Ep 58 – Wheezy!

This week we talk to Luis, better known as NetSecWheezy! Luis shares his journey with us on how he went from slinging ice cream to Network Engineering! He’s had an exciting career so far and made some risky, yet rewarding moves. Wheezy is also one of the most active members of our Discord community, he is always pushing people to be and do their best, and he’s usually the first to congratulate someone when they post in #winning. He even shares some super exciting #winning news of his own, but you have to listen to hear it!

You can find Luis:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NetSecWheezy
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-garcia-jr-87243a147/

This episode has been sponsored by Meter. 

Go to meter.com/aone to book a demo now! 

Transcript

this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information that will expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers hello folks and thank you for flying a1 airlines this is your captain speaking ha take that aj look at me i am the captain now anyway we hope to be right on our way here shortly but we do have to stay on the tarmac for just a bit there's a nasty broadcast storm blowing through on account of that redundant lane not getting blocked as it should despite my many efforts to get the airport to implement rapid spanning runways we still have to deal with stuff like this of course i'm not one to say i told you so we just have to wait it out a couple four delay timers and we'll be off once in the air we'll be by with the carts for refreshments and some of those packet peanuts you all love so much also once in the air we've got an exciting in-flight show called the art of network engineering enjoy finally an airline i want to fly on thanks tyler well you own it so you know dan always talks about lambo money but if we can get an airplane you kidding me is that what that's called i don't know definitely not cessna money anyway i am aj murray at no blinky blinky he is tim burtino at timber tino tim how you doing i'm in my bedroom i like it i've moved up from the basement i'm in my bedroom it might be temporary more to come on it might did be happen in the basement no questions please don't ask don't tell andy how are you doing he is at andy laptop andy i'm good yeah aj yeah yeah i'm also at permit andyandy.com well i was gonna let you kind of talk about what you've been up to lately you know that's what i've been up to lately yeah eight or nine months after our personal branding episode he finally got around to personally i finally got around to publishing a website and now i know i haven't done it in all this time because it's a goddamn pain in the ass right right i mean i spent two hours trying to change the color of a font last night so that's what i've been up to oh my gosh yeah that might be too long i don't know i can't tell i really wanted it to be green to match your your other colors yeah i can see that well i'm going to have to head on over to permit ipndandy.com and check it out i know you sent some links over in our group chat earlier but i have not had a chance to check it out i've been a little busy you have been a little busy but thanks aj i'm doing good excellent excellent dan dan how you doing at howdy packet howdy dan howdy i'm doing good yourself i'm doing well doing well how's your uh how's your back and knees feeling fine just fine yeah i might be old but my back and knees are just fine i had my knee pads on there you go hang on the listeners might need some context now let's just leave it right there that's fine i guess no none of us are telling secrets this evening uh no i'm i'm about halfway through the kitchen remodel uh we did demo yesterday um there's a well there was a peninsula in my kitchen and it it went all the way there's apparently a couple of different floors there's been a few remodels in my kitchen and it went all the way to like the original floor of the house and some lovely construction worker thought it best to build this particular peninsula with two by fours uh it was framed like a house on its own and um on one side they had nailed the two by four to the wall into a stud mind you with six nails it took a whole lot to get that off the wall oh you big baby no it was good it was good i got uh got a couple of contractors coming by tomorrow uh to to do some plumbing and some electrical and then i have a crew of friends coming over on saturday to help hang some cabinets put in the sink do a whole bunch of stuff and we'll get this project wrapped up this weekend so i'm pretty excited i have a question i've heard of an island in a kitchen so is a peninsula like a table that comes out from the wall yeah it's attached to what the peninsula is yeah all right so like a little breakfast nook or like is that where you like what were you doing with your peninsula it was a very custom thing and it was like falling apart uh so we took it out but we are replacing it we're putting in uh some cabinetry and uh putting in a bunch of block top you're putting in more counter space because no matter what i never have enough counter space no no we're not doing anything major to the kitchen we didn't like move anything around it's just gonna be a complete refresh the cabinets that were in there were like from the late 70s early 80s uh so we're just freshening everything up awesome man yeah i'm pretty excited excellent well glad everybody's doing well uh let's jump into some wins andy can i get a goat scream you know it i am so excited uh first on the winning list tonight is one of our very own patreons in the chat and it's like 1 30 almost 2 o'clock in the morning adil khan passed the jnc is enterprise congratulations that's huge uh steel network past the az 900. that was very nice very nice azure baby cloud uh drew 5280 got a great job offer and is finally getting out of a toxic work environment oh you can't beat that you can't beat that congratulations uh i'm excited about this one uh myself and tim mcconaughey are going to be working together yeah yeah we just found out that uh we've both been assigned to work on the same project uh we're going to be doing some cisco sd-wan and uh cisco's helping us with the design and the initial implementation and then we're going to take it over from there and uh yeah tim hit me up on the side today he's like hey don't you work for red river i'm like yeah yeah i do he's like i'm going to be working with you guys i'm like yeah that's amazing small world small world i love it that's awesome man very exciting uh and corey freed passed and completed his comptia a plus so the the first time around when we saw him wearing that a1 uh shirt he had passed uh part one then he went and did some more studying and today he smashed part two and completed his a plus exam so congratulations corey nice nice good job and we got some new patreons in the house please welcome nick thank you so much nick for your support of the art of network engineering podcast and all that we do here we do appreciate it and we appreciate all of our patreons thank you so much hi patreons i know you're watching thanks for all your support we couldn't do all of this without you all right let's bookend that section thanks andy i forgot my goat in the basement hey wait actually i think you guys skipped one of the wins oh yeah i read all the wins on my list too late push it the next week oh well i wanted to throw one i went on my own so i just wanted to announce that i've accepted a position with cdw i'll be an associate consultant network security i didn't put it in there because i want to save it for the show yeah welcome to the show and you yes the infamous weezy coming to your local toy box soon dude that's so huge yeah did you say the title was i'm going to be an associate consultant for network security and then after about 18 months i'll be promoted to consultant all right is this going to be regional are you going to be covering all over the place uh i think it'll be regional i'm on west coast and arizona so it should be regional fantastic we need another good screen for that one dan just wanted to catch andy when he wasn't ready so he could say he wasn't ready but he was quick still yeah they might ask me i gotta i just well it was as simple as moving it from behind me to in front of me excellent uh luis welcome to the show thank you so much for joining us um i i'm so excited to have you i've been talking to you since uh i think before we started doing this podcast and it has been amazing to watch you kind of go through everything that you've gone through in this past year and i don't want to blow anything right now let's let's just talk about it though uh so you're going to cdw um when are you making that transition so my last week and my current job is the 27th and