Yes I knew the way!

My trip to San Jose for the IPExpert boot camp last week gave me my first taste of California. So on the two down days I had (Sunday and Saturday at either end of the trip), I had a look around San Francisco.

First however – how do you get to San Jose from SFO – easy, just jump into a shared van at the airport and then go on a geeky magical mystery tour until you get to your hotel. Travelling down the highway into Silicon Valley you see all the names of the places where those big companies you know the names of, and some other places that you go “oooh, I didn't know that was there!” (at least as a geeky Brit on their first trip anyway!) Mountain View, Cupertino, Moffett Field, Palo Alto. Hmmm!

If you are ever in San Jose, check out Gordon Birsch for a beer and a meal , a fine pint (or 3) of the seasonal bock, and a good feed – and thus ended my travelling day 26 hours after I woke up.

Awake at 4:30 hmm isn't US TV poor at this time of the morning – breakfast – UK football streamed over the internet, then time to catch the train to San Francisco. Firstly the San Jose VTA light rail to San Jose Diridon for the CalTrain to San Francisco – on time – nice! (Although given how short the change time was should have gone the opposite direction from Metro to Mountain View which is what I did on the way back) The fast train (baby bullet!) gets from San Jose to San Francisco in just about an hour (the stopper takes 1 and 1/2 hours!) and I managed to make it. Just! I’d decided to take an open-topped bus tour, but I had forgotten my coat, and it was colder than anticipated. I can however recommend it as the best way to see everything if you are very time limited (just don’t get off the bus unless there is really something you want to do!)  I had been looking forward to seeing the Golden Gate Bridge since I booked the trip – here it is!

That’s right – cloud arrived just before I did! So rather than get off I stayed on the bus and went over the bridge. It was much clearer on the northern side – but no photo of the whole bridge without any cloud. This is the best!

Down to Fisherman’s Wharf – fresh crab for lunch/dinner and then back to San Jose (CalTrain, VTA etc.). Back to the hotel in time to get a good night’s sleep before the course started.

San Jose Here I Come!

This weekend I’m off to San Jose (not for a holiday!) for the IPExpert 5 Day Lab Preparation Instructor Led Boot Camp with Vik Malhi. I thought I’d note what I’m looking to get out of the course, and then I can check back afterwards with what I thought (and whether it was worth it!).

I get a lot of comments when I say I’m off to San Jose (the obvious one + others) for a training course – “That sounds like fun!”, “Couldn’t you go any further for the course ?”, "”Don’t they do that course in the UK ?” etc. Mostly when people think of IT-related courses they think of the 5-day low impact CCNx or Microsoft courses, so when I suggest that most of my time will not be spent in the pub, but in a classroom for 10-14 hours a day people are shocked and ask more about this mythical CCIE certification. They are then shocked again when I tell them how much the exam costs, what’s involved and that I’m doing mine in Sydney in April (“Can’t you do that in the UK ?” ) Come on Cisco, if I have to do a re-take, Brussels in not my first choice for a destination, and one of the reasons it’s taken me so long to get motivated since passing the written (in Barcelona – why do exams in dour places!) They also think that I should pass it “easy”, at which I nod politely and say “hopefully!”. If only they truly understood!

So what am I expecting ? Well – having done most of the volume 1 labs, I’m looking for filling in the gaps. There are many times, especially in the call routing sections where I’ll do it one way and the proctor guide describes another way – both get the same end result (as far as I can tell), so if Cisco awards points in a results oriented fashion, I’ll be fine! It is always advantageous to know multiple ways to do things however, in case Cisco says you can’t do it the way you know.

I hope to get some good tips on strategy, as I need to work on mine and refine it until it is second nature. I’m spending too much time thinking, and not enough time doing at the moment. It needs to flow better.
It will also be good to surround myself with a group of like-minded individuals who are all pulling in the same direction to achieve the same goal. Hopefully I’ll meet some new people I’ll come to call friends and we can go for a beer when we have our numbers (personally I quite fancy CCIE#30000 – which, looking at the latest digits being handed out, could be right about when I take my exam – any number will be fine by me though!)

