Busy Week in Review

Study, Study & Panic?
Less than eight weeks out already, could it be that soon? Alas it is, but I have a plan... Not to be confused with having a flag. Also on a better note, I have been reviewing CCIE Dreamer's blog and glad that I am not the only person who has decided to go down the SP path after already having R&S knocked out.

A word on Support, and I don't mean the TAC...
For those of you who are done with all forms of school and are not married, I don't want to hear a peep from you about not having enough time to study. For those of us who are married/decided to go back to school/raising kids or otherwise have family commitments will understand my jubilation at my next remark. My wife has agreed to me becoming the invisible husband for the next two months. I told friends after I passed the R&S and it will be so this time as well, while it is possible to accomplish a CCIE of any track without support from work, I have yet to see a married man or woman who did not have some support from their spouse in accomplishing getting their digits. That being said, I know several people working on getting either their first or additional IE's and each has said the same thing independently, so there has to be some level of truth to it.

Back to the Plan...
I see it as having about five good weekends in addition to evening studies to get the inconsistencies corrected in my mental database. I think that I am about at the 1st Normalized form now.

New Lab Date Set

Time to get serious about studying again:
Currently scheduled to sit the SP lab in RTP during Feb. So I will be buckling down and taking some long over due weeks off for training purposes at work. As bad as the economy may be, there always seems to be more work.

Tools, tips, and Tannenbaum:
At this point, I have both the CCBOOTCAMP and the IPEXPERT Service Provider Study guides and have loosely mocked the scenario's up with Dynamips. For anyone not familiar with Dynamips and Dynagen for lab prep, do yourself a huge fovaor and take a look. I'll be spending a little more time on getting that prepared in the next couple of days. With the holidays rapidly approaching the intent is to get as much of the basic review done before the end of the year and then January be spent performing mock labs.

Question to you:
Other than the two that I mentioned, does anyone have experience with the SP material from other vedors that you would recommend? While, ideally, this would be my last attempt at taking the SP lab, I may have time to go through one more workbook or guide prior to February. One of my co-workers who is already a multiple, the show-off, is recommending that I look at Internetwork Expert as he has been impressed with their material for other tracks. Any others?

Good luck to all in your studies & heres to less than 60 days and counting,
RouteTarget

The beginning can be a difficult thing...

Welcome one and all!

So this is the beginning.  Not the easiest things to do, but will see what we can do on that front anyway.  

Does the world really need another blog?  I am gonna have to say yes.  The great thing about the internet is that there is something out there for just about everyone.  If you happen to discover that it is not out there for you, well then... Go create it yourself.

So here is what I wanted to do with this blog:

1) Focus on CCIE Service Provider issues.

2) Help focus myself for an attempt at the same.

3) See where I can try to help the community as a whole.  

I have taken some inspiration from a couple of the other CCIE bloggers out there and figured that if I could help others in the same way, well it will have served #3 above.

To be Anonymous or not?  I am going to say yes for the moment and here is why:

I really want to stay impartial to hardware, software as well as training material out there.  There is no totally pure Cisco, Juniper, Nortel, Foundry, F5, etc... shop out there.  That being said, I am going to do my best to remain impartial.  We all have to deal with other carriers, vendors, customers and the like.  I want to try and remain honest to those I serve and that I rely upon to get my job done.

I am open to comments and will see what I can do to respond threads when appropriate.

Thanks and look forward to seeing what we can do to have more people get a second, or maybe even third, CCIE.

Route Target