Category: books

Spring Cleaning

Inspired a bit by Marie Kondo, perhaps, I’ve been doing some spring cleaning this weekend. I haven’t actually watched her Netflix show or read her book, but it’s hard not to run into references to her work lately. I caught her appearance on Colbert, for instance, and listened to a Pop Culture Happy Hour episode about the show recently. And I’ve gotten a kick out of some of the anti-Kondo backlash that’s been showing up on Twitter and elsewhere on the internet. I know that it’s all exaggeration and/or misperception, but some of it is entertaining. This Washington Post article is a good example.

Anyway, it’s a three-day weekend (for me), so I’ve got some extra time. I thought I might get an “easy win” by going through a box of old college papers and throwing most of them away. I assumed the box was mostly full of notebooks from my RPI days; I don’t really have any sentimental attachment to old differential equations notes, so those could be easily discarded. Alas, the top few inches of papers were actually from my K-12 days, including stuff from grammar school, middle school, and high school. Most of my old notebooks from those days had already been discarded, so this was stuff that I’d previously decided to keep.

I managed to talk myself into throwing most of this stuff away, after scanning it in. So that slowed things down a lot. I only got through maybe the top inch of stuff in the box between today and yesterday. (And the box is about 12 inches tall.) So, visually, it doesn’t look like I’ve put much of a dent in things.

Since having to reinstall Windows 10 a while back, I’ve been trying to come up with a good solution for scanning. I couldn’t quite manage to reinstall the old Canon software that came with my printer/scanner, and that I’d been previously been using. For now, I’ve settled on using the Microsoft Windows Scan app for scanning to JPG/PNG format, and the freeware NAPS2 for scanning to PDF. I’m not completely happy with either, but they’re actually a little better than the old Canon software in some ways.

Anyway, I’ve been scanning old photos and single-page documents to PNG, and multi-page documents to PDF, for the most part. I’ve come up with a naming convention that starts with the year, so my First Communion certificate is named “1975-first-communion.png,” for example. (And the actual certificate is now in a garbage bag in the dumpster behind my apartment building. Sigh.) I’ve been putting them all into a folder in OneDrive named “Andy-childhood”. My intention to to stick anything up to my high school graduation in there. Having the file name start with the year will make the files appear roughly chronologically.

Spending time on all this seems a bit self-indulgent, but I’m ok with that. It’s not like I spend a lot of time rummaging through old grade-school report cards, in general. I don’t think I’ve looked at the stuff in that box in twenty years.

I’ve come across some pretty funny stuff in that box, including a short story I wrote, titled “An Interstellar Christmas,” which is all about Santa making an appearance on an interstellar spacecraft on Christmas Eve. I didn’t put a date on it, but it looks like it’s probably from 1979, when I was 12.

I also found an issue of my middle school “newspaper,” also from 1979, that had a page devoted to a creative writing assignment that included submissions from three students, including me. The assignment, I guess, was to write something resembling a haiku about several people we though were interesting. (It wasn’t really haiku, but I think it was supposed to follow some kind of pattern.) My entry covered Aesop, Ben Franklin, Agatha Christie, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Francis Scott Key, Charles Schultz, and Lou Ferrigno. (Another kid covered Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Muhammed Ali, James Bond, and Dracula. I’m not sure if the exercise was supposed to include fictional characters, or if this student just thought James Bond and Dracula were real…)

My best find, though, was in yet another box (which I started to poke around in, and quickly gave up on after realizing it also wasn’t going to be an “easy win”). It was a notebook from my senior year high school English class. It was a journal that we were supposed to keep over the course of the year, and hand in for grading occasionally (probably once a month). So it had entries from September through June of my senior year. This was really a goldmine of oddball stuff. Early in the year, the teacher had us write about specific reading assignments, so there are some one-page reports on essays by folks like J.B. Priestly, Winston Churchill, and Virginia Woolf. Stuff like that. Later, he gave us looser themes, so there are little essays on Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Will Eisner, and my feelings about the college application process. Very late in the year, I wrote some fairly personal stuff relating to how I felt about leaving home and going away to college. Since we were handing this book in to the teacher regularly, and getting it back, there are notes from him throughout, such as “you, without doubt, are an interesting person!” and a scribble asking if he could borrow the Harlan Ellison book I was writing about in one entry. (I don’t remember if I ever lent it to him, but if I did, he gave it back, since I still have it.)

