Personal

2022 Goals: Professional and Personal

Posted on January 1, 2022 by Mike Bolitho

Getting them on paper is half the battle right?

Professional

ENWLSI
CWAP

I bit off more than I could chew last year and ran into issues so yeah, gonna set the bar a bit lower this year and actually hit them. Since I landed a full time WiFi gig, I’m going to focus on more things outside of work/career development. That’s not to say that I’m not going to continue to press in. I’ve got quite a bit of training scheduled this year for DNAC/Spaces and Catalyst wireless gear. We’ll see where I’m at after the CWAP. If I’m feeling up to it, I might try to sit for the ECSE Design.

Less time on the phone
Read more non-technical books
Run 500 miles
Road bike more

I really need to take care of myself both physically and mentally in 2022. I had big plans to run more last year and failed totally failed. I’m not sure why but in 2020 I totally fell off the bandwagon and did basically nothing for two years. If ya run, you know how hard it is to get back into it. I always had excuses and just never got into the rhythm again. I need to get back to that 2016-2018 form. No more on-call duties in 2022 means no excuse to be near my phone at all times which will be huge for a lot of these goals. When I’m exercising it helps a ton with physical (obviously) and mental health so that will be really big. Being in better shape mentally and physically will help me be a better husband and dad too. I won’t be as tired, there will be less anxiety, and less need for escapism (reddit/twitter/etc). So yeah, here’s to a much better 2022!

A bit of background on me and my career

Posted on November 21, 2021 by Mike Bolitho

I figured I might as well kick this thing off with an intro post. I live in Phoenix, AZ with my wife and two kids. We have a son and daughter that are both in elementary school. We’ve been here for over a decade and although both my wife and I are transplants, we are fully rooted here in the desert. Most of that has to do with our amazing church community. That and it doesn’t snow. We are what you might consider “mildly outdoorsy”. We like exploring the parts of our state that we can drive to. If you could do overlanding via minivan, that would be our jam.

I’m originally from a small mountain town in Colorado. In classic angsty teen fashion I left immediately after high school and spent the next decade or so bouncing around the country pursuing a couple of different degrees and careers. Neither the degrees nor careers worked out for me. IT was actually a bit of a fall back. I had always liked tinkering around with technology but never seriously considered it for work. A good buddy of mine is a sysadmin, I knew he enjoyed his work and made a decent living so I asked him for some advice. He sat down with me and we worked out a path forward so I could try to get a start in the field. I built an ESXi homelab and started diving in.

Through a mutual friend, I was able to land a job in a NOC at a VAR doing server support. We also handled networking and security. I quickly found out that networking was much better and started working towards my CCNA. I ended up falling in love with the technology and began looking for a pure networking role.

My next stop landed me at a Tier I ISP doing break/fix in their national ethernet NOC. I spent four years there honing my craft and working my way up to a senior technician. I picked up my CCNP and was able to jump back to the enterprise side as an operations engineer for a large hospital system.

My team was tasked with implementing, maintaining, and fixing the campus network. I was heavily involved in all things break/fix as well as a ton of project work deploying technologies around the region. It ended up being around 40% break/fix and 60% implementation and project work. The job was really fun and fulfilling, and I had the privilege of working for a great boss on an incredible team.

Early on in my time here, I knew that wireless was my weak spot so I picked up a CWNA book and the rest, as they say, is history. Once I got my first taste of WiFi, I found that I enjoyed it immensely. I put myself in situations to absorb as much as I could from our wireless design team, volunteered for any sort of WiFi trouble tickets, and continued pursuing my CWNP and CCNP-W certifications. I subscribed to about every wireless podcast out there, have attended countless webinars, and watched dozens of videos from past conferences. An opportunity recently opened up on our wireless team and I was selected to fill the position.

I’m very excited to see where my career takes me as a wireless professional. I’ll be using this space to chronical the things I’m learning, labbing, discovering, and building on my path to CWNE. So, that is my life and career in a nutshell. I hope some of you find some value in what’s to come!