Returned from my vacation.

I am back.  It was a well deserved timeoff for me. Unfortunately i didnt get a chance to study at all.  Good thing is that i didnt put on a single lb, funny how that works out when you watch what you eat, even though i felt as if i had gorged myself silly.

Great news is that when i got in last night, the 1st thing i did was check Narbiks website and found that he has a session in March 09 right here in Richardson Tx ( Mar 30th to Apr 3rd 2009 ).  Followed by another one in July. I am definitely going to attend the first one, and then depending on how i feel afterwards the 1st bootcamp/narbiks advice, it will be either constant practice or a reseat of his bootcamp. I am just ecstatic about this.

Nuff said for now. Time to get my jet lagged self in studying mode once more.

A Happy New Year to each and everyone out there. Lets hope 09 is better then 08. Happy studying, and may you achieve your CCIE # in 09.

2 week hiatus.

This past week most of my time has been spent going over Ospf commands from the ospf command book.  I did some reading as well ( ospf related from the doc cd ), and also watched all of the ospf vids from IE.  A good week spent going over debugs, troubleshooting commands and trying out different scenarios with debug outputs to see what goes wrong if i dont have the right network type, timer settings etc etc configured. I still have a ways to go to cover everything ospf related, but am placing that on hold for now since i ll be going on vacation as of tomorrow for a couple of weeks.

I am taking my laptop with me, so hopefully i can do some studying but am not holding myself up to it 100%. Visiting a 3rd world country ( pakistan ) doesnt guarantee 100% uptime for power. Yea i know. sucks doesnt it.

Ok game plan upon returning will be to try out the IPExpert Dynamips lab topology.   I found via their blog that they had released a dynamips topology, and promptly requested my copy which was delivered within an hour.  Upon returning i am going to go over the IPX ospf labs, work through them a few times and then decide my next step. Oh yes before i forget Wayne has posted part two of IPX ccie giveaway on his blog.  I already sent in my details, and am waiting to see if i am considered or not.

Ok thats all for now. Time to go get some sleep and then get a few hours of studying done tomorrow before i catch my flight out of town.

Happy Holidays to all.  Keep the eating under control. hehe. Be safe Merry Xmas, and a happy New Year to all.  May we all achieve our CCIE,s in 09.

Updates for last weeks posts.

A couple of updates from last weeks posts are necessary, at least for me.

This past week i made mention upon returning from the lab, that i was a bit confused on some of IPExpert topology. Guess i need to look through ALL the diagrams for it to make sense.  hehe. So pie on my face now.  I got the topology working as needed.

And as i mentioned before as well. I had emailed Narbiks rep Janet about any upcoming boot camps in Texas.  No replies received so this morning i sent off another email, and received a reply stating, that they set the Richardson Tx date since some Cisco employees had requested that. I replied back with a request of mine to be kept in the loop in case they opt to set up some more classes my way. Otherwise i ll be pulling out the frequent flyer miles for a trip to Pasadena in a few months.

On the study front,  i went through 5 of the OSPF videos from IE.  And am now working once again through the Vol 1 OSPF labs.  Simply put, going back and forth between the labs/videos,  i am doing some of the basic labs to hone the skills i still have, along with work on some i have missed.  So far this method is working out good for me. I am able to retain more information after doing several labs, and then watching some of the videos.  I plan on going through the Vol 1 labs twice before moving on to working through the ospf command book. There are several scenarios in there that are not as explicitly explained as i would like to see them. But overall the book does a decent job of explaining how a command is applied and the thought behind it.  And lastly i cant forget the doc cd. Tonights goal is to read through some of the different flavors of ospf documents that are in the ospf doc cd, mix in a nice assortment of ospf labs and it should be a good night.

Thats all for today.

Getting back in to the rhythm of it.

I got up this morning, picked up from where i left off last night. Yesterday i set completed a few of IE vol 3 dynamips topology sessions. I completed the last of the remaining two today, along with watching 1 session of the IE video on OSPF.  Working my way tediously through the next ospf session.  I plan on watching every single video several times before Jan 09 comes around. From my 1st lab attempt i recall having to go back and watch some of the videos again only to realize that either i had forgotten something or missed a key point that was being made. Whomever said you live and you learn is right. This week i will have ample time since there is no one at home other then me. I fly out to Pakistan in Dec 16th, and well i wont be able to do much with lab practice there, thus my plan is to watch as many videos i can get time. I know i ll get plenty of time since jet lag usually keeps me up at odd hours of the night for several days.

