Monthly Tech News - Cisco Champions, Cisco CE Credits, Chat GPT and Google Bard

We're back for our 50th episode! The big 5-0. This week is our monthly tech news show and we give a shoutout to the Cisco Champions community, Alex using Cisco Continuing Education Credits and renew his CCIE and also some ChatGPT/Google Bard news. Tune in!

Transcript

Pat: 0:31

Hey everybody. Welcome back to this week's edition of Breaking Down the Bites. Thanks for joining us this week. As usual, I'm your host, pat. You can find me on Twitter at@layer8packet. That's the number eight. You can find Kyle on Twitter,@Danath256, and you can find the show on Twitter at@breakinbytespod. We're pretty active on Twitter, so come say hello. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe on your streaming platform of Choice three Amigos are back again. This week we're all here. Yes, it feels like a good time. We're all here. We can all get together, sing Kumbaya, do all those sorts of things. So, no guests this week, you just got us three chatting away, and we're gonna do the the tech our monthly tech news this week as well. So, some two, two personal sort of endeavors. And then a little ai, a little chat G P T and Google Bard News. So that's gonna be always always fun as well. So, Kyle, what's up man? How you doing?

Kyle: 1:29

live in the dream. How about yourself?

Pat: 1:32

That's it. This is the dream. I'd hate to see the nightmare, I'll tell you that much right now. So, yeah. Nah, man. We did not get the weather that we expected. It was kind of mild, I gotta admit. But you know, it is what it is. And we there's a chance for a good snow yet here in, in the east, on the east coast yet. We we've seen snow up until, early May, or I should say yeah, early May, early early April. So, we got about another month to go. So we'll see what happens. I know you're the weather guy, Kyle, so

Kyle: 2:00

let's roll the dice here and,

Pat: 2:02

throw that out there.

Kyle: 2:03

right, right.

Pat: 2:03

I'm knocking on wood cuz I'm not the big snow guy cuz I'm the one shoveling it. So I w I would not prefer to have that happen. So, I will tell you, I will introduce you to a man who does not have snow right now, where he is at on the left coast. Mr. Alex is back with us. Hey man, what's going on?

Alex: 2:20

Busy studying trying to renew my CCIE, but we'll talk about that more a little later in the podcast. And

Pat: 2:28

if I ever heard one

Alex: 2:30

right and trying to psych myself up for next week. So starting tomorrow cuz that's gonna be the official return to the office four days a week.

Pat: 2:39

Oh, that's

Kyle: 2:40

Oh man.

Pat: 2:41

That's right.

Alex: 2:43

we'll see. And the big guy,

Pat: 2:46

far, how far the drive is it for you into the office?

Alex: 2:51

it's 49 miles. Which I, I did bef I did for years. It evolved by pos almost exactly what my commute was, but

Pat: 2:56

Yep.

Alex: 2:57

it, it wasn't an la queue commute, so

Pat: 3:00

Right.

Alex: 3:01

it takes me an hour and a half at least to do it. So, it never bothered me too much cuz I was only going to the office once and then recently, twice a week. So we'll see how this

Pat: 3:12

How, how it

Alex: 3:13

out.

Pat: 3:13

Yeah. Yeah. you sound really, really stoked, I must say

Alex: 3:19

I got all kinds of audible books queued up, so that's what I've been

Pat: 3:23

it just gives you more, it just gives you more power to listen to podcasts, so it's all good.

Alex: 3:28

Yeah. I gotta start subscribing to some podcasts.

Pat: 3:30

There you go. So if anyone has any suggestions for Alex to get on the train with podcasts, let us know. Cuz he's gonna need a whole boatload for that hour and a half drive to la So that's one way. So technically he's, he's a, he's a three hour guy now. He's a three hour guy

Alex: 3:48

And that's if I'm lucky, I've had a

Pat: 3:51

on a good day.

Alex: 3:52

pushing two hours on the way

Pat: 3:53

Yeah. Oh, geez. Yeah. So that's, that's interesting.

Alex: 3:58

yeah. For.

Pat: 4:00

That is interesting. I'm, I'm curious to see how that plays out. So,

Alex: 4:04

I'm interested to see who shows up. I wanna see how many people actually commit to that.

Pat: 4:09

Yeah. Kyle, what's your drive? I know you're sort of in the opposite direction of where you're working now at Cus town.

Kyle: 4:15

Yeah. It's 27 miles and it takes me about a half an hour to get in. like 40 to 45 to get home, 30 ish on a good day. But normally it's, airport road and like Cedar Crest, they're always

Pat: 4:32

Ugh. Terrible.

Kyle: 4:34

not great

Pat: 4:36

Nope, not great. No traffic here in the Lehigh Valley really, really stinks. Like we have highways that were built for like the mid fifties and now we're like trying to like jam a million cars on these things. It's like, good Lord. Anyway. Alright, cool. So, oh, shout out to Louis also known as Netec Weezy on Twitter for last week's episode. That was really,

Kyle: 5:00

Yeah, it was awesome.

