From: subodh.rawat@wipro.com
Date: Fri Feb 08 2008 - 15:58:48 ARST
Many congratulations Scott!!!
Very nice post....Must confess that it should not take less than 14
months to complete so much stuff.
Thanks
Subodh
-----Original Message-----
From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Scott M Vermillion
Sent: Thursday, 7 February 2008 21:34
To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
Subject: Beat the 20k Mark in SJ on Tues!
Hi All,
Been having some strange e-mail issues that started out in San Jose and
apparently followed me home. I appear to have lost several sent
messages, including my original post to the group regarding my trip.
Short version follows, longer version follows that (if I can stomach
wring all of this again):
I have no idea why I set this as a goal for myself, but I did set it and
I did achieve it. I beat the 20k mark by less than 50!! New number is
#19953!!
Products used:
GROUP STUDY and its members!!!
Let's not forget that it's Paul that brings us all together here!
InternetworkExpert Vol I, II, & III
InternetworkExpert Advanced Technologies Class (CoD)
InternetworkExpert Online "Bootcamp" (marketing thing I think - I
generally thought of it as a "lab strategy" class, personally)
InternetworkExpert Graded Mock Labs (1-3)
Generally, the Brians and also their new blog
Thanks also be to Kady and Misty on the support staff
Narbik's bootcamp
Narbik's workbooks (all)
A massive collection of posts, musings, and humor from Scott Morris
Cisco Assessors (A & B)
Too many Cisco Press books to list but certainly all of the mainstays,
such as Doyle Vol I & II and Halabi, and lots of other less obvious
choices for the non-core stuff.
I chose InternetworkExpert largely based on advice from Joe Brunner and
also because the Brians seemed to be on the same wavelength as me
regarding Dynamips. They gave me some great suggestions as to how to
put together a good topology that would support their workbooks and so
it was an easy decision to make. I ultimately ran a Mac Mini as my
Dynamips server and bridged out my router ports to four new 3560-8PC
switches (just not an e-bay
kind of guy). They were horribly expensive but I resolved to get 100%
of
the switching points during each and every lab attempt as my return on
investment. I'll obviously never know if I attained that goal, but it's
pretty clear I came close enough.
I elected to attend Narbik's bootcamp after Rik Guyler planted the seed
in my head. I also couldn't help but notice how many people who
ultimately pass credit Narbik in their announcements. Narbik is a way
cool guy and I enjoyed our week in Pasadena immensely. Had some great
classmates in Santi and Chris Riling too.
I do recommend the Cisco Assessors and the IE Mock labs. Strongly. I
can't say I always agreed with the grading (never having passed a single
one of them), but I learned immensely from them in terms of getting a
lab done and looking out for pitfalls that tend to appear only when
you're racing the clock. Ever an issue for me. I literally - and I am
not exaggerating one bit - was typing in the final command for the final
task when the proctor came around and told us to write mem and take a
hike. I had probably 25 or 30 points of stuff I needed to re-verify but
never got the chance. Thus, my three-mile walk back to the hotel was
spent planning my next attempt.
Without those graded mock labs, I'm just sure I wouldn't have been
successful. As it was, I was on the edge in terms of time management,
etc.
It's only coincidence that I have never used anything from IPExpert.
While I don't believe you can pass by buying everything on the market, I
do like to get a new perspective on things from time to time. And Scott
Morris is a first-class human being. I appreciate what he does for this
list on an almost a daily basis and I appreciate Scott as a friend.
Thanks again for showing me how to eat Japanese food out in San Jose!!
OK, this last part blends in some personal history, so feel free to tune
out at this point:
I started my own business several years ago and the early years were
fantastic. I made a very reasonable living and trips to Jackson Hole
and international vacations became part of my family's normal routine.
Then some things turned sour and I wasn't really working full time.
Then my wife, a corporate finance type, quit her job and was unemployed
throughout most of 2007. I decided to get out of the industry
altogether and set about trying to decide what I was going to do when I
grew up. Well I guess after
18 years, I'm just not capable of anything else. Nothing I thought of
seemed to stick for very long. So by the 4th of July holiday here in
the States, it became obvious that I needed to get back to work. But
not as a regular employee. I'm ruined for that after being out on my
own for so long. So I resolved that if I was going to remain in IT, I
was going to climb the mountain. I ordered a pile of books and tore
into written prep probably around the second week of July.
Conventional wisdom held that the written was designed primarily to
filter out only the least likely candidates to pass the lab. Plenty of
people told me how easy it was and that it was basically a CCNP-level
exam. I still studied hard, but did not bother to incorporate lab time
into my preparation. Thus, I may very well be the first guy to have
passed the lab with a single attempt but not the written! LOL. I
regrouped and passed on my second attempt about a week-and-a-half later.
Booked my Feb 5 lab date
the next morning and got busy.
I spent FOREVER working my way through Vol I. My routine was basically
this:
1. See what the topic of the technology lab was
2. Go read EVERY SINGLE word I could find on the topic in the
DocCD
(supplement with books as needed)
3. Do the lab.
4. Break the lab
5. Play with the lab
6. Return to the DocCD as needed
I sometimes stretched a 20-minute lab into an all-day affair. I finally
moved on to the Vol II labs but was taking something on the order of
four days to complete one. Still returning to the DocCD constantly.
