Personal

So yesterday, I started with all the lab exercises that has to do with EIGRP. I did the one in the self-study guide, and one (2.7.1) in the lab portfolio. I also started on 2.7.2.

So far, the labs in the labportfolio are far better written than the ones in the self-study guide. Today, I have snuck in a few practice scenarios regarding default route propagation.

Alright, I am done with reading about EIGRP. I am now skimming through the chapter, and taking notes. I have an okay understanding of how EIGRP works, and I am looking forward to the labs to nail out unknowns.

I am not 100% convinced about taking notes, or rather doing it in the order im doing (reading first, then skimming and taking notes, then going to the lab).

Today, I am continuing reading about EIGRP.

My goal for today is to get at least 40 pages of EIGRP reading done. Lots of nitty gritty details such as unequal-load balancing and route authentication.

To understand and process the material, 10 pages takes up 30 minutes of reading time. This includes reading the material, looking at the topologies being presented and thinking it through (in case of metrics and bandwidth calculate a bit to see where the authors are getting at).

Chapter 3, EIGRP.

Started reading about the inner workings of EIGRP today. EIGRP is an improved distance vector protocol provided by Cisco themselves. It is an improved distance vector protocol, because it passes updates directly to its neighbours. It is more advanced than traditional distance vector protocols, because it supports VLSM and it does not use periodic updates. It uses hello packets like link-state protocols.

Okay. I will try and document some information regarding my study to attain the BSCI (Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks) exam.

This is by many considered the hardest exam on the CCNP track (1 of 4 exams). I will tackle this one first, and then continue forward to the other exams knowing they will be easier.

Okay, so its been a while since my last post.

Been having some issues to deal with, which has taken quite alot of energy.

I am going for the CCNP, starting with the BSCI exam. Ive got the books for it, and started studying. There’s alot of detailed information, and lots of labs to do. Chapter 2 is 40 pages long, and its taken me two days to reach the end of the information in the book, now im starting the labs in the end of the chapter 🙂

I am happy to report that I managed to pass the CCNA exam yesterday. What a relief.

Here it is:

Hopefully Maibrith passes her exam today as well!!

Update: She did pass it!

So, test is scheduled for tuesday, and im looking through and updating my notes. My plan is to look through all of my notes on the morning, trying to pick up on anything I might have missed during my studying.

I just purchased a Rack from Dantrak UK. I need some sort of solution to mount the gear I have and will be getting. I cant have it all lay around the floor. They (Dantrak UK) is basically a reseller of Dantraknet.

I like sunny weather when its moderate, but temperatures in the 25+ Celcius range is a bit too much for me. Especially when I need to spend time in front of my computer. I will need some kind of cooling solution this summer for sure.

Im writing this on my 3rd HP laptop in 2 years. This is a company owned laptop, because if not, I would never have purchased another laptop from Hewlett Packard.

My first HP laptop was a so called NC8430, which is in their line of business laptops. It replaced a T20/T21 (I have forgotten), which was 3+ years old, and still working fine. The NC8430 has a 15″ display, 256mb graphics card, comes with 1 gig of ram (which I had upgraded to 2gig right away), and as far as i remember, a 60 or 80 gb harddrive. It also had a 2.0 ghz Core 2 duo processor from Intel. Pretty nice machine from reading just the specs. And thats where the story takes a turn for the worse.

Since starting my now almost infamous Cisco course, I have become very interested in ways to learn new material.

How do you plan out a semester, how do you organize a study schedule, where do you study? what kind of tools do you use to get you through it all?

I watched an iPhone get a dent yesterday. Not a pretty sight. It was my girlfriends iPhone. She dropped it on the floor, and unfortunally it landed on the edge of a doorstep, causing it to get a dent. Nothing wrong with the glass surface or function of the phone at all.

Been having alot on my mind lately. Ive been writing down the topics I want to give my opinion on, but just havent gotten around to actually elaborating on them. I will try to rectify that over the comming days.

Trip to China cut short.
For some reason I fell sick in Amsterdam and had to go back to Denmark. Im out sick until friday where I will get to see my doctor.
Im quite convinced that what I experienced was a panic attack that just wouldnt go away for some reason.

So Ive hit a snag in my learning process. There is a question on one of the chapter tests, that I simply cannot work out. I know the answer, but I simply cant figure out how to that answer. It is really pissing me off.

In recent months ive re-experienced what its like to have a bad teacher.

Im currently taking a CCNA certification, and anyone who has taken one, know there is ALOT of material to go through. To have a good teacher help you with questions and problems would be a huge help. Unfortunally I am not in a position to say I have a good teacher.

Another attack.

I suffer from depression along with anxiety/panic attacks. When I was 21, I all of a sudden felt like I couldnt breathe, and everything around me seemed to blur and sound funny. I was at work, and was forced to leave work and drive to my parents house, since I knew that, at the time being nobody was home. Unfortunally my mom was not home from work yet, so I lay down on the living room floor and waited, still feeling really really bad. When she came home, she was ofcourse very afraid of what was wrong with me, and called my doctor immediately. Because of Danish rules, unless you call for an ambulance, you cant really goto the emergency room before being sent there by your doctor. So we took a taxi to my doctor, who was nice enough to see me right away, and he saw me and listened to my heart right away, and sent us to the hospital, which at the time was still open to heart cases, which my condition was thought to be. I was then admitted to the reception room, where they put me on an EKG machine, along with taking a blood test, my heart rate was very high, but within an hour it stabilized alot. When they were sure I was not going to die on them right there and then, I was taken to a more permanent room, where I had to stay in my bed, since they dont want heart patients running around so shortly after an attack. At about dinner time, they came to take another blood test, I was also told I could goto the smoking room if I wanted to which was a nice relief at the time. They were all very nice to me, and they all knew me because of my mom working at the hospital for a very long time. She has been making sure the hospital has always been clean as an tablespoon for as long as I can remember, and she is very well respected, and with good cause, she’s the best and most caring person you will ever meet. Alas, the next time, the doctor was making his rounds and checked me out, along with the answers to my blood tests. They revealed that I had indeed not suffered a heart attack of any kind, but his best bet was that I might have a strained chest muscle which could be why I still felt like someone was sitting on my chest. He sent me home, where I still felt like crap.