i'll be starting on august 30th all right and so what are you doing currently uh currently i'm a network and security administrator for a local municipality i handle the networking of security uh just working on different projects resigning not the network we have here anything security uh they've implemented you know crowdstrike different firewalls palo alto it's anything security that we have it's a response i'm responsible for that i really love it uh always something new and challenged that's a i think cdo is going to bring me a lot of challenges a lot of opportunities how did you find security as a passion i think i started when i was about eight years old uh why i don't i didn't really know context was i think computers existed when you were here okay uh so yeah i was five years old and i just got into computers i did a dns uh poisoning attack i didn't know what that was the time right but there was when you were yeah i was i was just messing with the host file and i found it interesting i mean at the time i didn't know what i was doing but if only funny how like my parents would go to youtube or they would go to msn it would redirect and they would kind of what's going on what's going on so that's good question is what did you send them to that is a valid question uh nothing malicious that's how i started them all right so we're a bunch of nerds how do you poison dns i have no idea i mean i know what dns does and i guess you could hack it but is that a hard thing to do um i mean it is now like with the big companies like dying dying dns you know with big providers at the time i was doing something small just a local computer so it was just basically editing the host file uh so in the computer you can just break its dns yeah pretty much well if you remember dns lookup process the first thing your machine will check is your local host file and so if you wanted to really mess with somebody you could go redirect you know youtube.com to an ip address for a different website and they'll never you know probably never figure it out because nobody really messes with the host file these days yeah wheezy this is one of the reasons i have imposter syndrome i didn't even know there was a host file for dns moving on so there you go there you go danny you were trying to ask a question and i stepped on you oh no you're good i was basically wanting to get to where he how he got to the job that he's at now because it was kind of a crazy move for you wouldn't it it was oh yeah quick all right quite crazy uh do you want to start the beginning or first well yeah we we went you're in security now and then we went to eight now we're back to what's going on here guys yeah it's almost where should we start here let's let's go back to you know how did you get interested in tech was that the moment there when you were eight is that when you kind of knew like you wanted to do something in tech um originally no i'm gonna be honest i want to be a doctor i actually had like a dream when i was growing up to be a doctor go to the university of miami uh but i i was interested in tech but i always wanted to be a doctor you know it's very prestigious i'm very interested in science and then i'd say my perspective shift shifted when i was about october 13 to okay i teach what i want to do i would look up you know anonymous and all these things and it was fascinating to me not that i want to join them but it was just fascinating that that was the impossible white hat but i don't know how much money they bring down it might be tempting yeah so it's just that's always the right thing i guess you were you were 12 or 13 and kind of just started to get a hankering for for tech yeah i would be you know in high school i was getting to always reading the teacher would be talking you know i'm like ah that's not important to me look up the new exploit or the new attack this happened you know wow so security grabbed you right away huh yeah really definitely definitely security i i didn't really think about networking and that's one of my big passions now but it didn't like come across like how does this connect to this you know i just kind of figured it wasn't i was gonna ask you that when we first started because do you have to learn one to know the other like how can you practice network security if you don't know networking right or security just its own thing that has nothing to do with networking no i definitely think that networking fundamentals you gotta you gotta know that before you jump into security you can't protect what you don't understand yeah yeah that's a good point yeah that's a great way to put it and i think you can apply that to like any you know kind of security right like if you're going to secure windows devices or linux devices like you got to know it i mean there's there's certain i think generic things that you know come around to to security like secure passwords well how do i apply secure passwords to those systems and there's various ways to do it so yeah well put well put so in your high school do they have a lot of tech programs uh actually no no um so the semester before i started in my high school they had the cisco academy and that same year they removed it because there was not enough participation uh there was another high school uh that had it but i didn't know what to school was at the time uh it was morning security uh and graphic design took a lot of classes on that and i guess networking didn't really come come across for me or you know become more visible to me until i got to college uh then i started a cyber security degree with chat networking in it and that's when i found cisco so so what were you doing with security when you were like 12 to college like were you were you hacking was it a hobby was it just like you were interested in you're reading the articles what's happening i was i was messing around with catalinx a little bit uh virtual machines nothing too serious just a curious little child you know i'm shaking my head here because i'm i'm having flashbacks wondering what the hell i was doing in high school because i don't think it was the right thing you and me both tim so did you go straight into college you knew in high school you want to go to college you wanted to get into cyber security so you went to college right after high school yeah i started originally it was like a class just to get my general or basic courses and actually ask the advisor there if do you have cybersecurity and they told me no that we don't offer that here and i'll say okay well i'll do computer science you know everybody's favorite i.t degree computer science and then eventually i was going to register for another semester and i saw this big table it said cyber security so i said yeah interesting i talked to the person there and they told me oh yeah we've had this program for about four years now so i started from scratch to get the cybersecurity degree was this is the school they told you they didn't have a cybersecurity program yes they got bad info yeah it's okay it was worth it in the intestine yeah yeah so yeah you went to college uh how long before you uh were able to secure a job in in it were you really get one like right away because you had the college degree or did take some time yeah no i think i had an offer um december before i graduated but then i didn't have i didn't have the math course needed so i wasn't able to finish my associates but once i did they called me maybe about two months later to start nice yeah as a contractor what kind of job was that i was a microcomputer specialist which basically was uh help desk but i was doing networking doing security was doing anything they needed basically it was on me running cable um anything active directory how long have you done that for uh so that was about three years i'd say okay did you do any internships in college oh yeah that's how i originally got the offer uh towards the end of my college degree i did an internship then i stopped because i was continuing to go to school to finish that math class and i was actually getting ice cream at the time at a baseball game with my little card walking around and uh somebody who that was working at the place today when she got the offer saw me was the cop camera not showing up anymore let's go i've been in school i'm trying to finish my degree i'm like oh give me a call and so they gave me their number so you went from slaying ice cream to that to it yeah actually classic right place right time yeah so i think ice cream in the 100 degree heat where i used to live it was interesting this whole story up to now was we're all in south texas right yeah i'm in celtics at the time okay yeah gotcha gotcha so what i don't want to jump ahead but like you were in south texas and then now you're in arizona yeah all