January 7, 2025 • 49 mins
Meet Nicholas Calcutti: Manager of IT Operations at US Assure and Adjunct Professor at Florida State College Jacksonville. Nick shares his fascinating journey from collecting garbage via horse and buggy on Mackinac Island to managing complex network and cloud infrastructures. We explore the challenges of transitioning from on-premises infrastructure to the public cloud, the importance of unlearning old habits, embracing new paradigms, and teaching the next generation of IT professionals.
Where to Find Nicholas
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-calcutti-0660aa94/
- Twitter: https://x.com/NicholasCalcut1
- Website: https://www.technicalcutti.tech/
Show Links
- US Assure: https://usassure.com/
- Azure Cloud: https://azure.microsoft.com/
- Mackinac Island: https://www.mackinacisland.org/
- KTech CONNECT: https://www.knoxtech.org/ktech-connect/
- Daniel Pelfrey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielpelfrey/
- Florida State College Jacksonville: https://www.fscj.edu/
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory: https://www.ornl.gov/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nicholas (00:00):
So we were just starting our Azure journey.
We were on a private datacenter.
We were just moving everythingup to Azure networking.
Wise, I had to unlearn a lot ofthings.
Forget what I know, Just goback to basics.
Stop looking for the nerd knobsand just break it down to okay,
I need to do X Y, Z.
How do I get that done in Azure?
William (00:42):
Welcome to the Cloud Gambit podcast, where we unravel
the mysteries of tech, andmaybe even the mysteries of the
universe, one story at a time.
I'm your host, william, andwith me is my co-host, the brain
, the cognitive scientist ofCICD, the behavioral specialist
of all the cloud services outthere, yvonne Sharp.
How are you doing today?
What's the mental model fortoday's discussion?
Eyvonne (01:00):
I need to point out that you couldn't even say we're
unraveling the mysteries of theuniverse with a straight face,
and so I'm glad to get that inthere Doing great.
For me, it's the last work dayfor a little over a week of PTO,
so getting ready to head to themountains and hang out in a
cabin, hope that there are nocatastrophic weather incidents
(01:24):
while we're traveling, like somefriends of mine have
experienced in the last week orso.
So looking forward to a littlebit of downtime, yay.
William (01:35):
Awesome, that sounds like a good time.
Gallenberg's always fun, aslong as it's not too too crowded
.
We're going during fall break,which is one thing routed.
Eyvonne (01:47):
Uh yeah, we're going during fall break, which is one
thing.
Well, our mo is.
We stop at the grocery store onthe way in, we load up, we go
hang out at the cabin, we have atrunk full of books and then,
you know, we just hang out a lot.
So we are very low-keytravelers.
We will do some touristy things, but we're also going to get a
lot of r&r, so, looking forwardto that sounds like a perfect
vacation.
William (02:06):
So with us we have nick calcutta now.
I think both yvonne and myself.
I know it was my first timemeeting nick at the the k tech k
tech connect event with the artof network engineering in
knoxville, tennessee, last year,where they basically did a live
episode with his name escapesme, but someone that worked for
(02:31):
the high-performance computingops thing in Oak Ridge, so the
National Laboratory.
Needless to say, it was a greatevent.
We had a really good time.
We got to meet Nick and I thinkyou and I Nick, like after the
live recording outside of thatstudio or wherever the event was
hosted at, like we sat thereand just talked cloud for like
(02:53):
30 minutes straight probably andwe're just drifting, you know.
Pretty awesome.
So yeah, welcome on.
How's this?
How are things going?
Great, Thanks for having me.
Nicholas (03:02):
And I think it was Daniel.
I.
How are things going Great,thanks for having me.
And I think it was Daniel.
I forget his last name, thoughthe engineer Daniel.
I think it starts with a P.
William (03:09):
I will have to put it in the show notes.
I'm going to have to look it up.
Yeah, so you're down in Florida.
How are things going?
How's the weather?
Nicholas (03:19):
The weather's great.
So I'm in Jacksonville, sonortheast Florida.
Here Sometimes we call itsouthern Georgia because you
know in Florida the more northyou go, the more south you get
Right.
Eyvonne (03:32):
Yeah, florida by and large is not really the south
Right.
It's a completely differentsubculture.
So yeah, I'm hearing you there,I'm picking up what you're
putting down.
Nicholas (03:43):
Yeah, yeah, Northeast Florida, I think would still be
considered the South, but afteryou get outside this region,
that's where it gets you knowinto Florida.
William (03:51):
Right on.
That's a foul love that I'mgoing to have to remember that
one.
Eyvonne (03:56):
We have the same thing in Kentucky, because folks from
Northern Kentucky will often saythat they are from Cincinnati.
They don't ever claim Kentucky,they say they're from
Cincinnati.
They don't ever claim Kentucky,they say they're from
Cincinnati.
So those kinds of regionalthings happen all over the place
.
William (04:09):
Do you blame them?
Nicholas (04:11):
Yes, Kidding, I know Ohio.
I wouldn't claim.
I lived in Youngstown, ohio,for like six months, so I
wouldn't claim from any part ofthat state.
Eyvonne (04:21):
I'm an Appalachian girl , though, so that's where my
roots are, so I can't claimanything other than mountains
and all that fun stuff.
I'm not even into these parts.
William (04:33):
I have nothing anyhow, so do you want to give us just a
brief?
You work in a few cool areas,nick.
You do some pretty cool things.
Do you want to give us just abrief overview of, just kind of
your journey in IT?
Just kind of you know, how didyou get to where you are right
now?
Nicholas (05:07):
um, growing up I wasn't a tinker on computers or
nothing.
My mother, we had a desktop,you know, gateway, back in the
aol days.
So using that to get onlineyou're researching things or,
you know, playing command andconquer on the computer.
That was the really what weused before playing video games.
Me, my twin brother and umdidn't do much till high school.
I moved from Las Vegas out tohere in Jacksonville well,
middleburg, south ofJacksonville and they didn't
(05:28):
have computer design,computer-aided design courses.
So I took computer repairinstead.
So it was a Comp P A-plus classbefore.
They did a bunch of things inthat class.
Now I think now if you go tothat same high school you get
CCNA pretty much out the door bythe time you get finished high
school.
So it's changed a lot and it'sgreat.
But we really just fought overto fix the printers of you know
(05:52):
teachers, sometimes right, wefooled around, fixed things and
then I kind of just did allsorts of odd jobs Worked for
McDonald's, a crew person, uh, Iwas a repo guy, rent to own,
which I kind of worked oncomputers.
When I worked for rent a center,a little bit too, fix people's
pcs, and then, you know, went tomichigan but did a garbage
(06:14):
garbage job.
I picked up garbage in mackinacisland, michigan, by horse and
buggy, so, uh, that was part ofone of the best jobs of my life.
I still love that experience.
I still remember it fondly inmy head and I have to take a
trip back up there get some goodfudge that sounds interesting.
Eyvonne (06:30):
When somebody says I had a garbage job, I imagine
that they would hear thatmetaphorically.
William (06:38):
But you're not saying that metaphorically.
Nicholas (06:41):
Literally.
I think it's amazing Garbagevia horse and carriage.
Well, actually, my first coupleweeks I did garbage and if
you've ever been to mackinacisland it's just like an eight
mile around island.
It's an old trading fur tradingpost.
Um, the british invaded.
There is a french indy.
They have a whole lot ofhistory there.
Um, our dorm rooms for thecompany pretty much was an old
(07:02):
english barracks built back inthe day and um, yeah, it was
great.
And then I switched torecycling, like a couple later
on, and that wasn't too bad.
That was awesome.
Um, because you're doing moreresidential and so just going
around seeing nice houses andpicking up residential stuff and
work the horses every daybecause there's no vehicles,
(07:23):
it's all horse.
So got got to know the horses alot more and they have
personalities.
I had a horse named drake.
He'd wait for me to get in thestall every morning just to use
the bathroom, or he'd walk by,he'd fart in your face like, and
he'd look at you the whole timedoing it too, just to mess with
you like he, he knew trollingyou.
William (07:42):
That is funny.
It was preparing you for afuture career with internet
trolls, right yeah.
So I, we, for my sons I think itwas his fourth or his fifth
birthday we went.
We went up there for a week andwe had a blast.
Like you said, the horse andbuggy thing everywhere, no cars
on the island and the like, thetours that you could take
(08:04):
through the island.
I remember like our tour guidewas so funny.
Everybody was laughinghysterically like everybody was
crying.
It was just hilarious, thebrand of humor.
Everything was so fun.
And then, of course, I ate waytoo much fudge.
We brought way too much fudgeback home.
I I made myself sick.
It's so good, you can't stop.
Nicholas (08:29):
Yeah, did they tell you all the haunted stories on
the island?
That island actually has a bookwritten about how haunted it is
.
William (08:37):
Yeah, they were selling .
We may have even gotten a copyof one of the.
They had all sorts of stuff youcould bring home.
We brought home all sorts ofstuff.
Yeah, funny, crazy stories.
Nicholas (08:49):
Yeah I, I actually started that job a week after
micro and dirty jobs filmed myjob, so he did my job week
before yeah.
So I heard stories about himcoming to the island and how
great guy he was and and now ifyou watch his Mackinac Island
bridge painting episode, justknow the night before he was out
with the guys, so you canreally look at the episode
(09:11):
differently now.
Eyvonne (09:14):
So how did we get from driving a horse and buggy
collecting garbage to tech?
Nicholas (09:20):
So after I came back from there I went back to work
at McDonald's, was managingthere for about six years after
that and during that time ifthere was a technical issue I
was kind of the guy like, hey,I'll hang around with the
technicians they send up andlook at things.
I tell you I picked this one upto call you next time Cool,
Awesome.
Well then McDonald's kind ofcreated this program called the
(09:41):
Operations Technology Person.
I went to Oak Brook, Illinois,went to McDonald's corporate
office, got trained on site, gotto their OTP Level 3 program,
learned how to fix all the pointof sale systems for that and
that's kind of what I did.
So I was department manager andthe technology for my franchise
, for my franchise.
(10:08):
And after that I started goingback to college and then did
network systems technology at afour-state college, jacksonville
, and got back to networkingbecause all my buddies in high
school did networking and justdid that and to work, start
working for a government joblocally and just rose from there
awesome, yeah, so um you spenthow many, how many years did you
do local like government it?
(10:30):
so that's seven years sevenyears.
William (10:32):
That's a long, quite a long time.
So I I know that you knowrumors.
Rumors abound and assumptionsare like like weeds growing in
the garden out back.
Eyvonne (10:44):
But is it?
