[Book] In Search of Stupidity

While taking a break from a *major* site renewal which I hope to post about in the next couple of days, I started going through some of my books that I still have in packed boxes from my move.

One that caught my eye was "In Search of Stupidity". I bought this book quite a while back from a review on somebody's blog.. I have no idea of who's anymore.. and read it through while on the train to work everyday in Japan.

I swear that I must have been the oddest foreigner (let alone person) on the train for that 2 weeks because I would just start giggling or snickering over some of the items that the author brought up. I'd literally have to close the book and look out the window or something to not burst out in laughter and be a total oddity. That along with the writing style, facts, points brought up, I definitely recommend this book to anybody that is around 26 to 40 and had their hands a bit dirty in the "techinical industry" while in school. A lot of the topics in the book will be very familiar and it will sort of "come together" and make some sense.

For example there is a section about the fall of Novell to Microsoft in the networking area and it really made me realize what a great decision I had made at the time because I was literally inches away from going towards Novell instead of Microsoft Server admin etc. I had the whole "network admin package" for studying. The author brings up this topic in pretty good detail and much humour, even reading it again now makes me laugh (good thing I'm at my desk this time). I didn't study it just due to the fact that it was insanely hard to manage and understand due to the lack of GUI. (for me at least)

There are a lot of good subjects and points brought up, if you have time to read a book for a few laughs and some interesting insight into what happened in the 80's and 90's in the techinical industry, pick it up and read it. It's a few years old now I think so getting a used one or borrowing from the library shouldn't be a problem if you're not up to buying it.

Posted by Graeme at August 7, 2005 07:11 AM