right i assume at some point we'll get to why you decided to move um so you you were slinging ice cream you got this guy's number you give him a call obviously you got the job how long were you there and and then what was the next hop so i was initially offered a contractor position i think i was there about seven months and it was constantly oh yeah we're running out of money uh i guess that's one of my biggest fears being a contractor that uh it's like last week and that's it but they were able to extend me extend me and eventually i got a full-time offer yeah so i was working with somebody else's magical health department of 300 users at the time and then i got the full-time offer and that was to uh cover the wic program i don't know if you guys are familiar with that yeah so i was the first i.t person for that department uh that was 17 offices two were remote uh there were vans and then i think there was eight that were out of town and seven were local so that was all me so walk us through that that contractor experience uh throughout that were you when you had that contract and you knew it was going to end at some point were you constantly looking for a job or did you have a feeling they were gonna extend you and you just held tight no i definitely was looking out uh looking for other opportunities i remember i would go to uh like there's a lot of local computer places here uh where i lived before obviously you don't know there anymore but so i was always taking my resume i was you know walking and trying to be like hey you know if there's any opportunities you guys can give me i'd really appreciate it i'm up and coming in the ait world i work my butt off whatever you need to do and uh actually i did get a call um for one of those positions but they had kind of already told me they were gonna keep me on where i was at so i had to turn it down yeah that's interesting i've i've not done um contract work i mean i have done contract work while i'm full-time employed obviously they don't conflict with each other but um i i have not done contract as like my only source of income and so to me that's just like wow yeah i mean i'm sure like it's younger it's it's a little bit more you know risky but you have a lot less to risk but you know i don't know that i could have the stomach for doing contract work at this point in my life i did it with a wife a baby and a mortgage it was scary oh thank you sure it was a very stressful couple of years and you always feel like you're proving yourself i don't know how it was for you luis but you know every day you're trying to like show them that you're worth bringing on full time right okay i'm here early i'm working late you can give me anything like it's i don't know yeah that's something i felt i was always every day try to do something better or try to accomplish something not have to have them see oh yeah this guy's worth keeping on and i guess it was did it offer me a position it's like an audition every day right how long did you do that i think about eight months okay not terrible right and then they just brought you on they said hey we love you you're the man let's bring you on full time yeah i was originally working um in the it was another city that i worked in so i was working all the health department where i was at and then when i got the full-time offers for the wic department which uh just 17 sites like i said a lot of them were out of town so it was me going out of town a lot driving three hours away for hours away trying to shoot some issues come back some long days that was your that was your first real gig out of college right this place that you were in for a couple years yes so what enticed you to leave the place that gave you your shot in the industry uh so i just felt like i was going to be able to move up but i was working on my ccna at the time i got the icmd1 and then about a month after i actually two weeks after i left i got the ic d2 so i finished my ccna nice so you had mentioned up to this point that you were pretty focused on security and now you say that you feel like you need to have a strong networking background when did you start getting pushed or pushed yourself into wanting to learn networking getting into cisco that kind of thing so my freshman well not my freshman year but i guess the first year that i started my cybersecurity degree there was a cisco one course and i walked in thinking you know oh i'll just study this network plus book it'll be easy not too worried about it you know and i quickly got humbled quickly like that yeah i could i could definitely say that i loved what i was doing in college but after that first semester i feel like that big imposter syndrome you know it's uh not going to work out but i i kind of pushed through that so i'm glad i did yeah definitely nice and so um you got your ccna how many attempts did it take you to land that one one what wait a minute did you break it up into two or did you take the composition i broke it up in the two only because uh you took two exams bro yeah but if it was one attempt each time i wish i did what you did i took the composite and failed over and over and over again i i really should have broken it up did you did you feel that the the exam was was a fair representation like because when i took the composite it was just too much material all jammed in to one it was too the breath was just too wide like did you feel like the icnd one and two were manageable the amount of material you had to know yeah it was a lot i'd say but definitely yeah it's still a ton right yeah i i think to actually take dancing you want i had to drive about six hours uh that wasn't testing there was no testing centers near here uh so so you had to pass basically or come back yeah yeah so oh my goodness did you imagine a six-hour drive home if you failed an exam oh yeah yeah it was i actually went uh it was like for two reasons basically that i went to houston decided to take the smd one uh my brother and one of my best friends were actually going to concert there so i was like well i'll just kill two two birds in one stone you know so took him out there to houston um where it was it was brutal online like i just almost said i have to pass this or i'm i'm coming back again and i didn't want to do that yeah it was how long did you study for it uh two months maybe wow that's crazy i used to like this guy i didn't like him when he told me he was doing dns poisoning at eight yeah yeah but it was it was a journey to even get started starting i mean study started studying because i bought the book maybe about 10 months before i started studying i just kept there kept it there and then wait you were a computer science major do you take networking i failed at computer science so you got to let me in on you know the scoop here do you take networking in computer science uh so i didn't finish or i didn't finish the computer science degree because then i got shown that there was cybersecurity degree there actually was computer science security yeah okay so there wasn't much networking in there i guess right like it's very minimal uh for the computer science yeah but for the cyber security i took four ccna courses um that was one of the toughest college courses i've ever taken yeah i remember being there like sometimes 10 hours a day because i couldn't figure out this lab couldn't figure out why the osps neighbors won four aminos so i would just stay there it was crazy so so to be fair andy he was studying for the ccna for a while just once when he says two months what's he showing off for the patreon once he got the book he zoomed right through it yeah i studied for two weeks and got it so we dig a little deeper while i was in school for 19 months for the ccna i'm just trying to get you to left louise so i don't know if we ever got there why did you leave the micro computer did you get your ccna imbalance for more money or why did you move on i just said you hit a glass ceiling like yeah yeah that's that's what happened i was the only one that had the ccna or even icd-1 uh i was trying to move to the networking positions and this wasn't working out so i decided it wasn't going to happen yeah so how did you know for people listening who i've been in that position right like i worked at a knock and i was never going to get to that next level i wanted to get to and for me they basically told me bro you're never going to go anywhere here but how did you know where you were that like were you applying and getting turned down or you just saw it in the culture like how do you look around and decide it's time to move you know yeah i i was talking to the networking people and talking to the manager there and i'd be like yo please i'm trying to get in i'm going for a ccna i was kind of like oh yeah give us like a