Pat: 5:00

really cool dude. We, we appreciate him coming on and sharing his story and giving us a little a little schooling on some next Gen firewall stuff. So, that's gonna be really cool. So appreciate him coming out. So, we'll definitely have him back on again. But this week sort of highlighting the community as some of you may or may not know, the show was nominated last year for Cisco IT Blog Awards. We were a finalist last year, so I don't know how that happened. I don't know who nominated us, but we're glad that they did obviously. But yes, totally, totally cool. And that has opened some doors for. For us as far as a platform to, to reach people me specifically I think Dean as well who's in the same community, but we were roped into, or we were accepted into the Cisco Champions community. And that's basically it's a private community that Cisco has that you sort of have to register for, sign up for sort of be nominated, blah, blah, blah. And I obviously use the podcast as leverage to get into that community. So, kind of rolling off of that I was fortunate enough to be invited to do a Cisco Champions Radio podcast this week. And basically the gist of it is if you, if you haven't heard of it, go check it out. They have some really, really cool topics on there. And it's it, it's, it's a mix of Cisco champions. So you basically get picked there's like two or three per episode, two or three champions per episode that, that get to go on. And there's a set topic. And then Cisco also invites Basically Cisco employees whatever that topic is, they invite the SMEs, the subject matter experts for that particular topic or product, and then have them come on the podcast with us. And then basically just, have a chat back and forth. And sometimes it's show, show showcasing a product. Sometimes it's, I listened to the one the other week, it was on how to basically do, like study habits, things of that nature. And there's a whole plethora of topics that are that are out there. So, I did one just recently last week and it was on the new Cisco Catalyst 9,500 X series switch that they have coming out, layer three switch. So, we had some product folk over at Cisco come on and talk about what that is and kind of what's where it came from. And how that all kind of came to life and, and, use cases and guts and, things of that nature. And it was a really, really good discussion. Once I have a definite date, I'll, I'll mention it again on the podcast here just so you guys can tune in. But yeah, had, had a blast. It was really, it was a really good time and they just keep coming out with some really good products and, and the 9,500 x is, is is, nothing short of that. So, totally enjoyed that and looking forward to being on on another one the next uh, next couple of months depending on when they pick me. So I thought that was a cool thing to start the show off with and, and kind of go from there. So, yeah, really loved it and wish I could do more of it.

Alex: 7:41

Yeah, and I don't want to ruin it for anyone who plans on listening to that podcast, but can you give us kind of the cliff notes? So what's the big thing with the 9,500 x.

Pat: 7:52

Yeah, so I g you know, so what they did a couple years ago is they kind of repackaged the catalyst line under the 9,000 naming moniker, I guess you wanna call it. So, the, the the three, the Catalyst 3000 became the 93 hundreds, the catalyst, well nine, the, the, the 2000 line became the 92 hundreds, 93 hundreds, so forth and so forth. That sort of thing. So, the catalyst 5k became the 95 k, things of that nature. So, so it's, it was an all all inclusive umbrella, if you will. I'm trying to bring that more kind of more standardization and kind of under the same umbrella. But now it's just a, they're up in the 9,000, so they kind of try to streamline a lot of that. So, And I, the 9,500 x is it's, it's meant for a campus, campus switch, right? So not technically data center somewhere in a, in a branch or, enterprise, type, type building headquarters things of that nature. So, but it's got it's got some really good juice going there. So, it brings all the standard stuff that Cisco's known for at that enterprise level, right? Stateful, switchovers, and things of that nature. I think they did bump the guts up from the, the Mac table. It's like 128,000 to like 2 56, so they doubled it. Things of that nature. What else is here? It does all the routing, right? BGP and mpls layer three VPNs. Yeah. Ethernet over mpls. What else? Spine leaf, you can do that, that kind of thing. So it is quite, it's quite it's, it's got it's, it's definitely got the juice and 400 gig is, it's got a couple ports of 400 gig throughput on there. So, I think it's, it's 40 gig, a hundred gig, 400 gig is kind of what their ports are, looking like. And then with the, they call'em breakout cables, right? So, your fiber and whatnot. So you got, you got 10 gig, 25 gig, 50 gig, and then a hundred gig with the with the specified, breakout cables for, fiber and things of that nature. So there's quite a few models here and whatnot, but it seems to, they're creeping into that 400 gig territory, which I, which I find really, really interesting.

Alex: 9:52

Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. And I think also the 9,500 line and maybe some others, I didn't look into it too much. I know they're starting to do some things with containers, which is a good call. Back to previous episode we just had, so now Cisco hardware is being containerized, and what that is allowing people to do is you can actually run a Docker container on a Cisco device now, which I'm interested to see how people use that as a as something really helpful. I mean, from what I've understood, there's nothing really even stopping you. You could, you could run a, a full on Linux desktop on a, I mean, I don't see any reason why you don't wanna do that. But I'm interested to see what people end up using that for. I know one of the real quick examples that I saw someone use it is just to install a really lightweight version of I purf. So for anyone who hasn't used I purf before, that's the simplest way you can do to really like test the circuits bandwidth capabilities. It just allows you to, it's a traffic generator. So people now can install, I perf in a container right off a networking device. And now you can use your networking device and really slam a circuit if you want to, if you wanna do some testing. But yeah, there's also some things like some telemetry data that people can pull. And now you're used to having to pull telemetry data or send telemetry data somewhere else, but now you're, you're, it's right there on the same box. You're trying to get these really interesting stats and maybe some pretty gooeys. And you can run it right on a box now, which is all pretty neat.

Pat: 11:27

Yeah. The other thing I would say too is this falls in line with Cisco's DNA Center. So that's their overarching kind of gooey controlled sd software defined networking platform. Right. Which I'm a little shocked that they don't have a virtual version of that. It's, it's still a physical box, but apparently it's, it's a pretty beefy box that they have trouble converting it. To virtual, but yeah, I digress. May maybe one day there'll be a virtual version of, of DNA Center, but yeah. DNA Center, so this is completely compatible with that, right? With the automation that seems to be here and, and sort of ever booming, netcom s com yang models, all that kind of stuff, that's all supported on the 9,500 x zero touch provisioning is also supported. So, we all know that the shipping and. Whatnot has really been a detriment to a lot of tech these days. So you're waiting, what seems to be a long time for, for gear. Instead of shipping it to a headquarters and having somebody configure it and then reshipping it to wherever it needs to go, you can drop ship it right to the, the place it needs to go and it'll, it'll, plug in and call home and no, no need to technically touch it, that kind of thing. So, telemetry is another good one. Right, though you kind of touched on that, Alex, so it supports all that. So, yeah. I was really excited to be a part of it and it seems to be they've really put some, some real. Brains and beef into the 9,500 x stuff. So, it's, it's, it's really interesting to see kind of where that's gonna go in the next couple of years and, and see if that really takes off. But from, from what I've seen or from, the discussion that we had with some of the product folks on that, on that podcast, it was really cool. So, shout out to my to my buddy Tim Burino as well. He's he is a host over there at the Art of Network Engineering podcast. He was on with me as well. He was a champion that was on with me as well. So it's always good to see Tim re really good guy. So, yeah, shout out to them. So, yeah, it was just a cool, it was a cool time. Cool, cool podcast and hope to be part of more so just wanted to kind of throw that out there.

