What Happened? I’m Back!

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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.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/what-happened-im-back/

Burnout or just a Reset? – It’s Okay it Happens

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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.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/burnout-or-just-a-reset-its-okay-it-happens/

Cisco Live 2019 – On Site – Last Minute Checklist

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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!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/cisco-live-2019-on-site-last-minute-checklist/

Cisco SD-WAN ISR 4k Getting Started – Part 2 – Bootstrap Process

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The Bootstrap Process

In the Part 1 of this series we covered the first step to converting and ISR from IOS-XE onto the Cisco SD-WAN platform. We will continue from there with my story of frustrations and the discovered caveats and need to knows. Starting first with bootstrapping the ISR.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/cisco-sd-wan-isr-4k-getting-started-part-2-bootstrap-process/

Cisco SD-WAN ISR 4k Getting Started – Part 1 – Upgrading Code

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Upgrading from IOS-XE to SD-WAN Code

Recently I was building out a lab to iron out a migration onto the Cisco SD-WAN (Viptela) solution. As part of that process existing ISR 4k routers were going to be used at the edge devices. This process, while fairly straight forward, came with a few “gotchas” and “snags” that I had to work through. In this post I will cover the upgrade of the ISR onto SD-WAN code. In the next post I will cover the bootstrap process as well as a couple of caveats related to vManage and the ISR4k routers.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/cisco-sd-wan-isr-4k-getting-started-part-1-upgrading-code/

Cisco Live US 2019 – Explorer Guide

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I’ve been lucky enough to attend Cisco Live twice with both instances being on the full conference pass. This year, due to out of pocket expenses and the overall higher cost of San Diego I am attending on the lower cost Explorer Pass. In years past I purely interacted with Cisco Live remotely. This guide is intended to combine the best of both to assist in making the most of the Explorer pass. With that in mind, lets get some housekeeping out of the way.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/cisco-live-us-2019-explorer-guide/

Remote Troubleshooting Crossed Fiber Using Port Channels

Reading Time: 5 minutesLast year I was involved in assisting a datacenter core and access-layer refresh. In this case the IDF’s were reusing existing fiber patches and the run to the datacenter stayed in place. however, within the datacenter core equipment was placed across the room required new cross connects to be ran to the new core cabinet. When the cutovers began to take place the IDF’s were spread out over a large campus. Meaning troubleshooting by walking back and forth to check cabling was extremely time consuming and inefficient. Since all the IDF’s were connected via port channels I was able to figure out which runs were crossed and go fix them all at once using only the ether channel show output. I’ll walk you through the process now.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/remote-troubleshooting-crossed-fiber-using-port-channels/

Cisco Champions – An amazing place to be

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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Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/cisco-champions-an-amazing-place-to-be/

ATA 190 Recovery Firmware Page – ATA 190 Will Not Register

Reading Time: 3 minutesAs it turns out, albeit I don’t do voice as my career focus, I decided to help out a team member and took ownership of an issue that came up. It was a phone that wasn’t working, one that was attached to an ATA 190. After I tracked down the device I typed it’s IP address into my web browser and found it in a Recovery Firmware state. What us traditional Cisco route/switch guys would consider “ROMMON” as a loose equivalent. In this case it is important to note, since the device wasn’t function on proper firmware and was in recovery mode, the IP address of the ATA is actually in the Data VLAN at this point, NOT the Voice VLAN.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/ata-190-recovery-firmware-page-ata-190-will-not-register/

CLUS 2017 – A remote view

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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Permanent link to this article: https://www.packetpilot.com/clus-2017-a-remote-view/

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