couple of months and just never ever happened it was kind of just always and when i that's when i left when i left they're like oh yeah don't worry we're gonna position three and i'm like sorry that's what they always do right they're not funny you're on your way out the door like oh wait i think i might have found a position for you yeah unless you're on a macho they don't actually do that and that next job was was what what were you doing so from there i went to uh become a stock analyst so i was working together out security operations center um tier one fully remote all right you got to tell me what a sock is yeah i've heard of them i know we have them i want to hear some stories here is that a knock for security yeah is that yeah that's a good description not for security i thought it was a thing to put on your monitoring like i used to i used to watch spectrum first alarms like what do you monitor in security uh so where i was at we had a couple customers pretty big customers that we were just monitoring their network we had different tools in there like splunk i don't know if you guys were to splunk and uh yeah crowdstrike carbon black we basically fed all that data into some splunk dashboards and we were monitoring that and then we'd actively go into the customer environments and try to do threat hunting to find different uh it was pretty good are you looking for attacks are you pen testing are you doing all that you're looking for vulnerabilities like you're proactively looking for vulnerabilities as well as looking for people coming in hitting from external right okay active maybe even some customer or actors that were still in the environment which we did find uh sometimes what did you find uh actual actors in the environments uh like like internal employees doing stuff oh external external courses okay yeah how do you so all the tools like i've heard of crowdstrike but i don't know what it is like so all these dashboards you're looking at will alert you to like hey there's something funny here like we yeah like forensics type stuff it knows what patterns to look for when somebody's doing weird stuff like file transfers middle of the night that are strange yeah it kind of analyzes like uh the hosts and activities and it'll kind of say okay well this looks kind of weird uh let me out of the ordinary stuff so it sounds like a big dashboard i'm not sure he's sitting in the mock where he has different panels and and therefore you kind of you can kind of thread hunt and look into the environment see something's weird like i remember one time we found a uh a customer that one of their employees was going to this weird side and we did some investigation and it's known that that site was infected with a javascript card uh steeler that was skimming the cards from that website yeah so we reached out to that site we kind of told them hey like we're working for this company uh we just want to let you know we found this on your site if we could just get it removed or taken care of of course you never hear back from those companies you just kind of have to hope that you know they did something yeah so did you did you have a routine did you have a day-to-day down or was every day just kind of new kind of an adventure so i actually started this soccer as an intern i kind of gambled on myself i was working a nice government cushy job you know and uh working i went to an internship for this company same kind of process i was an intern and then i ended up being offered a full-time position so as far as routine i'm sort no so you left a full-time job for an internship okay but it was because it was a really good opportunity yeah security and right yeah basically okay i want to kind of get some security under my belt uh experience so i took a risk see i i have so much respect for people like you luis that that do that that have that foresight and and the willingness to know that in order to get a step up in the direction that i want i may need to take a step down first yeah because that's right that can't be easy to come to that decision and do oh no definitely i had some couple days thinking about it and pros and cons and talked about it with my girlfriend and we kind of decided that it was going to be the best opportunity for me which is paid dividends uh and i have the job now i have just because of those experiences that i had at the stock so and that takes some foresight and wisdom too right to be able to like see far down the road and say like okay well you know like you said tim i'm gonna have to maybe take a cud and you know i went from full-time to internship and even your ego you know it's a blow like great i'm an intern again you know but you had that you had that foresight right and that wisdom to be like all right like have has your career had a direction have you known where you want to go and that's a hell of a move you made right there i think that's a big like a big decision you made in your life like did you was this a master plan did you know what you were doing uh i didn't have a master plan i just kind of saw you know what i wanted to do which getting to networking getting security and i know security is like a huge huge thing right now so i figured might as well get some security experience under my belt maybe down the line get higher payer high-paying jobs more experience you know higher tier jobs so that was my goal basically just to kind of figure out or get some more experience in my blog because at the time i was doing a lot of help desk stuff you know not really much security i mean i was doing security but it wasn't as in-depth as what i was doing when i moved or left uh what's this show when somebody says security i think firewalls do you touch firewalls or is this a completely different now i do uh now i do touch firewalls but at the previous job i didn't really touch firewalls like it was like working at a sock you're not you know yeah managing firewalls right it's a completely different deal not really um i didn't really touch firewalls so we got a lot of live data from the palo altos from the asas yeah yeah but it wasn't really oh they can figure this role at this rule you know make this change right you're not managing policies yeah okay yeah i go back to the foresight thing like i'm lucky enough if i wake up tomorrow morning and remember how to put pants so so luis uh you brought up splunk and i seem to recall a while ago there was uh some news in winning one day that you passed a splunk certification exam and you did it right after some uh dental procedures can we go back and revisit that i forgot about that how can you forget about that i know so that actually was my second attempt at that splunk exam but i scheduled it like i know i had the root canal today but i'm going to do it i told myself it's put in my mindset or my mind that i'm going to do this today so i took the risk i got a root canal my face was still known i could feel you drooling all over the keyboard don't worry guys i got this yeah you probably thought you were drunk when you went up to the testing center like sir can i have your life yeah poor guy wow so he had a root canal and then you took a certification exam yeah i wasn't gonna let it beat me uh i just felt like i had to pass the exam so hang on there's not letting something beat you and then there's doing what you did i'd say that's a little bit different i do have a real question though was was the splunk uh certification that exam was that something that you wanted on your own or was that something that your employer wanted you to do no they they were a splunk partner so they pushed me to get it okay uh but i mean it was i kind of a both uh both ways you know i saw it was huge industry and i was like i want to do that so i told them you know as soon as you can or just let me take it and i failed the first time i'm not gonna lie uh but like i said i wasn't gonna beat me i never felt the exam at that point but i told myself like i'm not gonna let it beat me and i had never failed an exam at that point yeah that's at the company no i mean i'm you know i'm just jealous of people like you who you remind me of taylor like you know taylor was in diapers like doing calculus and then he you know like installing this exercise instead of playing with song horses like most kids yeah right i mean it's genuine like envy that you know people like you exist and and can do that like tim i half the time i don't know where my pants are we're never together when that happens you had you had what sounds like a pretty cool job uh working in the sock you were remote so you know you were kind of in your own domain i'm sure it was at least somewhat comfortable what drove you away from that uh so the reason i left was because i actually lived in texas at the time my girlfriend