Alex: 13:19

Awesome.

Pat: 13:20

Yeah. Yeah. So it's really interesting stuff. So, what else can I say about the champions? I don't know. It's, I, I, I enjoy it, man. It's, it's a cool platform for people to get together. It's a like-minded sort of community and there, there's a bunch of things that you get as a champion to kind of get the inside peek behind the covers, sort of thing. So, yeah, so, and, and I think actually was it registration just ended not too long ago for, for this year's inductees, if you will. So, yeah, so it's a, it's, it's a pretty cool platform. And actually my my new boss said I get to meet tomorrow. First time meeting him. Well, I shouldn't say first time meeting him. He's actually a champion as well, so we're part of the same kind of, kind of community. So that's kind of cool. So actually I knew him from a previous life, so when I worked at the data center, he, he was working for somewhere that had data center space, so I knew of his name and would see him every now and then. And now we're kind of crossing path again. So he's my new boss. So I'll, I'll meet, I'll get to see him tomorrow. So shout out to him, So it's always interesting how those things play out, right? Small world

Alex: 14:22

So do you, you mentioned that registrations or nominations, whatever it may be, just closed up. Does that mean you have to be nominated again or are you a member for life now until they kick you out?

Pat: 14:36

Now. So technically you have to reapply, quote unquote, every year. But as long as you're still doing something, like a blog or like a podcast or some sort of what kind of got you in the program to begin with, then you know, there's very little chance that you'll be, kicked out sort of thing. But you do have to reapply every year. I don't have to reapply cause I just got in last year, but as this time comes around next year I'll have to, reapply sort of thing. So yeah, it is a, I'm, I'm guessing they do that just so they don't have people basically just becoming stale, in there, that kind of thing. So like if we decide to not, do this podcast tomorrow, we would still kind of benefit from that for the end of time if they didn't kind of gate check some people. So I'm guessing that's what that's about.

Alex: 15:18

Okay. And outside of this podcast you just did recently, do you think you've been kind of taking advantage of the platform at all? I mean, maybe not as much as you could be.

Pat: 15:28

yeah, so I, you always probably could be doing a little more. But you know, there's some, so, so as, as a champion, you get access to a exclusive like WebEx and there's a bunch of channels in here. Stick of it as like a slack kind of thing. And, and people, people chat from, I mean, they're from all over the world. So, yeah, basically you're just chatting in all these different different spaces and, and and as far as the show, man, we could literally have guests from here till forever. People would come on, you know what I mean? Just pluck, pluck guests from, from this platform and people would would totally, you. Be in on that. So I could see that we get to, and I get to promote it. I get to promote it every episode within this. And obviously that's more people listening and eyeballs and, things of that nature. And then, as far as from a guest pipeline, it's like an unlimited amount of guests here cuz there's a bunch of really, really smart people in here. So, we'll probably start plucking some folks here shortly and just having'em come on and it's it's just a cool thing to just keep going and see how far it takes us.

Kyle: 16:28

Be

Alex: 16:28

All right, and my last question, maybe the most important question, did you get any swag,

Pat: 16:35

I did I didn't get any swag. I know. I gotta ask about that. It just depends on,

Alex: 16:40

a sticker or something

Pat: 16:42

I know something. I know. That'd be nice. Yeah, no, I, I hear you.

Alex: 16:46

Don't. Not expecting like an embroidered jacket or anything, but

Pat: 16:51

You know what? I did ask our Cisco count rep that I've been working with Cisco for 20 years and have not a stitch of Cisco swag any places I've ever worked. So I'm like, come on Tim, let's let's get on that. And he's like, all right, what's your size? So I gave him my size and whatnot. He's like, I'll see what I can do. So, man, I gotta, I actually, I'm gonna see Tim this week, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna check on that, see if I get some Cisco swag.

Alex: 17:12

Yeah, I got some Meraki stuff heading my way. I just had lunch with Cisco and a couple of the Meraki guys were in town, so they came on board and they just said, do you, do you want any Meraki stuff? I said, sure. I mean, I don't use it, but I'll, I'll take some swag.

Pat: 17:28

Heck yeah. Heck yeah. That bumps your street cred.

Alex: 17:33

Yeah. I've been wanting a polo like e ever since I got in the Cisco game like 15 years ago, I still have not gotten someone to gimme a Cisco Polo

Pat: 17:41

Come on. Somebody at Cisco send this man a polo.

Alex: 17:44

Yes,

Pat: 17:45

He's an ie. For goodness sake, send him a polo. The least you could do is send him a polo Now the other cool thing about the Cisco champions things too, is like you chat with these people pretty regularly, and then I would say a good portion of them actually head to Cisco live. So then it's nice to meet up with them in person at, at Cisco live. So that's the other thing too, I'm kind of looking forward to. And I've, I have never been to Cisco live. I'm trying to go this year. So we'll see what see what happens. But I would I, I would love to go this year, and I think it's in Vegas again this year, if I'm not mistaken. I would love to go and, and meet some of these folks and just, it's kind of just a cool community to hang out with and, you chat with all these people virtually and then you get to meet'em in person. You're like, ah, this is cool. It kind of brings your full circle. So looking forward to that's, see what happens. It is in Vegas this year, right? I think.

Alex: 18:32

I didn't look at it. I'm surprised that I haven't thought about it yet cuz it's coming up before we know it three months away.

Pat: 18:38

Sis.

Alex: 18:38

I know with layoffs and stuff, companies aren't that quick to pay for something like that, but I guess I should ask.

Pat: 18:45

Yep. There it is. Las Vegas, June 4th through the eighth.

Kyle: 18:49

No, man,

Alex: 18:50

Yeah. That's just a, that's a road trip for me.

Pat: 18:53

hot hop skipping a jump.

Alex: 18:56

Yeah. Hour flight, four hour drive. Yeah.

Kyle: 19:01

not bad.

