• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Standard Disclaimers
  • Resume/Curriculum Vitae
  • Why Blog?
  • About
  • (Somewhat Recent) Publication List

packetqueue.net

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

Uncategorized

February 24, 2014 Uncategorized

Cisco Modeling Labs (CML)

Read­ing Time: 1 minute

The prod­uct for­mer­ly known as VIRL has been rebrand­ed and is slat­ed for release in the first half of 2014. My mon­ey is on it being released just pri­or to, or at, Cis­co Live in May. It is an intrigu­ing prod­uct that I have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play with for a few months now. If you haven’t read my TechTar­get write-up, take a look at it here:

CML Review

Share

February 19, 2014 Uncategorized

Network Field Day Calendar

Read­ing Time: 1 minute

For those of you who under­stand what Tech Field Day is, and want to fol­low this week’s events, feel free to use this cal­en­dar to track the events.

Share

January 18, 2014 Uncategorized

Burnout Redux

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

Late­ly I have been strug­gling with career burnout.  Or maybe it’s exis­ten­tial grief, or bad bur­ri­tos, gas, and too many real­i­ty tele­vi­sion marathon binges.  What­ev­er it is, how­ev­er, I not­ed with some inter­est this arti­cle by Matthew Men­gel (@mengelm) over on the Pack­et Push­ers web­site.  Matthew is push­ing aside his career in the net­work­ing indus­try to pur­sue his true pas­sion in astron­o­my, after win­ning a schol­ar­ship to com­plete a PhD pro­gram in the sub­ject.

It is fair to say that I read his arti­cle with a fair bit of jeal­ousy.  After 22 years in the com­put­er indus­try, I nurse night­ly dreams (or delu­sions) of mov­ing on to oth­er things.  I said as much on Twit­ter, and found a sur­pris­ing num­ber of oth­er folks in my cohort who felt the same.  Long careers and hours had tak­en a toll.

More sur­pris­ing, how­ev­er, was what hap­pened when the dis­cus­sion turned to just what exact­ly we would all do, giv­en the chance.  There were a few out­liers, but far and away the answers were all in the fine arts or gener­i­cal­ly cre­ative space: art, film, writ­ing, and wood­work­ing were men­tioned.  And the num­ber one rea­son why was that these were all pur­suits that were start­ed dur­ing the naïveté of youth, before we all real­ized that the mon­ey was no good.

I know that I nev­er dreamed of a career in com­put­ers when I was a child.  My dreams were all root­ed in writ­ing, art, and music.  I ful­ly expect­ed to be a musi­cian, famous artist, or reclu­sive, well-read writer.  Obvi­ous­ly, that didn’t hap­pen.

I don’t know when I real­ized the imprac­ti­cal­i­ty of the arts as a career, but at some point in my lat­er high school years I decid­ed that the law would be a more prac­ti­cal pro­fes­sion.  Luck­i­ly, my uncle (a very suc­cess­ful attor­ney) talked me out of that, and I acci­den­tal­ly hap­pened into the world of pro­fes­sion­al com­put­er-wran­gling.

I had been pro­gram­ming and hack­ing since the age of eight, so when some­one offered me a job at what seemed like incred­i­ble pay back in 1992, I didn’t think twice.  In ret­ro­spect, it’s amaz­ing how low the ask­ing price for a person’s soul turns out to be.  Fast for­ward to the present, and we’re back to the con­ver­sa­tion about burnout and choic­es.

In talk­ing to the good folks on Twit­ter, and friends and cowork­ers, it seems as if there are a tremen­dous num­ber of peo­ple who would do some­thing else, if the mon­ey was left out of the equa­tion.  One of my best friends and I were talk­ing over the hol­i­days on this very top­ic, and it seems as if we’re all vic­tims of our own suc­cess.  “I’d move and change careers, “ he said, “but I can’t afford to start over.”

And there’s the prob­lem.  The same prob­lem every­thing always boils down to: mon­ey, or, more real­is­ti­cal­ly, food and shel­ter.  In all of human his­to­ry, we’re still slaves to our own abil­i­ty to sur­vive.  It used to be a cli­mate, or food-source, or shel­ter that drove us to wher­ev­er we end­ed up in life.  All we’ve done in the whole of our species is man­age to abstract that con­cept in the form of mon­ey.

Maybe I’m read­ing too much in to all of this, or being too dra­mat­ic, I don’t know.  All I do know is there are a hell of a lot of us out there, it seems, doing things for mon­ey that we wish we didn’t have to do any more.  I don’t know what that means, and I’m hes­i­tant to project my own anx­i­eties on the rest of you, but I think it at least begs a cou­ple of ques­tions:

(1) If the mon­ey was equal to what you do now, or what your career will ulti­mate­ly bring you in terms of earn­ing poten­tial, would you do some­thing dif­fer­ent?

