TAC Tales #19: Butt-in-Chair
This one falls into the category of, “I probably shouldn’t post this, especially now that I’m at Cisco again,” but what the heck. I’ve often mentioned, in this series, the different practices of...
Read MoreWhere does time go?
Two things can almost go without saying: If you start a blog, you need to commit time to writing it. When you move up in the corporate world, time becomes a precious commodity. When I started this blog several years ago, I was a...
Read MoreBefore the Internet: The Bulletin Board System
It’s inevitable, as we get older, that we look back on the past with a certain nostalgia. That said, I think that computing in the era when I was growing up, the 1980’s, was more fun and interesting than it is now. ...
Read MoreTAC Tales #18: All at once
The case came into the routing protocols queue, even though it was simply a line card crash. The RP queue in HTTS was the dumping ground for anything that did not fit into one of the few other specialized queues we had. A...
Read MoreInterviewing #2: Why do we interview?
In the last article on technical interviewing, I told the story of how I got my first networking job. The interview was chaotic and unorganized, and resulted in me getting the job and being quite successful. In this post,...
Read MoreTAC Tales #17: Escalations
When you open a TAC case, how exactly does the customer support engineer (CSE) figure out how to solve the case? After all, CSEs are not super-human. Just like any engineer, in TAC you have a range of brilliant to...
Read MoreCCIE Enterprise Infrastructure
There were quite a few big announcements at Cisco Live this year. One of the big ones was the overhaul of the certification program. A number of new certifications were introduced (such as the DevNet CCNA/CCNP), and the...
Read MoreCisco Live is over! Long Live Cisco Live!
I think it’s fair to say that all technical marketing engineers are excited for Cisco Live, and happy when it’s over. Cisco Live is always a lot of fun–I heard one person say “it’s like a family...
Read MoreInside Cisco Live
While I’m thinking about another TAC Tale, I’m quite busy working on slides for Cisco Live. I figured this makes for another interesting “inside Cisco” post, since most people who have been to the...
Read MoreWhat are we getting ourselves into?
It seems to be rank heresy for someone working in the valley to say it, but let me say it anyways. I don’t agree with the axiom of the technology industry which states that all technological progress is always good. Many...
Read MoreBlog Updates
A lot of the blog posts I write begin with “I’m just too busy to blog these days!” Luckily, I have dozens of drafts so often blogging is just a question of cleaning up something I wrote a long time ago. ...
Read MoreInterviewing #1: How I got my first networking job
I’ve wanted to kick off a series for a while now on technical interviewing. Let me begin with a story. My first job interview for a full network engineering role was at the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000. I had been...
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