books

This weekend, Disney released a new movie for download.  That by itself isn't remarkable.  What's remarkable is that this is a move that was just released to the theaters two weeks prior.  That movie is from Pixar studios and is called Onward.  I'm writing this as my son and I are watching it on March 21st.  That date alone is extremely meaningful to me, as it's World Down Syndrome Day (3/21) and he has Down syndrome.  This movie was released by Disney extremely early, because we're all dealing with something that a year ago we couldn't have imagined could happen. My family and I live in Northern California.  On March 16, 2020 we were ordered to "shelter in place"...

I'm not sure where to start this post. 2019 has been difficult for everyone in the United States, I want to say 2020 will be better...so I will! 2020 is going to be great! This year I focused on expanding my personal horizons and reading books that would push me to be a better person overall. I found that I didn't read a lot of entertainment as a result. It therefore felt like I read fewer books than I might have otherwise, but I found I read almost twice as many as 2018. So, I'm hapy with that progress. I set a goal on GoodReads to read 20 books in 2019 and fell a bit short. In 2020, I'm...

What a year. My family moved from Cupertino to San Jose, where we purchased a new home (don't even get me started on housing prices). I started in a new role at ServiceNow in Customer Success and Deb took on a new position at Cisco. My son started 2nd grade in a new school, which has helped him immensily, though I worry that this is now his 3rd school in his young life (I was in 9 schools by the 9th grade). We're staying put for the forseeable future. As I reflect on 2018, I spent a lot less time reading, something I truly missed. In reviewing the books I read this year (9 titles, down 60% from the 22...

2017 found my family and I finally settled, if a bit temporarily, in our new home in Cupertino, CA. We're renting and that will be the next major milestone we cross (buying a home). My son started First Grade, my wife continued her position at Cisco, and I'm still enjoying my position at ServiceNow (though I started a new role in 2018). In reviewing the books I read this year (22 titles), they were broken down in the following broad genres: Entertainment - 41% (down from 55%) Non-fiction - 27% (up from 15%) Computing - 5% (down from 15%) Biographies - 18% (up from 7.5%) Self-improvement - 9% (up from 7.5%) In my last What I've Read post,...

I love eBooks.  I’m not actually sure the last time I purchased a physical, paper book.  If I have recently purchased one, then it was a Computer Reference book of some type.  Most likely it was a Cisco Press, O’Reilly “animal” book, or any one of a number of technical books and programming manuals.  Over the years, I’ve purchased close to 50 O’Reilly “animal” books, with multiple copies of the “Camel” book (Perl Programming) being purchased.  A programmer always wants to have the latest copy of a reference guide, because the languages develop so quickly.  Same thing goes for a Network Engineer (I’m one of those too), or a Security Specialist (ditto). I figured out...