New personal blog posts

djerk.nl was started late 2005 when I started my CCIE journey. It chronicles me working my way through the exam blueprint. Helping me to better process information by writing articles and creating summary lists.

I failed the lab twice in 2007, and after quitting the job I loved, we moved to the UK in early 2008. Due to the job and culture changes, combined with the demands of young family life, I could no longer pursue the coveted number. Through my employer, I certified on F5 and helped numerous clients with network deployments, migrations and designs.

In 2014 my employment ended when my then-client outsourced the team I supported abroad and I decided to find my own work rather than rely on an integrator to do so for me. Since then, word of mouth has been the main source of work and a number of my former clients found their way back to me directly. After rolling back into the Security sphere, somewhere along the way, I was once again working on Bluecoat, Palo Alto and Check Point. This meant balancing Network, Services (F5) and Security work, which suits me well as it keeps work varied and engaging.

Over the last two years, I’ve spent more time away from pure networking than usual. I’ve deployed private and authored private cloud, DNS, IAM, Radius, Remote Access and Security designs. I am in the process of training up a CISO and got my hands dirty with gnmi/grpc metrics, Logstash grok filters and other ways of ingesting data into InfluxDB. All while recovering from a major motorcycling accident. [It’s hard to do justice to the gratitude I feel towards my clients who supported me through this challenging time].

So now the time feels right to bring some new life to my (former CCIE) blog. The first new article is there and I have a few more in the pipeline, so stay tuned and let me know if you’d like me to cover any specific topics.