my Last days before initiating preparation

The last two weeks i had to deal with the projects at work. There are various projects of major importance running simultaneously for the past few months and unfortunately another one came up last week, so this weekend will be spent on that one.

Although i didn't have enough time to spend on my preparation, i'm not worrying. I got my two new books from Book Depository and a full pack of inks for my Canon printer from Amazon. Also i bought 6 x 8h rack rentals from INE, but i am not planning to use them immediately; probably January will see most of them being used.

I didn't have time to prepare the dynamips/GNS3 environment, but i hope i'll have that ready during the weekend. On the other hand, i have my rate papers (a printed xls file where i rate myself and write down any remarks) ready from my previous CCIE, so i just need to change some titles and print a bunch of them.

Btw, i also made a donation to the GNS3 team who are running a crowd-funding campaign for the new GNS3 1.0. Although i am more of a hardcore dynamips user, the guys are doing an excellent job there and i hope they create one of the best training tools.

Regarding my preparation, i don't believe i'll be able to start on 10th of December as i was initially planning, but most probably the weekend after that. I don't think that will be a problem; i'll just need to spend more time the first few days in order to catch up.

I'm planning to start my actual preparation by running a full scale lab in GNS3, just to get an idea of the level of my actual/practical knowledge. I don't care about the time (i can even spend 12 hours in this first lab), i just need to provide as many correct answers as possible, while at the same time using the Cisco documentation for refreshing things of the past. This will also help me get accustomed to the documentation available during the lab exam. In the next labs, i will try to decrease the time but always focus on providing correct answers. All labs during my preparation will be rated by me and afterwards logged in "Lab Ratings".

Next update will be on 13th-16th of December 2013...