ccie quick ref...

before i even begin to read a new text, i build an anki deck from the glossary... i was disappointed that the doyle books do not contain one...

for me this is important as it familiarizes me with the subject matter i will encounter, and there will be no surprises upon reading the book... it also gives me a good indicator of what i don't know...

there is a constant in the pursuit of this thing; namely that it will never end... there is comfort in that...

i used to work with a guy who upon hearing that when i was not at work i spent all my time studying the vastness that is this, he'd scoff and tell me to get a hobby...  it is better to keep it to oneself, i thought...  that guy referred to himself as an engineer; i scoffed at that so we were even...

this pursuit is maddening, and often lonely... when you've struggled with a particularly difficult concept for a while, and you finally break through, there is no reward, no trumpets, no celebration, more a feeling of relief than anything else that that obstacle is over, and the realization many more lie ahead...

about that ccie quick reference from cisco press... towards the end there are sections on implementation... while i was reading through them i had a peculiar feeling of being there before... the terrifying moment came when i went back to earlier chapters for a sanity check... i was correct...  some of the same text was repeated verbatim in that later part...

although repetition gives rise to retention, i didn't expect a scrape from one end of the book to another...

of course, this won't stop me from reading it many more times...

by the way, the glossary for odom's ccie is about about 500 terms deep...