Author: lindsay

You haven’t heard much from me recently for a very good reason. I have had no life. None whatsoever. No biking, no going out, no watching TV, nothing. All my spare time has revolved around one thing: CCIE study. This year I set myself a challenge, of becoming a CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert). This is a top level networking certification, highly respected within the industry. I know most of you have never heard of it, but trust me, if you work in my field, you certainly know about it.

Becoming CCIE certified involves passing a written exam, taken at any one of hundreds of testing centres around the world. That part needs a bit of study, but it’s straightforward. That then qualifies you to register for the real meat of it – the 8 hour practical exam, taken at a limited number of lab locations around the world. These have limited seats available, and depending on where you are, it can be tricky getting seats. Luckily my nearest location is Sydney, which is usually not too tricky to get space at.

Because of other rather important things going on in my life – i.e. I’m getting married next week – I had to schedule my first lab attempt for this week. I always knew that it was going to be a bit tight to get ready by this time, but I thought I could just about do it. I don’t do any hands-on work with Cisco equipment these days, so all of the practice I get is in my own time, on my own dime. I’ve mostly been using training materials from INE in my study program. These give me some structure to work from, as I try and cover the enormous range of topics covered in CCIE Routing and Switching these days.

Almost every night I’m either reading, or practising scenarios on rented routers and switches. At least one whole weekend day is taken up with practice lab scenarios. Closer to lab time, this was both weekend days. My iPod has audio lectures loaded onto it. When I’m driving to and from Tauranga for work, this is usually what I’m listening to. Some people keep track of the total hours they spend studying. I don’t, but trust me, it’s a lot. I really don’t know how Anna puts up with it all, I really don’t. She has been amazingly supportive though.

All this work, but it turns out that I’m not quite there yet. Close, but just not quite there. Recently I tried a couple of practice labs from from Cisco 360 program. These offer a pretty reasonably simulation of what you might expect from the lab. One of them I was just below passing, the second one I passed. Note: There are two parts to it, troubleshooting and configuration, and you need 80% in both parts to pass.  So I knew I was on track. Not certain to pass, but certainly in the frame.

So this week I travelled to Sydney, for my first lab attempt. Things started out reasonably well, and I was reasonably sure I would pass the first part, troubleshooting. Sometimes candidates know they’ve failed the first part, and so they don’t make a proper effort in the configuration part. But I thought I was doing OK, and I thought I was going OK for time. So I wasn’t rushing, I spent a bit of time reading through the questions, looking at the diagrams, getting a feel for what’s going on. The last thing you want is to find that a question near the end of the exam completely changes how you should have done something at the start. It’s a classic Cisco trick, to have something late in the day that breaks everything you thought you’d configured earlier.

I started working my way through configuring various bits and pieces. I could understand pretty much all of the core stuff, but the problem was time. After a couple of hours, I realised I just wasn’t moving through the marks fast enough. I also got tripped up by the deliberate mistakes Cisco had inserted. I was prepared for a misconfiguration, I wasn’t quite so prepared for something added that would actively break things. That took a little longer than it should have to track down and fix. At lunch time I was OK, but only just.

After lunch, I worked my way through the rest of the items, all except for 3. Two of them were on a complex, but niche topic, and would have required a huge amount of work for the marks. One was dependent on the other, so I made the decision to just leave that, as it didn’t affect anything else. The third thing I could have worked it out, but I was running out of time, and didn’t want to risk breaking other things. I took too long configuring things, and I didn’t have the time to properly verify everything, other than full connectivity. Provided I got every other section right, I could just scrape through, even with the missing sections. So I wasn’t certain I’d failed, but it would be tough to pass.

This morning I got my score report. Passed troubleshooting (the section that trips up most candidates), but failed configuration. No CCIE number for me today. I think the thing that got me was three little words: “No partial credit.” If a question has 5 requirements, and it’s worth 3 marks, it means you need to get everything working correctly to get any points. You can’t get 4 things working, and get 2 out of 3. So what they’ll do is have 4 straightforward requirements, and one to catch you out. Clearly I’d made a few little mistakes along the way, because I lost too many points to pass. If I’d been faster, I would have had more time to verify, and maybe I would have picked up those mistakes.

