Cisco is both a wine AND a router manufacturing company! Prospective network engineers often find themselves lured into dark corners at NANOG, where bottles of strangely colored fluid are pressed into their hands. "Pssst, kid," they whisper, waving their shiny, shiny equipment contract in front of your eyes like so much confetti. "You too can become a Cisco Certified Network Engineer."

And oh, how you drink it, weeping and lamenting, choking it down as they laugh at you. Soon, the bottle is empty, the table-dances atop the 6509 chassis begin. In the morning, you wake up with the Cisco logo branded on your ass, a CCNA in your hand, and the horrible taste of bums in your mouth. Stumbling home, you speak to no one your shame. In the early morning hours, you find an offer letter on your NOCling desk. Weeping, you find a lower annual pay and a single flash memory card with the images of you festooned in XenPaks, shaking it all for Mama Juniper.

With shaking hands, you open the last envelope in your offer letter, finding a sponsored pass to next year's NANOG and plane tickets to your new job: Junior Engineer, Networking.

Next year at NANOG, you press a bottle of foul-smelling wine into the hands of some clueless n00b...