From: Scott Morris (smorris@ipexpert.com)
Date: Fri Dec 21 2007 - 15:01:24 ART
On a side note (and humorous one), I would suggest getting a written "pass"
note from your wife allowing you to take the test on Valentine's Day.
Howard, one of the proctors in RTP, has quite a sense of humor and flat out
says he'll abuse married folks taking their lab on Valentine's Day... So
you have a chance to "up" the humor a bit by starting the morning out
handing him a permission slip from your wife allowing you to be there. :)
Wear yellow shirts too (preferably Packers' shade).
On to your post, one of the things I always tell people about making their
own labs is that it IS a great idea, mostly because in the beginning people
aren't very good at it. The cool thing is that you may end up dreaming up
some impossible scenario. But after you've gotten really pissed off at
yourself for a while, you should be able to PROVE that it does or does not
work before making any changes to your lab. That exercise, while incredibly
frustrating is also very valuable in teaching yourself things!
Scott Morris, CCIE4 (R&S/ISP-Dial/Security/Service Provider) #4713, JNCIE-M
#153, JNCIS-ER, CISSP, et al.
CCSI/JNCI-M/JNCI-ER
VP - Technical Training - IPexpert, Inc.
IPexpert Sr. Technical Instructor
A Cisco Learning Partner - We Accept Learning Credits!
Telephone: +1.810.326.1444
Fax: +1.810.454.0130
http://www.ipexpert.com
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of Eric
Phillips
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 10:29 AM
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: Re: Final 40 Approach??
Hey Scott,
I am down near my 40-days as well. I am taking my first shot at the lab on
February 14th in RTP. Being newly married, I have quite the understanding
wife. :) When and where is your lab?
I intensified my CCIE studies about six months ago, and took every piece of
training material I have and put each chapter, video, or lab under the lab
blueprint. I then started studying one major topic at a time. During and
after each topic I spent a considerable amount of time creating my own labs
to test every variation or setting of the commands. I then made the labs
build on top of each other. For example, I started studying IGPs and QOS,
then by the time I was studying BGP I would make sure to build QOS, RIP,
EIGRP, and OSPF into the same lab.
I have two more days of IPv6 studying, and I will be done with my "academic"
studying of the major topics. I then plan on spending a week refreshing my
understanding of the non-core topics such as SNMP, RMON, NTP, etc. Luckily,
I have extensive real-world experience with most of the non-core topics, but
I still need to explore the "odd" features of each.
I now plan on working on the full labs and taking two accessor labs. I
bought one of the IE graded labs for January 21st when they were on sale,
and I will do one Cisco assessor lab, but I am undecided on exactly when to
do that.
I think the most valuable part of my studying has been creating my own labs.
I feel that to create a lab that completely tests a subject I needed to
thoroughly understand the technology and every intricacy about it. I have
also found that the labs I built were substantially more difficult then the
vendor-created labs. I would imagine the difficulty stems from knowing how
to exploit my own weaknesses, and the labs focused on the difficult parts of
the technology. Did anyone else create their own draft-quality labs while
studying? I am curious if you all agree that to make a lab requires a
complete understanding of the technology, not just a syntax-memory of the
commands.
-----
Eric Phillips
mailto:ephillips@ltiit.com<ephillips@ltiit.com>
Network Consultant II
*LTI Information Technology
501 Avis Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Phone: (734) 929-1400 Fax: (734) 929-1401
On 12/19/07, Scott M Vermillion <scott@it-ag.com> wrote:
LTI Information Technology http://www.ltiit.com
501 Avis Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Phone: (734) 929-1400 Fax: (734) 929-1401
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4
: Tue Jan 01 2008 - 12:04:31 ARST
*http://www.ltiit.com
//www.ltiit.com/>
>
> OK all, I'm not quite down to 40 days 'till lab time but I will be by
> Christmas. Of course I am interested in general thoughts on how to
> spend these last weeks, but I am particularly interested to hear
> thoughts on specifics, such as when best to do assessor labs. I know
> I still really, really need to work on speed, so it's too soon right
> now. But I don't want to wait until the point of no return and bomb
> an assessor. Since there's only two of them, you really want to get
> as much out of each as possible.
> Also, do you bother with reading anything but the DocCD and lab
> solutions guides at this late phase? I'm finding myself really,
> really wanting to read Odom's QoS book again. Also that Router
> Firewall Security book has largely faded from memory. I have books I
> haven't even cracked (and at least one more still in the shipping
pipeline). Etc.
>
>
>
> I will mostly be staying with my full-time study approach but will be
> blending in some paid work. Thus, I'm probably down to about 30 full
> study days left, which is why I chose to fire off this query now.
> Honestly, I would likely slip my date a month at this point, but I'm
> already committed to about three weeks of travel immediately following
> my current lab date, so slipping it a month would mean slipping it two
> or three, which I'm not too keen on right now. I have lots of air
> miles, etc, so the lab isn't as expensive for me as for some. But I
> loathe failure in all of its many forms, so I want to be deadly
> serious about each and every attempt. Any and all
> thoughts/experiences welcome!!
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Scott
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
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--
Eric M. Phillips Senior Network Consultant