I also came across a reference to the old Fahrenheit 451 video game that I’d been playing around that time. That sent me off on a little side quest, since I had really fond memories of that game. The game is playable from this page at archive.org, if you want to try it out. It’s also playable and downloadable at myabandonware.com. The description there makes it sound like it’s probably not as good a game as I remember, though.

So, anyway, I had a lot of fun reading that notebook. I went as far as scanning the whole thing in. It was 70 pages, so it took a while, but I was listening to an audiobook while I was doing it, so I was using the time wisely.

I also managed to shred some of my parents’ old bills while I was doing all this stuff, so, between the old school paperwork, the shredded bills, and a bunch of other ephemera, I managed to fill two garbage bags.

New Year’s Day 2019

It’s 7am on New Year’s Day, and I don’t have anything big planned today, so I might as well get started on my traditional New Year’s Day blog post. I’ve been doing this for several years now. Here are some links to the last few posts:

Weight, Sleep, and General Health

My general health was been OK this year. I had blood work done a few weeks ago, and it looks very similar to 2017’s blood work.

My weight has been pretty steady for the last few months. I was 140 on New Year’s Day last year, and I’m 135 now. I’ve been steady at 135 for a while now, +/-2. Last year, I wrote “I can’t see myself dropping to 135, but we’ll see.” Well, I did drop to 135. This year, I’ll say that I can’t see myself dropping to 130. If I do, then that might actually indicate a problem. My doctor this year actually asked me if I wanted to put on a little weight, or if I was OK as-is. I think I’m fine, but if I drop another 5 pounds in 2019, that might be a problem.

I’m still using Lose It every day, and recently paid for a lifetime subscription.

I’ve been doing OK with exercise, relying on the Apple Watch to keep track of things and give me a little nudge now and then. I got a new Series 3 Watch for Christmas, so I’ll likely be sticking with that. My move goal was 440 for a while earlier in the year, but has been adjusted down to 390. I generally hit that goal 5 or 6 days per week.

Sleep is still an occasional problem. I did OK (but not great) last night, and I’ve had a few bad nights recently. I still use Sleep Cycle to track my sleep. I’ve cut back on caffeine a bit, but probably not nearly enough.

I’ve been meditating on and off this year. I had a little streak going back in October, but I stopped again and haven’t started back up. When I do meditate, I’m using Insight Timer. I’ll likely stick with that. I want to get back to meditating regularly. If Bill Gates can find time to meditate for 10 minutes a few times a week, so can I.

My vision is continuing to go downhill, though I haven’t had anything really bad happen yet. (Given my family history, I’m kind of expecting that I’ll be legally blind at some point in my 60s, though maybe I can avoid that.) I went to my eye doctor earlier this month and got a prescription for progressives, so I’ll get that filled at some point this month and see if I can get used to those, and if they help me with computer work and reading. We have a vision plan at work now, starting in 2019, so I can at least get those at a discount.

My hearing is also going downhill. I haven’t seen a hearing doctor yet, though I plan to do that in 2019. I’ve been following advances in hearing aid tech, so I hope that, if I need a hearing aid, I can at least get a good one that works with my iPhone and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

I signed up for AARP last year too. I’m hoping I can get some useful information out of that in 2019. I’m trying to be proactive about aging, from both a health and finance standpoint.

Work

I hit the five-year mark at SHI in January 2018. I spent a lot of time this year working on a project related to Microsoft’s Partner Center, so I got to do a good bit of C# programming this year, and got to play with a few things in Azure, so that was good. This year, we should be opening a new warehouse, so that’s going to keep us busy, with related projects.

I, once again, got a very good performance review from my boss this year. I’m not going to get too specific, in case any coworkers stumble across this post, but I’m doing well.

Professional Development

I didn’t do any structured professional development this year, really. I watched a few Pluralsight courses, mostly related to specific stuff I needed to learn for work. Looking at my Goodreads history, I see that I read a handful of programming-related books this year:

Wow, that’s actually a longer list than I thought it was going to be. Some of those aren’t really programming books, like “Hit Refresh,” Satya Nadella’s book, and some are just short ebooks, but it’s still enough that I feel like I put some effort into keeping my skills sharp and staying current.

Finance

I did a quick year-end finance review over the weekend, and it’s a bit depressing. Any gains I had for the year were soundly wiped out by the recent stock market plummet. But, ignoring that, I can at least say that I have things in order. I did a little bit of reorganization in 2018, including moving some money from my legacy Merrill CMA account to a new CMA Edge account, where I can do my own trading online. I invested some money there into a couple of Vanguard index funds. I read John Bogle’s The Little Book of Common Sense Investing in May, and I’ve tried to reorient my finances in a more “Boglehead” direction, though I still have a lot of old-style mutual funds. I also made an attempt to book a session with an independent financial advisor, but failed to find someone who looked good and was willing to take on a new client. I should probably try again in 2019, since I really should have someone else look at things, given my age and the somewhat haphazard state of my portfolio.