Am I down about it? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t down, at least a little bit. I’ve put in a lot of work, but I’ve still got more to go. But I need to keep this in context – the numbers I’ve heard are that there is a 10% passing rate for first timers, and overall about a 26% passing rate. So I’m in good company. It’s not wasted effort either. It’s not cheap, taking a week off work, flying to Sydney, paying $1650USD for an exam, and coming away empty-handed. I’ve spent thousands on training materials too. But this is all good experience, and I know I can pass this exam. It’s just going to take a bit more work. I know I deserve to be there attempting it – passing the troubleshooting part proves that. But first things first, I need to take a break. I’m getting married in just over a week, then I can take a good holiday. Hopefully I don’t forget too much while I’m away! Next attempt will be around April/May I think. Have to negotiate with Anna…

Recently I started a new job, in some ways coming back full circle to how I started out. As a fresh graduate, I started work for HP as an IT Consultant. My main focus was network management systems. Rakesh Patel started work at HP at the same time. Coincidentally, we both left HP around the same time, taking different directions. While I went off down the networking and security path, Rakesh continued working in the Service Management field. Not long ago, Rakesh asked if I would like to join him in the company he started, offering consulting and implementation services for Service Management. Admittedly the timing was not quite ideal, with the other things I’m trying to do this year, but it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

A few weeks ago I started this new role. I’m working as an IT Consultant, mainly in systems and service management. Oh. 10+ years, and you’re doing the same thing all over again. Nice going Lindsay. See, that career hiatus meandering about the world really did stuff you up. Well, not quite. Previously I was the junior, doing what I was told to do. Now I’m the senior consultant, working with other consultants to work out what we’re going to do, as much as the how to do it. I get to do some pre-sales, some consulting, some design, and some implementation. Hopefully very little operation. Exciting times, working with range of different customers, all well-known companies, helping them with complex problems. The company is growing very rapidly, and there’s a lot of work coming up ahead of us. Very busy, but very exciting times!

During my career, I have acquired a reasonably wide range of skills, covering networks, systems, applications, security, management . Some of that experience is reasonably deep, some is spread thin – but it does mean that I can talk about a range of topics without sounding like a complete knob. When it comes to system and service management, generally you don’t need to know all the right answers – you need to know the right questions to ask instead.

This doesn’t mean it’s all easy though – far from it. Some products have changed significantly since I last used them in depth. Other products haven’t changed much, while some have just had a face-lift. This means that I’m desperately trying to get back up to speed, devouring manuals and training videos, running demo installations, reading all I can. This is all within my capabilities, but it makes things very intense. No slacking off at work for me! A lot of people have placed a lot of faith in me, and the last thing I would want to do is let them down.

As an aside, it also turns out that my typical work-wear is in compliance with EtherealMind’s recent lecture on fashion for male engineers, apart from the absence of a belt-clip. Lucky that. (Side note: Read rule #8 – I’m not the only one who believes in the simplicity of having all socks the same). The upshot is that I think that I can look and act the part in front of customers. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’ll turn into a sales-droid. My role is still to act as the truth police.

We’re also in the process of moving this week. Anna is being absolutely wonderful, organising pretty much everything. She’s been far too nice to me, ensuring I’ve got time to study, while she does most of the running around. But still, there’s been a bit of stuff I can’t avoid, moving stuff around, etc. The rest of our stuff will get moved on Saturday, but there will be work happening around building fences for Samson, working out where everything goes/is, and generally getting used to the new place.

So yeah, I’ve been a busy boy.

Just to top it all off, I’ve recently started writing a couple of blog posts for Packet Pushers. This is a (generally) highly technical site, which I expect will only be of interest to about 2 of my readers. I’ll understand if I don’t see you there. My next article on SNMPv3 will be published in the next couple of days. I’m hoping to write a series of posts of network management systems over the next few months. Just in case I get sick of work/study/everything else going on.

Anna decided that we had too much spare time on our hands, and not enough stress, so she decided that in addition to studying for her exams, planning and wedding, my studying for the CCIE lab, and my changing to a new job (more on that in another post), we should look for a new house.

We live in a very nice part of the city, with a peep of harbour views, surrounded by houses that start at $1m. Walking distance to the city, plenty of parks around, just off Ponsonby Road, a well-known road in Auckland, lined with restaurants, bars and eclectic stores. Obviously we don’t actually own our house here, I work for a living. But no, we definitely need to move. After all, my new office is walking distance from the house. Can’t have that. So we’re moving.

It turns out that right now is not the best time to be looking for a place to rent in Auckland. Rents have gone up, and there’s a lot of pressure on rental properties. Large numbers of people turning up to look at places, and your references must be up to scratch. That in itself shouldn’t be a big deal for us, as we look presentable enough, we have very good references, and Anna has been in her current property for 5 years. There’s just one problem. A very hairy, 45kg problem, named Samson. We were very close to getting a place in Ellerslie that would have been perfect, but we got turned down because of Samson. Other places wouldn’t even consider a dog, even though dogs do less damage than children.

So we had a few tough weeks trying to find a property. Plenty of places being snapped up as soon as they were listed, plenty that were nasty places you wouldn’t put the dog in, and plenty that just wanted far too much for what they were. You start out with a certain budget, and that creeps up and up as you can’t find anything decent. You start thinking about what the minimum you need is. No more than <x> km from the city, 2 bedrooms plus study…or do we really need a study? What about parking? I want a garage….ok just off street parking…ok on street, as long as there’s space.

