Wednesday, November 28, 2007, 5:48 p.m.
After one failed attempt 3 weeks ago, I finally passed the CCNP Switching (BCMSN) test today. This is a huge relief. After failing it the first time, I was getting pretty discouraged. In addition, it was hard to focus and concentrate because switching is not really where my interest is.
The goal, for me, is to specialize in WAN connectivity and very large networks. So, routing is more interesting to me than switching. The next test is the BSCI (Building Scalable Cisco Internetworks) and I am pretty excited to get started on it. I'm especially looking forward to working with BGP.
So, onward and upward. I just have to make sure that I don't lose my momentum.
Monday, August 14, 2007, 12:55 a.m.
This last weekend was the first annual Ammon family reunion. It was not your typical Utah family reunion- it was just Mom and the kids, five people total. Mom and Russell and his wife Shar went down Friday morning and set up camp and myself and Cassie joined them that evening.
We grilled steaks for dinner and then played some games and went to bed. It was pretty laid back. Since we rarely get everybody together, we can usually have a good time just talking and catching up. My assignment was to bring steaks for everybody, so I made sure that my own steak was the biggest. I only ate about half of it - it was a monster.
The next day we fished a little and I took some pictures. Then when it got too hot we drove out to the Utah Launch Complex, an old abandoned Air Force installation, and looked around. It was interesting, but very old (they closed it in 1974). On the way back, one of mom's dogs decided to throw up all over the dashboard of my rented car. We got it cleaned up, but it stank for a while.
After lunch, Cassie and I headed back up to Ogden. It was good to be with everybody. We're planning to make it an annual thing. It looks like next year it will be at Fishlake. As long as everybody stays in Utah, we'll be able to keep doing it on an annual basis. This was the first trip that I have taken my new digital camera on, and my photography has gotten quite rusty. Photos of the trip are available here.
All in all, it was a good time. It was really relaxing and a lot of fun. We always seem to laugh a lot when we get together, and we usually end up with some good memories, too.
Friday, August 3, 2007, 8:14 p.m.
Today I taught my first class at the U. No, I'm not a professor. My class was a training session for Nagios, a network monitoring software package. I've been preparing for the class for a couple of weeks, and when I got up this morning, I still had things left to do. However, it turned out to be a success. I met a lot more of the IT guys from campus, and we had some good discussion.
I am amazed at the power of collaboration. I know a few things about Nagios, but most of the guys in that room with me have been in IT longer than I, and probably know a lot more than I know. Because everyone came with an open mind, however, we came up with some good ideas about how to handle monitoring on campus. It has been a long day (I showed up to work at 7:00 a.m. and I'm still here) but I am pleased with how things turned out.
Thursday, July 9, 2007, 11:21 p.m.
I am pretty excited about the new look for tomsbox.net. I found a template on oswd.org that I really liked, and after a few minor tweaks it is in production. I'm no web designer, so I appreciate those at OSWD that share their work so freely.
I have big plans for the new site, including a PHP-based content management system to automate the blog section, an HTML version of my resume that intergrates with the theme of the site, and a slideshow of some of my favorite work in photography.