Rereading books in 2013

I like to read and since I will be commuting on the train very soon, it will give me even more time to read. I read 51 book last year, you can find those books here: http://pinterest.com/denisgobo/books-i-read-in-2012/ This year I decided to read a bunch of books that I have read before and that I have loved. Here is the image of the books as I took it this morning, I will go into a little detail after the image.

Hirohito And The Making Of Modern Japan
Written by Herbert P. Bix. I got this book as a gift from my father in law 8 or 9 years ago and didn't really know that much about Hirohito's life before reading this book. I like history and decided to read this book again.

On Writing
Written by Stephen King. This book is part memoir and part master class in the art of writing. If you are thinking that Stephen King was born to be a terrific writer, you are wrong, he struggled a long time before he got his first book published.

A Short History of Nearly Everything
Written by Bill Bryson. A history of the world written in a funny and informative way...who said history was boring?

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
Written by Bill Bryson. This was the first Bill Bryson book I ever read and I immediately loved it.

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
Written by Bill Bryson. There were several times that I laughed out loud reading this book. You will find some of the stereotypes described in this book, contrast how Germans park and drive compared to French and Italians. The book is a little dated because some countries don't exist anymore and things as described in the book might not be completely like that these days

Thinner
Written by Stephen King. I got this book as a gift from my wife before we were married and loved it. It is about a gypsy curse that makes a man get thinner, this book is also one of the thinnest Stephen King books

The Stand
Written by Stephen King. I am still waiting for a tv show that does the book justice, maybe HBO will pick it up. This is Stephen King's master piece about the battle between good and evil, a true page turner. Can't wait to start on this one again

The Shining
Written by Stephen King. One of the few books were the movie is as good as the book. A fantastic book and probably my favorite one after The Stand and It

The Hobbit
Written by J. R. R. Tolkien. I read this for the first time in 2001 and decided to read it again after having watch the movie 4 weeks ago. I am almost done with the book, have only 14 pages left.

The Lord of the Rings
The Fellowship of the Ring: First Part of The Lord of the Rings
The Two Towers: Second Part of The Lord of the Rings
The Return of the King: Third Part of the Lord of the Rings
Written by J. R. R. Tolkien. Read these in 2001 after I watched the first LOTR movie in the theater. I have watched the movie many times more but I just want to see again what they left out of the movie and what parts were different.

Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
Written by Mark Bowden. I had to choose between Killing Pablo and this one, I choose this one. I ahve watched the movie as well so we'll see if that will will make me like the book less or more compared to last time

Into Thin Air
Written by Jon Krakauer. After reading this book I was amazed why people insist on climbing Mount Everest. The book details how dangerous this really is, five people died and others were severely frostbitten. I wonder if my mind will change after reading this book again.

The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea
Written by Sebastian Junger. If you watched the movie, realize that it doesn't do the book any justice. There is so much more detail in the book than in the movie. I remember reading this in Ocean City and loving it

Cryptonomicon
Written by Neal Stephenson. This is my favorite Neal Stephenson book! The boos takes place in WWII and in present day, there is an unbreakable encryption scheme that puzzles the present day characters. Highly recommended.

The Joy Luck Club
Written by Amy Tan. I saw the movie first before I knew it was based on a book. I loved the movie but I think the book is even better. The book is about four Chinese mothers who have to deal with their westernized daughters, the story goes back in time when the mothers were living in China and tells their part of the story.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The book chronicles one day in the live of a character's life in a labor camp in Siberia. This is some messed up stuff, next time when your house is a little chilly or you have to walk a mile longer think of Ivan Denisovich and what he had to endure instead.

A Clockwork Orange
Written by Anthony Burgess. This book might be disturbing for some people because of it extreme violence. Some people might find the book difficult to read because of the use of nadsat, nadsat is an argot used by the teenagers, it's a form of Russian-influenced English, the back of the book has a 2-3 page dictionary so you can look up the words. I will still recommend reading this book.

A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3)
Written by George R.R. Martin. This is book 3 of Game Of Thrones and in my opinion the best one. So much stuff happens in this book and one person at last gets his justice delivered to him. The reason I am reading this book again is because season 3 is starting on HBO on March 31st That is all for this post, are you going to read any books again that you have read in the past and loved?

There goes another chunk of money: Star Wars Saga Goes Blu-ray in 2011

George Lucas annnounced Star Wars on Blu-Ray at Celebration V yesterday.

