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Closed Loop Automation With Anuta Networks’ Active Service Assurance
As a network operator, I want to describe in plain language what I need a network to do, and the network is configured accordingly. Then I want the network to monitor itself, and when things aren’t...
View ArticleI, The Braggart – A Network Fable
My boss stepped into our shared cubicle space and rested his arm on top of the fabric wall. He peered down at me. “Hey.” He always started with a quiet “hey” when he was about to ask me to do something...
View ArticleMarketing Docs Are Not Written For Engineers
When reading marketing literature as an engineer, you must always be careful to parse the words correctly. For example, I was reviewing a vendor’s pitch deck on a new hardware switch. The switch was...
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I’ll Be At Cisco Live US Las Vegas 2022. See You There?
I’m attending Cisco Live US 2022 in Las Vegas this June. I’ll be there on the Explorer Pass, crawling the World Of Solutions and chatting with anyone and everyone my introverted nature can handle. If...
View ArticleHow To Work With A Sponsor For Your IT Blog
For many years, I’ve been working with B2B IT vendors who sponsor content with my company to market their offerings. My co-founder and I have learned many lessons–some the hard way–about dealing with...
View ArticleHow To Use Grep + Regex To Match Non-200 HTTP Status Codes In Apache Server Logs
When parsing Apache web server logs on Linux, I find it interesting to monitor access requests resulting in HTTP status codes other than 200s. An HTTP status code in the 200s mean the request was...
View ArticleCan Fantastical Openings Replace Calendly?
TL;DR Fantastical Openings can’t replace Calendly for my scheduling needs yet, but it’s close. The Rest Of The Story I use Calendly so that folks can schedule me for appointments. I send people a...
View ArticleCareer Advice I’d Give To 20, 30 and 40-Something Year Old Me
Career Advice To 20-Something Year Old Me Start that business. You have sufficient technical & business skills, and you can figure out what you don’t know. Take the chance now while you have little...
View ArticleHow To Fix Ubuntu 18.04 ‘apt update’ Throwing An NGINX Repository i386...
When running ‘apt update’ on Ubuntu 18.04 to prepare for routine system patching, the system kicked back the following error. N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'nginx/binary-i386/Packages' as...
View ArticleHow To Create A Python Function You Can Call From Other Scripts
Python gives you the ability to write a bit of code and the call that code as a function. You can call the function from within the same script where the function is defined, or you can save the...
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How To Blackhole (Null Route) An IPv6 Block On Linux Using ‘ip -6 route’
If there’s an IPv6 netblock you’d like your host to stop responding to, one tactic is to blackhole the traffic. That is, send any traffic from your host destined to the troublesome IPv6 netblock into a...
View ArticleWhat Does An ‘R’ Before A String Mean In Python?
R Means ‘Raw String’ An ‘r’ before a string tells the Python interpreter to treat backslashes as a literal (raw) character. Normally, Python uses backslashes as escape characters. Prefacing the string...
View ArticlePodcast Guest: Can You Have A Successful IT Career Without A Degree?
I was a guest on the February 22, 2022 episode of the So You Wanna Be In IT podcast. Certifications I chatted with hosts Pat & Dean about how my career got started. I’ve been around IT since the...
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How To Pass Environment Variables To A Remote SSH Deployment With PyCharm
I pass access tokens, authentication keys, and other secrets to Python scripts via environment variables rather than encode these values into the scripts themselves. If I was a real boy, I’d use a...
View ArticleHow To Pass API Query Parameters In A Curl Request
If you’re using CLI tool curl to retrieve data from a remote API, you might send forth a command like so. curl -H "Authorization: Bearer access_token_goes_here" \...
View ArticleThey’ll Remember The Rage Monster
I was tired. Very tired. Tired in my brain. Tired in my body. I needed to eat, puke, and scream…all of those things as soon as possible. Big cutovers are like that. You know the kind of change I’m...
View ArticleThe Best Technologists First Try To Solve Their Own Problems
Every once in a while, I get questions from random internet folks who want me to do their homework for them. They want me to provide them with detailed technical information, solve their complex design...
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How IT Pros Learn Online In 2021
I surveyed 53 IT professionals about online IT training in August 2021. Most of the folks I interact with are networking & cloud infrastructure professionals, and the answers reflect that. 53...
View ArticleWhat Makes A Senior IT Engineer “Senior”?
Ravi asks the following… I’m trying to figure out what makes a network engineer truly a “senior” engineer. What skills, mostly non-technical, do they possess in order to bring value to the work place?...
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How Upgrading PHP On WordPress Became *It Was DNS*-An IT Operations Tale
The server needed a PHP update. WordPress told me so with a severe-sounding notification adorned with red coloration, a security warning, boldface type, and a link explaining how to change the PHP...
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