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TL:DR…..I needed some self care and checked myself into a hospital

Okay, A lot of people noticed I disappeared for a hot minute or two and you know what?……I’m not ashamed to tell you why.

I know that some of you were quite worried about me and to that point I have to say I love you all to death and appreciated that I mean something to you all that you would be concerned. It truly means a lot.

Life had gotten the better of me and I checked myself into a 2 day self care overnight at my local hospital. They court order petitioned me to a 7 day care at a Mental Health Hospital an hour away where they took my cell phone from me so I couldn’t respond to anyone.

I apologize for not responding to anyone who messaged me or reached out via any social media means but I just didn’t have the means to reach back.

This was triggered from general life issues and then on top of that I lost my job due to some bad apples at work. It kind of pushed me over the edge and I needed to get myself straight.

Outside of the adventure stories I could tell from my experience in the hospital I can say I met a couple of good chaps, learned a lot, and got my head straight.

I had some good “sessions” that made me think a bit and put 2 and 2 together to get back on a good page. Now I just need to work on finding new employment.

Aurora was well taken care of, the first two days at the first hospital my hockey team member took care of her, the 7 day stint at the hospital an hour away my sister (bless her heart) drove 10 hours round trip to pick Aurora up and take her home to watch her and let her play with her puppy Loki. Pops brought Aurora back to me on Friday.

Recently I found myself struggling with something. I couldn’t really put my finger on what exactly it was but my motivation seems to have vanished throwing me into a terrible feeling of purgatory.

You may have noticed if you follow me on social media as I just haven’t been terribly active in the last little while. I needed to figure out what was wrong.

It’s crunch time! Many of you may have already left for a few extra days before the event, others aren’t leaving until this weekend. Either way, there are a few things you want to be sure you have on hand and ready for Cisco Live in San Diego!

Reading Time: 5 minutesThe time for applications to the Cisco Champion 2019 program are fast approaching. As I learned this it caused me to reflect on the privilege I have had for the last two years of being part of it.  I’d rather tell you about my experience and why you might want to join in on the fun. In those two years, I have seen it from two different views. My first year was 100% remote as I was unable to make it to Cisco Live. Last year I got to experience all of the greatness of some of the in-person events.
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Reading Time: 4 minutesThis year I was unable to make it to Cisco Live U.S. for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the stars don’t align and you can’t make logistics work, or maybe financials just fall short. That doesn’t mean you can’t “go” to CLUS even if it may be remotely and in spirit. Trust me, if the spirits right it’s an exhausting week even when you aren’t there.

I dedicated a lot of effort this year into “attending” even though I was remote just shy of a couple thousand miles away. Here’s how I did it!
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Reading Time: 14 minutesSay you have a network that currently has an MPLS WAN from your HQ to all of your Branches. You want to migrate these MPLS connections into a DMVPN design and in doing that, you would like to move the MPLS links into a Front Door VRF. There comes a challenge with this move in regards to the routing tables and when to move the headend.

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Reading Time: 2 minutesThe new year just sprung upon us. This is usually when I go through my bag and reorganize. I figured hey why not post what I carry. I know, it’s nothing new nor original. I’m surely not the first person to do this post. I always find it interesting though to see what others carry so maybe someone is interested in my daily carry.

So, here we go. Lets start with the top left and move through from there.

• Super Glue
  • I always end up ripping a finger or knuckle home on something. Super glue it the go to fix
• Pain Reliever
• Extra Pair of Contacts
  • Hey, I’ve lost one before and it isn’t fun being half blind
• Visine
  • Again, contacts…they tend to dry out in datacenters
• Bose Soundsport bluetooth headphones
  • For conference calls, general listening. Paired with laptop and phone
• Laptop Charger
• Kobalt 6x speed driver and bits
  • Seriously the coolest and most efficient screwdriver. Each turn and back cycle = 6 spins.
• Small LED flashlight
• Old Wacom Tablet for drawing diagrams on projectors when whiteboards aren’t available
• Fluke Networks rollup pouch
  • Holds misc cables and adapters
• The original Air Console.
  • Freedom from the rack!!!
• Stock iPhone headphones and charger
  • No I haven’t upgraded to the 7
• Thumb Drive and SD card
• Whiteboard Markers
• Console Cable
• Battery Pack
• Metallic Sharpie
  • Ever need to take notes about cables on a black network rack?
• Pen and Pad of paper
  • Sometimes you just have to write analog style
• Laptop
• Bose QC 15 cans
  • Again, haven’t had a reason to upgrade but love noise canceling when necessary

So where does it all go? It seems like a lot listed out but to be honest it barely fills up the backpack I carry. I currently carry an OGIO Renegade RSS. Plenty of room for more than you need. Also, before anyone asks “what? No box cutter?!”. Daily carry is a Gerber Paraframe of sorts on my person.

Reading Time: 4 minutesI’ve always wanted to find a quick way to test a multicast deployment in a Cisco environment. Many of us are already familiar with simply pinging a multicast address from an interface, and going to another router and issuing the ip igmp join-group command.

I’ve came across a new way to test that I’ve missed over the years but has apparently been around. This tool is the Multicast Routing Monitor. It has a fairly straight forward configuration and will at least give you some view into your multicast domain and it’s functionality.

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Reading Time: 5 minutesI came across a paragraph in an older book in regards to EIGRP operation. As I read it I was kind of dumfounded. To be honest I didn’t believe it at first so of course I had to lab it to see if it was true. It turns out that it is in fact the way EIGRP operates in this very specific circumstance. I had never seen it before in some of my favorite books nor through my favorite video training vendors. So my findings are this: In a very specific scenario, EIGRP will advertise static routes into EIGRP as internal routes without any redistribution statements.

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