The Star Wars saga will at long last be released in a high-definition home video format as all six movies come to Blu-Ray in a Box Set in Fall 2011, as announced by George Lucas this morning at Celebration V. At the fan convention's Main Event, thousands of Star Wars fans braved the muggy heat of an Orlando morning to queue for a one-time only stage session between George Lucas and The Daily Show's Jon Stewart. Stewart asked Lucas questions submitted from the fan community, and one of the most frequently asked questions submitted online prior to the Main Event was about the saga's release on Blu-Ray.
"I wish I could say it was coming out this year," said Lucas, "but it will come out next year."

The set will feature all six live-action Star Wars feature films, with the highest picture and audio quality, along with extensive special features.

I have not switched to Blu-ray yet and Star Wars together with The Ultimate Matrix Collection and The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy should make that pretty much a no-brainer. It is funny how the LOTR Blu-ray got horrible reviews because these are not the extended editions you are looking for but the regular editions, and of course they will come out with the extended editions sooner or later so people will have to buy both sets. SO yes, maybe once the LOTR EE comes out I will switch to Blu-ray, for now I am fine with my plain vanilla DVD collection. Also be aware that you won't see the original trilogy theatrical versions because necessary restoration would cost too much. These are the Special Edition remastered version of the original trilogy that were released on DVD.

Below is the long-lost deleted scene from Return of the Jedi.

Lamborghini and Porsche cars at the mall

I went to the small MarketFair mall next to my house and found 2 Lamborghinis and 1 Porsche GT (I believe it is a Porsche GT3) within 50 feet. I had my camera with my so I snapped these pics. Click on the pictures to get to the flickr page which will have a larger image.

Lamborghini









Porsche GT

Recap of MVP Summit 2010

I attended the 2010 MVP summit this year for the first time.

So it all started for me at 4:15 AM (EST) on Monday, this means it was only 1:15 AM in Seattle. I took a 7:35 flight from Newark New Jersey to Seattle Washington. I met Denny Cherry at the airport and we took a cab to Bellevue. This summit all the hotels for the guests were in Bellevue.

Bellevue at night


View from the hotel room




I have been checking the weather in Seattle for the last couple of months and noticed that it is 55 degrees and it rains 6 days out of 7....I was thinking to myself who would want to live here? Well as it turns out it was sunny every from Wednesday till Saturday and we really lucked out. I even took a little visit to Lake Washington.



At least I think that is Lake Washington but I could be wrong.


Microsoft Campus
I was really impressed with the campus, they have a ski shop, a barber shop, a bike shop, many restaurants and even an artificial turf soccer field.


There were 2 full days of sessions on Microsoft's campus. These were really interesting sessions, I met some of the people who worked on SQL Server and it was interesting to pick these people's brain or complain about some of the stuff that they created. The SQL team really put some interesting sessions together and I would like to thank them for that.



After these sessions we had dinner with some of the Microsoft employees, I was seated with the Azure team and we had some interesting conversations about Azure and databases in the cloud in general.

Networking

I finally met and talked to so many of the people I only knew from online newsgroups, blogs and forums. Here is just a small list:

Kevin Kline
Erland Sommarskog
Rod Colledge
Adam Machanic
Louis Davidson
Itzik Ben-Gan
Kalen Delaney
Joe Web
Dejan Sarka

Pinal Dave
Matija Lah
Michael Coles
Hugo Kornelis
Alejandro Mesa
Arnie Rowland
Kevin Boles


I (and many others) also signed two copies of the SQL Server Deep Dives book that will be given away at SQL Saturday in NYC on April 24th


Desynchronosis
Jet lag really kicked my behind the first couple of days, even though I didn't go to sleep until 11:15 PM on Tuesday night (meaning I was up for 22 hours already) I woke up at 2:30 AM on Wednesday..after tossing and turning for 30 minutes I decided to hit the gym. Luckily for me the gym is open 24/7 at the Hyatt.


I read or listened to the following things while flying or being awake during vampire hours and walking around Bellevue.

Finished In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Finished half of The Lost Symbol

Finished 40 % of MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-448): Microsoft SQL Server 2008-Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance: MCTS Exam 70-448 (Self-Paced Training Kits)

Listened to the following podcasts:
This week in tech
This week in google
Security now
Windows weekly
The disciplined investor
Dotnetrocks (2 episodes)

Shutter Island

After all the sessions were done on Friday I decided to go see Shutter Island. I really liked this movie and highly recommend it. The ending is very interesting.


Mount Ranier
On my way home I snapped these two pics of Mount Ranier from the parking garage at Seattle airport

Euro 2012 draw

So the World Cup is still months away but already we can start preparing mentally for Euro 2012. Euro 2012 will be held in Poland and the Ukraine. Below is the draw, I don't think that there will be any surprises, the groups seem pretty easy for the top teams.