It’s hard to say if the Rugby World Cup is having an effect on rentals. What I can say is that I think that it may have helped us in the end to get a property. We have finally been accepted for a place in Sandringham, about 3km away from Eden Park. The open home was an hour before the Fiji-Samoa game kicked off at Eden Park, and it was raining. Because of various road closures, there was a lot of traffic around, and it seems that hardly anyone came to look at the property. It’s not a pretty house, and it is in need of some love, but it’s got the space we need, with a double garage(!). Finally I’ll be able to put the bikes inside, and maybe even the car too. We’ll need to add a small amount of fencing, but it will work well for Samson, giving him more room than he has now, and a few shady spots for him in summer.

For the first time, we’re engaging professional movers. Anna has accumulated a large amount of furniture over the years, and I really don’t fancy moving it myself. Apparently I will be installed in the study, and told to, well, study. CCIE study has been taking a bit recently, with various other things going on. Down to 2 months to go, time to seriously knuckle down.

I’ll post some stuff about the new job soon – so far it looks like it’s going to be very, very interesting.

Back in 2005, when I was working in Scotland, New Zealand put together a superb bid for the Rugby World Cup, doing everything they could. We were competing against the likes of South Africa and Japan, and we just don’t have the money or resources to compete against the big boys. So we got all the heavy hitters we could – the Prime Minister and the All Black captain of the time made a presentation to the IRB, Colin Meads went out drinking with his old rugby buddies, twisting a few arms in Dublin bars in the wee hours.

We last hosted the World Cup in 1987, back when it was a small event, where you could go and buy a ticket to final the day before the game. Times have changed, and people didn’t think this little country could cope with the changed expectations. Not enough money or people, small stadiums, timezones don’t work well for Brits watching the games, etc…

But  somehow, we just managed to sneak in. Everyone knows that this  is the last time a country this small will host the tournament. Wouldn’t matter if we won every RWC for the next 30 years, the best we’ll get in future will be a handful of matches if Australia hosts it. So bugger it, we’re making the most of this chance.

There’s been plenty of arguments over the years, plenty of bureaucrats engaging in pointless arguments, silly decisions being made about not building a decent stadium down by the waterfront, endless roadworks around the city…but it doesn’t matter anymore.

Because things have finally kicked off, and in superb fashion. New Zealanders tend to be a reserved lot, but this time we seem to have lost some of that – people were out in hundreds of thousands, flags and decorations are everywhere, everyone’s wearing black jerseys, everyone is out there celebrating.  Last Friday most of Auckland seemed to knock off early, and head down the recently revamped waterfront. What was an industrial liquids storage facility – i.e. a tank farm – has been partially overhauled into a park, play area, and strip of restaurants and bars, linked to the existing Viaduct area by a bridge that can be raised to let yachts through.

Normally the weather in Auckland in September is not up to much. Cold, blustery, showery weather would be par for the course. As indeed it has been this week. But last Friday even the weather played its part – clear skies, warm temperatures, mild winds. So the play areas were full of kids, the bars and restaurants packed out early, and those that couldn’t get in just lined the waterfront. Mostly dressed in black, and everyone having a great time. Yes there was overcrowding, and no, not everything went well – vis. the train meltdown – but it didn’t really matter. Auckland has probably never looked better.

My father always told me that “It’s not what you know, but who you know that counts.” This proved very true for Anna and I. A friend just so happened to be organising an event near the top of a tower building right beside the waterfront. His company was moving out of the building, but the lease hadn’t quite expired. No furniture left, but fabulous views…and they’d trucked in a heap of free food and drink. Perfect. They even had a couple of TVs so we could watch the opening ceremony and game. We live quite close to the city, so all we had to do was walk down.

Here’s a few shots of what it was like:

It was a bit of a long afternoon and evening, so by the time we were walking home through the Viaduct, it was carnage. Had to make a stop at the petrol station on the way, pick up a 2L bottle of chocolate milk for the next day. Very much required.

A few weeks back we went mountain biking, taking our dog with us. It’s a bit hard taking him in summer, as he’s a long haired dog, built for living in the snow. He still wants to come, but he has to get told No, you’re not coming today. He doesn’t understand, so just looks morose, staring longingly at the gate.

But it’s winter here, so he can run along with us, and not die of heatstroke. He sees the bikes getting loaded onto the car, and he’s very happy when he gets the call to jump in. He’s in like a flash, in case we change our mind.