Reading

According to my Year In Books on Goodreads, I read 106 books this year. A lot of those are actually short stories, short ebooks, and comic books, but I did read a fair number of novels this year too. I participated in a Great American Read group on Goodreads, and read a number of books that were outside my comfort zone. I posted about that in November. I’ve finished a few more TGAR books since then (Lonesome Dove, The Lovely Bones, and Lu), and started To Kill A Mockingbird, which was the winner of the TGAR poll.

I should note that I used my local library system a lot more this year than I have in previous years. I’ve used it for physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks. I’ve visited both my local branch, and the larger Bridgewater branch multiple times. So I’m thankful that we have such a good library system here in Somerset County.

As to comic books, I posted in December about my current indecision about sticking with Westfield for buying new comics, or maybe just giving up on buying new monthly books for awhile. I think I’m probably going to stick with Westfield for a few more months, at least, but I’m not sure. The reading pile is getting too big again. I’m pretty sure that I’ll stop buying monthly comics at some point this year though.

Looking at my Goodreads 2018 list again, I see a lot of Batman and Batman-adjacent stuff this year. Probably my favorite comic book read of the year would be Warren Ellis’ The Wild Storm series.

In terms of general reading goals for 2019, I want to (finally) read a couple of books on meditation that I bought early last year, Search Inside Yourself and 10% Happier. I also want to read this book on “finances after fifty” that I bought last year. I don’t have any specific goals related to fiction reading. I have a bunch of books piled up that I’d like to read, that I didn’t get to last year, including Ready Player One, and several other science fiction novels. I put off some of my genre reading in favor of TGAR books last year. I’m glad I did that, but I’d really like to get back to some SF. My “want to read” list in Goodreads has 308 books on it right now, so I’ve got plenty to choose from.

Summary

I’m skipping over a few things I could include here, but it’s now almost 10am, and I have a few things I want to do today, since it’s stopped raining and it’s reasonably warm out. So this post will be a little shorter than last year’s. Maybe I’ll write some follow-up posts over the next few weeks.

Illegitimi non carborundum

Here’s an oddball digression for a rainy Sunday morning: Somehow or other, the phrase “don’t let the bastards get you down” came into my head this morning. I vaguely remember my dad using it in a letter he wrote me when I was in college. Or possibly seeing it used in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. Anyway, in the old days, this would have been a passing thought, but the internet exists now, so a passing thought can become an hour-long trip down the internet rabbit hole…

I first found a song titled Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down by Kris Kristofferson. That’s clearly not where I first heard it, but it’s not a bad little song. Then I found a reference to Illegitimi non carborundum, a “mock Latin” phrase that’s meant to mean “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” I remember seeing that Latin phrase before, probably in a book, though I still can’t find a reference to it in a Vonnegut book. (And reading the Wikipedia page for it, I see that John Boehner is apparently fond of the phrase, so that’s kind of disappointing.)

Searching further, I found a song by The Toasters called Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down, which is very different from the aforementioned Kris Kristofferson song, but still a pretty good song, if you like late-90s ska. And also definitely not where I first encountered the phrase.

And after even more searching, I found a reference to Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum, which is apparently an alternate version of the phrase, used in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I did read that book in college, so I might remember it from there. And the phrase is used prominently in the season 2 finale of The Handmaid’s Tale TV show, so that explains it’s recent popularity as a tattoo. I haven’t watched that show, and I’m so far behind with TV that I probably won’t be watching it any time soon, but I’m curious about it.

So anyway, that was my internet digression for this morning. I’m not sure I learned anything useful, but it was kind of fun. The sun is up now, so I should probably brush my teeth and find something useful to do.

The Great American Read results

The Great American Read PBS series wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, with To Kill A Mockingbird as the number one book on the list. Here’s a link to the results page for the full list. When the series started, with a special back in June, I joined a Goodreads group related to it, and set myself a challenge to read 13 books from the list, before the show ended. I didn’t quite meet that challenge, but I managed to read 12 books from the list.