lived in arizona so i ended up getting a driver right where she lived in the city of small town too uh i ended up getting this position i'm at now it was so lovely love is what caused the last job change that and they told me oh yeah like we we don't have authorization for you to work in arizona so that was another thing that kind of pushed me out oh the job yeah because the stock position is fully remote so in theory you could have moved but apparently they didn't allow that yeah and i got a nice paypal i'm just going to work though hey there you go hold on why would it matter where you're sitting in a remote position that i don't understand why would they care where you are it has to do with the paperwork because actually no it wasn't paperwork they can't change your address in hr is that the problem no i that's what they explained to me that they had like the wrong paperwork for they only had authorization like for paperwork in texas utah colorado california maybe security stuff i don't understand but you got you got a pay bump but before we get to your job that you're at now you're you're my splunk expert now so congratulations so i used to use splunk a lot in the knock and all i would do is put like source and destin and get what i needed right or like you know i could put a device name in and it would just give me logs like it was very easy and the wonderful place i'm at now you have to use all these indexes oh yeah what the hell is a splunk index and why can't i just put a device name in splunk now like well yeah i just i don't understand why i have to put this string of stuff in before the thing i need to get it to tell me like and if you don't know we can edit this out and we'll skip it i don't understand splunk hang on i'm just waiting for a dan joke real quick is that an easy thing to explain wheezy like what is the splunk index or is this just we're moving on here i'm a little rusty i'm not alive but when uh whatever let him get another root canal first that'll jog his memory yeah but from what i understood it was kind of everything had a separate like a place where it was stored like palo alto like like pan logs that wasn't index everything had a little separate jar i guess you could say that it was contained in that yeah yeah okay so the data is kind of segmented by containers does that make sense if i'm looking if i'm looking for a pallow thing i have to put like something something firewall equals yeah so it okay so it tells splunk where the logical all right thank you yeah because i think you're using the wildcard which is asterisk it searches everything and that just slows down someone yeah okay all right so it's all separated logically it's super hard to read if you just send all that information and you have it indexed right okay gotcha thank you i learned something yay so you moved for love and for a pay bump and because the company couldn't figure out how to change your address on a form pretty much i moved in the middle of it too so that was interesting oh wow that's right you drove you drove your vehicle from from texas i remember talking to you about that because i couldn't fathom how big texas was and you like drove all day one day and you're like i'm still in texas and i was like two weeks later nope still here getting close to the border did you have a lot of crap to move did you have like a like a moving truck or uh no i just took my truck i have a f-150 so it was 20 hours whatever you needed yeah whatever you needed you could fit in the truck and you were good basically i'm not a very materialistic person on a lot of things let's say oh are you one of those minimalists no not really i mean i have like a lamp and like a desk in your place and that's it you have like two you have like two glasses for drinking water you and your girlfriend split like minimalism right it's a thing all right so you don't have a lot of crap that's good and you 20 hours something drive that's that's that's amazing yeah it's like aj said it was 10 hours just to get out of texas and then 10 hours across new mexico and arizona is your girlfriend watching right now yeah hey that's cool she's one of my biggest supporters so ah that's nice you need we've we've talked about that before right like you need a support system i think to succeed absolutely and career paths like this right we're almost always studying and like it just you know i i have like friends and family who are like doctors like you mentioned medicine earlier louise right like you go to medical school you bust your butt you do all that stuff and then you just got a job and you're chilling and you know what you need to know and they do they do ce but it's not much like it's it's kind of nonsense they're continuing education it's not like us where like every three or four years everything changes and you got to learn you know yeah new stuff so that's great having that support system man that's that's everything i think andy just said we're superior to doctors well no but what what attracted me to this career path is now what really gets on my nerves about this career that grinds my gears yeah i was just going to say welcome to the andy grant section no no well daniel technica said it best right like he had his best friend was a plumber and he was trying to explain to his friend what it was like to work in i.t yeah and he told his plumber friend well think about like if gravity changed every three years and you had to relearn plumbing yeah because everything's based on gravity and plumbing you know so yeah i just i just want to call out your your girlfriend for being so supportive like absolutely that's that's huge it's really i think critical to you know you you meet guys who have like a girlfriend who is like needy let's say or like a wife who like you know can't let him out of his sight like i think it would be really hard to be in one of those and and be in tech because oh yeah you know what do you mean you got to study again you know me me me so yeah i think there's a theme of like selfless generous spouses in tech they have to be yeah at one point i was going to school full-time uh working full-time and i was starting for my ccna so i had no time yeah it was rough but you were for her you guys you got a good one there oh sorry yeah thank you by the way andy yeah rock on she's in the chat she just said hello so hello hey thanks for joining us thanks for supporting weezy all right so before i forget wheezy before we get to your last job and where you're going next why wheezy because when i think of weezy i think of that poor bastard up on the shelf and the squeaker's broken and he's full of dust and woody has to go try to save him with the dog like why out of all the characters you know i'd probably pick buzz or like you know his name is inappropriate but like why why pick wheezy is there a do you have like a connection to weasel yeah so sometimes when i laugh i i really laugh when i start i start to sound like him when he's not the squeaker that's awesome yes we we got to make you laugh hard before the end of this i want to hear it yeah that's fine okay weezy that's sec wheezy that's that's really cool so you moved before we interrupted you you moved and you started a new job uh that's a good job man it's good i'd say uh interesting new challenges every day security again security and networking so so now is this your first like actual network focus um okay so now you're managing powers yeah i kind of did that to myself though i told my boss like whatever whatever you want you want to give me i'll do it and so we kind of set pilots what we need to bring in we had a sonic wall at the time people love that for the new people listening just tell the people you'll do anything they love it if you want a job if you want to move them you'll know never to say that oh yeah right you only do it your first job and then you're like oh god what have i done what's this saying no good deed goes unpunished that's right yeah that's that's the kind of attitude to have right there so so this is more networking for you right yeah i'm the kind of soul or networking person uh handle all the switches i've you know reached out to all i guess all of you about you know designs or ways to improve the network just to get started because it's a big project i'd say i mean for never having really had a networking focused role i know i do but i really enjoy it gotcha now how long have you been doing this job for uh so about eight months now i'd say i started in november and uh about to leave how does it manage how does managing a network compare to your previous like security roles and the sock and help desk ish definitely interesting i think i i i love it honestly if uh you know just design the networks you know put in vlans acls lapping it up yeah well because like