Pat: 19:02

It's the fir yeah, the first full week in June. Right on. So yeah, let's see if I can score some tickets from that and, and see what see what comes of it. So that's gonna be cool. So yeah, I thought we'd lead off with that and see just kind of, talk about that. And Kyle, you, you applied for it this year cuz you're part of the show now.

Kyle: 19:19

Yeah. You gave me the, the link as signed up

Pat: 19:21

Good deal. Alex, you did too? Or did you get to that or not? I wasn't sure if you came a little later.

Alex: 19:27

yeah. I applied too. So we'll see if what happens. Any idea when they pick those?

Pat: 19:32

It should be soon, from my understanding, I, I can't remember the exact time last year, but I think it should be soon. I, I, it was relatively quickly after the closing of the, of the registration period. So, yeah, I, I'm curious to see if you guys if you guys get in, so we'll see what happens, but yeah, that's cool. So, yeah, so I thought I would lead the show with that and just kind of say, that was really cool and really look forward to to that episode coming out in, in May. I think I think it's in May. So just be on the lookout for that and once I get more details, I'll, I'll send it along obviously. But that was a really cool cool thing to do. So. Kind of pivoting, still talking. Cisco kind of pivoting though. Mr. Alex, you're up on this one. You mentioned that you're trying to redo your C C I E or at least re re-up it, and this is your first time doing it via the credits, right?

Alex: 20:20

Yeah, that's right. I've kind of done it the typical way for the last. Oh, eight years, I guess, which is you just have to take the written again and that renews your IE and everything underneath it. And I was planning on doing the exact same thing again this year. And I just had a guy that reports to me pretty much told me I was nuts. If I want to try brute force in the written exam again, because that's what I've been doing. I mean, I don't, I should probably put a little bit more effort into it, but I think every time that I've gone to renew my C C I E, so this would be the, the fourth time I've done it. So the three times previous, I've failed it at least once and wonk

Pat: 21:02

Ah,

Alex: 21:03

And this is, so if you're not getting reimbursed for this, which I don't think I would, I mean that's$500 a pop. So

Pat: 21:09

Sure.

Alex: 21:10

you don't want to keep brute forcing it. But yeah. A guy that reported me suggested that I look into the continued education. I, I guess I just thought that, it would be a lot of administrative overhead, like, take the course and then trying to figure out how I can prove that I took it and then making sure that it did count and I see it. And I, I did one course recently on the digital learning library, I think is what it's called. But they have lots of courses on there. There's some that are free. Other ones you pay per course, other ones you, they have other options like just a full on pass that unlocks everything. But there are some free ones. But the one I took was a on paper, 40 hour course broken out pretty well. Has labs, has little quizzes at the end. And then at the very end there's just a the equivalent of, of an exam really.

Pat: 22:03

Hmm.

Alex: 22:04

or you have to work through, I don't know how many different questions. And if you get a passing grade, then it counts as you've completed the course and you get the continued education score credit for it. And depending on what level of certification you're trying to renew. So if it's an associate level, and again, this is all Cisco stuff and associate level one, that's so the CCNA for example, that's 40 credits professional level, like the ccnp, it's 80 expert level at the C C I E, it's 120 and these 40 hour courses, and there's several they're all 40 credits. So at least the majority of'em are so, well, one I completed I think probably took me about probably closer to 20 hours. Closer to 20 than 40. And yeah, when I was done this is the part that was the big question mark for me. Again, administratively what, what, how do you actually get credit for what you've just done? But they really do make it straightforward. If you go to like ce.cisco com which is the continued education site you log in with your normal Cisco credits or your Cisco credentials, and it'll show you the certs that you have when they expire. And there's an option there to I guess I forget how they word it, but get credit for any courses that you've done. So in my case, when I completed the that course, that 40 hour horse they gave you a, like a 10 digit number to kind of signify the, the, you completed it. And when I went to the ce cisco.com site I just put in that 10 digit. Number when I completed the exam, and it was like an hour later, it said confirmed, and three days later it showed that my CCNA had been extended another three years. I, I saw the extension date. So it's really as straightforward as you complete these courses. They give you a, a unique value code that somehow references the completed course and you can use that to yep, renew your certifications. So in this case, I, I'm already starting my second one about halfway through that now, but sounds like this is gonna be the way to go going forward. So I'm pretty excited about that. So, I mean, having said all that, have you tried any of it yet, or are you still just doing it the classic way where you're just let them expire, or take an exam at some point and that's how you renew your other ones?

Pat: 24:28

Yeah, I got, I gotta be honest, I, all of mine have actually expired. They've ex, they were expired like right around the beginning of the pandemic, and I just didn't, it's just, it was too crazy. Stuff was going on, and I let it expire and I probably shouldn't have, but I did let it expire. And so I don't really have any skin in the Cisco game anymore. Not that I wouldn't want to, I probably, I probably should at least look at something again, since, where I'm at is 90% Cisco shop. But, there's just other things that I'm dealing with now that, that, that, that are a little more beneficial. Right. So, like I said, some of the address stuff that we that we talked about, I've been, doing a lot of that and things of that nature. So it's No, I, I, I don't have any sort of CE credits or, or any sort of need for them at the moment, but I totally should. Just because it's, probably should get back on that horse at least. At some point I'm interested to see if I could actually pass the new ccna, cuz when I passed it, it was it's a decade ago, 2013. So, that was the older one, or, a couple old versions by now. But I'm curious to see if I could pass the new one and then, kind of go from there. But the cc m p was really, was really cool. That was a special one. I just you never thought you could get there and then all of a sudden you do and you're like, ah, cool. I can, kind of hang in with the big boys. This is nice, and I was an idiot for letting them expire. So, I, like I said, I, I probably shouldn't have, but it just it just is what it is. So, Kyle, do you have any Ciscos or anymore, did you ever attempt them or did you have, did they expire on you?

Kyle: 25:51

no, no, I actually, I never got any as, as much as Kevin, Kevin, beat it into our head.

