Malweth’s Metablog

I suppose it’s a good thing (to keep me on track), but I’ve been so busy on weekends, at work, and even after work (the carpet guy is coming tonight) that I feel far behind on my CCIE studies! I’m still completing my Supermemo repetitions daily (sometimes skipping a weekend day), but I haven’t had the time to learn new items.

I’m starting to get back on track, though… reading the Techexams Forums is a great motivator! Seeing where others are at and where I should be headed… I love Darby’s log. Another good motivator I use is reading through a few points of the Supermemo “20 Rules of Formulating Knowledge in Learning” - it’s a good place to see that I AM learning in the correct way - I just need to keep ON TRACK!

Really, anything that talks about the Exam or the Lab tends to be an excellent motivator for me. I just need to get to the point where exam tips can be put to use! Another good one of these is CCIE.org.

I’ll hold off on posting my stats for now. They’ve increased only slightly since the last time I posted them, and I’d rather do a bit of studying than take the time to gather statistics…

so until next time…

I’ll apologize in advance for the rant.

The worst part of studying for the CCIE (and ESPECIALLY the CCIE R&S) is that the beginning of the course is a major review. It may be that I’ve done too much IRL or that I just got out of my CCNP bootcamp… but it’s hard to wade through the tall grass of the chapters and find the valuable new material hiding in it. The worst part is the tall grass.

I already know how VTP works (it’s pretty simple) or how Trunking works (I’ve used it a good deal between routers and switches). After the CCNP (and CCNA!) it’s pretty old hat… There are some new things (the actual frames used in ISL and 802.1q), but it’s primarily rehashed stuff. For completeness however, everything I think I should know for all time is being studied (and supermemofied). This makes for LOTS of flash cards and very slow going.

That’s the end of the rant. To make up for it, an anti-rant… Even though I’ve had a lot of exposure to the basic elements of R&S, it’s of utmost importance that I solidify these fundamentals. Kageyama speaks to the importance of fundamentals in Go; the same is true for internetworking.

It’s actually fairly amazing that I’ve already been able to use some of these fundamentals! It’s good to know things off the top of your head (with just a bit of time for recall). I’ve had someone ask me to get back to him with info on a basic ethernet frame, and I was able to draw it out for him directly. Talk about a good way to impress people! I feel obliged to issue one warning: This does not work for picking up women!! At least not unless she’s also a network engineer. As proof, I’ll make this attempt on my wife tonight… maybe 802.3 with SNAP will be enough.

Cisco has come out with a new CCIE R&S Exam Blueprint which goes into effect starting 19 June 2007! The changes seem fairly expected (MPLS & IPv6) - Odom’s CCIE R&S book (2nd Ed.) mentions both, though I might need extra reading on IPv6 as it seems a bit light there.

Unfortunately, my SuperMemo database is patterned off of the previous blueprint. Practically everything will be carrying over, but I will have to change my hierarchical format a bit. Just at first glance, other things have been removed or at least adjusted - I don’t see OSI on the new blueprint, for example. RIPv2 is also gone (they must have realized that very few people use it?).

Supermemo Statistics

Supermemo Statistics

After Converting to the new Blueprint

The last week was pretty busy for me: 2 weekends ago was a Birthday party that I was in charge of AND we painted our bedroom. This past weekend was sort of a variety expo. We bought a new lawn mower (it’s Craftsman, RWD, Key Start… pretty nice), slept a good deal (needed), and moved my brother out of college. During the week it just felt busy - I guess I have to admit that I slacked a bit

Progress was slow, but I’m back on track again! I’m starting something new… Supermemo was mentioned before: it has a statistics output that I can use to track progress, so I’m going to be adding that to this blog every few days. (Baselined on Monday, how about)?

Supermemo Statistics