William (10:44):
true that local IT government is underfunded,
pulled in lots of differentdirections and maybe lacking in
skilled labor, which causesproblems.
Are those fair assumptions?
Nicholas (10:57):
Very, very fair assumptions.
In fact, that's what mydissertation is kind of on,
right now-ish, so right now ish,so right now go back and forth,
but yes, 100 percent.
William (11:10):
How does that impact?
I mean, I know that it's easyto sit in like my seat and blame
.
Like every time I have to go inand get something done with
local government or even justanything like, the first thing I
think of is, oh, this is soinefficient, they're living back
in the Stone Age.
Oh, I know that this is offtopic, but last year I had to
(11:31):
send a fax at a medical office.
You come into some of thesefacilities and you see how
things work and you just think,wow, this isn't an
eight-month-long project, thisis really outdated.
This isn't a, you know, aneight month long project like
this is really outdated.
What, what, what can we do toto actually progress that
forward?
Or is there, is there, a silverlining?
Nicholas (11:55):
well, it's a silver lining.
I think I think there can be100 there.
There can be, because when Ifirst started work for
government I thought, okay, sogovernment jobs gonna be
everything.
All you know everything t's arecrossed i's are jobs.
It's going to be everything.
All you know everything T's arecrossed I's are dotted like
it's going to be great.
And it went in there.
I'm like there's some bubblegumduct tape that's holding this
whole place together, you know.
And then I found out how actualgovernments work and all the
(12:17):
constitutional offices and howthey all have their own little
kingdoms.
And really that's where a lotof us focused on was hey, we all
have our own little kingdoms,but we all help each other out.
So we all had unofficial hey,I'll help you out.
So even I was the network guyfor the border county,
commissioner.
So we're at the main seat rightfor the local county I worked
(12:37):
for.
But I still interfaced with thesheriff's department, with the
clerk of courts office,supervisor of elections office,
all because by Florida Statestatute we had to provide them
voice.
Now the statute was written onthe days where copper lines were
voice and not VoIP.
So that's how we're allinterconnected and honestly, I
(12:58):
think the way forward is startbreaking down the kingdoms
IT-wise and, you know know,start doing more shared model
costs so you can kind of helpout with the skilled labor.
You know you'll pay for five itdirectors, for five different
constitutionals.
Maybe you pay for, you know,one.
Get the skilled labor in thereand get your economy to scale
going that's a good point.
William (13:21):
I think one one thing too whenever I know that when I
worked for like large enterprise, even one thing you, you have
this thing where you're gettingready to prepare the budget,
you're getting the budget ready,you're, you know, getting in
all the things that are thingsyou can't live without, but then
you have like these nice tohaves and you're trying to
basically spend as much or morethan you did the year before,
(13:45):
because you don't want to losebudget.
You don't want to come in andactually spend less, because
next year you're probably goingto get less at the end of the
day.
So one thing about governmentand these larger institutions
that have been around for areally long time is they've
they're kind of in that samething where they have all these
(14:05):
funds flowing in.
And one thing that these, likeI went through I worked for a
company that got bought up byprivate equity, essentially, and
they it was like they bought acompany that had actually
acquired a few other companiesand they came in and it was just
everybody's scared, Of courseit's private equity coming in
(14:28):
and you know, you know reallywhat they want to do is they
want to optimize and cleaneverything up as much as
possible and all these thingsthat we had on budget.
They just kicked everything tothe side.
They're like nope, you don'thave any budget.
You're going to have to comeback and we're going to go
through piece by piece anddecide what is actually real and
what is not real.
And hey, that makes you, thatputs things in a different
(14:49):
perspective, it takes you off ofyour comfort seat a little bit
and you have to really thinkokay, we've got to make a
difference.
We have things that we have tohave.
We actually have to think aboutall this stuff now and solve
some of these problems.
Do you think that's apossibility?
for government, or is that alittle too intense?
Nicholas (15:07):
No, I think it'd be great.
I think every system we use ashake up right, start from zero.
I mean technology.
I love doing that.
Once a year I wipe my PC rightStart from fresh, right.
You know my phone too, and Itell my students to do that same
thing too.
Like start from fresh.
I think any organization canbenefit from that Start from
(15:29):
fresh.
Really think about what do Ineed?
What are my criticals?
I can't live without?
And then go from there.
Y'all know it'd be greatbecause my budget was way
different from other people'sbudgets and we're over here
frugally buying like mid-gradehp, dells and then I go to like
another consular office.
They're getting xps's and stuff.
I'm like what kind of yourbudget looks like?
(15:52):
What the heck?
Eyvonne (15:54):
well, and I think the a lot of that too.
Like it takes a little while inthose kinds of organizations
just to understand the rhythm ofthe organization, right, like
you have to be there for a fullyear to even understand what the
cycle is going to look like.
And then the folks that manageit the best are those who try to
(16:14):
keep an eye on.
You know, from a visionstandpoint, what is it that we
need to accomplish, what is itwe need to deliver?
What are we actually here to do?
And then try to figure out waysto make that happen inside the
system and, frankly, like that'sinfinitely harder than just
(16:34):
kind of going with the flow and,you know, living in the normal
rhythm, without trying to marrythe two.
But I think for organizationsthat actually move forward,
there's somebody or severalsomebodies doing that work and
(16:54):
it often is happening in verythankless, unrecognized pockets
and corners.
But there's somebody who reallycares, trying to figure out how
do we use this weird systemthat we have.
And make no mistake, no matterwhat organization you're in, the
deeper you go, the more you'regoing to find weird systems and
(17:16):
and get what we need done done.
There is nowhere in anyorganization that I've ever seen
that doesn't have someweirdness under the covers.
William (17:30):
It's not in one place, it's in another.
So you recently did a talk onlike, basically, changes in
networking skill sets orcompetencies or something along
those lines.
Networking skill sets orcompetencies or something along
those lines, you know kind oflike a like a packet walk
through the shifting sands oflike skill sets for network
practitioners, maybe likeindustry requirements and
(17:54):
impacts, things like that.
And in the slides you kind ofstart like you go all the way
back to to the eighties, likethe ARPANET evolution.
You know how, like when ARPANETadopted TCPpanet evolution, you
know how, like when arpanetadopted tcpip, and you know
sliding into like internetdominance, and you even like
highlight some of the older tech.
Um, like we all three of us hadto study when we got our ccna's
(18:17):
like frame relay.
Oh, the token rings and so on.
Um has wide area network or wantech, and like, land tech
really changed that much sincethe 90s.
What are your thoughts on that?
As far as like, has therereally been innovation and what
does that look like?
Nicholas (18:36):
well, I think we got a lot more tunnels right.
You know, a lot of tunnelingprotocols have popped up, um,
and then you know, know, Ithought SDN, software-defined
networking, wasn't the biggerthing than it actually was.
And then I'm like, okay, well,it has a niche.
Life, you know, has its ownspots right.
I think there's been some greatimprovements, like SD-WAN
(19:00):
honestly has been a fantasticimprovement, has really changed
from MPLS thought right, so nowyou go from, oh, I need an MPLS
to everywhere I mean, or mannetwork, and now I can say, well
, I can do SD-WAN, right, I cango get my, you know, meraki or
Fortinet, I can auto VPN and,you know, start building things
up there and get application.
We got a lot better on thelayers four through seven since
(19:22):
the nineties, lot better on thelayers four through seven since
the 90s, instead of just layerthree and four, especially
application aware trafficking.
Eyvonne (19:28):
I think it's been fantastic well, and when we
think about, like, softwaredefined networking and all that,
that was and it's gosh over adecade ago like it was.
It was like 20 teens when thatwas all the rage, I think you
know the goal ofsoftware-defined networking in a
(19:50):
lot of ways was to makenetworks more manageable and to
deal with the distributed natureof networking.
I think that the challenge thatwe had with SDN is it is
fundamentally a distributedsystem.
Like networks have to bedistributed and your data plane
(20:12):
has to be able to function, andso you centralize it too much
and you just can't get theperformance out of it that you
need.
But I also think that theideals of software-defined
networking have driven a lot ofwhat we're still seeing in the
industry as far as a push towardautomation, toward more
(20:33):
centralized systems.
From a control plane standpoint,how do we get visibility and
observability?
All of those things that wetalk about today were the dreams
of software defined networking.
It's just that implementationwasn't robust enough to solve
(20:55):
our bigger problems, and youknow, especially I'm thinking
about things like OpenFlow andand technologies like that.
Right, but that movement hasfueled a lot of still the things
that we're talking about today.
Um, and and I think you know weneed to operate at scales that
(21:21):
could not have been imagined inthe ARPANET days.
Nobody, well very few people,envisioned billions of
interconnected devices like whatwe see today.
William (21:40):
Yeah, I don't have the slides in front of me, but you
had, like I think you're likelisting out the older
technologies and you had CatOSin there, which made me laugh
and I guess I just asked thequestion of, oh, has it changed
that much?
And right now, as things popback in my head like the all the
set commands and the CatOS daysyou know I spent so much time
(22:02):
when I first started in networkengineering managing CSS, load
balancers and I complain aboutit still it was to say things
have changed.
Things have changed a lot likegenerate you had to generate the
CSRs.
You got to output the CSR toPEM.
You've got to, you know, submitthe CSR to like a cert
authority.
You got to get the server andthe intermediate certs back and
(22:22):
then reinstall them back on theCSS and all the commands were
just so bizarre and you know,sometimes I just want to like
find a CSS on eBay and have likea CSS themed birthday party
where all the guests have tofollow handwritten instructions
and install certs to win a prize.
Totally kidding, actually, Idon't know, that sounds like fun
(22:44):
, but anyway, um, do you likewith all the?
So that theme there?
I guess the the pain pointreally is you are going in and
you're typing in all thecommands you're doing.
Every little piece of that ishandcrafted and artisan.
And just kind of back to whatYvonne just said as far as the
(23:07):
progression and having a lot ofautomation in some of the things
and how they've changed a lotof the products and platforms.
Nowadays they're actually stilldoing a lot of these things
under the hood.
A lot of them are based onLinux, but you're just not doing
it.
It's happening in an automatedfashion under a layer of
(23:32):
abstraction that you don'treally see.
So I guess the crooks of it isit's changed how we perceive it,
how we view it and how weoperate it, but really
underneath the, the hood, not aton has changed.
I guess Any thoughts?
Nicholas (23:43):
Yeah, I mean I think we got it easier right the
software-defined networking,after that phase I think.
Then you had a lot of cloudmanagement popped up right, so
you had the Meraki start comingout of the woodworks.
Juniper, who did they buy Mist?
