Tag: books

25 years of Red Hat

Years ago I bought Polish translation of “Under the radar” book about how Red Hat was started. Was a good read and went to bookshelf.

Years passed. In meantime I got hired by Red Hat. To work on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For AArch64 architecture.

Then one day I was talking with my wife about books and I looked at shelf. And found that book again. Took it and said:

You know, when I bought that book I did not even dreamt that one day I will be working at Red Hat.

Today company turned 25. Amount of time longer than my career. I remember how surprised I was when realised that some of my friends work at company for 20 years already.

This is the oldest company I worked for. Directly at least as some of the customers of companies I worked in past were probably older. And hope that one day my work title will be “Retired Software Engineer” as my wife once said. And that will be at this company.

Organizing books on Kindle sucks

I have a Kindle. Paperwhite to be precise. And 224 books on it…

When I look at a shelf behind me I see probably similar amount of paper ones. Science fiction, fantasy, sensation, computer ones and other. They are more or less in an order.

I have series next to each other — with books set in reading order (not always original one but mine). Tall separated from low ones, English ones near to those in Polish.

So when I want to read “Collectors” by Baldacci I can just go there, take a quick look, grab it and start reading. Other two parts are next to it (I just realised that I lack two books from cycle) and in Polish. Similar with “Witch World” cycle by Andre Norton (but only in Polish).

Getting such order on Kindle? Forget it.

I have 5.3.3 firmware with jailbreak and Collection Manager. I use Calibre on desktop to have my e-books in one place. But then I have some books only on Kindle cause I bought them on Amazon directly. Will unDRM them one day. For some books from Polish online stores situation looks similar.

Some e-books have the same title for both parts — like “Dziewiąty Mag” for example. And guess which one is which on device without opening…

There is no easy way to store information where book was bought. Sure, I can create a column in Calibre and fill that data there. But have you tried to do it for more than 3 books? PAIN…

I created several collections to get a bit of order on device. But I do not like situation when I have to edit e-book title just to add information which part of cycle it is.

Maybe one day I will find solutions…

Reading books for children

There is lot of talk about reading books for children. In Poland there is a big campaign on that subject called “Read your child for 20 minutes, daily” (which has some rhymes in Polish language).

I started reading very early and have no problems with reading (even in languages which I do not fully understand which was useful during our trip to Slovakia in 2005). And I plan to read books for my daughter.

But I wonder what kind of child she would be if I would read computer books instead of children books…