Woodhill Mountain Bike Park is about 45 minutes drive from home, out in the Woodhill forest to the west of Auckland. As soon as we got there, Samson leaps out of the car, and does a runny poo right next to someone else’s car. Hmm, that’s not good. At least it’s not as bad as someone else’s dog that crapped under the picnic tables.

We head out for a good ride, stopping at a stream along the way, where Samson lies in the water, drinking it up. Later he also stops in a small pool of muddy water, drinking some of that too.

Back at the carpark, we wash the bikes down, and give him a bit of rinse off. He drinks up a bit more water. The sign says the water’s not suitable for drinking, but that doesn’t apply to dogs, right?

We get the bikes loaded up, dog installed in the back of the car, and start to pull out. Wait a second. Samson makes a bit of a funny noise, and we turn around to see he’s gone and thrown up an enormous amount of liquid. He’s a big dog, and it turns out he can hold quite a bit…looks like half of his volume has been expelled, and is covering him and the back of the car.

Luckily there’s always a blanket and a tarpaulin that he sits on in the back of the car. Very useful when he’s been at the beach. Just didn’t think it would be needed for him throwing up. Not much actually got on the car, it was mostly him that got it. Poor old fellow. He got rinsed off again before we set off. Didn’t seem to worry him much!

We then had to drive back, on a warmish day, with a lovely dog-sick aroma in the car. I managed to make myself scarce when we got home, doing something with the bikes, while Anna cleaned it up. When he’s good, he’s my/our dog, other times he’s very much Anna’s dog.

The other day I was following a bus, which had a large picture of a typical tropical island covering the back of the bus, and the words “The Cook Islands would be nice about now.” Given that it’s well into winter here, with weather pretty similar to late spring in Scotland, the Cook Islands did indeed sound appealing. It’s been cool here, and going for a run in the morning is a lot tougher in the dark. Trying to find and pick up the dog’s poo is tough when the sun hasn’t come up yet. Usually you need to find it by smell.

Well, I am happy to be able to report that the Cook Islands is indeed nice about now. Blair, a friend of mine from university days, was getting married to the lovely Tara, and we had been invited. Unfortunately Anna and I are a bit short of time at the moment, with work, university and CCIE study, but we were able to take a 4 day weekend, arriving the day before the wedding.

We had both been working far too hard, so the idea of a break was perfect. We were a bit worried that it was going to be a big flashy resort, but it turned out to be anything but. Just a nice relaxed island, a few dogs and chickens running around, easy-going locals, everything we wanted really. Someone had tried to build a flashy Sheraton resort about 2km from where we were staying, but it turned out to be a bit of a debacle – see this video for some idea about what happened.

We were staying at Are Moe, a nice little self-contained studio, about 50m down the road from where Blair, Tara and most of the rest of the wedding guests were staying. We didn’t really know what the details of the wedding were, other than what day it was, and the name of the place they were staying at. But we knew we were staying just down the road, so we figured it would all work out.

We got a shared van from the airport, and as it got down to us and one other couple left, we got chatting. Turned out they were on the island for a wedding. Apparently their grandson was getting married to an American girl. Oh yes, this sounds familiar…well now we’d made contact with at least one other couple, and we knew we weren’t the only ones who didn’t know exactly what the details were going to be.

So we settled in, enjoyed a bottle of wine, went out to dinner, had a couple more drinks, thinking we would have a quiet night…and then Tara found us at dinner time. Apparently the bachelor and bachelorette parties were underway, and we had to go and join them. Oh dear. If you’re going to have a stag do/hen’s night, there’s a very good reason why you should not do it the day before the wedding. I’m not really sure what happened, we didn’t even stay up all that late…but there’s a reason that Anna looks like she’s in serious pain/near death in some of the photos from the wedding. Poor old Tara was worse, and she couldn’t just hide in the background like we did. Anna and I spent most of the morning staying horizontal, that seemed to help. We can also report that they make a good meat pie on Rarotonga. We forgot to check the chocolate milk situation, that would have been a sure-fire hangover restorative.We were mostly revived by afternoon, but we couldn’t stay up late. A bit after 9pm we slipped away. We weren’t the first to go either!

The ceremony itself was a very nice affair, held on the beach near where were staying. It had been raining off and on all morning, but just on 3pm, the pastor walked out onto the beach, looked up at the sky, and it stopped raining. Lasted just long enough for the ceremony and photos too.

We had been hoping to do some diving while in Rarotonga, but we hadn’t gotten around to organising anything. We needed the rest, so we made a late decision to just have a day off following the wedding. I had plenty of reading to do – just picked up “Dance with Dragons” – and we needed to just chill out, and relax. Turned out to be a good decision, as it rained fairly heavily for much of the morning, and the seas were pretty rough. No problem, our place had everything we needed.

Here’s a couple of shots from the weekend: