New Books

We don't get out much. After 8+ hours of programming and meetings every day, I don't often go out and something exciting. I'm happy to have dinner with my wife, take the dogs out, and watch an episode of something or other. When I put it in words, it does sound rather drab.

Yesterday was the first Saturday that I've slept in since before we moved. I decided to mess with my graphics card a bit, and in the end, the easy way out was to reinstall my operating system. The up side is that I was prepared for such drastic measures. I now have Ubuntu 9.10 running on "Extra Visual Effects" mode--which means some of my windows are transparent and I can make my windows wiggle when I grab them with the mouse. It's the little things in life.

Last weekend I enjoyed reading and skimming, and I realized that I don't have any story books that I'm currently reading (and no such books that I want to read on my shelf). Saturday was also the first day in several weeks above freezing, and I hadn't been on a good long walk since Christmas. In response, we killed (or at least seriously injured) two birds with one stone--we walked to the nearest bookstore. The round trip was about 2.8 miles with some sidewalks, some snow-walks, and some roadside-walks.

After looking through a few books (Ubuntu, The Number Phi, Mind Hacks, and Nicoli Tesla), I asked one of the guys who worked there for some recommendations on science fiction or fantasy books to pick up. He was rather surprised that I hadn't read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He recommended a book called Red Mars about colonizing Mars, so I'll read that after Hitchhikers. I also picked up my very first Linux magazine--Linux Shell. I'm already learning about all the wonderful things I can do with Bash scripting.