Personal

Happy New Year - 2024 everyone!!

Its a new year, which means a new beginning.

For the last couple of years I have been very incognito and focused on some personal areas of my life. This meant that I have not been active in the networking community as much as I would have liked and not attended as many things either.

As im sitting here in the hotel, waiting to leave for the airport, the only thing on my mind is: Wow.. what an amazing week this has been.

I have met so many old friends and made a bunch of new ones. All of the Tech Field Day delegates and staff are so bright and friendly that its hard to put into words. We have debated, discussed, thought out loud, shrugged our shoulders and laughed hard.

I am honoured to have been selected as a delegate for Tech Field Day during Cisco Live Europe 2019 in Barcelona!

Cisco Live Europe will take place from the 27th of January until Friday 1st.

I am really looking forward to this opportunity. There are some really great names among the list of delegates that I hope to be interacting with quite a lot, both during and after the event.

Small update.

I was fortunate enough to be selected as a Cisco Champion for 2019. Looking forward to alot of good information and cooperation from the program! 🙂

I recently decided that i would like to utilize Observium as well as rancid for configuration backups on my home network. To that effect, the following links really helped me out getting it all setup correctly:

https://docs.observium.org/rancid/

http://packetsandpings.blogspot.com/2013/05/installing-and-configuring-rancid.html

https://layer77.net/2016/08/10/upgrading-from-rancid-2-3-8-to-3-4-1/

Let me know if you run into anything i might help out with.

New Server:

So I just completed a purchase off eBay for a new server for my lab purposes.

For a while now I’ve been limited to 32Gb of memory on my old ESXi server, which is really more like 20Gb when my regular servers have had their share. Running a combination of different types of devices, each taking at least 4Gb of memory, doesn’t leave much room for larger labs.

I am fortunate enough, to be able to goto Cisco Live US! again this year.

Last year was such an experience, that my hopes are really high for this year as well.

I will be arriving on Friday the 8th and leaving on the 15th. Not a long stay this time, but it was what my boss could arrange for.

Wow, what a busy month this has been!

So I started my new job on February 1st and thus far, everything has been really great.

My new coworkers are very friendly and helpful.

I’ve spent the better part of february, trying to get to grips with the SP network I will be focusing on from now on. Im still not where I want to be yet, but im getting there. One of the guys I will be working very closely with, started cleaning up the network when he was hired 9 months ago and he’s done a really great job with what he’s had to work with.

This post is my follow-up on a recent discussion on twitter.

Working for a VAR (Value Added Reseller) is not always the glamours life some make it out to be.

Working as a consultant, what you are really doing, is being the CEO of your own service company.

Why do i keep focusing so much on Cisco, when there are clearly alot of different vendors out there with similar products and technologies?

There are several reasons for this.

1. I began the professional part of my networking career with Cisco.

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People often ask me why i keep studying and when i will be “done”.

To me, this type of question seems odd, because i am committed to lifelong learning.

I am of the opinion that going through life without learning something all the time would be a life wasted. I think this goes back to the early explorers. Discovering new things, whether it be a new continent or simply a piece of knowledge really excites a certain type of people.

Even though im still in San Diego, Cisco Live! US 2015 is but a memory.

But what a memory it is! It being my first time attending a Cisco Live conference, I didn’t really know what to expect.

What I was met with, was a conference full of really sharp and nice people. The conference staff was very helpful and polite and really made an impression on me, from the time I first stepped onto the pavement outside San Diego convention center.

I have decided to change my focus quite a bit.

I was planning on tackling the IOS-XR exam this year and was preparing for it by going through the blueprint. However another track kept pulling me towards it, and ofcourse thats the CCDE track.

Well, a short update. I managed to pass the CCIE Service Provider lab exam on March 14th.

I am quite exhausted from the experience, but very happy 🙂

I just had a chance to go ahead and read Mr. Greg Ferro’s ebook called ”Arse First Method of Technical Blogging“.

The book is being published by Leanpub (leanpub.com), an independent publisher and the readers will get free updates to the book as they become available.

I just ordered my ticket for DKNOG, which will be happening on March 21st in Copenhagen.

Catch me there if you can!

www.dknog.dk

Wow. The other day, someone posted a link to [zenhabits.net]. and I was hooked right away.

The entire idea around being “Zen’ish” really appeals to me on a fundamental level. I like the idea behind it, i like what it entails, i like the discipline and i like the calmness.

Yesterday brought with it another Java security breach. It is security breach that doesnt yet have a fix for it (0-day), so short of disabling Java on your computer, you are out of luck.

Im continually amazed that we keep running this piece of software, but I guess I shouldnt be, given people’s track record of running insecure software (think older Internet Explorer browsers on windows).

Just wanted to share another great motivational video

Sorry for the lack of contents lately.

