CCIE Progress Update
Just over a year ago I posted that I was starting work toward the CCIE R&S exam. My original goal was to take the written exam by June of this year – so what progress have I made, and where am I at now? Well I ended up…
Tips for Working with Vendor Support
This post has been on my mind for a while now. I’ve worked as a network admin for long enough, and opened more technical support cases with vendors than I want to think about. Over the years I’ve developed my own process for how I handle…
What is Risk Acceptance?
You can’t always get what you want. As an engineer though, it’s your job to determine what’s best for the company and recommend it to management. What happens if your suggestion gets turned down? Well certainly your proposal must have been mis-understood, right? Maybe…
2018 Cisco Champions
I received an email late yesterday afternoon – to my surprise I was invited to join the Cisco Champions program for 2018! I applied back in November, but I never would have thought I would actually get selected. I’m very excited to join the wonderful group of existing…
You Should Automate Something This Year
Maybe 2018 isn’t off to quite the best start. Recent processor vulnerabilities have people scrambling to patch and update systems. Stuff like this ends up being a fairly large sink of time for any systems/network administrator. The worst part is that we have practically no control of…
How to Improve: Stop Doing, Start Understanding
There is a key to being successful at just about any IT job: Stop just doing work, and start understanding what you’re doing. Might seem like an odd thing to say right? But this is something that I have seen confuse engineers at earlier points in their careers.…
My 2018 Goal: CCIE R&S
I first completed my CCNA certification back in August of 2007. After that I started working on certifications pretty heavily, because I wanted to learn as much as I could about networking. I used the certifications as both motivation to learn and a measurable goal of my knowledge. Over the…
Ten years of Cisco Certification
It’s August of 2017 – which means it’s been a long ten years since I originally obtained by CCNA certification in 2007. I figured it might be a good time to take a minute and look at what that has meant for me, and how the…