Insomnia!

One of the few downsides of working in networking is that you often have to work when everyone else isn’t.  That generally either means late nights or early mornings.  Since where I work is a little bit of a drive and I hate leaving home once I get there, I choose the early mornings to do any work that requires rebooting anything.  Today I need to be in at 6am for the second time this week.  I don’t mind so much the early hours, but the problem I’m having is that I keep going to bed earlier and then that leads to my body thinking it’s time to get up at some obscene hour…like 3am.  I guess my internal clock will need resetting this weekend!

Right now I’m working on 2 separate certifications.  On the one hand, I’m just wrapping up studies for Microsoft’s 70-291, the last of my core exams for my MCSA-Security.  It’s been difficult keeping my focus on this one, or any Microsoft exam for that matter.  I just don’t use the technology much as I used to and it’s so easy to get distracted by subjects that would be more directly applicable to my work.  I hope to be ready to take “the beast” in 2 weeks.  In the meantime, to help keep my sanity and balance my brain, I have been reading my new book for Cisco’s SNPA (Securing Networks with PIX and ASA).  The company I’m currently working a contract for has ASA’s throughout their organization and I just keep running into them when I’m troubleshooting, so I decided it was definitely worth it to study up on them.  It’s also pretty interesting material.  As soon as I finish my reading, I plan on typing up a study guide to post here and on proprofs.com to share before I dive into some lab work.  I’d really like to take the Cisco SND (Securing Network Devices) exam along with the SNPA this summer to complete the Cisco Firewall Specialist certification, the only problem is that I also need to complete my MCSA and possibly start on my MCSE exams.  I just find it hard to get my head back into Microsoft after working so intensely with Cisco.

Other than my studies, life has been good…chaotic, but good.  I survived the rest of the team being gone for Disaster Recovery exercises and even had a productive week.  I’m looking forward to resting up and studying this weekend and perhaps even doing a little “cube decoration” if I can scavenge the free time.  If I manage it, I’ll be sure to post some pictures here of the results.