Pat: 25:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We should have. Yeah, I, well, I took, it took me three times to pass mine, my, my ccna. So I, I have nothing to I have nothing to, to to, to write home about on that one. But yeah, it was,

Alex: 26:10

Hey, that search there, Joe

Pat: 26:12

Yeah. The entry level, I'm, well, the coming from, coming from somebody that is just, has school like you and I work Kyle, and not actually like in it day to day, the NA is a tall order because it just, it, it's more real world than just. Book Text Smart kind of thing. That, and that's why I, like I said, I, I bombed it twice before passing it a third time, but it's for those that are trying to break in and do the network thing without any real world experience, and I don't even know if they have it anymore, but the, the C C E N T was probably the better track to go to the two, the two test route rather than the one c n a route. But I don't even know if they have that anymore because of the way they restructured their exams. So, but yeah, it, it, it's no joke. And pe it really, it keeps people up at night and I could, I could definitely see why even 10 years ago I could see why

Alex: 27:07

So the moral of the story is don't let it.

Pat: 27:10

Yeah. Don't be an idiot like me and let it expire.

Alex: 27:14

and you have continued education credits as a valid option. And, and like I said, it, you only need 40 credits to renew an associate level exam. And there are some free ones out there. If you go to the digital learning library on several different top, and it can be completely different topics too. So maybe that's not clear to everyone. It's like if you have a CCNA in the classic route and switch you, you can do a a five hour course on SD WAN Meraki's and which maybe that's not a good example cause that's, I think that's part of the CCNA now, but you could do a yeah. On any topic and that'll count as continued education. Going to Cisco Live also gives you credits too. So if you go to Cisco Live, just attending the conference and then. if you go to certain breakouts and can ch you get proof that you attended them, the, in their entirety, you get credits for those too. So, yeah, you, you, you can, you can go without ex expiring certs if you really want to without having to dive back into the books. Hardcore again.

Pat: 28:18

Yep. That's interesting. I, I, I probably should take it again just to prove to myself that I could pass a CCNA again. I'd be interested to see how that, how that, how that plays out in my head. So for those of you that don't know, Alex, I don't know why, why don't you, you for, for your, you've been a C C I E for what? Six, seven years now? Something like that.

Alex: 28:36

Yeah. 2015. Mm-hmm.

Pat: 28:38

Okay. Wow. Time flies. For those of you that don't know the rigorous I don't wanna say nonsense, but in the sense it is nonsense. That is a C C I E prep to, to try and pass it. I, I do You wanna give it a little 50,000 foot view of what you kind of went through to, to get yours? Alex

Alex: 28:54

Oh wow. Sure. Yeah, we could talk about

Pat: 28:56

Spotlight

Alex: 28:58

one. I was in a position that at work where they gave me a lot of time to do it. I, I don't, I, I just, maybe more pe people are just more into it than I am, but I, I just, I would have a tough time doing the C C I E if I just had to do this on my own and I couldn't use some work time to do it. So in this case, evolve IP that was at I was the most logical choice to, to get it on the team, but they needed a C C I on C C I E on staff in order to have some type of membership level that they needed with Cisco. So that was why they had skin in the. and they gave me I pretty much three months of my time there at evolve ip, I was pretty much on call. If anything real world came up real work came up. But otherwise I was, it was all my time to study for the C C I E, so to say it was six hours a day, five days a week was probably accurate. So that in itself was just so much time. And I did have a, a blog post that I put on the Cisco Learning Network that kind of highlighted my tips and tricks. But the big thing that helped with me is a shout out to I and E. They had the C C I E workbooks, which I think were probably the best training material that I had, but it was all stuff that I could. All lab related work. So I could go through these books and I could I had a virtual lab. It's kind of like the equivalent of what Eve is today. But that's not what it was called back then. But it was something better than GNS three to emulate network environments. And I used that and I went through every single page, every single lab of that workbook, which I think there's 2000 labs. It was something crazy. So I went through every one of those labs and then they had a, they had a video course that was called Advanced Technologies that was really good. I think that was like 130 hours. And then there was everyone had like a list of five books you have to read, T C P IP, volume one and two, like boil M P L S Design Technology. I P V six and there was some something else that I did. So I pretty much read five books, did two workbooks. I had I think about 2000 labs and 130 hours of video training. And then the final thing I did was it was called Cisco 360 then, but that was Cisco's ie lab training, but they had mock labs you could do full on like eight hour long mock labs. And I think there were six of'em. I did six of those. So in my eyes, I had taken the lab seven times, the six, the, the six times that I tried through Cisco and then the actual lab. So then when I went and actually took the exam, I actually thought the exam was easier than the, the Cisco Labs I was doing. Yeah, they, they, I thought they were harder and Yeah, I, I left the, the lab pretty, pretty confident they had passed and I was ex excited waiting for that email. Cuz one of the things that I mentioned in my blog post when I talked about it, which I don't think most people realize. I think people, there's a stigma about the C C I E lab and maybe it's different now, but even back then, there was a stigma that they tried to trick you and thing wording could be misinterpreted. But I thought that was all just ridiculous. I thought the lie was really straightforward, as in you really had to know your stuff. But the question would be like, set up NPLS VPNs. I mean, it, it'd be very clear cut what they wanted you to do. And one of the other things that the C C I E lab did was maybe. I can't remember if it was every question that you were asked to do, but certainly the majority of'em they would say, they would give you some way to validate that you're correct. So it would say like, once you're done you should have this output. This show command should have this output or you should be able to have reachability from this device to this device. So you can find out as you're going along like how well you're doing. Cuz you know the show output looks what it's supposed to or things can ping that you're expected to be able to ping. So yeah, either I could probably go into another hour of exactly what I went through, but that's kind of the gist of it.

Pat: 33:31

Yeah. And I remember, I remember you passing and you like calling me at some ungodly hour. Cause you got the email at some ungodly hour. I don't know what, I don't know what it was. The text was in Texas. Okay. Like

Alex: 33:41

texted four people at three 30 in the morning.

Pat: 33:44

I, that's it, that's what it was. I remember being in bed and all of a sudden the phone's going, boop. And I'm like, who in the f is texting me right now? And like, I, I just see her text. She's like, I passed, I passed. I'm like, oh my God. Like I couldn't wait. I couldn't wait to get to work the next morning to talk about it, man. It was so, man, it was so excited. That's, that's really cool.

Alex: 34:05

Yeah, my wife was happy. Cause you know, that was taking up so much of my life. And prior to the C C I U, I mean, I was doing, just seemed like I always had some cert that I was after. I was just, if it wasn't the na, it was the C M P. And then I went into security and data center tracks and yeah, just finally it felt like the culmination, like I, I didn't get another Cisco cert for a while after that. But yeah, that it was kind of a relief because then I kind of felt like I can kind of take a break from studying all the time and maybe focus on my job a bit more. So

Pat: 34:41

Nice. Yeah. Good deal. Yeah, I figured we'd throw that in there. Cause I, I don't know how many people really understand what kind of a game it is to, to do the C C I E and it really does take a village. Right. So, yeah, I know, I know your wife went down with, you drove down to, to to Raleigh things of that nature. So, and obviously you have, you had young kids at the time. They're not so young anymore cuz we're old, but

Alex: 35:03

teenagers? Yeah.

Pat: 35:05

Teenage. Yeah. So it's like, ah, man, like, having young kids and trying to be that dedicated. But I think I think that was big for Evolv to give you the, the time and, and and whatnot to, to focus. And I, I totally think that's that really puts you over the edge. So just wanted to highlight your story a little bit and it's, it's not an easy feat and it really takes a village and, your family has to be just as understanding of your, of the time commitment as, as you do when you take, the C C I E. So it's, it's definitely a big thing. I, I think, I don't, I don't think a lot of people realize that. I think a lot of people just realize it's another cert and Yeah, I'll study when I get to it, and blah, blah, blah. And, and it's like, no, you gotta keep on track and, and you gotta, know, you gotta meet date, dates and deadlines. Once it's scheduled, you really gotta get there or else you're, you're in trouble,

Alex: 35:49

Yeah. Yeah. And it's not like I came from Zero too. I mean, I was I was a senior network engineer at that point too, like the guy and still took a lot and yeah. Which is why, again, I can't let it expire. I can't imagine how pissed my wife would be if I told her I let that expire.

Pat: 36:10

So the question is, are you going for another one at any point?

Alex: 36:14

I told myself a while back once the DevNet stuff came up that I really should, and if there's any track that would make me do it, it's the DevNet track, but at this point I haven't even tackled the na, so I won't talk about that until I get that part.

Pat: 36:28

there you go. Good deal. Good enough. So, Or I should say, transitioning to some of the tech news that's out there or I should say, making some headlines in the last couple of weeks. We, a few weeks ago we talked about chat G P T and sort of the waves that was Macon in the AI space and the kind of craze that's going on with it now. And then of course couple weeks later Google comes out and says, we will not be outdone. So, Google Bard is the latest AI chatbot. Sort of, I guess it's a service. It's very similar to chatgpt. It's, it's gonna be a competitor obviously, to that. So figured AI is hot right now, and, and Google just announced their competition to it. So, take a few minutes and, and chat about that. So, I don't know, Alex, you wanna kind of give an idea of what like we talked about chatgpt and sort of what it's used for and, that kind of thing and and whatnot. I don't know. Do you have any kind of starting point from a Google Bard perspective?

Alex: 37:29

Well, when we talked about chatgpt, I think we talked of some of the advanced things that you could do with it and how it's kinda limitless in its potential. But I think what we should make clear to some people is it's what Microsoft is using for right now, which is the beta that people are using. It's really supposed to be like the evolution of. The search engine that was kind of like the most straightforward way people are gonna see this today. I mean, outside of being in tech and being a developer and people that can really utilize chatgpt and Google Bar to their full potential, think of it as an evolution to a search engine. So that's it's been pretty shocking the Microsoft Beta for Bing. How interested people have gotten into just Bing because they've introduced chatgpt as like a add-on to Bing. So, people are used to, they have a question, but they generally use search engines, not really to put in the questions, especially if it's pretty abstract, but they use it to put in a topic and then find the answer that they want based on the stuff that comes up. Now they're changing a search engine to, yeah, go ahead and ask me the question and. It could be very abstract, like, rather if you're, well going back to tech, if you're saying, I need to write code that does X, Y, z, you probably wouldn't expect a year ago to be able to type in how can I write a script that does this for me on this device? And if you did type it, you'd kind of expect, maybe you'd piece things together on three or four different websites and get to what you want. But now what Chat g p t is doing and what Google Bard's doing is it's actually knowing that's what your intent is. Going in doing all these from all these different, sites all over the world, and then actually coming back with a human readable answer that is exactly what you want. Like, the, the examples that I've seen just in the beta have been extraordinary and scary too. Cuz like I said, some of the examples are write a script that does this for me, using on this language that will work on this platform and it'll come back and say, all right, let me get this straight. This is chatgpt or Bing coming back. And it'll say, let me get this straight. I think this is what you're trying to do. I said, based on that, I think this code will do it. And then write, it'll write out the entire code. And then based on the output of the code, you can actually have it tweak things. You can say, oh yeah, that, that's close, but I don't want this done. I would rather it to be closer to this and it'll rework it. And yeah, having said all that the reason why that's important, why Google, I kind of think felt the need to say something in a hurry was it got people excited about. Which, there's kind of like an ongoing jokes where, who's ever said, let me go bing that, but

Pat: 40:25

That's right. Yeah. I'm, I'm interested to see where it goes, to be honest with you, because I don't, like I said, I, I don't use chatgpt a whole lot. Just cause I don't think about it, whatever. But. the Google Bard thing. I, from my understanding, Google Bard wasn't really ready to, for the prime time, or they weren't really ready to announce it, but they sort of had to, cuz chatgpt was so hot, like they had to announce it a little earlier and I think they've had some fumbles through that. So I think that is kind of, I would say weighing them down. But it definitely is a little bit of a black eye on Google's watch.