when you're when you're in the sock are you actually configuring things or are you just taking in a bunch of data and like putting things together it's mostly kind of bringing all the data and performing a picture out of that not really working on configuring so so that was kind of a big change then for you right yeah yeah how how big is this environment so we have about 300 users it's not that big but i think i think it's it works for me being you know first-time networking person right and you said you're the lone you're like the lone networking person that's kind of intimidating right like i've always had somebody senior to look up to and poke and say hey how do i do this thing i mean do you have anybody like that there um not there my uncle he is a uh i.t director for security and texas and he he's super networking focus super security focus so i have that there and i have you guys you know all the community yeah i really really appreciate everything everybody's done for me yeah there's no you know anything anytime i need something i have a question you guys are so quick to reach out everybody in the community so thank you isn't that amazing how much people help each other in this community i'm i'm just thinking when i used to sell used cars you know how much help i got from my fellow salesmen they would steal a deal from you in a second on your day off you would come in you guys obviously discord that's why so i do have something uh outside of of work that i wanted to talk about so you were a pretty early adopter to this community aj mentioned talking to you even beforehand how did you find this community i mean you were one of the first people that we brought into the faces of the journey yeah how did you get into this and you're one of the most active so i just want to thank you for i mean really you are and people who are active in our community i think really drive the whole thing and keep it going i know every day i log into the general channel i'm going to see you know wheezy say good morning and i that that helps me i i look forward to that i just know easy tells me good morning before my family around me tells me and it might sound small but yeah i kind of rely on that i know every day i'm going to see weezy in there and he's going to say hi and it just kind of brightens my day but i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut off luis i see him in general saying like good morning hi you know whatever at like 7 30 eastern time i'm like damn isn't he like a couple of times behind he's an early riser or he hasn't gone to bed yet i don't know which so so sorry sorry tim i took us off track so what was the what was the question how did he get involved with the discord yeah how did you were you in different kinds of communities like this before was this kind of person where'd you come from wheezy who are you i used to be uh i don't know if you guys are familiar with gifted lane yeah yeah yeah and i was going for my cc oh yeah that's true there was a podcast that was with her uh so i she was working on ccna and she would stream and i would kind of watch and i'd start from my ccna too and then eventually i got her discord and aj jumped in and he was like oh yeah there's this new thing i'm working on we're working on uh art of network engineering i was like sounds great and i opted wow aj was poaching members from other discord cross posting i wasn't poaching i was just informing the network community at large that we were starting a podcast and should have been interested yeah his his profile got locked out shortly thereafter she said it was for inactivity but she's like yo get out of here bro you're taking my members yeah so that's really cool that's really cool right and then i think i saw i watched the first episode i remember it wasn't even on an apple podcast so i watched on the site and i was just messaging with aj things are different back then i'd say i'm in a much better place right now that's great yeah i'll also you know bounce off of that um so me personally you know i i reach out to people in the community uh almost weekly um you know asking questions about things that i'm struggling with at work you know how do i handle this situation hey what are some ideas on this kind of thing you know just and people are just so responsive and so um down to earth about it like it's not a it's not like a pissing contest right right that's not even remotely what it's like it's more of how do we help each other together get through this journey right so it's awesome yeah you were always one of the first people to congratulate somebody to talk somebody up it's it's incredible to watch and that's why i asked did you have a community like this beforehand because you you're clearly a professional yeah so i did i'm nice to talk to some people in there they're great people i i want to pivot back to your job so you're the only networking person you have to go to the discord discord for help so what's what's your own call rotation like who do they call for outages is there a knock who does the maintenances is it all you all right there okay are you on call 24 7 365 like dan like you're just overwhelmed so i used to be on call over just the weekends like one week not every month but now i'm on call monday through friday so who covers the weekends if you're the only network guy uh yeah that's the thing uh they're gonna call me i'm not officially on call but they'll call me okay so you're always on call in theory uh right yeah unless it's like police fire and all that stuff too oh yeah we have police okay all right so do you make config changes is the change management you just doing whatever you want whenever you want like would you make changes like you said vlan ads or whatever you're up to like is it the wildlife yeah yeah how did it go okay that's usually i feel like small smaller networks are usually kind of like that because like roughly where i'm at it was like that right and so what happens if you break something in that environment like let's say weezy takes down the entire 300 user base because he does a vlan ad and he screws it up and wipes the vlan database out because he doesn't use the ad keyword like like like can you get like who's your boss like who who's who manages the only network guy is it's not another network person no um no i have an it manager that's my boss okay like a general idea guy right he kind of covers the whole department so if you broke something that's who'd be in your video okay probably so you said you were like the only networking security guy so was there a wheezy before wheezy did you replace somebody or they just finally say hey we need somebody to do this yeah they actually suffered an attack and they decided they needed somebody so they heard me all the way from texas like a security incident kind of thing yeah uh they had some kind of yeah oh was it the malware thing where everything gets locked down what's that thing called the i've been through that actually bitlocker the hotness right kind of thing somewhere what is it right somewhere yeah it was somewhere bitlocker did you have to pay him a bitcoin i i've actually been through one of those incidents and it's not fun oh man i can't imagine i missed the joke what happened what would you say aj i suggested that your malware was called bitlocker and then i realized bitlocker is a windows encryption tool dan just like fell on the floor i wasn't sure what happened something tickled then sorry so easy i i gotta ask you know you said a couple of times that you like really love and enjoy the current position that you're in but you're leaving for cdw so what happened oh yeah that's not cool yeah i mean i enjoy the projects and all that but i think with kobe i want to move remotely if possible yeah still be something i'm pushing for oh it's a you're on site it yeah okay i got you and your role will be remote yep yeah it'll it'll allow me more uh specialized because right now i handle aws security networking whatever projects basically it sort of handles so kind of so we do have a question from jordan here in the chat uh regarding cdw what was the interview process like was it pretty intense did you have to sit through a bunch of interviews how did that happen um so i think i had five or six interviews is that normal though six views i had a buddy who went through a round of interviews here lately and i i want to say he had almost like eight interviews what i mean i know somebody that got yeah i know somebody who that cdw they had a lot so i mean i guess it depends on the organization so hold on were these all technical interviews uh no i mean i don't know if you want to thank god all interviews i mean i i do but first one was kind of like a recruiter interview like oh yeah you know what and then the next one