Finally, I got serious about working on speed. It was difficult, to say
the least. I did a few Vol III labs but that was it. I was getting
close to my lab date and I have to do some reverse and re-engineering of
each lab to make it work with my 9-port switch topology. I didn't want
to waste any more time on that so I shifted to rack rentals and graded
mock labs. I'm here to tell you that I lose about 30 points off my IQ
the instant a clock starts ticking. I do DUMB stuff that I would
normally never do. The mock labs helped to shake that out of my system.
Having said that, I was planning my second trip to San Jose before I
even left on my first one. I literally checked available dates before
my flight. I knew the technologies but was still just taking too damned
long and not being able to verify my little mistakes away. Towards the
end, I gave up entirely on any of those "have X, Y, & Z done by lunch"
type of things and shifted back to more of a "build and thoroughly
verify" approach. This final adjustment was likely the one that put me
over the top.
In the final weeks, I made extensive use of the ATC CoD again and
Narbik's workbooks. He shows how things are configured and what the
various outputs will be. He occasionally shows common configuration
errors and what the result will be (and obviously what the correct
approach is). It's very, very useful as a late-phase review tool. As
is the ATC, as again, you're seeing the stuff being hammered out on the
CLI as it's being discussed.
Very helpful indeed.
I also eliminated distractions, such as phone calls and e-mail
(including the list!). This too was critical. I seriously, seriously
worked hard those final weeks.
I flew to San Jose while many were watching the Super Bowl. I took
Monday off and, in an attempt to wear myself out, walked about 12 or 13
miles. I walked from my hotel to Cisco and back just to scope things
out. BTW, the lab is in Bldg C and don't just show up asking where to
go. The jackass working the desk at Bldg A informed me that was
"confidential" and he couldn't and wouldn't tell me a thing. I asked
for his business card so I could complain. Then he poked around on his
computer and told me to go to Bldg L, which just happens to be the
fitness center. I ultimately figured it out by using my PDA to look up
that "confidential" information on their public website.
I did not sleep a wink the night prior to my lab. I walked back to
Cisco the next morning, having been awake for over 24 hours and
physically very exhausted. I was starting to fade while waiting in the
lobby (showed up about an hour early).
When I got in and read my workbook, it was on. Not the least bit tired
and totally focused. I KNEW I could do what that workbook was asking of
me and I got very excited that I was going to be a CCIE by the end of
the day.
However, some tasks were deceptively time consuming and I began to lose
my battle with the clock. By lunch I was pretty worried and by 2:00 or
3:00, I was fighting panic. But I learned from my mock labs and calmed
myself down.
Panic = lost points. Panic = failure. So I stopped even looking at it
and just focused on completing and verifying tasks. Like I said, when
5:00 rolled around, I was wrapping up a task that I had put off 'till
the last.
I actually think I nailed that one.
Mr. Morris just happened to be staying in the same hotel, so I joined
him for dinner thoroughly convinced I had failed. I didn't rule out
passing, but not having re-verified so many points worth of stuff, it
didn't seem likely. When I returned to my room and the message was
there, I instantly became ill. I didn't want to read a failure report
after such a nice dinner. But I was powerless to resist. So I followed
the link. to CCIE #19953! Yes, I'm still rechecking every day to
ensure there wasn't some kind of mix-up. Once, under "Status," I
accidentally read it to say "cancelled" vs. what it really said, which
is "certified." Evidently it should say "certifiable."
I had been advised to not be shy about asking questions of the proctors.
I wasn't. I demonstrated that I knew all the different ways to do a
given thing and discussed what some of the possible outcomes might be.
They were more than willing to clarify what they were after as long as
they were satisfied that my confusion was only what the actual task was
looking for
vs. what might possibly be done to solve it. I never bothered to ask
anything designed to lead me to an answer I didn't know, which would
have been a waste of valuable time. I only asked how to interpret
certain ambiguities, explained why I thought it was ambiguous, and
demonstrated how I could solve it if I went down Path A and also how I
would solve it if I went down Path B. And I'm glad I did too, as I
think on several occasions it prevented me from choosing poorly. I am
truly grateful to both proctors for their patience with me. I thought
maybe they might get sick of me but never seemed to. I thought they
might fail me for asking so many seemingly silly questions but they
obviously didn't. So my advice is plan your questions carefully and
ensure that what you are asking is something they'll be willing to
answer, which is pretty much limited to how to interpret something that
could reasonably be read in more than one way. I obviously can't speak
for any other testing center, but I can tell you that the San Jose guys
are not some disgruntled old hermits who hate CCIE candidates. I sensed
that they are deeply connected to us and are sympathetic to our plight.
It's an outrageously stressful ordeal and they seem to understand that
in normal life, you'd be a lot smarter than you sound while doing battle
with the beast. I was very pleasantly surprised in this regard and now
I'm certain I'll never test anywhere else. And yes Joe - the watermelon
juice was GOOOOOD!!! I'll credit 10 points to that stuff alone. LOL.
OK, that's it. I'll be hanging around the list and will consider SP
following a break and some much-needed work. The offers/opportunities
are already starting to roll in. It's an amazing thing, this CCIE
stuff.
Cheers all and prosperous studies,
Scott
CCIE#19953
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