The first couple of decades of life are usually spent view college as the "finish line" of the academic path. Elementary, Intermediate, then high school, followed by the hallowed finish line of college. The reality is that business is changing so quickly, that you'd better be, as well.

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This may not be pervasive in your environment, but I've asked for this email from people and received it in the form of screen captures. I kid you not, ragged-looking, email-size-inflating screen captures that you stand no chance of using the "copy" functionality on. It's not really their fault; they likely asked someone how to get the information out of a command prompt once and that was the answer they were given. Take the time to educate them as to the proper way to harvest the information with the following steps.

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Though it grates against the geek side of an engineer, you'll only do yourself (and your company a favor by embracing it. When it comes time to plan the budget for next year, figure out how much to bill a department, or calculate cost savings, you may be asked to calculate the dollar impact of provisioning and reclaiming switch ports. Odds are, the group that handles your data center facilities will know exactly how much it costs per square foot in terms of cooling, floor space, and electricity, so you'd better be able to come up with some dollar amounts as well.

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