Let's hear it for Chapter 11; SuperCrown (they're a fairly common bookstore down here, but without the cappucino and fuzzy feel of Borders or Barnes & Noble) is going out of business, which meant it was time for me to stock up on books (60% off the jacket price is hard to pass up, even if the book is a waste of paper). The few decent books I managed to find (the only books really left in volume were in the business section and the rows upon rows of cheap romance paperbacks) were:Work
- The Hacker Ethic, Pekka Himanen
Slashdot did a review of this book a while back, and it caught my attention. It looks to be a good read, but I have't tackled it just yet.
- Rebel Code,Glyn Moody
Another book reviewed by /., this is a good summation of recent years, starting from Linus' first stabs with Linux, and working forward to today where open source is viewed as a reasonable basis for software development models in business. I have to wonder if the book would have read differently had it been written during or after the recent layoff frenzy (yes, I believe the worst is over, sans a few more upcoming announcements) in the tech industry? I haven't finished this one yet.
- Getting Started in Computer Consulting, Peter Meyer
This was a pure impulse buy; I recently read Getting Started in Consulting by Alan Weiss (from the same publisher), and was curious if it would match Weiss' quality of writing and direct approach to the subject. Haven't had a chance to go through it yet.The fifth book's name eludes me for the moment, and since they're all sitting on my nightstand at home, it's a little hard to go look it up. ;-) It was what appeared to be a fairly complete book regarding user interface design for e-commerce applications. I'll make sure I post the title here later.
- Why Should Extroverts Make All the Money?, Frederica J. Balzano and Marsha Boone Kelley
Another impulse buy; being an introvert myself, and having a strong interest in MBTI typing (I'm an INTJ), I was interested in what she had to say; I've just about finished this one, and I'm actually fairly impressed, I expected a feel-good book of self-affirmation, and I what I found was a book filled with example case studies (which didn't always work out well) and reasonable approaches to the problems many introverts have with "networking". It's geared toward the job-hunter, so maybe some of the recently-downsized here can find some use in it.
Spent the last two days attending a surprisingly up-beat all-company meeting, which unveiled our new "image" and (more importantly) gave everyone in the company a solid understanding of the product produced by the company we just acquired, and how it will integrate with ours. I'm surpised to find myself very impressed with what this tiny group of folks have managed to create in under a year with a shoestring budget; it put our own efforts, which were presented as well, to shame (they have a working product, we have some lovely PowerPoint slides). (For the curious: their product is an amazingly complete "coming together" of responsible online marketing services; opt-in email, banner ad campaigns, etc, most with the ability to actually track both the hits you're getting from various impressions, and the amount of actual revenue you brought in from them, along with a whole gambit of other handy toys you'll probably want if you're trying to run a real business with Internet sales.)
Good things arising from the sessions: we're committing fairly publically to reducing our current platform support (how many proprietary software products do you know that ship on 19 separate platforms? betcha you can count 'em on one hand), and that we're really pushing to phase out the old product as quickly as possible after the new product launch, meaning a much simpler infrastructure to try and maintain here. The bad things: international sales are attempting to completely backdoor the entire process, and artificially prolong the life of our dead product by foisting it on the European audience, with partners over there doing all the translations and further development (with our name stamped on it, of course). Sales seems to think that we'll manage the infrastructure for all this development here in the U.S. The CTO has a slightly different opinion. It'd be fun watching the fireworks, if it wasn't my infrastructure caught in the middle.Personal
Erica's Jeep died yesterday, on her way to lunch from class. Luckily, we haven't missed a beat; she's driving me to work and picking me up afterwards, with classes during the day, so all is good. Hopefully she'll have it fixed by Monday (let's hear it for 1500-miles-left-on-the-warranty!).Red Hat 7.1
Almost here. Sounds like the release name is "Seawolf" from some chatter on a few Red Hat mailing lists. I'm betting on either a late Friday/Saturday release, or they'll hold off until Monday to better handle the flood of support requests. ;-)