So after a good bit of thought, and some boredom with the CCDA/DP material, I think I'm going to bypass the DA and DP for now.
I don't have much of a set plan right now, and most of my study, while helping get to CCIE, will be along the lines of what will enforce the work I'm currently doing at work.
Expect posts right now to relate to BGP mutlti-homing with dual ISP's, VRF, and general ASR 9k implementations.
I'm leaning towards the IPexpert labbing paths for eventual CCIE test/lab. Most of the video representation on INE bores me to tears.
I still have a hard date of 2020 to pass the lab portion of the test, so I'm giving myself plenty of time. I'll need to pass the CCIE written by 2017 to retain my CCNP.
I'm starting from this diagram which is done on GNS3 v1.2 with IOU l3 devices. As you may notice, I have CSR1000v's implemented in VirtualBox. I'm not sure how useful they will be yet. They use a lot of RAM, and don't work with IOU devices(can't connect) as I currently have them implemented, if at all. I may have to move them from virtualbox to an ESXi hypervisor since the IOU implementation is already running on Vbox.
I'm probably due to build another "GNS3 for dummies like me" post again, but I'd like to get the CSR a little more sorted first.