This is why I post ...

I normally post "How-to articles..." however, I figured this time I'd share a thought that came into my head yesterday as I was watching "Grey's Anatomy". Now I am not particularly a big fan of that show but my wife had a surgery recently and while she was on bed rest, I started to watch the show with her. In one of the episodes, it was revealed that Meredith's mother wrote down all of her research because she was going to get Alzheimer and would eventually forget everything. As I was watching this episode, suddenly a thought popped into my head ... "why do you write how-tos/blogs? ... it's time consuming ... you could be doing something else instead...?" ... As I laid awake mulling over on this thought ... I realized that there are more than one reason as to why I write ...

I post how-tos/blogs because as a natural part of this writing process, I am constantly labbing, reading RFCs, looking at Cisco docs and researching. It teaches me something new everyday and reinforces what I already know. However, there is another reason -- perhaps the most important reason, it is to help my fellow Network/IT engineers.

Here is an email that I received from one of my blog readers ... I am helping him with his CCIE Lab setup along with the WEB GUI to auto load INE initial config files.

From:<arwinr@gmail.com>
To:Miguel
 Miguel --   
 Apologize, but I have been extremely busy with the holidays. Is it ok If I come back to this right after 
 Christmas on dec 26th?   
 Thanks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
From:Miguel  
To:<arwinr@gmail.com>
 Arwin,  
 No worries. I was anticipating this to be completed after Christmas. I am just truly grateful that you 
 are setting this up for me. I can't wait until my lab is up and running. Just let me know before 
 you are going to begin so I can set everything up and get team viewer going. Have a happy holiday!!  
 Best Regards,  
 Miguel  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By the way, if you are interested in how to set up the CCIE Lab for INE v5 ... follow these blogtorials.

CCIE v5 INE Home Lab - Part 1 - Configuring VMware ESXi

CCIE v5 INE Home Lab - Part 2 - Configuring CSR1000v on VMware ESXi and connecting Physical Switches

CCIE v5 INE Home Lab - Part 3 - Console to Routers / Automating scripts

If my article helps out even one fellow engineer ... then it is worth my time.