Recently in Book reviews Category

I'm reading LOTR trilogy again. It's been a few years since I read them. I had forgotten how much detail there is in the history and background of everything. The story and characters really come alive due to all the rich history developed behind it.

For a long time I've suffered under the illusion that I was doing ok in managing my time and all that I was working on.  I assumed that all other programmers, software engineers, system administrators, etc. all had lives similar to mine and that we all barely keep our heads above water and at any moment we could drown.

Well the truth is different from that, and it took a book to help me understand that.  Please, please, please- if you are at all in the IT industry and work with code, or systems, or networks, or stuff like that- then please buy and read "Time Management for System Administrators" by Thomas A. Limonecelli (O'Reilley).  This book is not magic, don't get me wrong- but if you feel that being burried by tasks and projects is normal and that you have to work more hours a week than a "normal person" becuase your job is just that demanding- then you need this book to help you see differently!

This book is awesome.  I learned so much from it that I have placed it second on my list of books every software engineer should read.  There are so many great topics covered in such a easy to read and understand way that you can't help but want to try them out.  And after trying a few out, you start to wonder how on earth did you live without some of these things.  

There are a few books I have read that I really got a lot out of, and this was one of them.  I was familiar with a lot of the things discussed in here, but not at any great detail (at least with some of them).  I even learned a thing or two with perl (imagine that!).