It is also helping me to focus. Doing this with a 9-5 job (more like 6:30-7:30 if you include commute), it is hard to make the time to have long focused time – i.e. just the weekends – you wouldn’t run a marathon if you could only practice at a quarter to one-third distance! This is the point where the hard push towards the finishing line begins. My study program has another big push just before I fly out to Australia (where I’ll have no access to lab gear for the final 7 days leading into the lab), where I hope to get myself peaking at just the right time. We’ll see!

Right time to pack my bags!

Weekend wake-up call

This weekend I attempted my first lab double-header, two sessions on the proctorlabs.com racks in two days. My aim – to finish off the IPExpert volume 1 workbook, and to attempt a full length lab. Well, let’s say if I had any doubts as to how much work is still be done to get myself up to the required standard to pass the lab, I don’t now!

My Saturday labbing was to fill in the gaps where my previous lab sessions had left. This meant starting with lab 6 and working through to lab 13, skipping those I had already done and picking off other bits where time allowed. This is to be the last day I study with other things going on in the background – you know the usual slight distractions, music or amazing premiership football games with up to 8 goals! It’s very hard to get the nuances of IPMA  as yet another goal goes in (anybody who listened or watched Soccer Saturday this weekend will attest to that!)

The various application sections opened my eyes to functionality that is bound to be on the final lab, as it is the stuff that I don’t touch every day (or even any day) – IPMA – I’m looking at you here. I guess someone must use it! It was interesting to see and is now on my read more about list, e.g. how to tell if the question wants shared-line mode vs proxy mode. At least with the application sections there seems to be less variation in how to configure the final solution (or do I need to learn more about them so I can see more alternatives – I’m not sure yet).

Sunday, how am I going to go with a full lab – volume 2 lab 1 – I guess this must be a nice easy starter lab (and in fairness I’m probably right here!). I do wish there was a difficulty level attached to each of the volume 2 labs, as it would help gauge where I’m at (I’m sure if I google it, someone has stated the difficulty level compared to the actual lab!) As I’ve stated before, the time zone issue means that my labbing is 1pm to 8:45pm – which coincides with two major meal times – and Sunday lunch is the most important meal of the week! So I knew from the start that I was not going to go straight through and would probably not have enough time to finish everything.

For anyone attempting the full labs in one session, I have a suggestion (which I thought of beforehand, but didn’t do this time), read the lab in the hour before the rack time starts and make any notes, set up any points tracking, and any test plans you feel you will need (and you will need all of that) . That way you won’t waste any of the rack time (I will take my own advice next time).

I actually have many suggestions and things I’ll do differently next time, here’s a few.

• Don’t get stuck!
  If something is causing problems, move on and come back, especially if it is not core to getting the basics working (which may have already been done in the real lab). It is really easy to burn time, and a fresh look will often find the problem (this happened to me twice!)
• Save your configurations regularly
  It’s easy to forget this one, given that a lot of work is in the CUCM GUI, but those gateways don’t auto-save their configuration and when you enter that one configuration command which causes your 2811 to reload (not done that to an IOS device in years) – it was something to do with DSPs in telephony-service if my memory holds – then that’s the last hour or so that needs to be re-done (not such an issue when you have the proctor guide, but come lab-day!)
• Details, Details, Details
  Just because it looks like a T1 configuration doesn’t mean its a working t1 configuration. There will be tiny details – often taken for granted – that will trip you up and burn time, watch for them, be aware of them and don’t let them get you! Oh yes and if you don’t see significant digits on the mgcp endpoint screen – it’s because you didn’t select Digital T1 PRI !