You know, mist popped out.
Aruba had their Aruba Central,so we kind of had GUI-ized
(24:08):
instead of CLI a lot of thingsthere.
Firewalls got a little easier.
At least I think they got alittle easier to use, going from
ASA to a 4DED or even a.
I had a Sophos 5 room at onepoint and that thing was easier
to use than an ASA all day.
I had a Sophos Fiberoma at onepoint and that thing was easier
to use than an ASA all day.
I think we took a lot of thecomplexity out to get some basic
things done.
So I remember when I leftbecause I worked in the county
(24:31):
and then I left and then I cameback and before I left I trained
the server guys hey, here's howto use the Fortinet firewall,
here's how to use the Merakis,and I kind of abstracted a lot
of the concepts to likeorganizational units and actor
directory and stuff, and withina week they're like okay, we got
this, okay, no problem, and Ithink it kind of helped lower
(24:53):
the bar.
There's no commands they had toremember.
They said, hey, click here,click here.
Here's how this works.
If you knew the concepts ofnetworking and just some rule
flow, you were good to go a lot.
I think that's how we we'veimproved the barrier entry a
little lower, I think, ongetting things done.
But also guis are known not towork too so yeah, I'm a cli
(25:20):
first kind of person.
William (25:21):
Usually I'd rather write some code once and never
have to log into a gui again,but you can't do that with
everything, um, unfortunately Iwould have categorized you as an
api first person, not a cliperson all right just checking
the code, as long as it'scodified and repeatable.
I don't care what the, theinteraction service is, I'm good
(25:43):
to go, but, um, I guess moving.
So the one of the themes ofthis podcast anyway is like
looking at things and sort ofhow they've progressed and then
cloudifying things.
So cloud has become such amajor theme for so many
different verticals and so manydifferent types of technology.
You know it's had a majorimpact on networking.
(26:06):
So cloud networking is a hugething and that was one of the
things we talked about back inKnoxville that time, and one of
the things I think you talkedabout in this presentation was
like the impact of cloud on themodern day network engineer.
Do you want to talk to that alittle bit?
Just kind of like how cloud hasimpacted the network
(26:28):
engineering space.
Nicholas (26:30):
Yeah, so I definitely so.
Back in Knoxville we were juststarting our Azure journey at my
company.
So we were on a private datacenter and we were just moving
everything up to Azure.
That was during that time.
We were doing a private datacenter and we were just moving
everything up to Azure.
During that time we were doingall the code, all the bicep and
getting ready to rock and rollfor a weekend, and that weekend
was 17 hours one day, 19 hoursthe next day.
(26:53):
It was a Herculean event with abunch of other programmers and
stuff on the call, but I sayimpacting the networking-wise.
I had to unlearn a lot of thingsgetting into Azure in cloud.
I had to say, all right, forgetwhat I know, just go back to
basics, stop looking for thenerd knobs and just break it
(27:15):
down to okay, I need to do X, y,z.
How do I get that done in Azure?
One great thing is I don't haveto worry about QoS, which is
fantastic, but also, at the sametime, I can't do QoS.
So if I have an applicationthat's not performing that well,
I'm like well, sorry guys, youknow a lot of apologizing at
that point.
So the impact of cloud has beenvery, very much great for
(27:41):
networking on there, relearning.
It really helps you jumpstartthe brain again and say all
right, it's not a Juniper, it'snot a Ruckus, it's not any other
switch.
This is a different platform.
And how do I learn this first?
Eyvonne (27:55):
Well, I think where fundamentals become important is
understanding, like when youcan grasp hey, arp is not a
thing in cloud, right?
Like layer two doesn't reallyexist and any trickery that you
(28:17):
were doing at layer two to makethings work isn't really
transferable.
Now there are ways around thatand there are technologies that
are coming that make thatstatement not strictly true.
So if my networking folks arelistening, give me some grace.
(28:39):
At the same time, you know bumtraffic is very different in the
cloud.
You know that and you can'treally rely on it the way you
did in the past.
And but what that also means is, architecturally, you have to
make different decisions and ifyou just take your the
(29:02):
architectures that you're usedto on-premise and try to
replicate them in the cloud,you're absolutely going to have
performance issues and you'regoing to run into design
constraints that you're notexpecting.
And so that, peeling back whatare first principles, how do we
need this thing to work, whatare the constructs that are
(29:23):
available to me and how do Iimplement.
And it gets even furthercomplicated when you start
talking about hybrid cloud,multi-cloud, because the rules
aren't the same in every cloud,even from you know how does the
routing table behave right andhow it behaves in a VPC on AWS
(29:47):
or a VPC in Google Cloud or a.
Is it a VNet that we call thosethings in Azure A VNet in Azure
?
They all operate very, verydifferently and so you can't
take the assumptions you make inone place to another.
So I think, like understanding,yeah, you need to understand
(30:08):
what a route table is, but thenyou need to understand how that
is implemented in yourparticular cloud of choice so
that you can make the rightdesign decisions.
So we've added a layer ofabstraction and we've removed
certain layers of complexity,but there are new layers of
complexity with the abstractionthat that we we have to think
(30:30):
about.
That maybe we didn't thinkabout before.
Nicholas (30:35):
Yeah, I agree, the unlearning things, my basic
default thing, trying to figureout the route tables in Azure.
It was like all right, it can'tget from here to here, let's do
a packet capture somewhere,right?
And then getting a packetcapture in Azure was such an
event I was like I don't eventhis, is you know what.
We're just going to startpoking around and figure out
(30:56):
another way, Get things going.
William (30:59):
Yeah, well, even basic things.
Like somebody, I was talking tosomeone a few months ago that
was that they're this person'slike, really they're like a
routing, top-notch routing, youknow, route switch person.
And they have realized that thecompany that they work for
today, they're, they went reallybig in cloud.
(31:22):
His budget is kind of gettingreduced a little bit on the
network engineering side andhe's just thinking, okay, I need
to learn something about one ofthese adjacent areas.
So he's getting more into cloudnow and as he's doing that, you
have that sort of I don't wantto say nervousness of like, okay
(31:44):
, this huge thing is loominghere and I've been so stuck
solving these problems over herethat I haven't really had the
time to take and go into thisnew area and really do anything.
And I, just as we're kind oftalking because he was asking me
just for oh, you know what, Idon't have a ton of time.
What are some good introductoryresources?
Where should I start, you know?
(32:06):
So we sort of had aconversation and I just was
talking to him about how, like,look, a lot of your skills are
going to, you know, transferover, because when you think
about it, like even connectingto the cloud.
Okay, if you're connecting fromlike a colo or on-premises
somewhere you have internet.
You have connecting from like acolo or on-premises somewhere
you have internet.
You have to run bgp over it.
You have a gateway in the cloud.
(32:27):
Um, on that gate, I mean inazure, like you were talking
azure specifically, um for awhile there, um, you couldn't do
um, um, what is it?
Were you um bi-directionalforwarding detection with bgp,
so azure didn't.
You have to have that setbasically on both sides, and
azure didn't have that featureavailable until 20, I can't
(32:50):
remember now.
Um, it was like not that longago and you know.
Once you zoom out though, soyou're still doing all these
things you're using, you know,as path prepend, you're doing
like really common routing.
You know policy and design andarchitecture that you've done
historically.
You're just doing it in adifferent place.
(33:11):
It's still tunnels, still vpns.
Yeah, there's differentendpoints and different
availability zones maybe, andyou have to configure redundancy
a little bit different, butthose skills transfer directly,
like if you're connecting tocloud providers.
In that sense, you have a lotthat you're bringing with you.
So start on those solidfoundational things of what you
(33:34):
know and then just start takingon a little more a little more a
and these cloud providers.
they have great free tiers.
Eyvonne (33:42):
All of them do really?
William (33:46):
And what do you have to lose to go in and mess around
in a free tier and poke aroundand start learning these things?
It's not as bad as what itseems.
I guess is what I'm saying.
So when I hear, I guess, one ofthe things in the slides too, I
remember distinctly seeing.
I don't know, I can't rememberwhere it was, so forgive me, but
you had like, is, I think itwas like is network engineering
(34:10):
a dying field, or is it goingaway, or something along those
lines.
So do you want to expand on onthat a little bit?
Nicholas (34:19):
so I mean I'll have to call out Andy on that one,
because that's what he broughtup.
Actually I think it's a topicthey covered on one of their not
their podcast, but the one hewas on.
He talked about it and I saidyou know, that's a good thing,
because so I teach at the localFlorida State College of
Jacksonville and of course,everybody there I ask first day
class hey, what's your name isand what's your degree path and
(34:41):
what do you want to do?
Because your degree path maynot also be what you want to do.
So a lot of them are like Ihave mainly security, everyone's
BIT security.
I'm like okay, and I have likemaybe one or two networking.
This semester I had the mostnetworking.
Actually, this semester I hadthe most female students too.
Usually it's like one out of 24.
(35:02):
Now it's like seven each class,so that those numbers are going
up too.
That's positive.
And I go guys, thanks forshowing up.
You know like this is great.
I'd love to see more diversityhere.
But yeah, there's not a lot ofnetworking.
People want to do networking.
I try to convert them over andI said, okay, guys to do network
security.
(35:22):
Maybe you should learn the darkside of networking.
First, like come on, we havecookies.
I think so do.
I think it's a dying breed.
You know, I don't really thinkso.
I think we forget about theplumbers.
You know we forget about us.
You know making things work.
And also, I think we have towear different hats a lot more.
(35:43):
I think our titles have justbeen maybe changed to architect
or cloud, even though we'restill doing things on prem Right
.
So I think titles might changeor abstraction, say oh, we're
here now, we don't worry aboutthis, but you still can get the
internet Still has to happen.
William (36:00):
Yeah, yeah, that makes that makes sense.
And you know, t T, c, p, I Phasn't changed since the you
know nineties.
Bgp hasn't changed much, andjust how we control them.
That's one thing that I think alot about is like okay, the
technologies haven't changed,but especially for network
(36:21):
engineers.
About is like okay, thetechnologies haven't changed,
but especially for networkengineers, the thing that I see
that changed the most as Ipivoted to cloud was a lot of
the things that I'm actuallyinteracting with are almost the
same thing, but the way that I'minteracting with them is very
different.
It's a tooling change.
So instead of using, instead ofattaching text files to change
(36:43):
orders and then copying commandsinto CLIs, I'm committing
things into a Git repository.
That's triggering something andthen it's using, you know, api
calls or hooks or something oranother to go and configure a
component somewhere, a componentsomewhere you know, and that
(37:05):
that is some.