Alex: 41:01

Yeah. I mean, this is not something that you turn up in a week. So this has been in production for. Years. Yeah, given the success of Chat GBTs and Bing's beta people kind of felt like Google hurry up and rushed an announcement before Microsoft could get any more news press on it. And because of that, it seemed like a lackluster announcement where even if you're not in tech today, you take a just, just a vote of how many people have heard of Google Barr. And it, it's probably not nearly as many as you think should given the, its importance. Cuz of right now if Google Bard isn't successful, they're gonna lose a huge market share to Microsoft. And just the idea that Microsoft could potentially, because this is such a evolution in the. This game that the idea that Microsoft could be the de facto search engine seems just wild to think of like a year ago. But this legitimately could turn into, people will say, let me bing that

Pat: 42:07

Kyle,, are you using chatgpt or goo Google Bar for anything nowadays?

Kyle: 42:12

I haven't used Bard yet, just cuz I cannot, I I just haven't really, I, I've been using just chatgpt for everything.

Pat: 42:20

Yep.

Kyle: 42:21

I refuse to do it through Bing though. I go still through the website.

Pat: 42:24

That's funny.

Kyle: 42:25

yeah, I was, I was looking at the difference between him two. I guess Bard uses a different kind of artificial intelligence than chatgpt does, which I thought was kind of cool. Or Bard is based off the Lambda, I think is what it is, the language model for dialogue applications,

Pat: 42:45

yep.

Kyle: 42:46

which is cool as as opposed to, I forget what the g t stands for now.

Alex: 42:51

Yeah, I do too. I mean, eventually it won't, it, it won't be called Google Bard and chatgpt it'll just be probably, yeah,

Pat: 43:00

and chat

Alex: 43:02

it'll just the newest version of Google or you, that's what big Google search Engine or the Bing Will Just things will use chatgpt and Google Bard but you, they just, it won't be called that, like Yeah, they'll just, they'll utilize it to make other things much better.

Pat: 43:20

Yep. G P T stands for generative pre-trained transformer.

Kyle: 43:24

There we go.

Pat: 43:25

So for all you folks keeping score at home, that's what it

Kyle: 43:29

Did, did you find that on Bing

Pat: 43:31

for No I wish. No, that was like the old joke years ago where nobody used Internet Explorer. The only time you use Internet Explorer is to download Chrome. So it's like, it's the same it's the same

Alex: 43:43

The crew installer.

Pat: 43:46

that's it. You might as well call it a Chrome installer. It's basically it. No, it's the same thing here, but no, I, I think if, if Microsoft can get this right and Google sort of fumbles with it still, it just seems that there could be a shift in the tide, which is kind of weird cuz we've all literally been Googling for decades now. It seems like its like now it's weird. Googling is literally a verb, you know what I mean?

Alex: 44:12

Yeah. Who doesn't? I'll Google that. Yeah. I was

Pat: 44:15

That's right.

Alex: 44:16

some TV show the other day, just like some detective show, and they said the term, Google it twice. And and I was just, yeah, and I mean Google lens, which is also kind of, I was just somewhat in the same vein as AI with the idea of being able to scan a picture and then that can actually go out and then find what that actually is an image of and bring back resources. So I was using that the other day and then I just couldn't just how that's another AI thing, just like how impressive this technology has become. Cuz we were at a car show and we had two different instances. One was a very unique car and at Google ends it and it came up with the exact model. Like, oh yeah, this is a model, whatever car. And then my wife, we were on a walk and she noticed some pretty. and she wanted to know what type of tree it was. She took a picture of it, and then, yeah, Google lens could then, based on that, the metadata that's in these little parts of the tree or the picture of the tree could come up and say, oh yeah, this is this kind of tree. And that's, that's pretty wild too. And the, I think they're, I don't know if Samsung's implementing that yet, but that might be on phones coming up soon. So say you have a thousand pictures on your phone and you're trying to find a picture of a dog at the beach and you're circling through, you can actually type in dog in the beach and it will actually, based on that, could come up with images that it thinks is a dog and a beach.

Pat: 45:43

On a beach. Look at that. Look at that.

Alex: 45:46

So yeah. Technology's wild.

Pat: 45:48

it is crazy. I just I hope I'm dead before the Sky Net 2.0 comes around again,

Alex: 45:54

Well, that's another, that's, you bring that up. That's another thing that was tech news here, because I. That former Google engineer was making a highlight or headline news cuz he kept saying that Google's bard was sentient, like

Pat: 46:11

Yeah.

Alex: 46:13

He's, he's claiming that they've made true self-aware artificial intelligence,

Pat: 46:18

It's crazy. This is crazy.

Alex: 46:21

So, I mean, Google's trying to write it off like he's nuts. But he did make some headlines like,

Pat: 46:29

Yeah. That's interesting. I, I'm, I'm interested to see where this goes. The other thing, and, and I'll, I'll say this in full disclosure, but I am an Android guy all the way through. I've never been a Mac or an iPhone or an Apple guy, is just kind of where I've fallen along the battle lines. But it, it, it's just the one frustration I do have with Google is it drop. Projects so quickly. It just seems that's like frustrating to the end user of like, look like you had so many cool ideas and so many things, and then all of a sudden it just literally cuz goes off the face of the earth and you're like, man, really should have stuck with that. I like that. That kind of thing. So like, like for example, this was forever ago. I wanna say at least a good 10 years maybe, maybe almost 15. But they had Google Wave, which was basically slack before Slack was a thing, right? They had, it was called Google Wave. And then, we were, I was using it, I thought it was cool, blah, blah, blah, and then all of a sudden it was gone. And I was like, where did you go? That was freaking awesome. And they just never had any sort of, kind of steam behind that. But the, the, the messages is another thing. Text messages, right? So I think Kyle, you and I talked about this a few weeks ago. Like, they had hangouts for a while and then it was messages and then it was

Kyle: 47:42

They had

Pat: 47:43

Aloe, and there was like a whole bunch of'em, like, like literally, that's the thing I give credit to Apple for like, they've literally had standardization and development over their stuff over the last however many, years that they've had a thing and it's like they, you know what it is, but like Google, it feels like sh changes like almost every day. And it's just like, I hope this Google Bard thing doesn't sort of go the same way of the lost bin of projects that Google just never seems to, sort of put behind.

Alex: 48:13

I think that was one of Steve Jobs quotes which probably should Google or bing the quote

Pat: 48:18

Let me bang that. Hold on. I'll be right back.

