I’m 4 hours into my subscription and already I’m plagued with registration problems!  Viewing the on-demand material is straightforward and working properly.  For live material, I ended up emailing the support@ciscolivevirtual.com helpdesk, joining the ‘New to Networkers’ chat session, and calling the Registration support number to see if I could resolve my problem with adding sessions (i.e. keynote, breakout, technical, etc.).  I have yet to receive a response for my 1st email to the helpdesk.  Here’s the response I received in the chat session:

Barry Reyes: How long does it take for my premier pass to activate? FYI, I signed up earlier this morning but would like to start adding some breakout sessions.
Quang Nguyen: Hi Barry, your premier pass should be accessible right away. Please note that the On-Demand breakouts in the Auditorium are currently accessible, and the Live Day sessions begin tomorrow and then on Weds at their scheduled times. Since many of the breakouts are recorded from Cisco Live, the Session Catalog will begin populating in July once the sessions are produced for on-demand viewing.

I suspect that I won’t be able to add any sessions until tomorrow morning when the event actually starts.  I wish they would just come out and say that is the case.  The response I received over the phone was to send a 2nd email to the helpdesk.  So far I’m just going around in circles.  Fun stuff.

As much as I would’ve liked to have attended the event, I wasn’t able to make it out to Cisco Live in San Francisco this year.  Rather than miss out on some of the great information that will be delivered, I opted to pay for the Premier Pass.

For the record, this is my first conference with Cisco and already I’m overwhelmed with the amount of data on the site so far, but I’m sure after 30 minutes of clicking around I’ll find a comfort level.  I meant to sign up for the event yesterday, but didn’t get around to it so I find myself seeking support on activating my premier status.  As it stands, I’m unable to add any of the breakout sessions.  I’m sure my system profile just needs to be updated but hopefully I don’t miss out on anything while I’m waiting to hear back.  As long as I can view a missed session and read about the notes later on, I’ll be a happy camper.

With each passing day, I get further and further from where I need/want to be with my security studies. There was a point in April when I managed to get some practice lab time in my schedule. I can only blame myself for the lack of focus. For here I am at another point in my life and I’m conflicted with continuing my pursuit of the security lab. The reason for this misdirection is quite simple – work has taken over my life. While it may sound harsh, the reality of becoming an IE has drastically changed my life for the better.

During these harsh economic times, I still find companies are looking to contract or employ an IE. Contract work is usually long and tedious for most consultants. For me, I’ve had to adjust and reorganize my daily priorities to accommodate the contract work hours in the evenings and on the weekends. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything, so I basically had to sacrifice my security studies in order to keep up with the chaos. I’m not giving up on the track but merely postponing lab studies until October or November. From the time when you pass your written exam, you have 18 months until your passing result has expired. Basically I have until February 2010 to complete or make an attempt at the lab. This year doesn’t have to be a complete wash. I am, however, going to continue to read all the Cisco Press security books to prep for the OEQ since it takes me awhile to absorb some of the material.

The 2 main drawbacks about my contract is the distance from my house and the current security products that they have in-house. Firstly, I can no longer take the train since the contract is located in another area of SoCal. This just means that I lose the ability to read an hour in the mornings and need to find some time in the evening – for most of you who attempt to read at night now you already know how difficult that task may be with family and other activities (i.e. social life, sports, fitness, etc.). Secondly, my new has no use for any of the Cisco security products. The company uses CheckPoint firewall and McAfee’s Intrusion Prevention products. Cisco isn’t the right solution all the time, but I have stated my case with the current products to senior management, so let’s leave it at that.

There is a plus to all of this in that my contract relies heavily on MPLS. Prior to announcing a few months ago that I was going to focus my time on the security track, I had just walked away from my Service Provider studies. In order to properly support my new environment, I’ve had to read and familiarize myself with ATM, MPLS, L2/L3 VPN, SP QoS, BGP, IS-IS, and Management. Guess what, that’s more than half of the topics on the SP lab. At the moment, I’m far from committing to the track at all, but I have been keeping track of my progress and found that I’m not too far off either. I know for a fact that the amount of work is steady enough where I’ll be busy until the end of the year.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

Jacob passed his R&S lab a few days ago.  He mainly used CCBootcamp’s material to complement his studies and could probably give you some insight on the product more indepth.  Send him your congrats.