One step ahead of Hurricane Earl...

The proctors in Beijing have kindly informed me that I passed CCIE
Security in RTP today. In a bit of irony, this week includes trips to
both RTP and Miami: you'd think it would be obvious on which trip I'd
have to worry about a hurricane. Guess again!

Some random notes

- Kelly (the *awesome* proctor in RTP) said that Roman R. has already
taken SP Operations at least once. Pretty soon he's going to be
tripping over the CCIE ribbons on his Cisco Live badge.

- still plain old SecureCRT w/o tabs for Security (console server or
individual windows). Hint: bind F6 to \036x to switch between
console sessions

- the candidate PC bogs down quite badly if you have a ton of IE
windows open. I was having to close/re-open quite a bit. Loading
very large pages like the ASA error message guide took at least 60
seconds to render.

- no more CCIE Storage exams in RTP. As soon as San Jose finishes
testing their pod, the equipment will be removed (which would have
been nice today since it's right next to the Security cubicles and
quite loud).

- CCIE Wireless is live in RTP. The only local equipment is a 7921
phone and its AP. Everything else is in SJC.

- according to Kelly, they do NOT reload your gear before grading.
They grade it exactly as you leave it at the end of the day. Only
would be reloaded for a re-grade.

- In the past, if you dared to denigrated the Green Bay Packers, you
would either automatically fail or Howard would sneak onto your pod at
lunch and change things. Kelly is a NC State Wolfpack fan. Fair
warning.

- if it's not obvious, the previous was a joke!

My preparation

- IPX and INE volume 1 technology labs. Mostly reading and re-reading
the solutions
- IPX volume 2 full labs
- IPX video walkthroughs. Brandon did an incredible job with these,
especially vol. 2
- IPX audio bootcamp

also

- Yusuf's practice labs from Cisco Press, plus the one he gave at
Cisco Live. Very, very highly recommended that you use these. They
definitely give a feel for how the actual exams are written.

- for OEQ and general knowledge, the Cisco Press flashcards are solid
but I didn't like that they're online-only. I played around with
creating an iPad version using Mental Case, but never finished it. I
also spent quite a bit of time reading Yusuf's "Network Security
Technologies and Solutions" book.

Cheers,
B*

--
Brian C Landers
http://www.packetslave.com/
CCIE #23115 (R&S + Security)
Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net