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packetqueue.net

Musings on computer stuff, and things... and other stuff.

Why Blog?

Read­ing Time: 2 min­utes

“If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you can­not learn any oth­er way.” — Mark Twain

In times past, when you want­ed to learn a skill you would seek out some­one with expe­ri­ence to teach you.  You would spend time appren­tic­ing with that per­son, learn­ing from both their knowl­edge and as impor­tant­ly from their expe­ri­ence.  You would learn not only why a thing does­n’t work, but also what the con­se­quences of ignor­ing that knowl­edge would be.  Even­tu­al­ly you would have learned enough to move on, prac­tice your craft, and con­tin­ue to learn and devel­op your own skills until, one day, you would pass your knowl­edge on to some­one new.  And so the cycle would con­tin­ue.

We do not see that same style of appren­tice­ship very often these days, and while there can be rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle doubt that we have much more access to qual­i­ty infor­ma­tion and learn­ing mate­ri­als than at any point in human his­to­ry, some­thing has been lost.  You can buy 20 books on your favorite sub­ject, and pre­sum­ably learn the mate­r­i­al con­tained there­in, but you would still be miss­ing the glue that holds it all togeth­er: expe­ri­ence.  With­out expe­ri­ence, you become what my grand­fa­ther would have called “book smart, but with no com­mon-sense.”

Why?  Because most books are focused on impart­ing a skill.  They cov­er the thing itself: the how, the why, the his­to­ry per­haps, but typ­i­cal­ly noth­ing more.  Expe­ri­ence typ­i­cal­ly has to be learned first-hand: by screw­ing it up your­self, or by watch­ing some­one else screw it up.  You have to “hold a cat by the tail” in order to ful­ly learn and appre­ci­ate the con­se­quences.

On these pages, in this blog, I hope to help con­tribute at least a lit­tle bit to the expe­ri­ence fac­tor in your learn­ing about com­put­er net­works.  I am still on a jour­ney myself, work­ing towards my Cis­co Cer­ti­fied Inter­net­work­ing Expert (CCIE) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and I also work as the IT Direc­tor and Senior Net­work Engi­neer for a mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tion.  I have 17 years of pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence in com­put­er pro­gram­ming, net­work­ing, and win­dows and Unix sys­tem admin­is­tra­tion.

Why do I think what I have to say could be valu­able?  Because with all of my expe­ri­ence, and all of my cur­rent stud­ies, I still screw up on an alarm­ing­ly reg­u­lar basis.  I expe­ri­ence all man­ner of self-inflict­ed pain, and a fair amount of ran­dom “char­ac­ter build­ing” equip­ment fail­ures.  When these things hap­pen, I don’t shy away from the after­math; I aim to write about it.  I aim to share my expe­ri­ence with you in order to con­tribute to the knowl­edge pool in what­ev­er way I can.

I will also share tips and tricks as I find them, con­fig­u­ra­tions I use in my own CCIE stud­ies, and any­thing else that I think some­one besides me might ben­e­fit from know­ing.  You can also expect the occa­sion­al half-delu­sion­al rant or screed on a vari­ety of top­ics.  And now, back to grab­bing the prover­bial cat by the tail.

Sin­cere­ly,

@SomeClown

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