Best Books of 2004

This being the last day of the year, I thought I would list the books that I've read over the past year for which I gave the best reviews. These were not all published in 2004. I just happened to read them in 2004. I'm leaving out software development-related titles which don't have broader appeal.

In no particular order...
Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip by Jim Rogers
Read my review



Traveler's Tool Kit by Rob Sangster
Read my review



Photo Nomad by David Douglas Duncan
Read my review



On Writing by Stephen King
Read my review



Six Months Off: How to Plan, Negotiate, and Take the Break You Need Without Burning Bridges or Going Broke by Hope Dlugozima, et al
Read my review

The Earth is wobbling. No wonder I feel dizzy...

From cnn.com:

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- The deadly Asian earthquake may have permanently accelerated the Earth's rotation, shortening days by a fraction of a second and caused the planet to wobble on its axis, U.S. scientists said Tuesday.

Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth's center during the quake Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or one millionth of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.

When one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was forced below the edge of another "it had the effect of making the Earth more compact and spinning faster," Gross said.

Outsourcing to English Majors

I was filling out my "performance evaluation discussion questionnaire" today for my annual review with my employer when the thought hit me, "Why am I lowering myself to such as disgraceful position as to be filling out paperwork? Can't I outsource this? Isn't that the American way?" Think of all the thousands, per millions, of English majors with no relevant job skills that colleges turn out every year. Couldn't I pay one of them a penny per word to write my performance evaluation for me? If we can trust foreign workers to develop our most critical software components, why shouldn't we trust those who know nothing about us to write our performance evaluations and other meaningless documents?

Want to Get Rich? Learn from Jim Rogers.

Jim Roger's new book Hot Commodities : How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World's Best Market hit the booksellers today, and I've already ordered my copy. I've been investing, reading investment books, and watching financial network commentators since I was thirteen-years-old and can say that Jim Rogers is one of the extremely few individuals on the planet whose investment advice is worth listening to. And that's an understatement. I regularly check out his website, jimrogers.com, hoping to find any new pearls of wisdom. Jim co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros, later retired at age 37, and has traveled around the world twice, collecting even more investment wisdom in each of the hundreds of countries that he's visited and dozens in which he has invested. I'll be posting a review of the new book as soon I read it but until then buy yours today. You might also want to check out my review of Jim's previous book, Adventure Capitalist.

ITConversations.com

Over the past few weeks I've been listening to audio interviews downloaded from ITConversations.com. It started when I was burned out from listening to music while working on the computer and has now grown to the point where I've even burned a disc of these MP3 interviews to listen to in the car. The interviews range from 40 minutes to an hour in length and are available in streaming format, downloaded MP3 (my preference), or downloaded .m4b for the iPod.

I was drawn to the site after seeing that Philip Greenspun did an audio interview with them, a very interesting one as well. I was hooked. Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, did a two-part interview in which he covers his quite impressive auto-biography. As a kid he was drawing on paper the logic circuits to create computers. It would be a few years later before he could afford the parts to actually build them with the advent of integrated chips.

There are some great interviews out there on the "not so nerdy front" as well. Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners talks about emerging technology trends and what is currently happening on the venture captial front.

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to listen in on a briefing at the Pentagon, Thomas Barnett may the closest most of ever get. His speech on the era of globalization is very interesting. Here's a bio from ITConversations.com:

Professor Thomas P.M. Barnett is a Senior Strategic Researcher in the Warfare Analysis & Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College. Currently, Thomas is on temporary assignment as the Assistant for Strategic Futures, Office of Force Transformation (OFT), Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he is working with OFT Director Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski (USN, ret.) on a cluster of strategic concepts that link change in the international security environment to the imperative of transforming U.S. military capabilities to meet future threats.

Thomas has published a number of articles explaining these strategic concepts, which he presents comprehensively in a briefing entitled, "A Future Worth Creating: Defense Transformation in the New Security Environment."

At the Naval War College, he serves as Director of the NewRuleSets.Project, an ambitious effort to draw new "maps" of power and influence in the world economy so as to expand the U.S. Military's--and specifically, the U.S. Navy's--vision of where and how it can wield maximum influence across the international security environment of the Era of Globalization.

I'm now a regular reader of Barnett's blog as well.

Book Review - Traveler's Took Kit by Rob Sangster

Packed with wisdom and an extremely great value

The Traveler's Tool Kit by Rob Sangster is an all-encompassing volume of how-to travel knowledge from a reliable source. The author has traveled extensively all over the world for many years and also for very extended periods per trip. The first half of the book is split between two sections, Part One: Planning Your Trip and Part Two: Getting Ready. The remaining half of the book focuses on actual "On the road" wisdom.

