2004 Book Log in Review

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20 books. That’s all I read in 2004. It seems light. I feel like I must have missed some. But perhaps I just had a toddler.

  1. The Cartoon History of the Universe Book 1 – Larry Gonick
  2. The Cartoon History of the Universe Book 3 – Larry Gonick
  3. The Mismeasure of Man – Stephen Jay Gould
  4. Business Lessons for Entrepreneurs: 35 Things I learned before the Age of Thirty – Mark D. Csordos
  5. The Fun Of It: Stories from the Talk of the Town – New Yorker – Edited by Lillian Ross
  6. Shadow Puppets – Orson Scott Card
  7. Quicksilver: Volume One of the Baroque Cycle – Neal Stephenson
  8. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced look at the Right. – Al Franken
  9. How to Buy & Manage Rental Properties – Irene and Mike Milin.
  10. Dress Your Family in Coruroy and Denim – David Sedaris.
  11. The Well of Lost Plots – Jasper Fforde’s
  12. Fluke Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings – Christopher Moore.
  13. The Rattlesnake Master – Beaufort Cranford
  14. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal – Eric Schlosser.
  15. Running With Scissors: a memoir – Augusten Burroughs
  16. The Richest Man in Babylon – George S. Clason
  17. Monstrous Regiment – Terry Pratchett
  18. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 – Edited by Dave Eggers and Michael Cart.
  19. The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer – Doron Swade
  20. Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin – Stephen Jay Gould

Currently on my reading table are:

Value Investing with the Masters – Kirk Kazanjian
The Confusion: Volume Two of the Baroque Cycle – Neal Stephenson
The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World – A.J. Jacobs
Made In America: My Story – Sam Walton (with John Huey)

—–Edited to add:
21! I forgot about:

21. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason – Helen Fielding

Yer in, kid!

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Things that just made me laugh out loud in a cube:

Bobby Strong: (sings) That freedom sun will shine someday, til then you better run, runa run, run awaaaay!

Rabble: I’m frightened!

Bobby Strong: Ooo, yes, well you should be! Freedom is scary! It’s a blast of cooool wind that burns your face to wake you up!

Rabble: Literally?

Bobby Strong: Yesss.

–Run, Freedom, Run
Urinetown

Movin’ on Over

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We got moved to another building, which means I lost my office, but gained a cubicle with a window. If you can imagine.

I had an amazing amount of stuff, which is all sitting in boxes that are blocking the aforementioned window.

No biggie. They tell me the window makes the cubes too hot anyway.

Sort of dovetails nicely with a debate between Glenn5 and I…

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You are 60% geek
You are a geek. Good for you! Considering the endless complexity of the universe, as well as whatever discipline you happen to be most interested in, you’ll never be bored as long as you have a good book store, a net connection, and thousands of dollars worth of expensive equipment. Assuming you’re a technical geek, you’ll be able to afford it, too. If you’re not a technical geek, you’re geek enough to mate with a technical geek and thereby get the needed dough. Dating tip: Don’t date a geek of the same persuasion as you. You’ll constantly try to out-geek the other.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

Cars and Keyboards

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I was listening to NPR this morning, and heard the story about alternative fuels in Brazil.

They had cars that ran on alcohol! Their fueling stations all have four types of fuel available! They are now making flex-fuel cars that can run on either gas or alcohol! Arg!

How can we consider ourself this technologically advanced country when we’re being whupped, whupped I say, in car technology by Brazil?

And I’m not even going to go into the fact that the Japanese car companies have once again served the American car companies up for breakfast with their hybrids.

Okay, I am going to go into that. What kind of dweebs are running these American car companies? Where is the so-called American pioneer spirit that forges new frontiers in technology?

And how come my space key is all sticky?

*sigh*

I’m going to go back to supporting products designed in Canada now.

CDs = Money!

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Just went to a local CD Warehouse up here in Roswell.

I handed them 30 CDs we never listen to, or have duplicates of, or triplicates (because Stacey stole CDs from her old roommates). I got back two Lyle Lovett CDs, a DVD of The Iron Giant and $13.

And 20 CDs they didn’t want.

Yay!