Wednesday, September 24, 2008

CCIE Command Memorizer

First things first, for those of you who remembered Mike Down, he is now back at http://idontwannabeaccie.blogspot.com/ . The man's back. Period. Welcome back Mikey! :-)

I recently purchased the CCIE Command Memorizer from ConfigureTerminal.com and also subscribed to their top notch newsletter. Now what made me purchase this e-book? It was down to a few reasons. For the screenshots and description of the product, I suggest you visit ConfigureTerminal.com and check them out. Caue's blog has also screenshots (not to forget Richard Bannister's blog as well).

1. It is rather a unique tool that actually helps you (or rather forces you ;-)) to remember commands which you will likely use in your CCIE lab (that's the point of the product name). For example, it will give you are scenario e.g. configure eigrp using AS 1 so you will need to then type "router eigrp 1". WRONG! In fact, the CCIE Command Memorizer takes the full approach by putting you in the enable prompt and waits patiently for you to put in "configure terminal" before adding "router eigrp 1". Now this is good as it mirrors the exact config style of the IOS. So in case you didn't notice, it is a simulator.

2. The price and the freebies. Ok you get the e-book with free updates for a year. Granted they do tell you you get another free e-book (Cool IOS Commands) and a free newsletter (really top notch) but these are available even if you don't get the CCIE Command Memorizer e-book. The point is at USD $99.99, you get a good CCIE product. As all of us CCIE candidates know, USD $99.99 is kinda cheap for a CCIE product.

3. Last but not least, it has been tested and used extensively by a few excellent CCIE candidates. The product has also contributions from Richard Bannister, a cool guy so that speaks for itself. Caue has been using it and I believe a few others are using it as well.

As of now, I am happily memorizing a few commands from the first few chapters of the CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Certification Guide 3rd Edition and testing them on this new tool.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Books before Bedtime

After my wedding dinner went successfully last week, it's back to full time studying and slowly picking up the pace where I last left. However, there is this one distraction from reading only CCIE materials, it's my other interest, security so for the last couple of nights, these books are my bedtime story books.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Non CCIE-related = Wedding Photos

Another non-CCIE related post. My personal wedding photos are posted on my personal blog at http://nthane.blogspot.com for those who want to know how I look like. Just in case anyone is wondering, I am 1/4 Japanese and 3/4 Chinese. Please leave a comment if you like/hate the pics :P.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

IPExpert's BLS on Linux

If you're like me who runs Linux primarily but having trouble running IPExpert's BLS on it, there is a nice HOWTO at http://joshatterbury.com/blog/ipexpert-bls-on-linuxquick-guide/ . I have personally tested it on my OpenSuSE Linux box running Wine 1.1.3 and it works.

Please disable Compiz prior running to this as it may give mix results (for me I got a badly rendered screen). Mad ass props to Josh for taking time to give us Linux users a BLS solution :P

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Non CCIE-related = Disc Prolapse

Not much to write about but I am still reading Cisco Press's CCIE Routing and Switching Exam Certification Guide 3rd edition. There are already a few stuff that I have forgotten even though passing my CCNP was not so long ago. It tells you how forgetful the human mind is sometimes or maybe it's just me ;-).

I have added a few more blogs to my blog roll so I am sure not to forget to visit them ;-).

I do have some bad news. My disc prolapse problem has returned after the pain was gone for the last 3 years making me think that perhaps I got 'cured' (note the quotes). But it seem that it has caught up with me. I used to have this problem way back in 2005 but during that time I had a gigantic dose of nerve reliever (as the doctors called it) to relax my nerve and hence I was not in pain until two days ago. The pain was unbearable! For two days until today, I was unable to pass motion comfortably and to make matters worse, I could not sit in front of the computer for more than 10 minutes so I had to take 5-minutes intervals in-between. I will be visiting a specialist this Friday and perhaps I might have to go for surgery so if you don't see me updating my blog for quite some time (a month or more) you can be certain that I am in a hospital bed playing tic-tac-toe with the cute nurses.