about me

Hi. I’m Tony Mattke, or tonhe since 1994… I’m a 31 year old network engineer/geek located amidst the endless cornfields in north central Indiana. In some circles, I’ve been credited with inventing taco Tuesday, and I’m a Mac.

I’ve been in networking since 1999, but most of that time was spent doing consulting on the side. In 2008 I started my own consulting company, BGP Guru, working for a few ISPs and Data Centers around the US and Canada. In late 2010 I took a full time position as a Senior Network Engineer for a financial institution.

In the past I was never been too big on certifications, but I decided that since I was doing consulting having a couple wouldn’t hurt. Currently I have my Cisco CCNP, CCNA, and I also have a freshly expired ImageStream ICNA… At some point in the near future I do plan on working towards my CCIE, but until work slows down a bit, that is not an option.

Even so I made the switch to Mac in 2008, I’m still a Linux advocate. I’ve been using it since 1993 when I first installed Slackware. Currently my web server, file server, dynamips server, JunOS Olive server, and router all run one flavor of Linux or another. (mostly Debian these days…)

Some of my other hobbies include bad photography, biking, saving babies from trees, bowling, being too scared to fly my rc helicopter, amateur pyrotechnics, finding new varieties of wheat beer, collecting useless crap, video gaming, keeping freshwater cichlids ( sold my tank ), rescuing kittens from fires, and pistol/rifle shooting.

If you wish to have a chat, try the contact form (gone because of spam), if you’re impatient send me a tweet and I may share more, or you can look for me in #cisco on Freenode…