So how did I go – hmm lets just say it needs more work. That’s my speed needs more work (too many typos), my time-management needs more work (spending too long on a problem – I now understand why you use VIA zones, although I still not sure I can see much of a use for them in the real world), my overall knowledge needs more work (see VIA zones comment). It’s an over-used cliché, but it is a journey of discovery and I’ve discovered a lot over that one weekend. 2 months (should I be counting in days yet?) to lab day, too late to cancel. Off to San Jose for some IPExpert  boot camp magic, lets see what I think after that.

New Laptop–Same Old Issues

As you may have read, I purchased a new laptop last week, and I said I’d answer the question am I happy with it. Well here are my first impressions and feelings on what I’ve purchased and will have to live with for possibly another 5 years.

The packaging of the Vaio can only be described as minimalist. Power lead, check – ooh great the power supply has connectors at right angles to the cable, why can’t all power supplies be like this, less chance of damaging them! Laptop battery – check. Laptop – check. A couple of pamphlets about warranty – and done.  Great not much to throw away.

The out-of-box experience of Windows has never been good – and laptop PCs have often been full of crap-ware. Sony annoyed me instantly – when it got to wireless network connection – um, I checked the store demo laptop and it definitely had 802.11a wireless, but it couldn’t find my 5Ghz network, not happy – this laptop is going back first thing in the morning! Once Windows setup had completed and the machine had rebooted a few times, I got to log in, first stop – network and sharing, change adapter settings and lo’ in their wisdom by default 802.11a is turned off! (The setting is under the advanced driver options – find that if you don’t know what you are doing!) Turn it on, and voila’ I’m on my 5Ghz wireless network – Windows update time (argh!) 2 hours later and multiple reboots, I think I’m done.

The next step is the removal of crap-ware. Sony even give the full instructions to completely remove the “complimentary” anti-virus software on the back of the invoice. This was highlighted by the man in the shop (score one bonus point for customer service), I guess they’ve had complaints. AV gone (three reboots), Microsoft Security Essentials installed and I’m away again. Add, chrome, acrobat, Skype (preloaded, but old version update me please), remove office and install my own copy with OneNote, Outlook et al. Getting there. Acrobat Reader (another preloaded needing update).

Set up Media Centre (no tuner – but the best way to watch Sky Player!) – hmm no Sky Player icon. Some Google time and a few reboots later, I found the solution here. Sky player is a must for couch surfing, but it gets confused if you use multiple browser sessions (or browsers), so it’s easier to use it within Media Centre, then you always know where it is.

Hmm, other things of note to add – GNS3 – it may not do voice interfaces, but for practicing everything else its fine. There are limits onto which versions of IOS you can usefully load on its emulated 3745 & 7200 routers for voice – 7200 for PSTN, 3745s for the rest. Wireshark of course, never know what you might need to look at. Of course putty.  Interestingly, I was able to find 64-bit versions of both of those! Not forgetting chrome  (preinstalled with an update me!).  VMWare – mental note – need more RAM.

I have added the latest Intel wireless drivers, so I can now use WIDI once I purchase the Netgear Push2TV adapter for the other end (surprisingly this is cheaper in the UK than the US – it is just hard to find). This is a feature not advertised at all by Sony – but the combination of wireless chipset and i3-370 provide it (along with the new driver and wireless display software that is).

So once all this was done (its been over a few nights as I remember what I’m missing, not all at once!) the important question – am I happy with what I’ve bought. The short answer is yes. I now use it on my commute (1hour on a train – not the tube/bike sections) in both directions, without having to carry a power supply. I can get a couple of lab problems worked through in that time, or write a blog post (like this one). The screen size (13”) doesn’t bother me, in fact its great as I can watch TV without it being obscured by the top of the screen.The keyboard is comfortable without being too large (although its taking a bit of getting used to the position of home/pgup/pgdn/end one above the other), typing on it is a breeze. As for performance, its handles everything I’ve thrown at it so far – its not a desktop replacement, so I don’t expect it to be one. Sony, you have one happy customer. Time to remove the stickers!