Archive for the CCIE Written Category

Beta Results Came Back (Finally)

Posted in CCIE Written, Exams on November 13, 2009 by Gerren

After almost exactly 8 weeks since I took the 350-001 beta, I got my results back. (See my previous post for the background on this)

I ended up with a 623, which given the little studying I did, makes me feel pretty good. Let’s just say that I really need to hit multicast pretty hard. So with the right amount of preparation, the written should be relatively simple..I hope.

I need to get back into the game here soon. The little one has somewhat of sleep schedule now, but it just doesn’t necessarily agree with my peak study times! (ie she’s awake around 4am — I’m still operating in zombie mode)

Reading through the success stories on ieoc.com has helped get my motivation going, now it’s just time to do something about it.

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Week 1 Down…??? to Go

Posted in CCIE Written with tags on July 26, 2009 by Gerren

For various reason, which for now will remain a mystery, a I lost a lot of motivation this week, but still managed to get in a decent chunk of studying. Instead of updating several sources, I’ve made my time tracking sheet available as a Google doc. This link will take you to the public spreadsheet I am using to keep track of my hours.

Friday and Saturday were my weak days, which both tie in to the lack of motivation. I managed to get back into the game on Sunday with a solid 4+ hours, but I would’ve liked to do more.  The past week has been dedicated to spanning tree, and all of its various incarnations. I forgot how much I liked studying spanning tree…or maybe I should say that I’ve come to like spanning tree more as time goes on. This coming week will be focused on VLANs and VTP, along with Etherchannel.

I’m going to try this week to see if I can get my company to cover the cost of ordering the INE CCIE 2.0 study package. The only thing I need to figure out is if they are going to have a CCIE R&S v4 package out soon. I want to dive in and get started, but don’t want to buy the v3 package if its going to be updated soon.

Anyhow, hopefully this week I can stay focused a bit more.  I think I’ve managed to get myself out of the funk that I was in, but we’ll see how the week plays out.

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CCIE R&S Written Exam Prep

Posted in CCIE Written with tags on July 19, 2009 by Gerren

I’ve begun the task of preparing for the written exam, and I have to say that the concept of actually passing this thing is a bit overwhelming. I’m sure that most people feel that way at first, but holy hell! there’s so much damn information to keep track of.

I’ve started using Google tasks to try and keep me on track. So far, I’ve broken down section 1.10 of the R&S v4.0 Written Exam Blueprint and I’ve got a full week scheduled (damn you spanning tree and all of your diabolical offspring). It’s painful to think that there’s 11 main topics to cover!

For those of you that are interested, I’ve started bookmarking sites that I will be using/reading in accordance with the lab topics and have tried to categorize them using the exam topic number (for example – 1.10 is spanning tree). You can view my list here: http://delicious.com/gerren.murphy

Does anyone have any good tips on keeping things straight during their exam prep?

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