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What a week.
Someone asked me recently why I always take exams when I have time off work. The truth is that I take time off work to do exams, that’s how I roll baby! The only real time I can make for myself to study is on days when I don’t have to travel to work, so weekends or holidays. So it was this last week, I had an exam scheduled for Friday so I took the week off for some final (and some might point out necessary) preparation.
Unfortunately this week I managed to come down with a rather vicious cold that made any kind of study difficult from Monday through until Wednesday afternoon. So my week of study suddenly became just a couple of days, and I wound up doing the exam through a medicine induced haze.
Continue reading CCNP – Done
Did an ONT exam today, and passed it.
I didn’t enjoy that exam one bit, the preparation material i had which was the Ciscopress ONT official exam certification guide was quite light on some of the areas that the exam covered, some of the software in the exam was based on older versions of the software than are current… overall a bit of a nightmare. Led to me getting just 890/1000 which is quite low for me, I generally get over 900, but a pass is a pass so I shan’t gripe about it too much.
Still at least it’s done. I only have BCMSN to do now and then I have a CCNP. I have no idea what I’ll do after that, maybe I’ll do something non-Cisco, or maybe I’ll plough straight on to a CCIE. Who knows?
I actually finished the exam a bit early, the receptionist was impressed and exclaimed “Wow! That was quick!” “Thanks,” I replied “that’s not usually a compliment.” I think she then drew the conclusion that I was some kind of idiot 
I had a bit of a panic today when I spotted an email sent to me a few days ago by Cisco about an update to the CCNP programme. It is quite a significant change, going from four exams to three, and changing all the exam names and wotnot.
What they’re doing is they’re getting rid of BSCI (Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks), BCMSN (Building Cisco Multilayer Switched Networks), ISCW (Implementing Secure Converged Wide Area Networks), and ONT (Optimising Converged Cisco Networks… not sure how that shortens to ONT), and replacing them with SWITCH, ROUTE, and TSHOOT (Switching, Routing, and Troubleshooting respectively).
At first glance it appeared that they were going to completely retire the old exams on the 31st July 2010, and I thought that I would have to get the two remaining exams done by then or lose the two that I’d already done. Now two exams in six months isn’t that big an ask, but I’m a busy guy you know, lots going on, not much time for study. I got a bit flustered, had a bit of a tourette’s afternoon, and broke out the self study books.
After I calmed down a bit and re-read what was happening, checked on the cisco website, it turns out that ROUTE and SWITCH are direct replacements for BSCI and BCMSN and have equivilence in the certification programme. TSHOOT is replacing both ISCW and ONT. So I can either do ONT and BCMSN or SWITCH now, or SWITCH and TSHOOT later, either way is two exams and I don’t lose anything if I get ONT done, and only the validity of my ISCW exam if I don’t get ONT.
So panic over, but it has maybe spurred me into action on the studying front, I really ought to do something in the next month or two.
So, I’m thinking that maybe I should get back to the gym and weight loss stuff. I lost around 3 stone last year, then got bored and lost motivation and put 1 of those back on. So now I need to stop that rot and get back to it.
It ought to be easy enough to eat healthier now that Christmas is passed and all the tempting chocolates are gone (that sounds like an excuse to me!) and I can just get decent food. I just need to remember that when I shop, maybe do some shopping online so that I don’t see the shelves as I’m such a bad impulse buyer.
I also feel a little more motivated to go to the gym in the mornings, except for today, too much hassle to clear snow to then go kill myself, besides which I bet they would have been short handed. I did go yesterday though, so it’s not all bad. if I can get back to the three to four visits a week then I’ll be happy, once I recover from the visits.
Once I get some data points I’ll redo the old graph too and put it back on here.
Well, without wanting to break the cycle of neglect and despondency, I thought an update was in order to the effect that I passed the exam I had booked for today.
The passing mark was 790 out of 1000, I got 946. However you get 300 just for turning up, which possibly says something for some of the examinees.
The guy sat next to me was really irritating. One of those types that just can’t help but make noise all the time – sighing, snorting, coughing… I felt like telling him to STFU, but he finished about 20 minutes after I started, so it wasn’t too bad.
Well, now for the next exam, after a few days of chilling out, maybe play some of those long neglected games (some of them are still in cellophane).
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Wow weather. Very rarely have I been so glad to get home, what a commute! 
