Chika Acha, CCIE #18904

Hello all, It's been 6.8 years since I last posted a success story here (when I passed my R&S)....and I must confess the feeling is darn GOOD! :). I'll be shot. After bailing out right after the SP Lab update to v3, I decided to give it a shot again, but this time with a bootcamp with INE. I attended the INE bootcamp in October 2013 at Chicago, IL with Brian McGahan....and I must say, he is a genius. He was able to make the very ambiguous and mind-boggling SP technologies look like a walk in the park. My confidence level grew from 45% to 95% right after my bootcamp. Gave it a shot in Dec (at San Jose), but sadly I did not make it. Not because the lab was difficult....NO! Very far from it. After having not done it in a while, a whole thing seemed strange to me as there were so many changes (i.e. no more hard copies)....the headache of having to scroll back and forth on your questions, and the NUMEROUS questions (v4 and v6) I had to attend to. I ran out of time, so couldn't go back to reviewing lab questions I could not complete. I gave it another shot 9 days ago at RTP, and nailed it this time....Mehn!!! Felt Good!! I can't thank INE enough for the fantastic technology lab workbooks, and also the "always available" SP rack rentals that aided my IOS-XR hands-on practice. Now, I need to get married (before I get dumped)....then definitely give the DC and DE a shot. Brian McGahan....I thank you sir. Cheers guys.