I am dealing with some personal issues that put a bit of a pause to my studies.

As soon as I’m fit for it I will put up some stuff related to the SP space.

Today I came across a blog post from a guy which I respect deeply. However, I disagree wholeheartedly with the content in the post.

The title says: “That Setting Yourself Goals is Practising Failure” and the entire post can be found here.

Its been a rough week. I have been finishing up projects and getting rid of loose ends.

I have also been giving a couple of lectures on IPv6 (Basically primers) to customers as well as some information on basic failover configuration in IOS. The advent of 3G and low cost gives alot of new opportunities for customers.

The picture below should be put into a frame and put onto the desk of everyone in the IT industry.

By day, I am a consultant, so I have quite a few stories that relate to this picture.

Finally.

I have been using Things as my task management program for about 5-6 months.

Its been better than not using anything at all, but what has really annoyed me quite heavily is its inability to do “Cloud” synchronization. The only form of synchronization from Things is through your wireless network. And even so, just directly to your Mac, which then syncs to the other devices.

I own alot of books.

By books, i mean those paper things, that takes up alot of space and for which we chop down trees.

Recently, i have been shifting my reading onto my iPad. Its easy to carry around, it holds multiple books and pdf files. On top of that, i find its a great reading device. The fonts are rendered fantastically and they are easy on the eyes to read. I have no trouble reading on the iPad.

This will be the last post of 2011.

It’s been a very interesting year in a lot of different areas.

The most important for me personally has been the achievement of my CCIE. I have worked very hard for this and it finally paid off.

I have finally decided to clean up my Routing & Switching notes and more importantly moving them from Microsoft OneNote to Microsoft Word.

I know, I know, its still Microsoft, but even though OneNote has been okay for my needs, the lack of the program for Mac OS is annoying the crap out of me.

Lately i have been making it a goal of mine to watch a TED video a day.

I do this in order to expand my horizon and learn things that i normally wouldnt pay much attention to.

Something as foreign to me as a music conductor explaining how to perform a piece of music, what it takes and why he does it, makes me a more informed human being.

I am back from our company trip to Dubai.

Dubai is a fantastic place. Its my first time in the middle east and it left a great impression.

The whole city struck me as a proof-of-concept kind of city. They decided they wanted to do something great and they went ahead and did it. Even better, they did it without much red-tape.

Lately i have been watching a Ted video each day. I find this fascinating as i learn stuff in areas i would not normally be looking.

I can highly recommend this to anyone in order to stay informed on whats going on in our world.

Some time has passed since i got my CCIE number.

I have spent the time reflecting on the time that has passed since starting my CCIE journey. I will write down my journey in more detail later on for those who are interested.

Hi everyone,

I am happy to announce that this week i passed the R&S CCIE lab exam. CCIE #29189.

Its been a long journey for me. Working full time, not taking any dedicated time off work to do so, has been challenging.

Warning: The following is primarily a rant! You might not find it applicable in your situation, or you might simply not care. You have been warned 🙂

Having been a consultant for a while now, i am constantly amazed at how solutions are made up and what is sold simply because it has a buzz-word in its title or description.

I have received the rest of my routers (1841s), I have also received the memory and flash upgrades for them all (256meg memory and 64mb flash). The guy who sold them to me was very helpful and it turned out he had the cables that i needed as well (some Smart-serial to Smart-serial, as well as some DB60 ones).

Welcome to 2011.

I hope that you have had time to enjoy the holidays and all the festivities that come with it.

Personally i have been doing alot of work stuff. Moving data centers is no small task when the customers want constant uptime. Of course for some customers this couldnt be done as they dont have fully redundant systems to switch over to. However a large part could be done very fast, but they all needed to be done at night and preferably during the weekends.

The month of December has been crazy for me.

A ton of work related stuff has been going on. Our HQ move has taken its toll on everybody. Ive been working through every weekend, putting in some 20 odd hours on some days.

Its been just over two weeks since my lab attempt.

I have basically done no studying at all during that time.

Time has come to get back in the game. I do have alot of work to do in the near future, but i will still try and do all the studying i can squeeze in.

First shot = Failure.

So i had my first lab attempt on tuesday the 2nd of November.

Boy was it hard 🙂

Unfortunally i didnt pass this time around.

I did very well in the troubleshooting part, but the configuration part, got the best of me.

At the bootcamp last week, i was almost out of reach from my lab.

Even though i just got the remote power controller, the network at both the conference place as well as the hotel (especially the hotel!) was pretty bad.

As you may have noticed from my inexcusable lack of posts, ive been very busy.

I have been finishing up IPexperts volume 1 workbooks and now going through volume 2. Still lots of interesting details to learn about. I have also managed to get most of my video-on-demand material onto my iPad so i have easier access to it.