And yes i almost forgot, i am going to start/finish all my IPx dynamips topologies this week as well.

Up and at em.

I am up, just breezed through my first cup of coffee this morning.  Getting up at 7 am on my day off is early for me. I prefer to stay in bed but got up thinking about the lab again.  Its a nice chilly 29 degrees outside ( yes thats cold for texas ) high is supposed to be 60 plus degrees which i need so i can go out and clean up the yard/garage.  I plan on using this weekend to do some housework,  and other errands.  Most important item is to get a haircut which i was neglecting for the past 3 weeks.

Game plan:

1st, This coming week i plan on finishing up my dynamips topology for both IE and Ipexpert workbooks. I found the IE workbooks to be clear on their topology although there are some glitches with a missing device here or their in some of the diagrams.  IPx i only did some of the switching technology labs thus only worked off of the switching related workbooks.  I did look at the topology and some of them seem a bit confusing therefore i ll need to take a closer look and then build them up. Since dynamips lacks switching capabilities i ll have to tweak the topology for trunk and such. My focus is to use as much dynamips for routing, frame relay, multicast and as much of the ip addressing/services the current ios i have can allow me to work on.

2nd, Going back to my previous MO, myself and the doc cd are going to become best pals.  This time around i plan on reading each document technology and labbing it up. If its got anything to do with spanning tree, then i lab it up etc etc.

3rd, boot camp.  Due to financial constraints and some of my technology weakness. I dont plan on attending Narbiks boot camp for another 3 months. I need to take care of some bills along with working what i think my weaknesses are before i make the plunge and drop $2500 for his BC in Pasadena.  I did send an email to his sales rep Janet who i corresponded with back in August of this year, asking if they plan on adding any new sessions to Richardson Tx in 09. I noticed that one of the venues is new for Maryland so i am hoping they add another Tx location. That would come in handy for me, plus save me travel expenses/hotel stay.

4th,  Rack rentals. Most of my non switching preparation was done on a laptop running win xp.  It does need a memory upgrade and tends to slow down once i get up to 8-9 routers running.  Still it has been a great help. I am contemplating how to talk my wife in to allowing me to get a new laptop. Also need to figure out which one to get, i recall a gent from GS getting his dynamips to work on a mac. I corresponded with him about this a few months ago but gave up on the idea of getting dynamips running on a mac since one i would need to get a new one. two there is no guarantee i would be able to get it up and working in time for preparation.  The fore mentioned person spent two weeks i think getting all the bugs kinks out before dynamips was flowing smoothly.  Either that or keep track of frys for xmas specials and hope to get a good deal on a pc/laptop from them.

The workbook prep for full labs was done via IE rack rentals which left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I still have around a $150 worth of tokens with them which i plan on using up soon.  But this time around i am going to go with cconlinelabs.com from whom i rented some time in the past but stopped using since Tony doesnt have his racks built for IE Vol 3 workbooks.  As far as getting my own set of switch, well I cant afford to buy a set plus my spouse isnt to keen on looking at cisco equipment around the house. nuff said on that.

5th, This all is still work i have planned out so far.  I probably will make a change here or there. But for the most part i plan on adhering to working each technology down,  read it, lab it, break it and then repeat as necessary.

All in all this is a 6 month plan for me.  What the next 6 months holds i dont know.  I am hoping that i can stick to the game plan, and gain success.  If anyone has advice or a tip on what to incorporate in to my plan then please do advise.  For now this is what i am working with/on.  Thx for reading. Till next time.

Day after.

Yea thats what it is. day after.  All the way back all i could think was one how come this plane cant get me home faster and two,   what if i had done this or typed that in the lab.  Overall a great learning experience but an expensive one at that. I just got home and checked my results and the result said fail.  I know my weaknesses and strenghts.  So its back to the ole drawing board.  Once i get some rest then i am going to work on building up my dynamips labs. I need to get the IPExpert labs in the mix as well.  That and i need to figure out a game plan which i am working in my head.   ok signing off, time to take a shower, check the mail and get something to eat.  Thx for the responses of support from Aragoen Celtdra and cciepursuit. 

Back from the lab.

Heres my lil writeup about the lab. I went in around 7:45 am this morning. Got seated by 8:30 courtesy of the procter. The lab booklet got handed to me.  I got started at the cli around 9:10 am. I made some mistakes, switching and frame relay wise. It took me 3 reboots and a reconfig to get my hub/spoke up and running.  Toss in some question interpretation issues and i was in deep trouble around lunch time.

