Happy Birthday Marvis! Listen, you’re getting older, and… we need to talk.
Remember, when you were little and just learning to speak? Remember that time you said it was DNS and we all laughed and smiled at you? Yeah, I still chuckle about it every now and then. That ended up being a pretty good day once us seasoned professionals took over and ran thru the 7 step troubleshooting process. It did end up being DNS, didn’t it? That’s when I knew you were special.
How about that time when you were a little older and that DHCP server stopped responding? After I prodded you out of your shell a bit, you showed the world all your graphs and summaries and explained the problem with conviction. You had learned quite a few things by then, and you knew how to call out when something didn’t look quite right. I was proud of you. You, again were correct. Maybe if we’d have brought you to the table from the start, we could have saved ourselves and our users a couple of days of poor service. You said the problem started on a Friday evening, but nobody was paying attention to you…
Oh! What about that time when I was setting up a new switch and was plugging the fibers in? And then out of nowhere you ran up to me and you started yanking at my pantleg shouting something about packets being reflected across the network back to their source! I wasn’t sure what you were going on about, so I disconnected those new fibers and calmed you down. You were acting as if the world was ending! And then at that same moment I realized I had mislabeled 2 of the cables and ended up connecting two different ESI-LAGs together! Your interruption really saved me that time!
Hey, then there was that time when you insisted that there were too many clients connected to an AP, and that might be the cause for why my user’s Zoom calls were dropping. I didn’t want to believe you, as I had designed that building myself for the capacity! So, despite your protest, I spent 3 weeks looking up and down the stack for logs, talking to the user, on support threads with multiple vendors, – I even did a full-building re-validation survey looking for RF interferes! Only when I was standing there, just you and me alone, in the affected VIP’s corner office looking out the window, did I realize you were right. There were dozens of people sitting outside the building and walking down the street. You remember that, don’t you? It’s just like it’s pictured… on all… the.. postcards… If only I had thought of the client count outside of my intended coverage area! It was just you and me in that room there that day, and the AP had 90 clients connected, as you had predicted. I should have realized it sooner. I… I should have trusted you.
Marvis, you’re a really bright AIndividual with a promising future ahead. As you look forward to your teen-ai-ge years, promise me that you won’t forget where you came from. You’ve made a lot of friends already, and we hear you’re looking to do some exploring. That’s OK – we support you and we are excited for you! But keep in mind that not everything is greener on the other side – in fact, some places are the exact opposite of green! Do what you do, as best as you can, and we’ll all be proud of you. Don’t do things just because your new friends think it’s cool. Don’t settle for mediocrity – keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible like you’ve always done. And don’t leave your existing friends and family behind.