Alex: 48:21

he had, so, Steve Jobs said something about focus and saying that focus isn't saying yes to the things that you need to do, but I guess in a large company, like an Apple or Google, it's saying no to a thousand really good ideas, so you can focus on two or three and see them to completion

Pat: 48:40

Yep. Yeah, I would agree. I

Alex: 48:42

still doing the thousand ideas and then eventually just, oh, we can't do it anymore.

Pat: 48:47

so frustrating. It's just like, oh man. Like, it's some really good stuff and then all of a sudden it just is not there anymore. And you're like, man, this it's hard to get any traction. It's like, man, but then it's like, goo Google. Yeah. Google's like my dealer, like, I just can't quit it. Like, you wanna walk away so bad. I'm just like, I can't quit. You And you're just so wrapped up in ecosystem that you just have no, like, I, I can't start over. This is insane. And they, and the problem is they know that. So it's like, like, it's just, there's no incentive. I, I don't know. It's just annoying. Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. I'll get off my soapbox now. now. But I'm, I'm really interested to see what The, the Google Bard stuff does. And like I said, I think they went off to a little rocky start. I think they were a little they kind of jumped the gun a little bit. They had to sort of put something out in, in competition with chat G P T and it just wasn't quite ready yet. It just they had some, they had some issues with I guess they had some knowledge that was wrong in the demo. Like, I think somebody asked it a question about the James Webb telescope and, and it got like a wrong answer or whatever. So I think there's some, some don't wanna say lackluster, but there's not a whole lot of confidence, in that. So they've had a rocky start, but you know, it's Google. They're, they're gonna get there. There's, it's just a matter of time it's just what they do. So I'm really interested to see where that, where that sort of goes.

Alex: 50:15

Yep. Yeah, I'm interesting. Yeah, I think that was actually the one of the things that Google says it's trying to do better than chatgpt, is when things are objective and opinionated, I guess chatgpt, for whatever reason, whatever its algorithm is using, it tends to. One opinion and then state it as fact, which is, could be. And the example that Google gave was if you asked chat g p t, what's easier to learn, the piano or the guitar? Like it, it would pick one and then justify it as opposed to Google, which will say that it awarded in a way to make you say, well, some people think that the guitar is easier because of this reasons, and people think piano is better for this reason. And because of that they think it's less likely to miss not misinformed people. Where right now that's chat GPTs, what they claim is they're, one of their biggest flaws is just the idea of stating things as fact. Based on whatever algorithm it used when it's maybe not quite fact,

Pat: 51:21

Yeah, I'm interested to see what that looks like too, right? Because it's, in this world of just information that just swims out there it'll be interesting to see what sort of what sort of way things lean. Cuz we all know the tech, the tech industry has over the last couple of years sort of swayed various opinions and, been caught doing some, some weird stuff. But I'm interested to see what that. Where, where that sort of lies. But you know, whether it is an opinion and they're just justifying that, or if it's, if there's other pieces to that. If they take five opinions and kind of shove'em together and kind of give you all a, a piece of all of them, or, I don't know that, that, that'll be an interesting piece to see where that goes in the next couple of years. So,

Alex: 52:11

Yeah, definitely a topic we'll revisit in six months, a year from now.

Pat: 52:18

That's it. Kyle. Anything else? You got any skin in the game here?

Kyle: 52:22

No. Now I'm just reading about the Barden stuff. Deep dive.

Pat: 52:27

That's it. Mind blown. Oh my God.

Kyle: 52:31

Yeah. Once they

Pat: 52:32

script.

Kyle: 52:33

yeah, once, once they get everybody going in the same direction, I think this is really gonna be probably pretty awesome.

Alex: 52:40

Oh yeah, it'll transform things. Yeah, just like Google did. I mean, just the idea of how you're so much more confident that you can do your job cuz you know, you, you got Google as a, an option to help you figure it out. This is just gonna be the next step where, people can do, do so much more.

Pat: 53:00

that's it. And I feel like I feel like it guys are just better at Googling things than other people. Maybe that's where we're at in our careers. There's just,

Alex: 53:08

And then you just, yeah, we, where people joked about how I'm really good at Googling on resumes now people are gonna joke about, I can chatgpt t, like a beast. I mean,

Pat: 53:17

That's it. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I'm gonna work on that. That's it. I think that's it. Phils, anything else? Any other points you wanna throw out here? We're right around the hour mark and trying to get outta people's hair, but anything else you wanted to touch upon in the the tech news that we got going on?

Alex: 53:33

No, we're good. An hour's. Good time.

Kyle: 53:36

Yeah.

Pat: 53:36

good to me. Kyle, you good?

Kyle: 53:38

Yeah. I'm good.

Pat: 53:39

Good to go. All right, buddy. Well, we appreciate you obviously joining us here this week on the podcast, breaking Down a Bites. Make sure you visit our website, breaking Bites pod.io, where you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast or Spotify or Stitcher or Google Podcast wherever. Or if you need just an RSS feed. We have one there as well, so you never miss the show. Throw us some rating on Apple Podcasts. That would be awesome. That fools with the algorithms and I don't know, maybe they use AI too. I don't know what goes on over there, give us a rating that plays with the algorithms and the whole deal and get some more people more eyes on the show and in people's ears. So that's always the, the goal here. And simply tell a friend about us as well, that works just as well. Be sure to follow us on socials, right, Twitter, LinkedIn Facebook it's a Discord server out there for us. So, invites in the show notes and all the links for the for our socials are in the show notes as well. So we sell the survey out there. The uh, Feedback survey, or I should say the listener survey just like nine or 10 questions. It's completely anonymous. We don't know who you are just aggregates answers for us and just tells us where we need to improve the show and what you're looking for versus what we're giving you. So, the more people will fill out that survey, the better the show gets, and topics and, kind of what you wanna see. So, that, that's super, super important. So again, all that stuff is in the show notes, links for all that stuff. So feel free to head over there and do your part. And I think that's it. Okay guys appreciate you joining and we'll see you everybody next week.

Kyle: 55:11

So long.