Unfortunately the warm days of the summer are gone. I still see sunny days every now and then but it’s cold and we’re starting here to have temperatures below 0 during the night. We didn’t even have much of an autumn, it kinda jumped directly to winter. Don’t know if I should be happy or not about that, I am not crazy about autumn either, at least not about the rainy part anyway.
At work it’s still kinda ok. Besides the fact that I have to go back and forth each week, the project is interesting, challenging and gives me the chance to work with technologies not easily available in most other places. It’s a great place to learn things and I would say it’s the perfect working environment to be in if you’re studying for CCIE, the Holy Grail of Cisco Certifications (Service Provider part).
Which is exactly what a couple of my colleagues are doing but it’s not easy at all. This is one exam (a 8-hour lab actually) where it’s not enough to just know stuff, you have to know it perfectly and be able to work fast because you are constantly under time pressure. And trust me, it’s not cheap at all, you end up with thousands and thousands of euros invested in books, rack rentals, boot camps, the lab itself, etc. Needless to say, this is hardly doable without the support of your company. And on top of that, the pass rate is very low. It is said that less than 10% of people taking the lab pass it the first time. On average, one needs 3-4 attempts to pass it. Kinda bad, eh ?
I am probably at the stage where I could attempt it but I really have no time for it, not when I am gone most of the time. Maybe later. I will just focus on other professional certification in the meanwhile.
Vacation is coming at the end of the year, which is something I am looking forward to. Probably we won’t go anywhere but some time at home is not bad either. Speaking of vacation, there is one thing that annoys me at my company. They ask us to give a vacation plan for the whole next year. I have 28 days of vacation and I have to plan them ALL one year in advance. I can understand their point of view in a way, that they need some kind of overview when people are gonna be gone, but I still think it’s very weird. How am I supposed to know what I will do in one year ? Something might come up and you might need to change the dates but you can be shit out of luck if someone else in your team has it planned in that time.
They say that this is just for “planning purposes” and that you can change it but we all know that once you turn it in, it’s pretty much fixed, there is no change because you most likely conflict with someone else. I didn’t use to have this in my former company but it was a bit easier there I guess, less people in our department so less chances of conflicts.
And at the end, something unrelated. I came upon a very interesting article from cracked.com: “7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable” (via). It’s a bit long’ish but it’s well worth it.
I am still around and I did not forget the blog, it’s just that I’ve been a bit busy with other things lately. During the week not much special is happening, it’s just work as usual. Most of the time in München, some of the time in this shithole small town called Rheinbach on the other side of Germany. Which is where I will be next week, actually. I can hardly wait, I am trembling in anticipation. Umm .. no, not really. In any case, not much I can do about that right now so I have to go.
Otherwise we’ve been working on our house, which we nicknamed “The Cave”, don’t ask why. The Cave is starting to look better now. We are also trying to do something about what we call “city rats”. They are not actually rats, just pigeons. We don’t like them, they are all over the roof, they make weird sounds and they shit everywhere. Luckily Freya might’ve found a solution:
Yes, that’s a pump-action water gun with a pretty good range. We hunt them down now and I think they are learning that it’s not so safe anymore to sit anywhere they please.
At the beginning of June I finally have a week of vacation, which should be kinda nice. As it happens, my parents will also be visiting and they will also bring a very special little somebody, which I will very happy to see again. That’s also the reason we have accelerated a bit the renovation inside The Cave. It’s not yet ready to receive too many guests but hopefully we’ll get it ready in time ;-)
Professionally I am still kinda working towards my CCSP, I have two more exams left in which the Cisco ASA firewall plays a major part. That’s one thing I can’t practice with at home so I don’t have many choices. Either classes or I just get whatever books I can for self study and I do the practice online. Which is what I will do actually. Internetwork Expert is a well-known site for the candidates to the CCIE, the Holy Grail of the Cisco certifications. They also have rack rentals and I noticed that the security rack has all the equipment I need to practice for my ASA exam: 2 ASA’s, IPS sensor, ACS server and so on, just perfect.
So I just rented rack slots for one week and at the end of June and I will just stay home and practice. It’s actually not that expensive either, about $15 for a 5.5 hour slot. My boss agreed with the plan, probably the $90 price for one week plus some books as opposed to many thousands of euros for a 4-day Cisco course plus travel expenses might’ve had something to do with it.
Last but not least, I am still trying to convince Freya to do a guest post on the blog but so far no success. I am still working on it, she has some funny stories to tell from her daily trips to work ;-) I even offered to translate it into romanian but I guess I need to offer more incentive. We’ll see.
Tags: ccie, ccsp, cisco, germany, house, munich, pigeons, rack, rheinbach, watergun, work
Daily stuff, Our House, Pictures | Stefan | 
May 20, 2009 6:33 am | 
Comments (3)
I forgot about this. Last week I passed yet another exam, only two more to go until my CCSP. After that .. I don’t know. I imagine my boss will want me to start working towards the CCIE Service Provider but I don’t think I will go for that just yet. I simply don’t have time for it. I think I will continue with CCIP but we’ll see, I still have some time.
