Gray Market Will Give Cisco Blues - GigaOM - My Tips for Second Hand Success.

Gigaom says Cisco second hand market will grow - huh - well of course it will. Here are my tips for doing it.

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Using the Wrong Date Formatting and the Global Problem - ISO8601

When working in a global company, a major problem is the way that some countries use the wrong date formatting. Say hello to ISO8601, standard for date formats. Read more

Blessay: Personal Ethics and Corporate Morals - My Choices

One of the challenges of professional life is that my conscience can be ‘challenged’ by the corporate process and actions that I deem wrong, by my personal moral code, are quite acceptable in corporate morality. Read more

Rant: SecureCRT - Too Expensive - Alternatives Putty, Tera Term ?

SecureCRT is a common choice for SSH Client for MS Windows. I want to buy SecureCRT but its too expensive. Way too expensive. Or is it just me ? Read more

Opinion:Certification Matters - Exams Are Not Relevant to Real Life - Part 4

One of the most common complaints from mendicants is that the written exams are not relevant to daily use of the technology or their jobs, and how am I supposed to learn this stuff ? Eh ? Of course they aren’t relevant. Lets look at this fallacy. Read more

The Real Job Description for Network Architect

Recently, I was asked to write the Job Advertisement for my own role (yeah, personal development thing). I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to write a follow on to What is a CCIE ?.

—Warning Sarcasm Ahead—

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Opinion:Certification Matters- Only You Can Do the Study - Part 3

When its comes to achieving certification, only you can do the study. Making excuses for why you haven’t started or about how much it costs, are just excuses. Read more

Opinion:Certification Matters -Part 2- Knowledge or Experience - Which Is More Valuable ?

Is knowledge or experience better when hunting for a position ? It’s a good topic and worth putting some ideas down here and having a discussion. Read more

Opinion: Certification Matters - Experience Less So - Part 1

I have received a couple of comments lately about Certification and taking me to task about my support for certified people. Here’s is Part One of Three (or more) about Certification and why it matters. Read more

Blessay: IT Training Lessons From the Olympics

While the current Olympics is about as interesting as reviewing firewall rules, the current success of first world nations shows that money CAN buy you success. I’m hoping IT Managers can learn training lessons from this. Read more

What Is a ‘Free’ Or ‘Unattached’ CCIE Number or Status ?

If you have never worked for a Cisco reseller, you may not know about this vital procedure of “attaching” your CCIE status to the reseller. Read more

Musing: On Permananent and Ephemeral Knowledge and Exam Study

Like many tech-workers, we need to ingest vast quantities of knowledge to get started in our jobs. Without that knowledge, there is no working in our business. What is unique, however, is that we continue to ingest knowledge for the remainder of our careers - often consuming large portions of our personal time and energy. Worse we even get tested on it by sitting formal examinations.

How can we manage this process to be more effective ?

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IOS: Reverse SSH Console Access - Part 2

Following my original post about configuring Reverse SSH on a Cisco console server, I wanted to make some followup to extend the usage. Read more

Musing: On Reading and Learning From a Computer Screen

One of the other tricks I have had to learn is how to read from a computer screen. Here are my musings on learning and reading from a computer screen instead of paper. Read more

IOS: Reverse SSH Console Access

I recently needed to secure the reverse console access using Cisco IOS router. Now for many years, we have been doing this over telnet and the configuration has been straightforward. But configuring it to support SSH instead of telnet is a little bit different, awkward in fact. Read more

Network Tools, Craftsmen and Why My Mac Is a Good Hammer

My brother is intensely interested in tools, especially handtools for woodworking. He likes to go to markets and buy old tools, it seems a strange type of hobby so I finally asked him why ?

It turns out that many of these hammers, chisels, and planes were actually HANDMADE by those tradesmen from 50 or more years ago, often when they are apprentices. And many hammers and chisels were customised by that person to fit their exact way of working, short handles, long heads, cutting blades at odd angles.

It strikes me I am part of time honoured tradition by making my own tools. My laptop is my own hand made hammer and chisel set, and I choose MAC as the raw material.

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