SO IT BEGINS...

So, there comes a time -- usually a week or two into your first gig -- when it's no longer even remotely feasible to use a notebook/sticky-notes in order to keep track of the wealth of knowledge/fixes/duct-tape workarounds that ensue on a day to day basis.  Sure, you might get by for a while with an ever-expanding binder of notes/diagrams, and sub-directory after sub-directory of notepad docs in a flash-drive that has been through the wash once or twice.  Eventually, though, your repository is going to start to bear a striking resemblance to that SMB "data-center" that still haunts your dreams:

GOOD GOD, MAN! Quick, cleanse it! Cleanse it with FIRE!!!

Sooner or later, you're shooting yourself in the foot with every passing second that you haven't turned up a wiki to dump tid-bits of knowledge and life lessons into. Because -- let's face it -- you can't remember everything.

Dumbledore documents like a boss.

Since Olivander was pretty persistent about not affording me a wand of my own -- Come-on, you've quite literally got walls of 'em just sitting around -- I'm commemorating the retirement of my own binder-o-notes, by starting a blog under the same name.

While I certainly won't be dumping every single notepad doc and diagram I handle day in and day out, this will (hopefully) shape up to be a good means for tracking interesting issues/quirky bugs/and my growth as a networking professional after somehow stumbling into the field three years ago.

It's like a flip-book, but with big words...and scotch. Don't forget the scotch.