I could write a ton here, but i think it would be best to keep it short. I am not to keen on breaking any NDA .  Overall all i can say is the lab wasn’t hard, i got hit with a stroke of bad luck on the connectivity issues across the network.  Question interpretation got me as well. I had my game plan together but it got stomped due to the fore mentioned. Looks like its back to the ole drawing board for me. I was hoping to close this December out with nice sparkly CCIE #, but looks like it wont happen.

I am headed back home in the morning. This weekend will be dedicated to cleaning up the house, in another week i am flying out to pakistan for two weeks. Going to take the ole laptop with me for some studying and dynamips.  I plan on coming back and hit the books/workbooks hard. Also looking to sit a bootcamp preferably Narbiks. Thats all for now. I am signing out.

Its time to drop the War Hammer.

Its about that time!!!!! This is what i have been working towards for the past 7 months. My goal was to sit for the lab this year and well today i ll be doing just that…..  I have been up since 4:48 am PST. I got in around 3:30 local time yesterday, got a late lunch/early dinnner, watched a bit of the animated cars flick on tv and then did some last minute prep. I fell asleep going over some last minute items that i wanted run through.  The flight had me beat plus the fajitas i tore through didnt help either. All the way from Dallas to SJC i kept thinking to myself,  check route reflectors, split horizon, update next neighbor along with other scenarios that were running through my mind. I can only imagine what i ll get in the lab this morning. I did go by the Cisco site and checked in with the gent at the front desk, he told me to be there at 8:15 am, i replied i ll be here at 7:30 am which wont be an issue. The hotel i am staying at has a courtesy shuttle so that has worked out just great for me. I didnt have to rent a car and then try to figure out how to get around town.

Thats all for now. I am flying out tomorrow Dec 5th since there were no flights for today, but i think thats a good thing, no reason to fret over catching a plane on the day of the lab.$10 bucks for a flight to SJC courtesy of my frequent flyer miles. Glad i signed up for the miles stuff when i did.

I will post my results once i get back in town on zee 5th.

Last day for studying winding down…..

The road for practice sessions and reading theory has now to to an end for now!!!!!!  Today i used up my last session from IE racks and went over several scenarios that i felt weak upon. I made some mistakes but also got some right. I think there is just so much studying i can now do. I cancelled my last session which is for later on in the day. I have gotten to the point that i am just tired of looking at the cli.   And to top it off this morning my anxiety was kicking in when i was looking at some of the labs that i wanted to go over.

So this morning i went as mentioned earlier over several scenarios from some hand picked labs. The rest of the day will be dedicated to going over some personal notes of mine that i wrote along with tips on approaching the lab that i have accrued over the months from GS, sadikhov along with some pointers from arden packeer, bitbuckets, antonie henning blogs. I have taken their approach and made some notes for myself.  Right now i am going over the freebie video on how to approach the lab on lab-day from IE.

Over the past months i used mostly IE material, i did go through some of the IPexpert material but as the months/days dwindled down i ended up just focusing on the IE workbooks. I still have a few of their labs that i didnt get to touch, but i at the point where i just dont want to touch the cli and would like to take a break. I am hoping this wont hurt me, but only time will tell and well that time will be  another day from now.

So heres to my 1st and hopefully only attempt at the R/S track.  Inshallah my next writeup will be about passing. Till then i bid you adieu.

Down to the wire.

One last day of practice tomorrow. I had one 5.5 hour session this morning off of which i lost roughly an hour since i didnt set my alarm clock. Oops. I didnt get a chance to do any studying after that due to some errands plus i had an electrician come by to fix the smoke detectors. So no more beep beep every minute.  Hmm come to think of it this might help me in the lab, i blocked out the beeping and if there are any voice candidates then should be able to block their phones ringing as well. nah, i ll stick to the game plan of getting some ear plugs.

I went over three of the IE vol lll labs today.  I have one more session tomorrow during which i hope to knock out two at the least.  I did have to cheat and look at some of the solutions which is bothering me, but there isnt much i can do about it now.  D-Day is two days away, but i can only study tomorrow and then catch a flight out at 10 am CST on Wednesday.

I am calling it a night now. Need to get some zzzz and go through some last minute lab practice tomorrow.  One last post tomorrow and then the next one will be on Dec 5th when i get back in to town.