Journey to CCNA

I will be writing about my journey to becoming a CCNA. I’m starting with just basic networking knowledge. I’m going to be using physical hardware and virtual software for studying. I will also be using a mixture of books from Safari books and videos from Train Signal and CBT Nuggets.

The Start (Paperless Project)

So in my effort to go paperless, I have started using Evernote for everything. It has been hard to only go into meetings with an iPad and NO paper. I have started snapping pictures of everything and adding it to Evernote. This has saved my ass once already when I snapped a picture of the white board we were working off of. I could not for the life of me remember one of the list we wrote down, but then thought, wait I took a picture. Went through Evernote and there is was “my life save” aka the note I needed. Evernote has now earned its way to all of my docks for easy access.

However, I still have all of my old notes and lots of old documents. So now I’m looking for a great document scanner. Thinking about the Scan Snap S1300 from Fujitsu, however, Canon has some nice models too. I just need one that is reliable and can scan say 15 to 20 sheets with out me having to stand there and feed it. Now for all of these documents I have created the same filing system I used virtually that I had psychically. Its a folder labeled “Files”, then 27 folders named “A-Z and Need to File”. Then in those files I only create a folder if I have something to put in it. I use the name of the company to label all of these folders.

All said I believe I am about 90% at home and 95% at work paperless. I have a few more things to convert over to digital and then its just a matter of keeping it up. Also, forgot to mention the paper to do have coming in to the house, we are recycling.

2012 Goals

I’m not calling this my “2012 resolutions” because I create one of these list every year and only one or two get completed. So this year I’m going about it a little different. These are my 2012 goals, by goals I mean, I’m setting hard dead lines.

1) Go paper less
- I started working on this at the end of 2011 so I should be able to complete this no later that March.

2) Complete CCNA and CCNA Voice
- CCNA = June 2012
- CCNA Voice = November 2012

3)  Blog, blog, blog
- at least one entry a week (I will try)

4) Read
- one book a month (non-technical) (I will list the books on here so you will see if I complete this or not)
- five news articles every morning (technical or non-technical)

5)  Workout
- 10 to 15 minutes every morning
- 20 to 30 minutes every night (more if time allows)
- get to 5k by May

Staycation

So I’m half way through my stay-cation. I am already going stir crazy and ready to go back to work. I have been using some of my time to catch up on reading and training.

I will begin posting more about day to day activities of a systems administrator, for an e-commerce company. If you have any question you would like me to answer. You can either email me at jmaynard@maynardsthoughts.me or post a comment.

Welcome

I will be posting many random and not so random thoughts here. If you like what I have to say please keep coming back, if not well I’m sorry but I can’t make everyone happy.