There is a lot of hesitancy tolearn and to get into those
tools because it's like, oh,immediately.
It's like, oh, I'm, I've got tobe a software developer now.
And no, not really.
It's a far cry from being asoftware developer and it's
really not that hard if you can,if you can memorize cisco
commands and debug and dodifferent things in a Cisco CLI.
Believe me, you can do all ofthose things.
Nicholas (37:25):
I agree with you a hundred percent.
So I was one of those peoplewhere I was afraid to do
automation with a networkingstack and I was like, well,
first I didn't have that manyswitches 70 to a hundred, I
think.
At one point I had 300 devices.
But it's between differentbrands and I was fine doing a
lot of manual stuff on thembecause a lot of them are static
, right.
(37:47):
But this job, when I first gotthere, we want to rotate the
Wi-Fi passwords on the guestWi-Fi for Meraki's.
And I'm like, all right, Ithink there's an automation way
to do it.
And I got to tell you, betweenJohn Capbianco and another guy,
angel, on the group there, youknow I stole a lot of things
from the Internet and Ireferenced them.
So you know I gave everybodycredit and you know those guys
(38:10):
kind of pushed well, how aboutyou add a QR code?
How would you do this to it?
And then John's like, why don'tyou submit this to DevNet?
And so, yeah, yeah, so now Ihave a DevNet published Meraki
Wi-Fi rotate to rotate yourpassword, the API, and then
emails you the QR code and justa little CSS HTML inside Say,
(38:32):
hey, here's your password, postit somewhere.
Eyvonne (38:36):
But one of the things I take away from that is you know
that what if?
Question is so important.
Right Is just embrace thecuriosity of well, what if?
Like, could you Wouldn't it beinteresting if?
And to ask those questions andthen try and answer them?
(38:57):
I think that's, frankly, areally profound way to learn.
It sounds so simple, frankly, areally profound way to learn.
It sounds so simple, but thefolks that are doing the most
interesting things in our worldright now are asking those kinds
of questions.
And, William, as you weretalking about how the
implementation is changing, themove from oh okay, I'm going to
(39:21):
write a script and I'm going toattach it to my change control
system and instead of that nowI'm going to check something
into a repository and triggersome actions.
You know, I've I've been tryingto articulate some of the
challenges that enterprise IThas and some of the things that
(39:41):
we need to understand about howthey operate, and I think one of
the things we need to be onguard against is linking the
implementation to either thepolicy or the goal or objective,
and so often we get so wrappedup in the implementation, in
(40:02):
other words, how I do it as clicommands or our change control
system or like someday there'sgoing to be something beyond get
and then we're going to have awhole universe of people that
are like I I do it the oldfashioned way with get right.
(40:23):
I mean, we have to hold all ofthose tools loosely and really
think about what we do in termsof what we're accomplishing, not
the particular tool that we'reusing, and I feel like that's so
much of where theconversational churn is.
It's really just around thetools and the tools are tools.
(40:44):
They're what we are using todayto do the thing.
In another decade, ai isradically going to change those
tools, and I know that folks aretired of hearing about it and
we're entering the trough ofdisillusionment.
I believe, around thattechnology, but it is going to
change how we work and we needto start thinking more in terms
(41:04):
of function as opposed tospecific tool.
William (41:09):
Those are great points.
Yeah, speaking of AI, like Iwas just reading something last
night my wife was gettingannoyed.
She's like can you stop readingthat, because it was like later
and I'm like I can't.
I got to get through this thing.
But it was like a group of PhDsin biology and like all these
different fields that weretesting the new Chad GPT 4.0
(41:30):
model and these two of them Iknow like one of them especially
, which is where I found thearticle, because I was looking
this person up because he's donea lot of like research and
writing on how dismal theprevious models were with their
field but this whole group waslike, okay, this 4-0 chat gpt
(41:50):
model is the real deal.
This is solving things.
They had like a series of teststhat they use for all the phd
students and different thingsand it's scoring better than
even the professors were scoringat some of these things and the
answers were really good.
It was not hallucinating as muchand the whole chain of thought
(42:11):
thing is apparently reallyreally strong and and fine, you
know getting to the root causeof like really complex
principles and questions andthings.
So, yeah, I think the change iscoming and it's coming faster
than what I expected it to.
I remember when, so the firsttime I remember ChatGPT actually
(42:36):
I'm sorry to sidebar here, butChatGPT came out and I hadn't
even created an account.
I'd saw a few things.
I think I actually sawsomething on the news and I was
helping somebody that I knowwrite a little bit of a web
crawler.
They were trying to dosomething really specific and
they're like hey, can you lookat this Python code?
So I was helping them out andthis person's not a coder,
doesn't like to write code, tooksomething that they'd already
(42:59):
found on the internet.
And then they come back a weeklater and they have like a full
fledged like.
They have classes, they haveall this object, like this
beautiful thing that's solvingtheir exact use case and so much
more.
I'm like we're how did you what?
Who did this for you?
And they're like I did it.
And I'm like no, you likereally no way.
(43:19):
And he's like, no, I use chatgpt and I'm like wait, that
thing that I saw on the news andand that's where it hit me like
wow, this is, this is kind of agame changer, this is pretty
cool, um well, I think.
Eyvonne (43:33):
I think the thing to think about there is you need to
be familiar enough with it toknow what things is it making
easy and what things are stillhard, and you need to lean into
the hard things right, knowingthat that's going to continue to
change.
But if there's something you'redoing today that it makes
incredibly easy, what that meansis that work is going to be
(43:55):
less valuable in the marketplace.
That is an objective realitythat we have to embrace, accept
and then look where things arestill hard, because there's
always going to be hard work todo.
Um, and that's how we are allable to to grow and have
(44:20):
economic value is to to do thehard things.
So, um, so yeah, but it butit's, it's a new tool and we'll
figure it out.
William (44:29):
I wanted to ask one more question.
I know we got it.
I think we have probably likefive minutes here, but I wanted
to hit a little bit on yourteaching.
So there's one thing that Ilearned in the past is when you
go to teach something, you thinkyou can teach something, but it
will challenge you on all thosesmall details.
Like, maybe you don't knowsomething as good as you thought
(44:49):
you did At least that's myexperience but you teach a few
comptia classes, right?
Yeah, you want to talk a littlebit about those and how that's
impacted your learning, and youknow the pros and the cons
trade-offs oh yeah, so I startedteaching.
Nicholas (45:07):
This is my going in my third year of january, so this
is my second year of January, sothe end of my second year of
teaching and, um, luckily, a+.
I could start off like I haveno lesson plan.
So I have a syllabus, I have atracker, but I don't lesson plan
.
I just kind of go look at thesyllabus, pull the chapter
PowerPoints, say alright, guys,let's go, let's rip and roll.
Um, and I will tell you yeah,sometimes I'll go through some
(45:32):
things and go you know what.
IRQ.
Ooh, why was that in portbefore?
You know?
And we'll go through that alittle bit.
Then I say hey guys, by the way, though IRQs for the test, yeah
, you should know it.
But practicality, anymore we'renot Windows 98.
We don't worry about how manyIRQs are open anymore.
You know, we've gotten betterLike, when I talk about drivers
(45:52):
I'm like okay, since Windows 8.1, we got really good self-loaded
drivers, so there's very littlethings you have to do drivers
for now.
You should know what a driverdoes and you should know you
might need to install drivers.
But I got to tell you EasyButton's been hitting a lot of
these things and I tell a lot ofthis teaching with stories, and
I tell all the stories when Iteach, and that with stories,
(46:15):
and I tell all the stories whenI teach.
And that's why my lectures arethree hours long, because I'm
from new york, I like to talk sowell, even in linux.
William (46:20):
Even in linux, the driver stuff is largely solved.
I installed ubuntu the otherday on a spare machine and, like
even the wireless, I didn'thave to do anything.
Everything just worked yes,wait, wireless.
Eyvonne (46:33):
What about bluetooth?
Did you try bluetooth?
William (46:34):
everything, so I have the laptop sitting right there
and it's an older laptop too.
Everything just worked.
Eyvonne (46:40):
I was, I was it's been a long time, yeah, since I've
done that, so it's good to hearubuntu has been great.
Nicholas (46:47):
I installed the arm on my m1 mac the arm version
because that's what I use forteaching, and it's so I followed
the book along with thestudents.
I kind of do the that side by,because that's what I use for
teaching, and so I followed thebook along with the students.
I kind of do that side by side.
It's funny because Linuxchanged so fast, so the new
Ubuntu doesn't have the commandsthat even the book wants you,
so I'll sit there.
Oh, here's how you install thecommand, guys.
You know this is an older one,here's the newer one.
(47:08):
And yeah, it's always fun doingthe fly there.
The Linux class is knocking outsome rough buckets, that's for
sure.
William (47:15):
Linux is important.
If there's one skill that Ithink anybody should know, and
it doesn't matter, with yourdatabase network security server
, if you learn Linux, you'regoing to set yourself up for
You're starting with a goodfoundation.
In your Linux course that youteach, do you have a lot of
(47:37):
receptive listeners like arethey actually interested in
learning it, or is it kind oflike, oh, we just need to do
this or what is your take there?
Nicholas (47:43):
I think well, first, the class is called operating
system fundamentals, so it'skind of shadowed as like linux
plus.
I go, hey guys, birthday.
This is linux plus guys.
I don't know why they calloperating systems fundamentals,
but also this is where the nerdshappen, this is where all the
fun stuff happens.
You want to be a good tinkerer?
You want to have fun in IT?
You want to mess around?
This is the OS for you right.
(48:05):
And at first they're like nowthey actually enjoy it.
I have students say, hey, howdo I install Ubuntu on my PC?
I'm like, all right, here'sVirtualBox, here's VMware
Workstation.
Now it's free, which isfantastic.
I love that.
Broadcom did that, I think theonly positive out of that change
.
But yeah, I think they've gonefrom I don't know to.
(48:30):
A lot of them are still usingit and they're tinkering around
with it and they're loving it.
William (48:31):
That's awesome still using it and they're tinkering
around with it and they'reloving it.
That's awesome.
Good to know I think we'recoming up on time.
Do you have anything else,yvonne?
I'm good, good.
Do you want to just tell theaudience where they?
Nicholas (48:48):
can find you, Nick, Mainly I do have a Twitter
account.
I really mainly follow you guyson Twitter.
I'm not active that much, butI've heard my following on the.
Hey, no, it's great stuff.
I it's always great, LikeYvonne, watching your house
being built.
That was fantastic.
It's beautiful.
The shed, the house, yeah,those are great and but usually
(49:09):
LinkedIn.
