work, and they have different benefits depending on who you are. So we have really, really great researchers who are already leveraging partnerships with hardware manufacturers in the quantum industry to do some initial testing. And like NetNet, right?

47:10
simplest way to say it is that the ability for quantum to calculate across a large number of possibilities becomes really a great way to solve certain types of problems. And some of those problems are problems that we face, right? So one of the areas that we're trying to work on is around medicine discovery. And I'm, I'm a hundred percent just to be completely transparent, am a hundred percent parroting what I have heard other research related folks say. So this is, this is me saying hopefully what someone that

47:36
way smarter than me said and not butchering it, right? But essentially we're investigating a space, say for instance, where there's an interaction between a particular type of molecule, say a protein, that's causing disease and we need to make medication that will bind to that particular protein. And so that's like a literal geometry type problem, right? Like how do we get a thing that fits closest into this thing? And so you're calculating different shapes and those shapes are controlled by... um

47:59
the molecule that you can make, which is controlled by the atoms you can put together to literally build a molecule. So you're literally like, okay, can I put another carbon over here? What does it look like if I switch this to iron? You know, that kind of thing. So those are great problems for quantum. And quantum works really well, at least from the  initial research that we've seen from these individuals  with small data sets, which is important for us because for a lot of the catastrophic diseases, you know, there aren't necessarily a large population of children who are suffering from it. And so we don't necessarily have

48:28
millions of samples that we can leverage in order to try to figure out what we can do to save uh a particular child's life. So anything that we can do  that eyes kind of back to that idea can really give us an advantage in trying to advance our mission. And so it's been a journey to figure out and thinking that through and to tie it back into networking. Of course, you've got a whole bunch of different ways to create qubits. You've got a whole bunch of different manufacturers.

48:51
they produce qubits potentially in different ways, maybe we'll end up with more than one type of quantum computer. How are we going to connect these things together? How will we be able to run things on top of them? How will we help support it? And so we've been in active support with our technical partners to try to kind of figure that out. Like how do you even build a switch that would talk between them? And ah once you do, can we leverage that switch to scale up the available number of logical qubits that we can then run  our potential algorithms on?

49:18
Which leads right into AI because it actually ends up being an AI related workload that we run on top of it. So it is literally all of the buzzword bingo that you could possibly imagine quantum plus AI all in one go, but it is real and folks are doing it. um So it's super early.  We don't own a quantum computer ourselves,  at least not at this point. And so we're still working through partnerships to try to gain access to that. There's quantum simulation. This particular researcher, it's...

49:46
It's kind of almost mind blowing. They leverage spot pricing in the clouds. So I know we didn't talk about cloud or cloud related networking, but it's a big part of it. And they're able to consume just an absolutely astonishing amount of compute power to try to do this because they're attempting to do quantum simulation. So when you talk about how much CPU do you have available or how much CPU will it take, the answer is they can use all of it.

50:07
Right. mean, they're literally calculating a problem space that is as large as the Milky Way galaxy are larger. So they will use all of the compute if they could get their access to it. It's unreal. Like it's just really mind blowing.  On the AI side, it's also super cool. You know, lot of the image processing that's out there, especially in the medical field is dedicated towards where the images list exists. Right. So it's datasets and for lots of datasets that's on adult patients.

50:33
So for us, it's a lot of development around specialized capabilities for our patients, you know, who are relatively small in terms of  both their physical stature and their population size from a sample perspective. And so we have to take maybe what is an existing model that's really effective in adults, but turns out is really not effective in children and try to either a tune it or use our existing data to build our own thing. And we have lots of researchers that are very excited about it.

50:59
We also are able to leverage and use AI in all the ways that everybody else is from a, you know, vibe coding automation type perspective, right? So you've got somebody who has really strong scientific skills and maybe some systems knowledge who wants to do some sort of processing or rendering or manipulation of data, maybe thousands of images, right? And they maybe don't have the skillset to write the code to do that themselves.

51:23
but you slap a large language model in front of something and now they can produce a capability to do that. So how do we safely empower them to  become their own developers and work with their own data has been an interesting challenge that we're kind of still working through. It's not really networking per se, but um it's out there for sure. So we do quantum, we do some quantum, I should say, we do some AI for sure. And we're really kind of leaning into that. What's it look like networking wise? I'll ramble for one more second on that.

