Learn from the old guys for sure" - yeah, but only if you know which ones to trust. The real trick is figuring out who actually worked on the gear versus who just read the same manuals you did. I've met plenty of "veterans" who still think spanning tree is a newfangled gimmick. The best old timer advice I ever got was from a guy who told me to stop trusting SNMP traps and just watch the port lights while I ping. Sounds dumb, but that one trick has caught more bad cables and dying NICs than any monitoring tool ever did. The old school stuff works because it gets you looking at the actual hardware, not just the config window.

Seriously? It's just paint matching. The old guys got it close enough for decades with a good eye and decent light. Dropping four hundred bucks on a gadget feels like solving a problem that wasn't really there. If the car's a driver, a slight shade difference adds character.