When I started doing the labs I tried not to peek at the workbook’s solutions nor the videos but as I advanced I realized it was the whole point of it, at the starting line I couldn’t be just demanding myself to know how to do stuff out of my head without having practiced for almost a month after the bootcamp was done. So after going through labs 1-8 in my first 4 hours of practice and finding myself lost by in the last two labs (7...

Read this, taking a training with Khawar was awesome! This guy never took a peek at documentation or anything, he just knew the stuff, hands down, and corrected himself whenever he came up with a mistake once or twice in a whole week, yes, 7 days of 12 hours of Cisco Security training at its best. On the last day we were talking and he persuaded me of doing the Security track now that I had built some momentum, it seemed right, so back from...

Back in 2007 I promised myself I would become CCIE RS by the end of the year and then go on with the Security track afterwards, so I started to read on for the written part while I finished my last few months of studies towards my Master’s degree. A month after graduation, I passed the RS written, it wasn’t very difficult to go through an exam after reading so much stuff. I started my lab preparation with the buying of material from...

Moving overseas was a challenge, not really easy to be honest, but it was good to help make me grow in so many aspects. While working for the small consulting firm I got concentrated in working and studying full time, I kept on going and did some more certs done: MCSE/MCSA: Security 2k MCSE/MCSA: Messaging 2k MCDBA (I hated it and it took me just a couple of days to figure out I am not build do just do DB stuff, I learned useful things while...

While looking for a better job to secure my income (I already had a daughter and was about to finish college), I found a nice oportunity from another HP partner company, this time it was the place to be at. This dude (my boss) wanted me to be MCP as soon as possible, they did MS, Cisco, Avaya besides doing HP as their main business, it was great, they sent me for training (upstairs, the training center was in the same building) more than once...