Counting down to the point of no return
Jason Rowley
Jason Rowley
Jason Rowley is a Senior Internetworking Engineer with Nuvox (soon to be Windstream), a large SMB focused CLEC. He has been in telecomunications since leaving college to start a successful ISP with a partner in 1993. With perfect timing, he sold it in 1999, just prior to the bubble bursting. From there, Jason joined tw telecom in 2000 and then Nuvox (then FDN Communications) in 2004.
Not to leave self employment completely, Jason also owns several small companies that provide consulting and development services, mostly through word of mouth referrals, and is an investor in several other ventures.
Jason currently holds a JNCIS certification and is scheduled to take (pass!) the CCIE SP lab in May 2010. From there, he will go on to obtain his JNCIP and ultimately, JNCIE certifications.
In his spare time, Jason enjoys photography, hiking, visiting beaches in the Caribbean, and lazy afternoon naps.
Jason's blogs can be read at http://blog.jason-rowley.com (CCIE SP study focused) and http://blog.synacknetworks.com (general technologies).
It looks like I’m down to 109 days until my lab. 19 days until my 90 day point of no return as far as rescheduling. So, how have I been spending my time?
I am most nervous about the open ended questions. I feel pretty confident about any configurations thrown my way, especially as I work my way through my INE and IP Expert work books. I will be absolutely furious with myself if I fail because I missed that part of the lab.
Because of the mixed reviews of OEQs (some say they’re easy, some say they are too vague or too obscure), I ended up purchasing the INE Core Knowledge Simulation. Holy crap, am I glad I did. I could answer about 50% very quickly. The rest I either had to really think hard about, or just didn’t know.
That’s good, but it sucks. It’s good in that it really helps me realize where my weak spots are, but it sucks because it’s starting to make me think that maybe I’m not so ready. How large is the pool of OEQs? Is it going to be my luck that I get 4 questions buried in some RFCs? Or, will they be ridiculously simple.
I’m not taking any chances. Most of my nights and weekends are spent reading RFCs and every bit of documentation that I can dig up on CCO. While reading, I write down questions about key items. For example, I just finished RFC5089 and one of the many questions I wrote down is: “What are the domain types in a PCE-DOMAIN sub-TLV?”. I purposefully left out how many domain types so that when I come back to it in a few days, I’ll have to think a little bit. I hope that I’m being vague enough to prepare for whatever Cisco throws my way.
So, my schedule is like this. I read extensively every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, I quiz myself and then either do scenarios from the workbooks or ones that I’ve made up. Friday nights, I don’t do crap except veg in front of the TV – no reading blogs, no browsing to cisco.com, no books – nothing.
What’s frustrating is that every time I’ve taken an exam in the past, it’s made me realize how much my memory sucks. Stuff like this is good to have a base understanding of, but the less I use something, the greater the chance that I will forget it. I don’t know about everyone else, but for day to day work, I don’t need to have every TLV memorized. Sure, I know some. Enough to have a good enough grasp of IS-IS, anyway. But knowing all of them? That’s practically impossible unless I need to frequently deep dive into protocols.
Maybe I destroyed too many brain cells back in college. And before college. And maybe a little after too…
I kind of wish that Cisco didn’t give you the OEQs until the end of the lab. It will absolutely suck if I know 15 minutes into the day that it’s a waste of $1400.
Anyway, I’m not going to let it stress me too much. 109 days should be plenty of time to read everything multiple times (even though work has me busy as hell). Hopefully my self quizzing also prepares me for the intentionally vague questions that I have come to expect from Cisco. We’ll see soon enough. One thing is for sure. I am definitely learning more and more. And that’s always a good thing.