My First CCIE

Well, my week didn’t turn out at all like I planned. I got some good reading done on the ample plane ride but I was “on” from the time I hit the ground for about 3 days. I had about 3 hours available each day, which I opted to use for sleep. It was crazy. Grueling. In the end, the job was done and I went home with a lot of overtime on the books.

But I didn’t finish my book, nor did I get any labs done. Ugh.. I hate how life gets in the way of things I want to do sometimes. But.. I finished another chapter this morning (Chapter 6) before work and.. maybe.. if things go well and I catch a little free time… I can start a lab today.

On a slightly different note, I’ve noticed how, even though I’m becoming an “expert”, I still don’t know anything. It usually works out that every other week or so, someone comes to me with some problem looking for advice from the great and wise Cisco sage. “I put netflow on one vlan and I’m seeing my stats for all my traffic but on another vlan in a virtual router, I’m only seeing partial traffic unless I have the room temperature at exactly 72 deg. between the hours of 1pm and 2:37 pm (eastern) during a high tide. Any idea?” Well, of course, they came to me because I’m the expert, right? “Uh. Huh. That’s an odd one. No, no idea off hand. But since I’m an expert and you expect a better answer from me than ‘I dunno’, I’ll have to look into it.” No one seems to come to me with, “I have a 0.0.0.0 in my frame map” or “My BGP is leaking private AS space. How do I shut that off?”

So, I’ve realized that getting CCIE is really only the cover charge. The entry fee. And on the other side of that door, there’s enough to keep me learning for the length of a lifetime career.