I kind of stick to LinkedIn forthat one.
But I'm on LinkedIn.
I have a website which Iprobably should buy the domain
for, so I'm just using the Wixsite there.
But, yeah, LinkedIn there andjust all around you know, doing
a lot of different things.
William (49:28):
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on.
We appreciate your time and,yeah, I'll link everything in
the show notes that we talkedabout throughout the episode.
Nicholas (49:36):
Thank you, Thanks for having me Appreciate you guys.
Always good to talk with youguys.
So we were just starting our Azure journey.
We were on a private datacenter.
We were just moving everythingup to Azure networking.
Wise, I had to unlearn a lot ofthings.
Forget what I know, Just goback to basics.
Stop looking for the nerd knobsand just break it down to okay,
I need to do X Y, Z.
How do I get that done in Azure?
William (00:42):
Welcome to the Cloud Gambit podcast, where we unravel
the mysteries of tech, andmaybe even the mysteries of the
universe, one story at a time.
I'm your host, william, andwith me is my co-host, the brain
, the cognitive scientist ofCICD, the behavioral specialist
of all the cloud services outthere, yvonne Sharp.
How are you doing today?
What's the mental model fortoday's discussion?
Eyvonne (01:00):
I need to point out that you couldn't even say we're
unraveling the mysteries of theuniverse with a straight face,
and so I'm glad to get that inthere Doing great.
For me, it's the last work dayfor a little over a week of PTO,
so getting ready to head to themountains and hang out in a
cabin, hope that there are nocatastrophic weather incidents
(01:24):
while we're traveling, like somefriends of mine have
experienced in the last week orso.
So looking forward to a littlebit of downtime, yay.
William (01:35):
Awesome, that sounds like a good time.
Gallenberg's always fun, aslong as it's not too too crowded
.
We're going during fall break,which is one thing routed.
Eyvonne (01:47):
Uh yeah, we're going during fall break, which is one
thing.
Well, our mo is.
We stop at the grocery store onthe way in, we load up, we go
hang out at the cabin, we have atrunk full of books and then,
you know, we just hang out a lot.
So we are very low-keytravelers.
We will do some touristy things, but we're also going to get a
lot of r&r, so, looking forwardto that sounds like a perfect
vacation.
William (02:06):
So with us we have nick calcutta now.
I think both yvonne and myself.
I know it was my first timemeeting nick at the the k tech k
tech connect event with the artof network engineering in
knoxville, tennessee, last year,where they basically did a live
episode with his name escapesme, but someone that worked for
(02:31):
the high-performance computingops thing in Oak Ridge, so the
National Laboratory.
Needless to say, it was a greatevent.
We had a really good time.
We got to meet Nick and I thinkyou and I Nick, like after the
live recording outside of thatstudio or wherever the event was
hosted at, like we sat thereand just talked cloud for like
(02:53):
30 minutes straight probably andwe're just drifting, you know.
Pretty awesome.
So yeah, welcome on.
How's this?
How are things going?
Great, Thanks for having me.
Nicholas (03:02):
And I think it was Daniel.
I.
How are things going Great,thanks for having me.
And I think it was Daniel.
I forget his last name, thoughthe engineer Daniel.
I think it starts with a P.
William (03:09):
I will have to put it in the show notes.
I'm going to have to look it up.
Yeah, so you're down in Florida.
How are things going?
How's the weather?
Nicholas (03:19):
The weather's great.
So I'm in Jacksonville, sonortheast Florida.
Here Sometimes we call itsouthern Georgia because you
know in Florida the more northyou go, the more south you get
Right.
Eyvonne (03:32):
Yeah, florida by and large is not really the south
Right.
It's a completely differentsubculture.
So yeah, I'm hearing you there,I'm picking up what you're
putting down.
Nicholas (03:43):
Yeah, yeah, Northeast Florida, I think would still be
considered the South, but afteryou get outside this region,
that's where it gets you knowinto Florida.
William (03:51):
Right on.
That's a foul love that I'mgoing to have to remember that
one.
Eyvonne (03:56):
We have the same thing in Kentucky, because folks from
Northern Kentucky will often saythat they are from Cincinnati.
They don't ever claim Kentucky,they say they're from
Cincinnati.
They don't ever claim Kentucky,they say they're from
Cincinnati.
So those kinds of regionalthings happen all over the place
.
William (04:09):
Do you blame them?
Nicholas (04:11):
Yes, Kidding, I know Ohio.
I wouldn't claim.
I lived in Youngstown, ohio,for like six months, so I
wouldn't claim from any part ofthat state.
Eyvonne (04:21):
I'm an Appalachian girl , though, so that's where my
roots are, so I can't claimanything other than mountains
and all that fun stuff.
I'm not even into these parts.
William (04:33):
I have nothing anyhow, so do you want to give us just a
brief?
You work in a few cool areas,nick.
You do some pretty cool things.
Do you want to give us just abrief overview of, just kind of
your journey in IT?
Just kind of you know, how didyou get to where you are right
now?
Nicholas (05:07):
um, growing up I wasn't a tinker on computers or
nothing.
My mother, we had a desktop,you know, gateway, back in the
aol days.
So using that to get onlineyou're researching things or,
you know, playing command andconquer on the computer.
That was the really what weused before playing video games.
Me, my twin brother and umdidn't do much till high school.
I moved from Las Vegas out tohere in Jacksonville well,
middleburg, south ofJacksonville and they didn't
(05:28):
have computer design,computer-aided design courses.
So I took computer repairinstead.
So it was a Comp P A-plus classbefore.
They did a bunch of things inthat class.
Now I think now if you go tothat same high school you get
CCNA pretty much out the door bythe time you get finished high
school.
So it's changed a lot and it'sgreat.
But we really just fought overto fix the printers of you know
(05:52):
teachers, sometimes right, wefooled around, fixed things and
then I kind of just did allsorts of odd jobs Worked for
McDonald's, a crew person, uh, Iwas a repo guy, rent to own,
which I kind of worked oncomputers.
When I worked for rent a center,a little bit too, fix people's
pcs, and then, you know, went tomichigan but did a garbage
(06:14):
garbage job.
I picked up garbage in mackinacisland, michigan, by horse and
buggy, so, uh, that was part ofone of the best jobs of my life.
I still love that experience.
I still remember it fondly inmy head and I have to take a
trip back up there get some goodfudge that sounds interesting.
Eyvonne (06:30):
When somebody says I had a garbage job, I imagine
that they would hear thatmetaphorically.
William (06:38):
But you're not saying that metaphorically.
Nicholas (06:41):
Literally.
I think it's amazing Garbagevia horse and carriage.
Well, actually, my first coupleweeks I did garbage and if
you've ever been to mackinacisland it's just like an eight
mile around island.
It's an old trading fur tradingpost.
Um, the british invaded.
There is a french indy.
They have a whole lot ofhistory there.
Um, our dorm rooms for thecompany pretty much was an old
(07:02):
english barracks built back inthe day and um, yeah, it was
great.
And then I switched torecycling, like a couple later
on, and that wasn't too bad.
That was awesome.
Um, because you're doing moreresidential and so just going
around seeing nice houses andpicking up residential stuff and
work the horses every daybecause there's no vehicles,
(07:23):
it's all horse.
So got got to know the horses alot more and they have
personalities.
I had a horse named drake.
He'd wait for me to get in thestall every morning just to use
the bathroom, or he'd walk by,he'd fart in your face like, and
he'd look at you the whole timedoing it too, just to mess with
you like he, he knew trollingyou.
William (07:42):
That is funny.
It was preparing you for afuture career with internet
trolls, right yeah.
So I, we, for my sons I think itwas his fourth or his fifth
birthday we went.
We went up there for a week andwe had a blast.
Like you said, the horse andbuggy thing everywhere, no cars
on the island and the like, thetours that you could take
(08:04):
through the island.
I remember like our tour guidewas so funny.
Everybody was laughinghysterically like everybody was
crying.
It was just hilarious, thebrand of humor.
Everything was so fun.
And then, of course, I ate waytoo much fudge.
We brought way too much fudgeback home.
I I made myself sick.
It's so good, you can't stop.
Nicholas (08:29):
Yeah, did they tell you all the haunted stories on
the island?
That island actually has a bookwritten about how haunted it is
.
William (08:37):
Yeah, they were selling .
We may have even gotten a copyof one of the.
They had all sorts of stuff youcould bring home.
We brought home all sorts ofstuff.
Yeah, funny, crazy stories.
Nicholas (08:49):
Yeah I, I actually started that job a week after
micro and dirty jobs filmed myjob, so he did my job week
before yeah.
So I heard stories about himcoming to the island and how
great guy he was and and now ifyou watch his Mackinac Island
bridge painting episode, justknow the night before he was out
with the guys, so you canreally look at the episode
(09:11):
differently now.
Eyvonne (09:14):
So how did we get from driving a horse and buggy
collecting garbage to tech?
Nicholas (09:20):
So after I came back from there I went back to work
at McDonald's, was managingthere for about six years after
that and during that time ifthere was a technical issue I
was kind of the guy like, hey,I'll hang around with the
technicians they send up andlook at things.
I tell you I picked this one upto call you next time Cool,
Awesome.
Well then McDonald's kind ofcreated this program called the
(09:41):
Operations Technology Person.
I went to Oak Brook, Illinois,went to McDonald's corporate
office, got trained on site, gotto their OTP Level 3 program,
learned how to fix all the pointof sale systems for that and
that's kind of what I did.
So I was department manager andthe technology for my franchise
, for my franchise.
(10:08):
And after that I started goingback to college and then did
network systems technology at afour-state college, jacksonville
, and got back to networkingbecause all my buddies in high
school did networking and justdid that and to work, start
working for a government joblocally and just rose from there
awesome, yeah, so um you spenthow many, how many years did you
do local like government it?
(10:30):
so that's seven years sevenyears.
William (10:32):
That's a long, quite a long time.
So I I know that you knowrumors.
Rumors abound and assumptionsare like like weeds growing in
the garden out back.
Eyvonne (10:44):
But is it?
William (10:44):
true that local IT government is underfunded,
pulled in lots of differentdirections and maybe lacking in
skilled labor, which causesproblems.
Are those fair assumptions?
Nicholas (10:57):
Very, very fair assumptions.
In fact, that's what mydissertation is kind of on,
right now-ish, so right now ish,so right now go back and forth,
but yes, 100 percent.
William (11:10):
How does that impact?
I mean, I know that it's easyto sit in like my seat and blame
.
