A lot of times I start to write a post, and end up cancelling it because I can’t get my thoughts together. So here are just some random comments which are held together by questionable relations, comparisons, and segues:
I recently took a couple of days off from work. Didn’t go anywhere, and I didn’t have almost anything planned. It was everything I thought it could be, and more. I played a lot of Civ IV, studied some, played some basketball and did just a couple of other things. Despite the very low number of things that I actually got done, I didn’t feel bad at all about slacking off so much. I think everyone needs to just relax sometimes, and in my case, I needed to relax for about three days straight.
One of the things that I did actually get done was study more for my CCNA. After failing the test three times, I realized last time that I needed a new approach. So what I’ve done is buy all the books for the CCNP. The CCNP requires four tests, which cover all of the topics that are on the CCNA but much more in depth. I think this approach has helped greatly. I am currently reading the Building Cisco Remote Access Networks (BCRAN) book, and I can say that I’ll be very solid in ISDN, Frame Relay, Dial on Demand Routing, and other remote access topics that will be on the CCNA test. Hopefully I can get through a lot of the three other CCNP books before June 9.
A nice side effect of the above approach is that I might be able to go straight for my CCNP shortly after getting the CCNA. However, I was actually hoping to go for my CCSP (Cisco Certified Security Professional) rather than the CCNP, so if I do go for the CCNP, I don’t want to get too sidetracked.
One area where Civilization IV and studying for my CCNA have converged is learning to be patient. In Civ IV, I’ve learned that when I want to take over a city, I should wait for all of my units to get there, even if it takes an extra five turns for them to show up. That way, I can run over a city, even if it is Paris, Timbuktu, Madrid, or Rome, with overwhelming force in one turn when the time is right.
Sure, maybe if I don’t wait for my catapults to get there I could still take the city, but I’d have heavy unit loss. And then I would have to make peace immediately with my rival Civilization. If I am patient, I can take over the city, have most of my units take about four turns to fully heal in the newly conquered foreign city, and move on to conquer one or two more cities. A much better result. This most recent game of Civ IV that I am playing, I get anxious to attack, attack, attack. But I keep telling myself, “patience, Stu.”
And I am learning that patience also applies to studying for my CCNA. I think it is best to be completely confident in my ability to pass the test. So, by using the methods I described earlier, I can be 75 per cent ready to pass the CCNP, which will hopefully translate into passing the CCNA with flying colors. I’ll just be jumping for joy if I completely smack down that test when June 9 comes around. However, if I pass by a margin of two points, I’ll probably have a stupid smirk on my face like I got away with something that I shouldn’t have. And if I fail by two points, I’ll be dejected for a good month and not want to pick up a Cisco book until that month is over. Hopefully I am doing this right.
But as much as I am going on about being patient, patience isn’t always best. Sometimes, rather than doing it right the first time, you just have to do it the first time, and do it right the second time.
Case in point: A few months ago I realized that I needed a good way to organize my notes, lists, schedule, and anything else I needed to write down or get off my head. Optimally, I would have some great calendar system that would be accessible online, and be able to synchronize with some sort of mobile device. And I would have a nifty to-do list that would also be accessible anywhere, and email me with notifications. And I’d have a custom database that could track my diet and exercise progress. And also a nice way of tracking my bookmarks. The list could go on and on. It would take forever to find the perfect application for each of the things I wanted to keep track of. And in the mean time, I’d still be dealing with the anxiety of having all these ideas floating around in my head because they weren’t written down somewhere and organized. So I just decided to install the MediaWiki software (the same software that runs Wikipedia) on my web server and just throw everything on there. I could just plop all these ideas onto seperate lists, and organize it all better when I could.
This hasn’t been perfect, but it’s worked great so far. And now that I am using this tool to get my life organized, I can start working for “perfection” in each of the functions I talked about above. I can replace them and not be rushed.
And working from this example, I’ve learned to apply this philosophy, as it were (I’ve been wanting to use “as it were” in a sentence for a while now), to a few things in life. In general, when I see a problem, the first priority is to remedy the problem. The second priority is to remedy the problem perfectly. I guess this is me fighting against my own perfectionism. I think I used to only have one priority – to remedy a problem perfectly or not at all. Trying to do it this way usually means that the problem doesn’t get remedied at all.
Now, kind of jumping right back to a previous topic (I warned you at the beginning that this post would be random)…I’ve realized that a lot of my money for the forseeable future will be going to education, both formal and independent. This IT certification stuff requires pretty big investments if you want to do it correctly. First of all, each of the tests usually costs $125. And I am planning on taking one test a month for a while now. Secondly, I am realizing that I will need a lot more hands-on experience with Cisco equipment. This equipment is going to cost me at least $1000. And then there are the books. Each one costs about $40. I’ve got about $400 of books saved on my Amazon wishlist right now, and I haven’t even started to add all of the Microsoft books that I will eventually need.
Also, after a bit of wrestling, I finally got UMBC to send my damn transcript to SFSU. It hasn’t actually arrived yet, but assuming it does, and then also assuming I get in, there is another couple thousand dollars per semester.
Add all of this to the fact that it is starting to become really clear to me just how expensive it is to live where I am living, and there goes a lot of my “fun” money. But, as expensive as it is to live in Northern California, and specifically downtown San Francisco, that isn’t making me want to move one bit. Let’s just hope that all of this “personal/career training” that I have lined up will lead to a larger salary. Not that I can really complain. I am just a greedy bastard, I guess. This is all especially important to me after looking at housing prices on Zillow. Houses in my neighborhood go for about $1,000,000 to $1,500,000. I am not trying to kid myself into thinking I am anywhere near certain that I know exactly where I would want to buy a house in five or ten years, but if I had to guess, I’d say it would be in the neighborhood I am living now. So I will pretty much have to become filthy rich to afford a house. Hell, to even buy a very small house in a working-class neighborhood I’d have to be filthy rich. I am guessing the least I’d be able to get away with paying is $600,000 for a house like that. Oh well, I am fine with renting until I can become filthy rich 🙂
I don’t want to torture you any more. That is all I have for now.
