Sunday, March 16, 2014

My CCIE Journey

I am currently trying to beat the deadline for the CCIE R&S exam. Cisco is moving from version 4 to version 5. As I have been reading the version 4 material for sometime, I would prefer to do the version 4 exam and then plan for the lab later.

Cisco has made important changes in version 5 which includes removing frame relay (this archaic technology) which was the thing when TKL was still the biggest player in the ISP business in Kenya :). This reminds me of what one Bryon said last week - Evolve or die, clearly TKL had it rough because they didn't evolve but lucky for them.. they didn't die.

I have been through most of the topics, after going through video material, I have decided to go back to the official Cisco R & S Certification Guide. Then I will get back to the video's.

I am currently on Chapter 6: IP Forwarding (Routing).. though I am not reading this stuff systematically. My base is BGP & MPLS being the topics that I interact with the most in my day to day job since the time I joined a local ISP's NOC.

I am a CCNP R&S by the way..

Lets see how it goes.. I was telling a friend that this certification is worth like 90,000 USD per year. Hope that''s the case or better by the time I am through ..

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Wife's Grandmother dies..

It's the 08/03/2014. Women's day and am at work. About 2 hours ago I got a call from my wife and she could hardly talk and disconnected the call. At first I thought she was laughing and she had called my by mistake. When I called her back she was sobbing and I knew something was wrong even before she uttered a word.

We had planned to call her aunt in India to get to know how my wife's grandmother was fairing on yesterday, as this didn't happen, I reminded her to make the call in the morning as I was leaving for work. I called her again after I had worked for about  two hours to know how she and the baby were. She informed me that the baby was Ok and she was to call her aunt.

The grandmother had been taken to India for surgery as she had a growth in her abdomen. The operation was successful .. I am not sure what went wrong. All the same she had lived a good life, was a good mother and grandmother. Someone loved by many. She was an active christian at the Naikuru PAG church.

She is a woman who I knew for about two years but loved very much because of her charisma, attitude and hospitality.

May she rest in peace. We loved her but God loved her more.


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