Home

It’s been a while! Time to check in!

Not much has changed over the past month, which is good in some ways and not so good in other ways.

Pros:

• Nothing major has broken!
• I’ve not been fired!
• Stability means time to learn and train!

Cons

• Few problems = less experience fixing them
• Complacency can occur, leading to laziness
• Knowing me, when something happens, I may get super rushed and not think it through clearly

I’ve been doing my best to stay productive and pro-active, though I’m not perfect!

I’m not looking for a job at the moment, but I started updating my resumé, which then made me think all the other stuff people do to stay current in the job market…lots of stuff being shaken up in the tech field, so might as well be prepared just in case.

• Update resumé. That by itself isn’t easy!
• Update LinkedIn profile. Annoying.
• Update Indeed profile. More annoying.
• Update Dice profile. Most annoying!
• Update the website with
  • A few blog posts
  • Recent profile
  • Current contact / job info
• Update Github with home lab stuff.
  • Do home lab stuff before doing Github.
• Review for CCNA, since it’s on SO MANY job listings.

Besides all that, yes — the CCNA, which has been booked for March 14th! We’re less than three weeks out!

I’m really hoping the CCNA will open up a lot of opportunities for me in the networking world. I’ve seen so many jobs advertised online that list it as a requirement, and I’m really starting to think that networking is where I ultimately want to end up – networking and infrastructure.

Besides the CCNA, I’ve still been toying around with some Powershell scripts that will be specifically made for the company….those unfortunately won’t / can’t live on Github, but at least the stuff I come up with at home is good for that!

Since I’ve brought it up a couple of times, here it is:

Click here for Richard Austin Guidry’s Github.

Yeah, the scripts are fun, but the CCNA has been eating up my time! I go to work, study and learn at work between issues, and then get home and brush up a bit more if there’s some free time! Go to bed, rinse and repeat.

It’s not necessarily that it’s an overly difficult exam…more of the issue is that it covers so many different areas that it’s hard to keep track of all the little factoids that I need to know for the exam but can reference in the real world, like:

• Protocol numbers
• ICMPv6 type message numbers
• Various virtual MAC + multicast addresses
• Lengths of various timers and other hyper-specifics

I get that with time and experience, they’ll become second nature, but at least for now, they’re slightly annoying. I LOVE the learning of new concepts and capabilities, and none of that I find particularly difficult — it’s the little stuff like that that trips me up.

I’ve been having a good time playing with all the resources! There are really so many great things out there. Here’s what I’ve been using:

1. Boson’s NetSim, ExSim, and Courseware
2. Jeremy’s IT Lab
3. Cisco Networking Academy
4. Keith Barker
   • Definitely have the least experience with him, but his explanation of APIs was literally the only explanation of them that made sense to me!

Right now, there’s nothing to report in the professional world, but I guess that in some ways, no news can be good news after all!

I’ll report back after my CCNA exam!

Hope you’re all well!

Austin