was a video recording where i had to submit they submitted some questions i had to record my response then i met with a hiring manager then i met with two technical leads and then i met with two more managers wow so was it one technical interview and all that mess with the two technical leads too okay it was a technical slash consulting interview yeah i had two of those technically technically so you said you had to do like a a recording in there so they gave you a bunch of questions and then you recorded your responses and then submitted it back that's that's a first for me i've not ever heard of having to do that as part of your process and it was one shot it was a one-shot thing so whatever you recorded you're getting sent because there was no no oh you can't like edit it yeah that's crazy well you can practice they give you some awesome questions but when you actually want to submit or what you're going to submit is not you're not able to practice oh okay look at that they're just like investing how well you do you know off the ground yes right are you going to be dealing with like clients or users are you going to be interacting with people yeah with customers because i i would guess that's what that's about right as the customer throws you and they want to make sure you're not going to like throw an f bomb at somebody like you know yeah see how you handle yourself like you said dan under pressure kind of like off the cuff maybe i'd do horrible with that so yeah that was one of the interviews and then i had a hiring manager i said two technical leads and it was interesting i had never had that many interviews in my life so yeah was it nerve-wracking having that many or yeah okay was any were any of them a panel like a bunch of people sitting there like hammering uh no it was about two two people at the moment it's not bad yeah it was what are you going to be doing there exactly is it network is it security so i'm going to be an associate consultant um and then like that i don't know what that means soc consultant is like you can't consult on uh there's different topics they have a cloud one they have a network security one they have data center but i'll be doing network security so customers i'll be installing palo alto firewalls asas uh anything security basically okay so i'll be working on that so you're it has security and then when they need support you're one of the resources that they can pull in say hey yeah these people need some help and it's a it's like a job slash training program because you start as an associate and then you eventually graduate to become an actual consultant okay nice so are you going to be like uh shadowing other people while they're doing okay hey that's going to be nice you're going to have people you could unlike the place you're leaving you got to come to the you know our discord to figure out what to do at work we still have people to ask like yo help yeah it's it's gonna be great i think a lot of uh a lot of great people work at cw and i know some people on discord uh former cdw one of them and he told me nothing but great things so i'm excited for the opportunity is this the biggest organization you've worked for yeah i'd say so edward i've worked for two cities uh smaller mssp which is a sock and now for cw cdw's i mean i've heard good things like you said i've heard people that work there they're really happy and they've learned a ton and and that's one of those places just speaking from a guy at a huge place surrounded by brilliant people like that's a place you can really sponge up some knowledge just yeah man you can learn as much as you want it at a place like that so that's going to be huge for for you man yeah that's great something they told me like it really depends on you like how how yeah much you move up how much it really depends on you and i like to think that i'm very passionate and right i'm always active in learning and asking questions so yeah that's fantastic i'm gonna soak it up yeah congratulations so speaking of of learning we do have another question from the chat from a deal i wanna i wanna split this up into how you've done it in the past and then how it may apply at cdw so how have you managed uh work and study have you been able to study on work time has it always been because i know you've done your ccna you've gone through i know you've done palo alto study uh splunk study so how have you managed that so when i was right when i was working for my ccna i whenever i had downtime i would try to study they encouraged it or thinkers um your employer encouraged it is that yeah is okay see that's nice you had an employer that was pushing you know like they encouraged you to do this like that's that's awesome yeah and and did you have so did that employer create the time for you to study because it's one thing to have an employer who okay it's one thing to have an employer to encourage you to study but if you're drowning in work with no time to study the encouragement is useless yeah so i'm just curious if you know like hey tuesday study day you know nothing like that no i was i was drowning in work i'd say i was imagining 17 sites like i said i had to drive out of town a lot of times so i'd leave at eight come back and it's already six o'clock seven o'clock at night yeah and so it was rough so you were encouraged to study during work in an environment where there was barely time to go to the restroom yeah sometimes it was like that the days it was slow but i kind of mostly took it on my you know it was an issue or took the initiative myself just because i i wanted to be a networking person i was i saw the networking team and like that's what i want to do you know so when do you study if you can't study at work is it at home like free time yeah mornings night what what works for you how do you do it i i would i would just say both uh social media from ccna but i i mentioned before there was a time where i was going to school full-time working full-time and studying for the ccna so that was like whenever i could find time yeah are you like get up early and do it like like tim's been doing or you stay up late and uh it depends yeah sometimes i get up early you know and i'll study i watch it i mean sometimes i even put on tv nuggets and i'll go to sleep listening to the videos just because sometimes i feel like i retain it i don't know sleeping with keith hello so what is your what's your impression on how cdw handles training i don't know how much you can divulge but what are your thoughts well based on you know speaking of a former employee of cdw he told me they they really push it they really want you to study they have uh they expect a lot of you but you know you can expect a lot from them that they'll take care of you and you do get dedicated study time yeah i would imagine avar you know like look at aj's you know shelves back there i'd imagine a var really pushing their people to be certified yeah for sure i i mean the the search they all account for for something for the business and so you know x number of nps nas ies and then you know other trains and tracks with with certifications those all all count there's like requirements right like if you're going to be a certain level oem partner the oem's going to require you know you to carry so many certified people on staff so and then at a large place like cdw there's people coming and going all the time for various reasons and so having more certified people on staff allows them to maintain those you know requirements through the evan flow of employees coming and going so it's they're all critical and i'm sure you know they'll definitely give you some opportunity to study and take the exams and all that fun stuff yeah the good thing is i'm actually ahead of uh they have a plan they want me to follow they get the ccna get security plus you know get a lot of certs i'm kind of ready for the game that's great they have like a learning plan for you what they'd like out of you i'm sorry if you covered this already how did you find out about this did somebody turn you on to this role or to cdw yeah yeah uh so actually yeah somebody in the discord uh i actually saw he posted it in the jobs i don't know if you want to mention his name but yeah you don't have to okay but somebody in the community said hey yeah there's this role and okay it was like in may that i initially i saw the posting he did in jobs and then he told me oh we're not hiring right now but keep a lookout and i saw the post again on indy and i hit him up he's like uh you'd be a good fit and that's a cdw person right somebody yeah xcdw yeah right but where i'm going with this is what makes what makes what makes me so nervous about changing companies or jobs is you don't know what you're stepping into you don't know what the culture