Books, life, etc

The summer is flying by. The summer always seems to fly by, but this summer has been crazier than usual. About a week ago, I was directed by the chair to move to a new office.

A new office! With a window!

I've been in the same windowless office for 15 years. Not that I've really minded. It was a nice office, with enough space, and far enough away from the door that I wasn't disturbed by people walking by. But it did have a tendency to overheat.

In point of fact, my new office was *really* the result of work on the first floor displacing the technical staff that they've wanted to bring together in one space for years. And they just had to bump me to do it. But now I have my own office. WITH A WINDOW.

Of course, on the first day at 3pm, when the sun made it over the building and started to shine in right on my head, I emailed the chairman. "I, better than anyone, appreciate the irony of this but... I really need a shade so I can see my computer screen." The guy came to measure for the shade this afternoon.

Still -- I ended up spending the better part of a week moving into my office. Well -- actually, I spent most of the time throwing stuff out. I am a pack rat and don't throw things away if I don't have to. More times than I can count, I've had people show up who needed something that everyone else had thrown away, but that I still had. What? You need a thick-wire media converter? I've got one. What? You need a SCSI terminator? I've got one. What? You need a zip 250 drive? I've got one. But not anymore. Most of that stuff is gone now.

A few things, I preserved in the Living Museum of Dead Computers. I had a couple of shrink-wrapped copies of Caldera Linux that I kept -- those might be worth real money someday. I kept a Kodak DC40 camera. And one of those detestable Apple "hockey-puck" mice they made for a few, horrible months. It was good to keep my mind off waiting for my book.

My book! Presitaj Floroj has arrived. It's wonderful. You can buy it at createspace or you can now get both my books at Amazon. I've gotten a number of copies to bring to the Landa Kongreso this weekend. I don't know how well they'll sell. People I've showed them to here seem to like them (although I don't see them rushing out to buy a copy). And my colleague Dr. Robert Read described his copy as "Tre bela, eleganta, raviganta!" Buy your copy today! Before the Espresso Book Machine runs out of paper! :-)