Group A
Germany
Turkey
Austria
Belgium
Kazakhstan
Azerbaijan

Group B
Russia
Slovakia
Republic of Ireland
FYR Macedonia
Armenia
Andorra

Group C
Italy
Serbia
Northern Ireland
Slovenia
Estonia
Faroe Islands

Group D
France
Romania
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Belarus
Albania
Luxembourg

Group E
Netherlands
Sweden
Finland
Hungary
Moldova
San Marino

Group F
Croatia
Greece
Israel
Latvia
Georgia
Malta

Group G
England
Switzerland
Bulgaria
Wales
Montenegro

Group H
Portugal
Denmark
Norway
Cyprus
Iceland

Group I
Spain
Czech Republic
Scotland
Lithuania
Liechtenstein

Already places (hosts)
Poland
Ukraine


So what do you think, which is the group of death this time? I don't think there is one

The curse and blessing of an hour long commute

At this time I live about 6 miles from where I work, this is of course nice because I can be home in 10 minutes. There was a time when I used to commute from Princeton to New York City. I used to take the Amtrak (clocker) or the NJ Transit express train. During my commuting days I would read about 60 books in a year. After I found work in Princeton the number of books I would read in a year would drop dramatically. There was also another factor involved…twins….we welcomed a set of twins in 2006 and that was pretty much the end of me reading anything for pleasure. Besides the twins we already had another child who was 2 years when the twins were born. Here is a picture of them from last Christmas: http://www.flickr.com/photos/denisgobo/3101785602/in/set-72157600873902525/

Now that the oldest kid is almost 6 and the twins are 3.5 years old it is getting a little easier to read. This year I read about 10 – 15 books, most books these days I get in audio format. The advantage of an audio format is that you can listen to the book where you would usually not be able to read the book. I find it is very difficult for me to read a book in a noisy environment, when listening to an audio book I don’t have this problem. Some audio books are also read by professionals and it makes the book so much better than a paper edition.

So I do miss my commuting days for the reason mentioned above but I do not miss it when a train breaks down in front of us, if there is a brush fire or when a major blackout happens like the Northeast Blackout of 2003. Yes I survived that one but didn’t take the train home till 4AM the next morning. On the Amtrak trains there was this funny conductor named Marvin who would say when there was a problem with the train that Amtrak guaranteed same day service.

During the last week of this year I will post a list of all the books I read this year and also a list of the books that I hope to read next year. At this moment I am reading House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street. This is a really interesting book and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to relive the crash of 2008. I also has the most F-Bombs in any book I read so far...kinda like the scarface of books :-)

There Is A Reason That AOL Users Are Associated With Eternal September

There Is A Reason That AOL Users Are Associated With Eternal September!!

There I said it!! I didn't think people still used AOL...apparently some people still do and I was wrong. So what is this Eternal September thing I am talking about? This is from Wikipedia's Eternal September page

Usenet originated among universities, so, every year in September, a large number of new university students from the Northern hemisphere acquired access to Usenet, and took some time to acclimate themselves to the network's standards of conduct and "netiquette". After a month or so, these new users would theoretically learn to comport themselves according to its conventions. September thus heralded the peak influx of disruptive newcomers to the network.

In 1993, the online service America Online began offering Usenet access to its tens of thousands, and later millions, of users. To many "old-timers", these "AOLers" were far less prepared to learn netiquette than university freshmen. This was in part because AOL made little effort to educate its users about Usenet customs, or explain to them that these new-found forums were not simply another piece of AOL's service. But it was also a result of the much larger scale of growth. Whereas the regular September freshman influx would soon settle down, the sheer number of new users now threatened to overwhelm the existing Usenet culture's capacity to inculcate its social norms

Why am I writing about this? It is because my wife had to email someone two pictures of our twins so that this person could use those in a school book. My wife emails the pictures and the person claims she can't open the pictures because they are not in jpeg format.
Interesting because I remember the pics being in jpeg format. So then I tried and emailed my wife the pics, she opened them fine,I then told my wife to just forward them to the person. Same reply from the person, she can't open them. Then I asked my wife what email the person had......it turns out it was aol.

Now I remember about 10 years ago someone went through the same thing.....if you attach more than one item aol zips it up into one attachment or something like that. So I told my wife to email her the pics in two separate emails and the problem was solved. I didn't even try asking the person to unzip or unrar the attachment because then I would have to explain how to install winzip or unrar.

Really how can you still use aol in 2009? I don't care that you use aol as your ISP but use gmail or yahoo as your email. I also remember a while back when we were looking to interview people at a previous job and they just eliminated all the resumes from people who had an aol email address. The reasoning was that if you had an aol email account you could never be a serious programmer, little harsh I know but that was what they did

So, do you know anyone that still uses aol?