From: Scott Morris (swm@emanon.com)
Date: Thu Jul 29 2004 - 11:44:59 GMT-3
Minutia will kill you, but it is not something to dwell or focus on! If
ommitted from workbooks, people feel they aren't getting their money's
worth, though. And, like you said, the workbook trap is easy!
The bottom line is that you need to LEARN the technologies involved. If you
know them well at a basic and fundamental level, the minutia becomes
irrelevant. Relevant from the fact that you need to address whatever they
throw at you, but irrelevant in the grand scheme of things because you'll be
able to quickly ascertain that which you don't know, look it up, and
implement it into your configurations.
That is really the goal. It's not entirely because I'm lazy and don't feel
like learning every single little tidbit (although that has something to do
with it too!) but more because many little things can be filed away in the
"whatever" section of studying where the world will not end if you don't
know it off the top of your head or have practiced the same little thing in
the last 15 labs you've worked on.
Mania is a good term. :) I suppose that's all we are anyway, is just a
bunch of Cisco maniacs. Heheheh...
Learning the basics not only pays off in the long run, but it also allows
you to keep the precious brain cells free and clear for truly new things! I
figure that I only have a few brain cells anyway, so whatever ones I can
spare is the better way to be!
Scott Morris, CCIE4 (R&S/ISP-Dial/Security/Service Provider) #4713, CISSP,
JNCIP, et al.
IPExpert CCIE Program Manager
IPExpert Sr. Technical Instructor
swm@emanon.com/smorris@ipexpert.net
http://www.ipexpert.net
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Joseph D. Phillips
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 12:34 AM
To: James
Cc: group study
Subject: Re: Just love driving back and forth to San Jose....
Well, I had a feeling of illegitimacy going in anyway. Something the Brians
said a week or two back has been haunting me.
Truer words have not been spoken -- it is too easy to fall into the lab
workbook trap. I don't know about the rest of you, but the lab exercises can
be kind of addicting. You do them over and over, get good at them and feel a
certain satisfaction that you've learned something when it's all over.
It's especially easy to fall into lab mania when you work a full time job
and come home tired. I was doing labs at work, completely exhausted, and
some every weekend, just mindlessly going through the steps without learning
much.
I have gotten better since my previous attempts, to be sure. Many things are
very easy to do now, but there are some things none of the lab workbooks
cover.
It's a lot easier for the Cisco folks to come up with an extremely obscure
task for you to perform than it is for Wayne Lawson, Brad Ellis or the
Brians Dennis and McGahan, et al, to prepare you for every possible lab exam
item.
This is the first time since I flunked my first time back in July 2003 that
I am not disconsolate. I had a raging headache going in on Tuesday, and
thought I was going to faint during the exam. Still I recovered enough to do
most of the tasks except for multicast.
Anyway, I need to spend some quality time making friends with the
technologies I have since dreaded, and maybe less time on the rack.
Maybe I grab my buddy in Sherman Oaks and we do labs together, or I come up
with some books to read, like on multicast, QoS or Security. And I think
I'll do another mock lab, too.
My problem is that I'm running out of time.
On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 23:50:33 -0400, "James" <james@towardex.com> said:
> >
> > Oh yeah, I flunked attempt number four in SJ on Tuesday.
>
> awww :( But, don't give up!
>
> So yea I flunked my first attempt today at RDU. I know how it feels.
> What really got me is that after viewing the score report, I was close
> to pass.
> Just a few necessary points killed it.
>
> When I looked at the score report, I pretty much realized where I
> screwed up.
> It appears after all seems to be my misinterpretation of how the Cisco
> wordings of the question wanted the solution to be configured. And
> apparently it wasn't done to their likings, hence no partial credit.
> What threw me off even more into dissapointment is on couple topics
> that I KNEW I was very weak on, I scored 100% on those, but not on the
> ones I knew well? Talk about irony..
>
> As a result, I am going to invest in that new 50 dollars Parctical Lab
> studies or whatever book from Cisco Press (I have the link somewhere,
> just dont remember the name top of my head) as well as DQOS book. Then
> focus specifically into where I exactly failed, and attempt and
> reattempt various IPexpert labs, specifically the nightmare and
> brutual Lab39 and Lab40 in ipexpert which scares the shit out of
> everyone, then go for 2nd Lab attempt soon.
>
> It appears I'll need to continue configurating IGP on routers 24/7,
> and continue redistributing them at 6 point places while keeping
> best+backup paths available until the whole technology becomes
> fast-switched in my head, where during the lab, fingers start typing
> without any thinking done, assisted by that small ASIC in your brain
> that got brainwashed with 300 hours of big messy IGP trainwreck :)
>
> Either way, no hard feelings. I hate the Boston weather anyway.
>
> -J
>
> --
> James Jun TowardEX
> Technologies, Inc.
> Technical Lead Network Design, Consulting, IT
> Outsourcing
> james@towardex.com Boston-based Colocation & Bandwidth
> Services
> cell: 1(978)-394-2867 web: http://www.towardex.com , noc:
> www.twdx.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sun Aug 01 2004 - 10:12:05 GMT-3