51:52
We get super excited and it's very difficult to talk to a lot of hardware vendors, but a lot of the AI related products actually meet some of the requirements that we've needed for a long time in this space, right? Which are  really high performance levels, potentially heterogeneous related workloads. A lot of AI workloads are homogeneous, but there are some heterogeneous  type capabilities, right? The ability to do data in, data out, limited security once it gets loaded. Like there's a lot of...

52:18
features, if you will. And also a lot of the AI related workloads, they use a job scheduler, which is critical to HPC. So that's right up in our wheelhouse, right?  So we've been in a lot of conversations lately with folks about quote AI products. And we're like, yeah, we don't actually care about AI. We're like, we don't want it for AI. We want it to just do like the regular stuff that we're doing right now. But you finally got something that can do that. And an ultra ethernet falls into that category too. Rocky B2, like I know we're out of time.

52:45
We missed the opportunity to talk about some of that stuff, but that stuff is super exciting for us as well. And it's not because we want to go do AI related stuff per se. That is a thing, but for us, it's also critical to supporting just basic fundamental capability. you talked about all the crazy file transfers and size and your latency requirements, I mean, that was the first thing I thought of is all this AI HPC, you know, getting the 800 gig points in Rocky V2 and, know, DPU endpoints, like you guys need all the AI infrastructure.

53:13
But not even for AI, just for what you guys do, right?  Which is pretty impressive. Just shows like the scale of the things you're working on and how much data that you generate and that you have to move. Right. So it's a networking show. We got to get deep for 10 seconds, right?  So how do we deploy these types of technologies with really crazy heterogeneous flows without breaking something? Do we just hope? How do we test it? Like, what do we do?

53:37
I could talk to you guys forever, man. This is awesome. I don't know if you'd ever be willing to come back, but there's a bunch of things that I didn't get to talk to you about. And I know you said we're out of time, and we could theoretically go forever, but in respect of your time and your family's and probably my wife and kids in the other room who were like, dude, come on, scoop our ice cream already. this is a fascinating conversation.  just wanna, you know, when you started talking about quantum and then went into AI,  I was like, whoa.

54:05
These guys are so smart and they're doing such cool stuff. But what really,  I guess, stuck in my  brain was when you talked about how you're accelerating, you know, your discovery and testing of medicines, how you can take small data sets because there aren't a ton of sick people and then do interesting things with them because all the states and superpositioning qubits and like, I barely understand the quantum stuff. I'm trying to get my head around it. And every time I do, get into quantum mechanics and then my brain breaks and  you know, but it's fascinating the fact that you're

54:35
getting to do that in your job and you guys are on the path and trying to figure it out. But the application of the technology, I mean, this is the whole reason I wanted to talk to you folks and the fact that you'll be able to hopefully do that someday on the cutting edge of technology. And then you said, how do you, I don't even know, I should know this. I don't even know if there are like switches. Like once there's quantum computers, there, is there networking equipment you plug in to like connect? Like, I don't know, I guess I should.

55:03
But how does quantum even communicate? Like, I have no idea. Do you? Like, is there a different networking stack for this, or is it just ethernet? We don't know yet, right? You need both. We're doing it. Yeah, so I don't know how long you want to wander around, but you do need both, right? So there's a classical component that you're never going to get away from. And then there is the potential to do.

55:24
true quantum connectivity. The biggest thing is that you need to maintain the entangled state end to end, and that becomes complicated. And it becomes even more complicated when you think about like,  if we're generating different types of qubits, then how do I get something that's like, I don't know, if you're like, let's use one that's working now, like an annealing quantum computer, right? How am going to hook up an annealing quantum computer to something that's, you know, super cool, right?  How am I going to do that?

55:51
or trapped ion? How do I make a trapped ion quantum computer interact with an annealing quantum computer? Those are two totally different methods of generating qubits. In theory, once you get to logical qubits, it's all the same, but like on a physical level, you still have to plug them in. So it's like, okay, one of you is talking token ring, and the other of you  is talking ethernet. Discuss, right? And it's like, wait a second, someone's going to have to go from token ring to ethernet.

56:20
Right? Like that's, you're going to have to do that. Like that's fundamentally what you're going to have to do or to make it even  more simple, like  Novell, you know, if you're talking IPX, SPX to general IP, right? Like you've got to be a getaway for those things to actually interact with each other. So there are people who are working on systems to do that, but you do have to first build the ability to even generate cupids and talk and keep entangled state across the network to do it. We don't need it yet. Right. But  we don't want to be in a position from where we are.