is going to be like oh yeah you know you don't know what whatever that's saying is like leave the devil you don't know for the w you know whatever so but but i'm look so the first thing i do is look on glassdoor and cdw's just hitting out of the park ton of reviews 4.1 stars anything over four stars just from experience talking to people is is a okay but the fact that you were not only able to because of the community and the discord and like you know you knew somebody they told you about it and then you could ask them like hey what's it like there because i always find that to be scary it's like what am i walking into you know so yeah i i owe a big uh no thanks to everybody in the community uh you know it almost wouldn't be possible you know if you don't network correctly if you don't meet with the right people then you lose out on a lot of opportunities and that's something that i try to you know tell my friends i try to get them into the community because they want to get into atm like look this is what the community is helping me accomplish and you can do the same thing there's so many great people in here that are going to help you with whatever even if you're just starting out you're just trying to transition we have a lot of career transition people and they're more than willing to reach out and help you with anything you need isn't it strange that we're not competitive with each other strange might be the wrong word but like everybody just wants to help everybody i guess there's like so many jobs and a shortage for this type of skill set and like i i i just i don't know i feel like anybody will just help right like you ask and not just in the discord i mean there's a ton of people on twitter like just the the it slash networking community i'm just blown away by in the in the years that i've been plugged in that i had a question the other day i put out there on twitter and i had a bunch of people that had answers to that question who had experience in the thing i was asking start hitting me up and like i mean writing me paragraphs taking time out of their day like here's an answer to your question we can hop on a call like and it's like it just i don't know man it's still maybe it's because i'm from a city and people look at you funny and like you're waiting to you know just come out here to the country man yeah right that's the thing like the i.t community is basically like just out there on dan's porch having a lemonade you know what i mean playing a banjo like everybody's just so nice and helpful and i really mean that it's i worked at a lot of jobs that weren't like that and it's it's a really nice i mean can you just say water don't answer this question just drop it all right well i'm watching my sock dashboard here and i just got an alert that says we're about up on our time so i think i gotta work on uh wrapping up this episode uh luis did you have any you know parting words for us and then uh how can people uh follow you uh what what are your socials do you have a blog so uh here's a parting word question i would have what would you tell somebody starting out like yourself like goodbye look how far you've come right in the short time like we've known you so what would you tell it sounds so silly to say what would you tell you know younger louise but like what would you tell somebody coming up that like your friends they want to get an i.t and you're like yo get on the discord and i mean what's the best advice you could give to somebody who wants to to get into this field i definitely recommend believing in yourself i mean that's taken me so far just believing you can do it it's easy to have imposter syndrome and networking that's huge uh this has gotten me to where i am now uh so the people just talking to people yeah people are working and networking and everything like cisco how do you believe in yourself this may be a whole other episode some other time with you but what you know right i mean imposter syndrome is not believing in yourself right so like how do you believe in yourself if that's your a number one i i think i i believe a lot of manifestation um when i was getting my ccna for example i put i had a whiteboard at my house and i would write ccna with my name on it because i told myself this is what i'm going to do cdw i did the same thing i was telling people even before i got the job this is my job right i had just knew it i just put it to the world like this is my job this is what i'm going to do because it's hard to believe in yourself that's huge there's something about that right like the power of intention and manifestation and like i know it's a whole tony robbins thing but i'm even thinking back in high school when i was like on you know in in sports like they we used to read these books of like it was all about visualization right see yourself in that you know and see yourself winning the thing and like like that's a proven i think scientific psychological thing is you know which is where fake it till you make it comes in right like if you don't believe in yourself start to visualize it write down the ccna with your name on it on the board like it's that's really good advice weezy definitely uh i get to join also the community a great community great for a group of guys and girls and it definitely has taken me far having all the support from everybody in the community on speaking i'm on twitter you said everybody's all nice i have a friend that's trying to get into i.t and he's like everybody and it's so nice they're so helpful yeah but yeah that's a good group yeah i just started off with saying that this community would not be what it is without people like you but specifically you easy for all the time you put in you're you're putting back in what you're getting out of this from from what i'm hearing from you and definitely what we're seeing from you so thank you for making this community what it is making this podcast what it is this is why we do this so thank you yeah thanks for everything you do you're a big contributing member to the discord community and it's really means a lot it is for the opportunity uh i really appreciate it all right where can people find you i know that you're on twitter at netsequeezy where else uh where else can we find wheezy at i do have a blog uh it's just netseqweezy.com i haven't posted in a while but that's going to change net security youtube channel yeah yeah you can see yeah i'm working on youtube don't worry i'm going to get it done uh i really like i'm starting to see networking pay off for me like connections and talking to the people uh it definitely pays evidence so that's like i said i'd recommend that i recognize everybody i know i t not an i.t just formless connections meaningful connections with people awesome well you can look to find all of those links in our show notes uh weezy this has been a really fun conversation i've been looking forward to this for a long time we've been had you on the schedule and i know you've been pumped for it because we talk every so often you're counting down the days uh so so thank you so much for joining us taking time out here evening uh i love the story um you know there's just all these times where you saw that like hey if if i want to get any further i got to control my own destiny and i think that there's a lot of people that don't really take that you know they they kind of like i don't know float their boat on hope right that that uh if they just hold out just a little bit longer that big change is going to come and that big thing is going to happen to them and you just hit this point where you're like i am going to make that change happen and you've done it so many times just since i've known you and clearly that wasn't like a new thing for you you've done that throughout your entire career so i really want to commend you from that and anybody listening i hope that's one of their takeaways right like don't wait for stuff to happen to you like you gotta take control of your own destiny and make that stuff happen so uh congratulations on all your success congratulations on the new job uh now that the secret is out you can uh go drop that in hashtag winning and have everybody cheer you on just like you cheer everybody else on uh so weezy thank you so much for joining us tonight uh thank you to all the patreons for coming out and chilling with us we really appreciate all the questions and and having everybody on uh if you're interested in joining the patreon you can do that at of patreon.com and uh thank you so much for joining us tonight have a great week we'll see you back next week bye bye hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of netench that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering dot com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you