(2) When were you the hap­pi­est in your life?  What were you doing?  Was it what you do now?

Feel free to send me answers and feed­back via my twit­ter han­dle (@someclown) or here in the com­ments.

Share

October 9, 2013 Uncategorized

SDN Explained

Read­ing Time: 1 minute

Soft­ware Defined Net­work­ing Explained:

type­def struct net­work {

void * stuff
void * moreStuff

}; SDN

Share

September 22, 2013 Uncategorized

On Writing

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

So, you want to be a writer?

Writ­ing is a lone­ly, dirty, self-dep­re­cat­ing affair.  And that’s if you’re good at it.  Robert Hein­lein said that “writ­ing is not nec­es­sar­i­ly some­thing to be ashamed of, but do it in pri­vate and wash your hands after­ward.”  That feels just about spot-on to me these days, as I fight the blank screen to see who is going to win on any giv­en day.  Usu­al­ly it’s the screen.

When you feel so pas­sion­ate­ly about any­thing that you want to take the time and effort to write it down, there is an inevitable come­down.  Osten­si­bly the writ­ing is a cathar­tic expe­ri­ence and when you’re done, it should be over.  You’ve said your piece, made your peace, and should let it rest in peace.

But we’re all just a lit­tle narcissistic—writers more so than every­one else—and we crave feed­back, val­i­da­tion, if not of our writ­ing skills or our ideas, then at least that we exist some­where out­side of the vac­u­um of our own thoughts. We want some­one to notice and care, even if it is sim­ply to pick a fight or claim that we have no busi­ness writ­ing.  Writ­ers are used to rejec­tion, so that’s not real­ly a prob­lem.  What we’re not used to is silence—at least not at first.

As writ­ers, we spend an inor­di­nate amount of time obsess­ing over our words—the way they flow on the page, or the sym­me­try of the sentences—and when we’re done we expect a sim­i­lar lev­el of feed­back from what­ev­er audi­ence we may have.  What­ev­er the size of our plat­form, we expect some lev­el of acknowl­edge­ment com­men­su­rate with the lev­el of effort we put into the writ­ing, and the fact is that in most cas­es what we get is the prover­bial silence and crick­ets.

Vir­ginia Woolf said that, “writ­ing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for mon­ey.” Once you start sell­ing your soul, you’ve fall­en off the precipice into a tru­ly dark place, a place where the explo­sive mix of cre­ativ­i­ty and edi­to­r­i­al demands col­lide and ignite like the improb­a­ble mix of drunk rodeo clowns and Pamplona—comedic tragedy writ large.

We nat­u­ral­ly think our writ­ing is per­fect when it’s done, and we expect that at least the one per­son com­mit­ted to read­ing what we write—our erst­while editor—will see our bril­liance and praise us for it.  That does hap­pen, but often that very thing we crave comes sad­dled with requests for changes rang­ing from small bits of gram­mar to com­plete whole­sale rewrites.  We sac­ri­fice our cre­ativ­i­ty to feed the beast.

Self-doubt begins to creep into the mix, and the writ­ing becomes hard­er and more painful, the page more men­ac­ing, and the anx­i­ety of dead­lines more prescient—creeping in even before we’ve accept­ed a new assign­ment.  The work we do sub­mit can take weeks or months to get pub­lished, and just as long to be paid for.  And if you dab­ble in the dirty art of essay writ­ing, you begin to find that your opin­ion has often­times rad­i­cal­ly changed by the time your words show up to be read, and you find your­self argu­ing on behalf of a point you no longer agree with.

Yes, writ­ing is a dirty, sor­did affair. It’s a back-alley ren­dezvous with some­thing or some­one you shouldn’t be involved with. But for those of us who write, it’s also unavoid­able.  It becomes some­thing we absolute­ly have to do to feel alive—something we can’t stop doing any more than will­ing our­selves not to breathe.

If you want to be a writer, then write.  Just don’t expect it to offer any­thing to you but therapy—an out­let for your own needs that like­ly will grow more des­per­ate as a result. Writ­ing makes no promis­es, and deliv­ers no boons.  But even after all of that, for me, I will always be a writer.  But I will do it in pri­vate, and I will wash my hands after­ward.

Share

September 21, 2013 Uncategorized

Cisco Live and Social Media Redux

Read­ing Time: 1 minute

A few peo­ple you might rec­og­nize, includ­ing yours tru­ly, are fea­tured here in a video for Cis­co Live. This was shot at Cis­co Live in Orlan­do back in June. I’ll see you all next year in San Fran­cis­co!

Share
  • « Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Page 4
  • Page 5
  • …
  • Page 7
  • Next Page »

Copyright© 2023 · by Shay Bocks