Like every time I have to go inand get something done with
local government or even justanything like, the first thing I
think of is, oh, this is soinefficient, they're living back
in the Stone Age.
Oh, I know that this is offtopic, but last year I had to
(11:31):
send a fax at a medical office.
You come into some of thesefacilities and you see how
things work and you just think,wow, this isn't an
eight-month-long project, thisis really outdated.
This isn't a, you know, aneight month long project like
this is really outdated.
What, what, what can we do toto actually progress that
forward?
Or is there, is there, a silverlining?
Nicholas (11:55):
well, it's a silver lining.
I think I think there can be100 there.
There can be, because when Ifirst started work for
government I thought, okay, sogovernment jobs gonna be
everything.
All you know everything t's arecrossed i's are jobs.
It's going to be everything.
All you know everything T's arecrossed I's are dotted like
it's going to be great.
And it went in there.
I'm like there's some bubblegumduct tape that's holding this
whole place together, you know.
And then I found out how actualgovernments work and all the
(12:17):
constitutional offices and howthey all have their own little
kingdoms.
And really that's where a lotof us focused on was hey, we all
have our own little kingdoms,but we all help each other out.
So we all had unofficial hey,I'll help you out.
So even I was the network guyfor the border county,
commissioner.
So we're at the main seat rightfor the local county I worked
(12:37):
for.
But I still interfaced with thesheriff's department, with the
clerk of courts office,supervisor of elections office,
all because by Florida Statestatute we had to provide them
voice.
Now the statute was written onthe days where copper lines were
voice and not VoIP.
So that's how we're allinterconnected and honestly, I
(12:58):
think the way forward is startbreaking down the kingdoms
IT-wise and, you know know,start doing more shared model
costs so you can kind of helpout with the skilled labor.
You know you'll pay for five itdirectors, for five different
constitutionals.
Maybe you pay for, you know,one.
Get the skilled labor in thereand get your economy to scale
going that's a good point.
William (13:21):
I think one one thing too whenever I know that when I
worked for like large enterprise, even one thing you, you have
this thing where you're gettingready to prepare the budget,
you're getting the budget ready,you're, you know, getting in
all the things that are thingsyou can't live without, but then
you have like these nice tohaves and you're trying to
basically spend as much or morethan you did the year before,
(13:45):
because you don't want to losebudget.
You don't want to come in andactually spend less, because
next year you're probably goingto get less at the end of the
day.
So one thing about governmentand these larger institutions
that have been around for areally long time is they've
they're kind of in that samething where they have all these
(14:05):
funds flowing in.
And one thing that these, likeI went through I worked for a
company that got bought up byprivate equity, essentially, and
they it was like they bought acompany that had actually
acquired a few other companiesand they came in and it was just
everybody's scared, Of courseit's private equity coming in
(14:28):
and you know, you know reallywhat they want to do is they
want to optimize and cleaneverything up as much as
possible and all these thingsthat we had on budget.
They just kicked everything tothe side.
They're like nope, you don'thave any budget.
You're going to have to comeback and we're going to go
through piece by piece anddecide what is actually real and
what is not real.
And hey, that makes you, thatputs things in a different
(14:49):
perspective, it takes you off ofyour comfort seat a little bit
and you have to really thinkokay, we've got to make a
difference.
We have things that we have tohave.
We actually have to think aboutall this stuff now and solve
some of these problems.
Do you think that's apossibility?
for government, or is that alittle too intense?
Nicholas (15:07):
No, I think it'd be great.
I think every system we use ashake up right, start from zero.
I mean technology.
I love doing that.
Once a year I wipe my PC rightStart from fresh, right.
You know my phone too, and Itell my students to do that same
thing too.
Like start from fresh.
I think any organization canbenefit from that Start from
(15:29):
fresh.
Really think about what do Ineed?
What are my criticals?
I can't live without?
And then go from there.
Y'all know it'd be greatbecause my budget was way
different from other people'sbudgets and we're over here
frugally buying like mid-gradehp, dells and then I go to like
another consular office.
They're getting xps's and stuff.
I'm like what kind of yourbudget looks like?
(15:52):
What the heck?
Eyvonne (15:54):
well, and I think the a lot of that too.
Like it takes a little while inthose kinds of organizations
just to understand the rhythm ofthe organization, right, like
you have to be there for a fullyear to even understand what the
cycle is going to look like.
And then the folks that manageit the best are those who try to
(16:14):
keep an eye on.
You know, from a visionstandpoint, what is it that we
need to accomplish, what is itwe need to deliver?
What are we actually here to do?
And then try to figure out waysto make that happen inside the
system and, frankly, like that'sinfinitely harder than just
(16:34):
kind of going with the flow and,you know, living in the normal
rhythm, without trying to marrythe two.
But I think for organizationsthat actually move forward,
there's somebody or severalsomebodies doing that work and
(16:54):
it often is happening in verythankless, unrecognized pockets
and corners.
But there's somebody who reallycares, trying to figure out how
do we use this weird systemthat we have.
And make no mistake, no matterwhat organization you're in, the
deeper you go, the more you'regoing to find weird systems and
(17:16):
and get what we need done done.
There is nowhere in anyorganization that I've ever seen
that doesn't have someweirdness under the covers.
William (17:30):
It's not in one place, it's in another.
So you recently did a talk onlike, basically, changes in
networking skill sets orcompetencies or something along
those lines.
Networking skill sets orcompetencies or something along
those lines, you know kind oflike a like a packet walk
through the shifting sands oflike skill sets for network
practitioners, maybe likeindustry requirements and
(17:54):
impacts, things like that.
And in the slides you kind ofstart like you go all the way
back to to the eighties, likethe ARPANET evolution.
You know how, like when ARPANETadopted TCPpanet evolution, you
know how, like when arpanetadopted tcpip, and you know
sliding into like internetdominance, and you even like
highlight some of the older tech.
Um, like we all three of us hadto study when we got our ccna's
(18:17):
like frame relay.
Oh, the token rings and so on.
Um has wide area network or wantech, and like, land tech
really changed that much sincethe 90s.
What are your thoughts on that?
As far as like, has therereally been innovation and what
does that look like?
Nicholas (18:36):
well, I think we got a lot more tunnels right.
You know, a lot of tunnelingprotocols have popped up, um,
and then you know, know, Ithought SDN, software-defined
networking, wasn't the biggerthing than it actually was.
And then I'm like, okay, well,it has a niche.
Life, you know, has its ownspots right.
I think there's been some greatimprovements, like SD-WAN
(19:00):
honestly has been a fantasticimprovement, has really changed
from MPLS thought right, so nowyou go from, oh, I need an MPLS
to everywhere I mean, or mannetwork, and now I can say, well
, I can do SD-WAN, right, I cango get my, you know, meraki or
Fortinet, I can auto VPN and,you know, start building things
up there and get application.
We got a lot better on thelayers four through seven since
(19:22):
the nineties, lot better on thelayers four through seven since
the 90s, instead of just layerthree and four, especially
application aware trafficking.
Eyvonne (19:28):
I think it's been fantastic well, and when we
think about, like, softwaredefined networking and all that,
that was and it's gosh over adecade ago like it was.
It was like 20 teens when thatwas all the rage, I think you
know the goal ofsoftware-defined networking in a
(19:50):
lot of ways was to makenetworks more manageable and to
deal with the distributed natureof networking.
I think that the challenge thatwe had with SDN is it is
fundamentally a distributedsystem.
Like networks have to bedistributed and your data plane
(20:12):
has to be able to function, andso you centralize it too much
and you just can't get theperformance out of it that you
need.
But I also think that theideals of software-defined
networking have driven a lot ofwhat we're still seeing in the
industry as far as a push towardautomation, toward more
(20:33):
centralized systems.
From a control plane standpoint,how do we get visibility and
observability?
All of those things that wetalk about today were the dreams
of software defined networking.
It's just that implementationwasn't robust enough to solve
(20:55):
our bigger problems, and youknow, especially I'm thinking
about things like OpenFlow andand technologies like that.
Right, but that movement hasfueled a lot of still the things
that we're talking about today.
Um, and and I think you know weneed to operate at scales that
(21:21):
could not have been imagined inthe ARPANET days.
Nobody, well very few people,envisioned billions of
interconnected devices like whatwe see today.
William (21:40):
Yeah, I don't have the slides in front of me, but you
had, like I think you're likelisting out the older
technologies and you had CatOSin there, which made me laugh
and I guess I just asked thequestion of, oh, has it changed
that much?
And right now, as things popback in my head like the all the
set commands and the CatOS daysyou know I spent so much time
(22:02):
when I first started in networkengineering managing CSS, load
balancers and I complain aboutit still it was to say things
have changed.
Things have changed a lot likegenerate you had to generate the
CSRs.
You got to output the CSR toPEM.
You've got to, you know, submitthe CSR to like a cert
authority.
You got to get the server andthe intermediate certs back and
(22:22):
then reinstall them back on theCSS and all the commands were
just so bizarre and you know,sometimes I just want to like
find a CSS on eBay and have likea CSS themed birthday party
where all the guests have tofollow handwritten instructions
and install certs to win a prize.
Totally kidding, actually, Idon't know, that sounds like fun
(22:44):
, but anyway, um, do you likewith all the?
So that theme there?
I guess the the pain pointreally is you are going in and
you're typing in all thecommands you're doing.
Every little piece of that ishandcrafted and artisan.
And just kind of back to whatYvonne just said as far as the
(23:07):
progression and having a lot ofautomation in some of the things
and how they've changed a lotof the products and platforms.
Nowadays they're actually stilldoing a lot of these things
under the hood.
A lot of them are based onLinux, but you're just not doing
it.
It's happening in an automatedfashion under a layer of
(23:32):
abstraction that you don'treally see.
So I guess the crooks of it isit's changed how we perceive it,
how we view it and how weoperate it, but really
underneath the, the hood, not aton has changed.
I guess Any thoughts?
Nicholas (23:43):
Yeah, I mean I think we got it easier right the
software-defined networking,after that phase I think.
Then you had a lot of cloudmanagement popped up right, so
you had the Meraki start comingout of the woodworks.
Juniper, who did they buy Mist?
You know, mist popped out.
Aruba had their Aruba Central,so we kind of had GUI-ized
(24:08):
instead of CLI a lot of thingsthere.
Firewalls got a little easier.
At least I think they got alittle easier to use, going from
ASA to a 4DED or even a.
I had a Sophos 5 room at onepoint and that thing was easier
to use than an ASA all day.
I had a Sophos Fiberoma at onepoint and that thing was easier
to use than an ASA all day.
I think we took a lot of thecomplexity out to get some basic
things done.
