How I Will Crush My 2016 Goals!

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Goals

Goals, Goals, and More Goals

I cannot recall ever being as excited for a New Year. It certainly is not like the last one was bad, I am just super excited for what is to come. Are you like me and looking to crush some goals in 2016? Here are some notes on my planning and conquering…

A Goal Reaching Head Start

There was no way I was going to wait until Jan 1, 2016 to begin making progress on some of my goals. Hey, some of them are just too damn difficult without a head start. For example, one of my goals is to run a half marathon. OK, OK, it is to jog a half marathon, but still, this was something I was absolutely too scared to try and start on the first of the new year. So I started running and tracking these runs in October, gearing up for the actual half marathon in 2016.

What Do I Really Want to Make a Goal?

I tend to leap headfirst at ideas and then try and achieve them. Sadly, I do this without a lot of thought. I just get really excited to try new stuff or learn new skills. In preparation for next year, I am really being careful about what I set out to achieve. I am focusing on the WHY I want to do things more than ever. To go back to the half marathon example, I realized there was a ton of reasons WHY I wanted to try and accomplish it. Weight loss, increased stamina, increased energy, they all added up to a big resounding GO FOR IT! Other goal ideas got scratched. Maybe some other year they would make more sense…

TRACK IT!

Why do I love my iPhone so much? That is simple – one word – TRACKING. I want to be a safer driver, the Automatic app tracks that. I want to run a half marathon, the RunKeeper app tracks that. I need to drink more water, WaterMinder tracks that…you get the idea. Most people never accomplish New Year’s Resolutions – only about 8% make it. Why is this? One big reason is they never track their progress throughout the year.

What are your goals for 2016? What are you doing to make sure you accomplish them? Let me know in the comments area below!

Subnetting – What Mask to Use

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SPeed Subnetting

Overview:

Remember, it is totally worth repeating in this series of posts on subnetting – while practicing just how fast you can ace subnetting questions in the certification environment is always worthwhile and fun, you do want to make sure you understand exactly why you are going through the exercise to being with. You also want to be sure you understand how subnetting fundamentally works. This is often referred to as subnetting “longhand”.

ICND1 Sample Subnetting Question:

Your co-worker has decided upon use of the 172.16.0.0 address space for a section of your network. This section requires 14 subnets. What subnet mask will you recommend?

Step 1: I reference the Powers of Two chart I created on my scratch paper when I encountered the first question. The formula for the number of subnets you can create based on subnet bits is 2 ^ S where S is the number of subnet bits borrowed. From the chart I see if we “borrow” 4 bits we can create 16 subnets. This is two more than we need in this scenario, but that is great as it will allow for future expansion with ease.

2^7=128  |  2^6=64  |  2^5=32  |  2^4=16  |  2^3=8  |  2^2-=4 | 2  ^1=2  |  2^0=1

Step 2: Borrowing 4 bits beyond the Class B boundary results in 255.255.128+64+32+16 = 240. Our mask is 255.255.240.0.