While the early chapters cover topics like "choosing a guidebook" and "choosing luggage" are very long-winded, especially for those with even the most basic travel experience, they are perfect for scared-stiff first-time travelers. Those not scared stiff and sweating with travel fever certainly will after reading Chapter 8, Keeping Healthy, as the author covers all the various fungal infections and parasite that you may join you during your adventure. Even though the author is very verbose, all of the text is filled with travel gems of knowledge like this one from the scary Keeping Healthy chapter:

If your feet will be constantly wet, as they might be during an extended trek in Amazonia, coat them with Vaseline to ward off jungle rot. Sounds messy but it works.

There are more "uplifting" gems as well, like this one from "Traveling By Bus":

Some trips combine spectacular scenery with luxury. The air-conditioned Scania superbus that cruises 1,200 miles from Santiago to Arica, Chile, has a bar, a bathroom, three movie screens, and a smiling hostess. As the sleek bus hums across the moonscape of the Atacama Desert, you spy huge boulders balanced on barren mountainsides... As heat waves shimmer outside the window, cool air breezes across your face and the hostess set an ice-cold beer at your elbow. At night, your seat reclines to nearly horizontal, a leg rest pops out, and you're in bed. All that for about $40.

Other travel gems provide advice for avoiding travel rip-offs and scams. The Traveler's Took Kit is an EXTREMLEY great value packed with sage travel advice.

Buy it on Amazon

Outsourcing to Arkansas

CNBC ran a story about outsourcing to Arkansas yesterday. A lady by the name of Dr. Kathy White has started a company in Jonesboro to aid companies in outscouring to us poor underpriveldged folks. (The author of this blog is a software consultant in Little Rock, Arkansas.) She has a very impressive bio that I've pasted further below.

Forget India; outsource jobs to Arkansas

Company website of Rural Sourcing, Inc. (Accepting resumes for those so inclined...)

She gave ASU in Jonesboro a $2 million dollar gift to establish the Horizon Institute of Technology. (I'm going to ask her for a few million to establish our own institute of something or another.)

From her company's website:

Founder and President
Dr. Kathy Brittain White is Founder and President of Rural Sourcing, Inc., an organization developing information technology employment in rural communities. She also founded the Horizon Institute of Technology* that supports technology outreach initiatives in Rural America. Ms. White retired as Executive Vice President and Chief information Officer of Cardinal Health, Inc. in March of 2003. She also held executive positions with Honeywell and Baxter Healthcare. White spent ten years as associate professor of information technology at University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Dr. White is a member of the Board of Directors of Mattel, Inc., Novell, Inc., and Certegy, Inc. She was named in Forbes Top 25 America's Businesswomen in 2001; top 10 CIO's in the United States, 1997 Information Week; Top 100 Women in Computing, 1994 Open Computing.

SQL Server Building Tour

Software developers, or anyone that drools over multi-terabyte computing power, should check out these video tours of the SQL Server building on Microsoft's campus:

• http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=31050#31050
  
• http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=31371#31371
  
• http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=31176#31176
  

Please ignore... I'm claiming my Feedster feed.

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Book Review - Rick Steves' Italy 2005 by Rick Steves

 HIGHLY Recommended
Rick Steves' Europe travel guides are the best since they're updated every year. I took the 2004 edition of this book with me on a two-week backpacking trip through Italy, and it was indispensable. I carried it with me at almost all times. Rick always offers great advice on what to see and what to skip, and you can count on great hotel and restaurant information. The physical size of the book is also perfect for putting in your cargo pants pocket, jacket pocket, or backpack. While the Rick Steves' guides don't include pictures to help you in your planning, the information is simply the best real world, "how do I do this" advice you're going to find in a guidebook.

The front of the book includes a color map of Italy with major rail lines as well as double-page city maps of Venice, Rome, and Florence. I never bought or needed separate maps of Venice or Florence and purchased a detailed map of Rome only in order to look up some very specific addresses. The maps in the book are great! You'll also find maps throughout the text with locations of the major sites, hotels, and restaurants listed in the book pointed out on the map. I purchased the Rick Steve's Italy fold-out map before my trip but never needed it.

If you're going to Italy, don't try to do it without this book!

Buy it on Amazon

Review - Rick Steves' Planning Map Italy

 Use Rick's Italy guidebook instead
I took this map as well as Rick Steves' Italy guidebook with me on a two-week backpacking trip through Italy. All of Rick's merchandise is excellent, but I simply never needed the map. His guidebook includes a color map of Italy with major rail lines as well as double-page city maps of Venice, Rome, and Florence. I never bought or needed separate maps of Venice or Florence and purchased a detailed map of Rome only in order to look up some very specific addresses. The maps in the book are all you'll need if traveling by train. You'll also find maps throughout the text with locations of the major sites, hotels, and restaurants listed in the book pointed out on the map. For those traveling by car, I definitely recommend a more detailed road map since this planning map only highlights, with little supporting information, the most major roads. The rail lines are also shown in bolder print than the roads making it even more difficult to use as a road map.

Buy it on Amazon