So I remember when I leftbecause I worked in the county
(24:31):
and then I left and then I cameback and before I left I trained
the server guys hey, here's howto use the Fortinet firewall,
here's how to use the Merakis,and I kind of abstracted a lot
of the concepts to likeorganizational units and actor
directory and stuff, and withina week they're like okay, we got
this, okay, no problem, and Ithink it kind of helped lower
(24:53):
the bar.
There's no commands they had toremember.
They said, hey, click here,click here.
Here's how this works.
If you knew the concepts ofnetworking and just some rule
flow, you were good to go a lot.
I think that's how we we'veimproved the barrier entry a
little lower, I think, ongetting things done.
But also guis are known not towork too so yeah, I'm a cli
(25:20):
first kind of person.
William (25:21):
Usually I'd rather write some code once and never
have to log into a gui again,but you can't do that with
everything, um, unfortunately Iwould have categorized you as an
api first person, not a cliperson all right just checking
the code, as long as it'scodified and repeatable.
I don't care what the, theinteraction service is, I'm good
(25:43):
to go, but, um, I guess moving.
So the one of the themes ofthis podcast anyway is like
looking at things and sort ofhow they've progressed and then
cloudifying things.
So cloud has become such amajor theme for so many
different verticals and so manydifferent types of technology.
You know it's had a majorimpact on networking.
(26:06):
So cloud networking is a hugething and that was one of the
things we talked about back inKnoxville that time, and one of
the things I think you talkedabout in this presentation was
like the impact of cloud on themodern day network engineer.
Do you want to talk to that alittle bit?
Just kind of like how cloud hasimpacted the network
(26:28):
engineering space.
Nicholas (26:30):
Yeah, so I definitely so.
Back in Knoxville we were juststarting our Azure journey at my
company.
So we were on a private datacenter and we were just moving
everything up to Azure.
That was during that time.
We were doing a private datacenter and we were just moving
everything up to Azure.
During that time we were doingall the code, all the bicep and
getting ready to rock and rollfor a weekend, and that weekend
was 17 hours one day, 19 hoursthe next day.
(26:53):
It was a Herculean event with abunch of other programmers and
stuff on the call, but I sayimpacting the networking-wise.
I had to unlearn a lot of thingsgetting into Azure in cloud.
I had to say, all right, forgetwhat I know, just go back to
basics, stop looking for thenerd knobs and just break it
(27:15):
down to okay, I need to do X, y,z.
How do I get that done in Azure?
One great thing is I don't haveto worry about QoS, which is
fantastic, but also, at the sametime, I can't do QoS.
So if I have an applicationthat's not performing that well,
I'm like well, sorry guys, youknow a lot of apologizing at
that point.
So the impact of cloud has beenvery, very much great for
(27:41):
networking on there, relearning.
It really helps you jumpstartthe brain again and say all
right, it's not a Juniper, it'snot a Ruckus, it's not any other
switch.
This is a different platform.
And how do I learn this first?
Eyvonne (27:55):
Well, I think where fundamentals become important is
understanding, like when youcan grasp hey, arp is not a
thing in cloud, right?
Like layer two doesn't reallyexist and any trickery that you
(28:17):
were doing at layer two to makethings work isn't really
transferable.
Now there are ways around thatand there are technologies that
are coming that make thatstatement not strictly true.
So if my networking folks arelistening, give me some grace.
(28:39):
At the same time, you know bumtraffic is very different in the
cloud.
You know that and you can'treally rely on it the way you
did in the past.
And but what that also means is, architecturally, you have to
make different decisions and ifyou just take your the
(29:02):
architectures that you're usedto on-premise and try to
replicate them in the cloud,you're absolutely going to have
performance issues and you'regoing to run into design
constraints that you're notexpecting.
And so that, peeling back whatare first principles, how do we
need this thing to work, whatare the constructs that are
(29:23):
available to me and how do Iimplement.
And it gets even furthercomplicated when you start
talking about hybrid cloud,multi-cloud, because the rules
aren't the same in every cloud,even from you know how does the
routing table behave right andhow it behaves in a VPC on AWS
(29:47):
or a VPC in Google Cloud or a.
Is it a VNet that we call thosethings in Azure A VNet in Azure
?
They all operate very, verydifferently and so you can't
take the assumptions you make inone place to another.
So I think, like understanding,yeah, you need to understand
(30:08):
what a route table is, but thenyou need to understand how that
is implemented in yourparticular cloud of choice so
that you can make the rightdesign decisions.
So we've added a layer ofabstraction and we've removed
certain layers of complexity,but there are new layers of
complexity with the abstractionthat that we we have to think
(30:30):
about.
That maybe we didn't thinkabout before.
Nicholas (30:35):
Yeah, I agree, the unlearning things, my basic
default thing, trying to figureout the route tables in Azure.
It was like all right, it can'tget from here to here, let's do
a packet capture somewhere,right?
And then getting a packetcapture in Azure was such an
event I was like I don't eventhis, is you know what.
We're just going to startpoking around and figure out
(30:56):
another way, Get things going.
William (30:59):
Yeah, well, even basic things.
Like somebody, I was talking tosomeone a few months ago that
was that they're this person'slike, really they're like a
routing, top-notch routing, youknow, route switch person.
And they have realized that thecompany that they work for
today, they're, they went reallybig in cloud.
(31:22):
His budget is kind of gettingreduced a little bit on the
network engineering side andhe's just thinking, okay, I need
to learn something about one ofthese adjacent areas.
So he's getting more into cloudnow and as he's doing that, you
have that sort of I don't wantto say nervousness of like, okay
(31:44):
, this huge thing is loominghere and I've been so stuck
solving these problems over herethat I haven't really had the
time to take and go into thisnew area and really do anything.
And I, just as we're kind oftalking because he was asking me
just for oh, you know what, Idon't have a ton of time.
What are some good introductoryresources?
Where should I start, you know?
(32:06):
So we sort of had aconversation and I just was
talking to him about how, like,look, a lot of your skills are
going to, you know, transferover, because when you think
about it, like even connectingto the cloud.
Okay, if you're connecting fromlike a colo or on-premises
somewhere you have internet.
You have connecting from like acolo or on-premises somewhere
you have internet.
You have to run bgp over it.
You have a gateway in the cloud.
(32:27):
Um, on that gate, I mean inazure, like you were talking
azure specifically, um for awhile there, um, you couldn't do
um, um, what is it?
Were you um bi-directionalforwarding detection with bgp,
so azure didn't.
You have to have that setbasically on both sides, and
azure didn't have that featureavailable until 20, I can't
(32:50):
remember now.
Um, it was like not that longago and you know.
Once you zoom out though, soyou're still doing all these
things you're using, you know,as path prepend, you're doing
like really common routing.
You know policy and design andarchitecture that you've done
historically.
You're just doing it in adifferent place.
(33:11):
It's still tunnels, still vpns.
Yeah, there's differentendpoints and different
availability zones maybe, andyou have to configure redundancy
a little bit different, butthose skills transfer directly,
like if you're connecting tocloud providers.
In that sense, you have a lotthat you're bringing with you.
So start on those solidfoundational things of what you
(33:34):
know and then just start takingon a little more a little more a
and these cloud providers.
they have great free tiers.
Eyvonne (33:42):
All of them do really?
William (33:46):
And what do you have to lose to go in and mess around
in a free tier and poke aroundand start learning these things?
It's not as bad as what itseems.
I guess is what I'm saying.
So when I hear, I guess, one ofthe things in the slides too, I
remember distinctly seeing.
I don't know, I can't rememberwhere it was, so forgive me, but
you had like, is, I think itwas like is network engineering
(34:10):
a dying field, or is it goingaway, or something along those
lines.
So do you want to expand on onthat a little bit?
Nicholas (34:19):
so I mean I'll have to call out Andy on that one,
because that's what he broughtup.
Actually I think it's a topicthey covered on one of their not
their podcast, but the one hewas on.
He talked about it and I saidyou know, that's a good thing,
because so I teach at the localFlorida State College of
Jacksonville and of course,everybody there I ask first day
class hey, what's your name isand what's your degree path and
(34:41):
what do you want to do?
Because your degree path maynot also be what you want to do.
So a lot of them are like Ihave mainly security, everyone's
BIT security.
I'm like okay, and I have likemaybe one or two networking.
This semester I had the mostnetworking.
Actually, this semester I hadthe most female students too.
Usually it's like one out of 24.
(35:02):
Now it's like seven each class,so that those numbers are going
up too.
That's positive.
And I go guys, thanks forshowing up.
You know like this is great.
I'd love to see more diversityhere.
But yeah, there's not a lot ofnetworking.
People want to do networking.
I try to convert them over andI said, okay, guys to do network
security.
(35:22):
Maybe you should learn the darkside of networking.
First, like come on, we havecookies.
I think so do.
I think it's a dying breed.
You know, I don't really thinkso.
I think we forget about theplumbers.
You know we forget about us.
You know making things work.
And also, I think we have towear different hats a lot more.
(35:43):
I think our titles have justbeen maybe changed to architect
or cloud, even though we'restill doing things on prem Right
.
So I think titles might changeor abstraction, say oh, we're
here now, we don't worry aboutthis, but you still can get the
internet Still has to happen.
William (36:00):
Yeah, yeah, that makes that makes sense.
And you know, t T, c, p, I Phasn't changed since the you
know nineties.
Bgp hasn't changed much, andjust how we control them.
That's one thing that I think alot about is like okay, the
technologies haven't changed,but especially for network
(36:21):
engineers.
About is like okay, thetechnologies haven't changed,
but especially for networkengineers, the thing that I see
that changed the most as Ipivoted to cloud was a lot of
the things that I'm actuallyinteracting with are almost the
same thing, but the way that I'minteracting with them is very
different.
It's a tooling change.
So instead of using, instead ofattaching text files to change
(36:43):
orders and then copying commandsinto CLIs, I'm committing
things into a Git repository.
That's triggering something andthen it's using, you know, api
calls or hooks or something oranother to go and configure a
component somewhere, a componentsomewhere you know, and that
(37:05):
that is some.
There is a lot of hesitancy tolearn and to get into those
tools because it's like, oh,immediately.
It's like, oh, I'm, I've got tobe a software developer now.
And no, not really.
It's a far cry from being asoftware developer and it's
really not that hard if you can,if you can memorize cisco
commands and debug and dodifferent things in a Cisco CLI.
Believe me, you can do all ofthose things.
Nicholas (37:25):
I agree with you a hundred percent.
So I was one of those peoplewhere I was afraid to do
automation with a networkingstack and I was like, well,
first I didn't have that manyswitches 70 to a hundred, I
think.