56:49
where someone research needs something or in clinical or wherever and we're just not ready, right? Like that's not what we're here to do. This has been fantastic. We'll figure it out. I know you will. That's what and now I now I understand more why when I interviewed with Josh, he didn't hire me because you guys are brilliant. He talked to dummy Andy and he's like, all right, dude, like you can't even spell Qubit. I'm kidding. This has been again. Thank you obviously for the work that you and your

57:18
your research hospital does and for you too. And for coming on here, this has been just such a wonderful conversation that honestly is a bit different, I think, than other. I can't think of, we have like 190 episodes and I really can't think of one speaking to folks that work at a company that just has such a profoundly beautiful, impactful impact, impactful impact, but like just such an impact on the most important humans we have, which are children, right?

57:47
I mean, it's just such a beautiful thing and to hear all the cool stuff you're doing with technology just,  it kind of re-enlivens my passion for technology. You're in it long enough and you kind of get jaded, right? And it's just like, whatever. ah But the fact that I get to meet folks like you and then remember like, oh yes, there are beautiful things happening in the world and people are making the world a better place. And the fact that they're using technology to achieve that mission makes me happy because I love tech and I work in it. So Remington.

58:15
Where can folks find you if they would want to  talk to you? Are you anywhere on the interwebs? So this is the question I've been dreading the most because I'm pretty tinfoil hat. uh You can find me on LinkedIn. I guess it's probably the best place to go. You can read more about what St. Jude does on stdude.org and you can go there to donate as well. But I'm on LinkedIn. You can look me up. pretty easy to find,  but that's probably pretty much it. Sorry. Josh, are you also tinfoil hat man? uh

58:41
Mine's not tinfoil hat  as much as it is. uh I don't want to talk to people. I'm on LinkedIn as well. I do try to be active in some of the support communities around some technologies that I'm passionate about.  Right now  we've got a group of folks that are big in the Home Lab. So I'm in our Home Lab a lot.  So you might see me there. love me. I love me a Home Lab.  I have so many routers and switches and servers and

59:10
It's a mess down there. I probably need to give some gear away.  What's the best way for folks to  help St. Jude? Is it go to the stjude.org forward slash donate? mean, I donations are pretty much the biggest impact you can make, right? To help the mission.  Yeah,  that's probably the best place to go right off the bat. There are other ways to engage. You can reach out through the website as well. Check out stjude.org. Check out their web. Check out their YouTube channel.  It's not

59:38
It's not for the faint of heart. Don't go there if you're  having a rough day. But honestly, I say that half jokingly because the outcomes are amazing to watch. You  you go through the story with these folks and you kind of experience their journey. Maybe I'm just overly empathetic, but then at the end,  know, St. Jude helped save their life. And then you watch them grow up with their family and you can see just what a beautiful, beautiful job that St. Jude is doing.

01:00:07
So thank you so much  for being here. Thanks for coming on. I'd love to have you back someday. And once you figure out uh the quantum world, as long as you don't create a black hole and destroy us all, building a quantum computer, we'll have you back on if we all still exist. You'll find out if we fail.  Will I? We'll all just be in.  I don't know what happens.  I'm not smart enough to know what happens when a quantum computer destroys reality, but  I it's fun.  I'm kidding.  For all things Art of Net Eng, you can check out our link tree at linktree.org slash art of net eng. All these things are there, including

01:00:37
Our Discord server called It's All About the Journey. We do have a Home Lab channel in there, as well as all other kinds of channels of people studying for certifications, helping each other out, lifting each other up. If you don't have a community and you're in tech, it's a place you can check out. As always, thanks so much for listening and we'll catch you next time on the Art of Network Engineering podcast.  Hey folks.  If you like what you heard today, please subscribe to our podcast and your favorite pod catcher.  You can find us on socials at Art of Net Eng and you can visit linktree forward slash art of net eng.

01:01:07
for links to all of our content, including the A1 Merch Store and our virtual community on Discord called It's All About the Journey.  You can see our pretty faces on our YouTube channel named the Art of Network Engineering.  That's youtube.com forward slash art of net edge.  Thanks for listening.