The wife and I had a romantic day driving several hours to a small town to take Cisco exams.  If this doesn’t get me some action, I don’t know what else to try.

I’ve already used the phrases “skin of my teeth” and “a pass is a pass” on Twitter today for good reason.  Passing is a score of 790, and I blew that away with a 790.  One more lapse in concentration and I would have been making up more excuses instead of smiling.  I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I have this weird reaction to taking exams where I don’t get nervous at all until after I’m finished.  Walking into the testing center, I was fine.  Walking out, I was shaking like Northern Virginia.  It was so bad that I could barely hold on to the door knob when trying to leave, so I guess that I’m really prouder than I thought I was.

It’s been a long time, eh? I’ve spent the last month or so with my nose down in a book and my mouse in a Google+ Hangout window studying my rear off for the CCIE R&S Written. Too bad I didn’t pass it.

The exam consisted of 77 questions over a 2 hour window. That’s plenty of time to finish; I think I had 48 minutes left when I was through, so time wasn’t a problem. There were only 2 or 3 questions where I was totally lost, so the technology wasn’t a problem. The big problem, like always, was the usual crap questions that are in these exams. Some didn’t provide all the required information. Some were impractical examples of deployments you would never use in the field. Some were on deprecated technologies. Hell, I had one that involved CatOS. Really? CatOS? Since I only failed by about 2 questions (like I always do), these shenanigans are magnified in my mind. It really irks me how these exams are being done; foggy questions don’t really measure ability.