At one point I had 300 devices.
But it's between differentbrands and I was fine doing a
lot of manual stuff on thembecause a lot of them are static
, right.
(37:47):
But this job, when I first gotthere, we want to rotate the
Wi-Fi passwords on the guestWi-Fi for Meraki's.
And I'm like, all right, Ithink there's an automation way
to do it.
And I got to tell you, betweenJohn Capbianco and another guy,
angel, on the group there, youknow I stole a lot of things
from the Internet and Ireferenced them.
So you know I gave everybodycredit and you know those guys
(38:10):
kind of pushed well, how aboutyou add a QR code?
How would you do this to it?
And then John's like, why don'tyou submit this to DevNet?
And so, yeah, yeah, so now Ihave a DevNet published Meraki
Wi-Fi rotate to rotate yourpassword, the API, and then
emails you the QR code and justa little CSS HTML inside Say,
(38:32):
hey, here's your password, postit somewhere.
Eyvonne (38:36):
But one of the things I take away from that is you know
that what if?
Question is so important.
Right Is just embrace thecuriosity of well, what if?
Like, could you Wouldn't it beinteresting if?
And to ask those questions andthen try and answer them?
(38:57):
I think that's, frankly, areally profound way to learn.
It sounds so simple, frankly, areally profound way to learn.
It sounds so simple, but thefolks that are doing the most
interesting things in our worldright now are asking those kinds
of questions.
And, William, as you weretalking about how the
implementation is changing, themove from oh okay, I'm going to
(39:21):
write a script and I'm going toattach it to my change control
system and instead of that nowI'm going to check something
into a repository and triggersome actions.
You know, I've I've been tryingto articulate some of the
challenges that enterprise IThas and some of the things that
(39:41):
we need to understand about howthey operate, and I think one of
the things we need to be onguard against is linking the
implementation to either thepolicy or the goal or objective,
and so often we get so wrappedup in the implementation, in
(40:02):
other words, how I do it as clicommands or our change control
system or like someday there'sgoing to be something beyond get
and then we're going to have awhole universe of people that
are like I I do it the oldfashioned way with get right.
(40:23):
I mean, we have to hold all ofthose tools loosely and really
think about what we do in termsof what we're accomplishing, not
the particular tool that we'reusing, and I feel like that's so
much of where theconversational churn is.
It's really just around thetools and the tools are tools.
(40:44):
They're what we are using todayto do the thing.
In another decade, ai isradically going to change those
tools, and I know that folks aretired of hearing about it and
we're entering the trough ofdisillusionment.
I believe, around thattechnology, but it is going to
change how we work and we needto start thinking more in terms
(41:04):
of function as opposed tospecific tool.
William (41:09):
Those are great points.
Yeah, speaking of AI, like Iwas just reading something last
night my wife was gettingannoyed.
She's like can you stop readingthat, because it was like later
and I'm like I can't.
I got to get through this thing.
But it was like a group of PhDsin biology and like all these
different fields that weretesting the new Chad GPT 4.0
(41:30):
model and these two of them Iknow like one of them especially
, which is where I found thearticle, because I was looking
this person up because he's donea lot of like research and
writing on how dismal theprevious models were with their
field but this whole group waslike, okay, this 4-0 chat gpt
(41:50):
model is the real deal.
This is solving things.
They had like a series of teststhat they use for all the phd
students and different thingsand it's scoring better than
even the professors were scoringat some of these things and the
answers were really good.
It was not hallucinating as muchand the whole chain of thought
(42:11):
thing is apparently reallyreally strong and and fine, you
know getting to the root causeof like really complex
principles and questions andthings.
So, yeah, I think the change iscoming and it's coming faster
than what I expected it to.
I remember when, so the firsttime I remember ChatGPT actually
(42:36):
I'm sorry to sidebar here, butChatGPT came out and I hadn't
even created an account.
I'd saw a few things.
I think I actually sawsomething on the news and I was
helping somebody that I knowwrite a little bit of a web
crawler.
They were trying to dosomething really specific and
they're like hey, can you lookat this Python code?
So I was helping them out andthis person's not a coder,
doesn't like to write code, tooksomething that they'd already
(42:59):
found on the internet.
And then they come back a weeklater and they have like a full
fledged like.
They have classes, they haveall this object, like this
beautiful thing that's solvingtheir exact use case and so much
more.
I'm like we're how did you what?
Who did this for you?
And they're like I did it.
And I'm like no, you likereally no way.
(43:19):
And he's like, no, I use chatgpt and I'm like wait, that
thing that I saw on the news andand that's where it hit me like
wow, this is, this is kind of agame changer, this is pretty
cool, um well, I think.
Eyvonne (43:33):
I think the thing to think about there is you need to
be familiar enough with it toknow what things is it making
easy and what things are stillhard, and you need to lean into
the hard things right, knowingthat that's going to continue to
change.
But if there's something you'redoing today that it makes
incredibly easy, what that meansis that work is going to be
(43:55):
less valuable in the marketplace.
That is an objective realitythat we have to embrace, accept
and then look where things arestill hard, because there's
always going to be hard work todo.
Um, and that's how we are allable to to grow and have
(44:20):
economic value is to to do thehard things.
So, um, so yeah, but it butit's, it's a new tool and we'll
figure it out.
William (44:29):
I wanted to ask one more question.
I know we got it.
I think we have probably likefive minutes here, but I wanted
to hit a little bit on yourteaching.
So there's one thing that Ilearned in the past is when you
go to teach something, you thinkyou can teach something, but it
will challenge you on all thosesmall details.
Like, maybe you don't knowsomething as good as you thought
(44:49):
you did At least that's myexperience but you teach a few
comptia classes, right?
Yeah, you want to talk a littlebit about those and how that's
impacted your learning, and youknow the pros and the cons
trade-offs oh yeah, so I startedteaching.
Nicholas (45:07):
This is my going in my third year of january, so this
is my second year of January, sothe end of my second year of
teaching and, um, luckily, a+.
I could start off like I haveno lesson plan.
So I have a syllabus, I have atracker, but I don't lesson plan
.
I just kind of go look at thesyllabus, pull the chapter
PowerPoints, say alright, guys,let's go, let's rip and roll.
Um, and I will tell you yeah,sometimes I'll go through some
(45:32):
things and go you know what.
IRQ.
Ooh, why was that in portbefore?
You know?
And we'll go through that alittle bit.
Then I say hey guys, by the way, though IRQs for the test, yeah
, you should know it.
But practicality, anymore we'renot Windows 98.
We don't worry about how manyIRQs are open anymore.
You know, we've gotten betterLike, when I talk about drivers
(45:52):
I'm like okay, since Windows 8.1, we got really good self-loaded
drivers, so there's very littlethings you have to do drivers
for now.
You should know what a driverdoes and you should know you
might need to install drivers.
But I got to tell you EasyButton's been hitting a lot of
these things and I tell a lot ofthis teaching with stories, and
I tell all the stories when Iteach, and that with stories,
(46:15):
and I tell all the stories whenI teach.
And that's why my lectures arethree hours long, because I'm
from new york, I like to talk sowell, even in linux.
William (46:20):
Even in linux, the driver stuff is largely solved.
I installed ubuntu the otherday on a spare machine and, like
even the wireless, I didn'thave to do anything.
Everything just worked yes,wait, wireless.
Eyvonne (46:33):
What about bluetooth?
Did you try bluetooth?
William (46:34):
everything, so I have the laptop sitting right there
and it's an older laptop too.
Everything just worked.
Eyvonne (46:40):
I was, I was it's been a long time, yeah, since I've
done that, so it's good to hearubuntu has been great.
Nicholas (46:47):
I installed the arm on my m1 mac the arm version
because that's what I use forteaching, and it's so I followed
the book along with thestudents.
I kind of do the that side by,because that's what I use for
teaching, and so I followed thebook along with the students.
I kind of do that side by side.
It's funny because Linuxchanged so fast, so the new
Ubuntu doesn't have the commandsthat even the book wants you,
so I'll sit there.
Oh, here's how you install thecommand, guys.
You know this is an older one,here's the newer one.
(47:08):
And yeah, it's always fun doingthe fly there.
The Linux class is knocking outsome rough buckets, that's for
sure.
William (47:15):
Linux is important.
If there's one skill that Ithink anybody should know, and
it doesn't matter, with yourdatabase network security server
, if you learn Linux, you'regoing to set yourself up for
You're starting with a goodfoundation.
In your Linux course that youteach, do you have a lot of
(47:37):
receptive listeners like arethey actually interested in
learning it, or is it kind oflike, oh, we just need to do
this or what is your take there?
Nicholas (47:43):
I think well, first, the class is called operating
system fundamentals, so it'skind of shadowed as like linux
plus.
I go, hey guys, birthday.
This is linux plus guys.
I don't know why they calloperating systems fundamentals,
but also this is where the nerdshappen, this is where all the
fun stuff happens.
You want to be a good tinkerer?
You want to have fun in IT?
You want to mess around?
This is the OS for you right.
(48:05):
And at first they're like nowthey actually enjoy it.
I have students say, hey, howdo I install Ubuntu on my PC?
I'm like, all right, here'sVirtualBox, here's VMware
Workstation.
Now it's free, which isfantastic.
I love that.
Broadcom did that, I think theonly positive out of that change
.
But yeah, I think they've gonefrom I don't know to.
(48:30):
A lot of them are still usingit and they're tinkering around
with it and they're loving it.
William (48:31):
That's awesome still using it and they're tinkering
around with it and they'reloving it.
That's awesome.
Good to know I think we'recoming up on time.
Do you have anything else,yvonne?
I'm good, good.
Do you want to just tell theaudience where they?
Nicholas (48:48):
can find you, Nick, Mainly I do have a Twitter
account.
I really mainly follow you guyson Twitter.
I'm not active that much, butI've heard my following on the.
Hey, no, it's great stuff.
I it's always great, LikeYvonne, watching your house
being built.
That was fantastic.
It's beautiful.
The shed, the house, yeah,those are great and but usually
(49:09):
LinkedIn.
I kind of stick to LinkedIn forthat one.
But I'm on LinkedIn.
I have a website which Iprobably should buy the domain
for, so I'm just using the Wixsite there.
But, yeah, LinkedIn there andjust all around you know, doing
a lot of different things.
William (49:28):
Awesome.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on.
We appreciate your time and,yeah, I'll link everything in
the show notes that we talkedabout throughout the episode.
Nicholas (49:36):
Thank you, Thanks for having me Appreciate you guys.
Always good to talk with youguys.
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