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Actively Reading
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Robert Pirsig
On Deck
The Philosopher's Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods | Christopher Phillips
Socrates Cafe : A Fresh Taste of Philosophy | Christopher Phillips
Read (since 9.16.99)
The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need | Juliet Schor
God's Debris | Scott Adams
Class: A Guide Through the American Status System | Paul Fussell
Zen and the Art of Motorycle Maintenance | Robert Pirsig
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Motorcycles | Darwin Holmstrom
The Perfect Vehicle | Melissa Holbrook Pierson
Jaco | Bill Milkowski
The Good, the Bad & the Difference | Randy Cohen
Introducing Ethics | David Robinson, et al
The Career Programmer | Christopher Duncan
A Beautiful Mind | Sylvia Nasar
Me Talk Pretty One Day | David Sedaris
Euclid's Window | Leonard Mlodinow
Ava's Man | Rick Bragg
Affluenza | John DeGraaf, et al
sed & awk | Dougherty, Robbins
The Unix-hater's Handbook | Simson Garfinkel, et al
XML/RPC | Simon St. Laurent, et al
Core J2EE Patterns | John Krupi, et al
eXtreme Programming Explored | Wake
Software Craftsmanship | McBreen
XML-RPC | St. Laurent, et al
Mastering Regular Expressions | Friedl
Programming Ruby | Thomas, Hunt
Slack | DeMarco
Advanced JavaServer Pages | David Geary
Effective Java | Jeremy Bloch
Learning the vi Editor | Lamb, Robbins
The Secret House | David Bodanis
Unix Tricks and Tips | Kirk Waingrow
Learning the Korn Shell | Bill Rosenblatt
Geeks | John Katz
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams
The Cathedral and the Bazaar | Eric S. Raymond
Stranger in a Strange Land | Robert Heinlein
Several Books on Solaris and Unix Admin
It's Not About the Bike | Lance Armstrong
The Humane Interface | Jef Raskin
The Pragmatic Programmer | Andrew Hunt
The Water-method Man | John Irving
The Nudist on the Late Shift | Po Bronson
Does the Center Hold?: An Introduction to Western Philosophy | Donald Palmer
Principles of Transaction Processing | Philip Bernstein
In the Beginning Was the Command Line | Neal Stephenson
The Tomb | HP Lovecraft
The Lurking Fear | HP Lovecraft
Secrets, Lies, and Democracy | Chomsky/Barsamian
Hannibal | Thomas Harris
eXtreme Programming eXplained | Kent Beck
Philosophy for Dummies | Tom Morris
Sophie's World | Jostein Gaarder
Clear Thinking | Hy Ruchlis
Chomsky for Beginners | David Cogswell
Philosophy, the Basics | Nigel Warburton
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! | Richard Feynman
The Lord of the Rings | J.R.R. Tolkien
Listening
Is This It | The Strokes
Sea Change | Beck
White Blood Cells | The White Stripes

 

 
Sunday, January 26, 2003

Whew! I've finally finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I started it once before, many years ago in college, but just couldn't slog through it that time. I hate to use the word "slog" on this classic book, but when you're in the middle of it, that's kind of what it feels like. It's the kind of book that you look at once you're finished, and say to yourself, now what exactly was in all those pages? I mean, there were some memorable bits, but enough to fill up that book?

I must say that I liked the ending, which is tied up pretty nicely. There are definitely a number of ideas in the book that made it worth reading. One of my favorites is:

"Or if he takes whatever dull job he's stuck with...and they are all, sooner or later, dull...and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he's likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his Quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others too because the Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn't think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going."

I'd like to think that the above excerpt describes in some way how I approach my work. Hopefully that doesn't seem too grandiose.


muttered around 10:18 PM

Thursday, January 09, 2003

I received my new camera on Tuesday. I'm very pleased with it. I can't believe I only paid about $50-75 more for it than I did for my old 1.3MP Olympus. The Olympus was great in its day, but this camera is really an order of magnitude more feature-rich. Very nice!


muttered around 10:55 PM

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