Here’s a list of the books I read during the challenge:

  1. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  2. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
  3. The Martian by Andy Weir
  4. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  5. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
  6. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
  7. Ghost,
  8. Patina,
  9. and Sunny, all by Jason Reynolds
  10. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
  11. 1984 by George Orwell
  12. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

So that’s not bad, for my summer reading this year. Several of those books are pretty short, but there are a few longer ones in there too. And a few of them were re-reads. (And I’m not sure if the whole Track series by Jason Reynolds counts as “on the list”, or just the first one, Ghost, but I’m counting them all.) I would have hit my 13-book goal if I hadn’t decided to read Lonesome Dove with the Goodreads group. That’s 900 pages long. (I’m about two-thirds of the way through that.) And I’ve been slowly working my way through Catch-22 at the same time. (I’m about a quarter of the way through that one.)

The Goodreads groups is continuing, and will be reading The Lovely Bones this month and To Kill A Mockingbird next month. I’ve purchased copies of both of those, and plan to read them with the group, though I really want to finish either Lonesome Dove or Catch-22 before starting a new book.

And since I’m posting lists, here’s a list of books from the main 100-book list that I’d like to read, but still haven’t read yet:

  1. Great Expectations
  2. Frankenstein
  3. Game of Thrones (series)
  4. The Picture of Dorian Gray
  5. Invisible Man
  6. Gulliver’s Travels
  7. Ready Player One
  8. The Intuitionist

There are others that I’d probably find interesting, but this is the short list I came up with, after watching the series and reviewing the list again.

Lately, I’ve been going back and forth between reading physical books and ebooks, and between buying books and getting them from the library. All other things being equal, I’d almost always prefer to read the Kindle version for most novels, but I balk at paying the prices that they charge for some Kindle books, especially for older book that (in my mind at least) shouldn’t be priced as high as new books. In cases where I can get the ebook from the library, that’s always the best option. I get the benefits of reading on my Kindle, for free. When I can’t, I’ll often buy a used copy from eBay or Amazon for $4.

Harlan Ellison, RIP

I was sad to hear of Harlan Ellison’s passing today. Here’s an obituary from the AP (via the NYT) and another one from the Chicago Tribune. (I haven’t seen an official NYT obituary yet.)

I loved Harlan Ellison’s stuff when I was younger. I distinctly remember reading “I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream” when I was way too young to read something like that. And buying a hardcover of Shatterday from the Science Fiction Book Club. (I really liked “Jeffty is Five” from that one.) And buying Dangerous Visions at a used book store in Cranford. And of course everyone loves his Star Trek episode, The City on the Edge of Forever. He was really one of my favorite SF authors when I was a teenager.

I haven’t read much of anything by him lately though. I picked up a copy of the 1000+ page doorstop The Essential Ellison: A 50-Year Retrospective back in 2000, but have barely put a dent in it. It’s too big and heavy to carry around, so it mostly just sits on the shelf. I occasionally grab it and read a story, but it’s been a while. (I wish they’d publish a Kindle version.)

Best quote from the AP obituary:

When a publisher broke a contract by allowing a cigarette ad in one of Ellison’s books, the writer mailed him dozens of bricks and, finally, a ripe, dead gopher.

Library Book Sale

I went to the Somerville Library Book Sale after work today and picked up a few things. It was a pretty good deal: four Rick Geary books and two lemon bars for $3! I’m a big fan of Rick Geary. I used to make a point of visiting his table at SDCC every year, back when I was going to SDCC every year. (Those were the days…) He’s a good guy, and his “true crime” books are really good.

I also got a chance to see a few of the books I donated last week one last time. I hope someone picks them up and enjoys them. And I saw a few things that made me realize that I could have donated even more stuff: they had a good number of old CDs and DVDs (and even cassettes and VHS tapes), so I really could have gotten rid of some old CDs and DVDs at least. I do feel a little bad that I didn’t pick up any regular (non-graphic) novels, but they didn’t have anything I really needed or wanted.

The Great American Read

I enjoyed watching The Great American Read launch special on PBS a couple of weeks ago. The idea is to present a list of 100 (fiction) books as American’s most-loved books, then let people vote, and pick a winner. The show then returns to PBS in September with an eight-part series, leading up to the announcement of the winning book in October. (This article at thirteen.org explains the concept better than I just did.)

I’m a sucker for book lists and reading challenges, so I’m getting into this thing a bit. (Mind you, I was also enthusiastic about the Now Read This book club that PBS NewsHour and the New York Times started in January, and I haven’t read any of those books yet.)

So far, I’ve joined the official Facebook group for The Great American Read, and an unofficial Goodreads group. The Facebook group is currently very active, while the Goodreads group has less than two dozen members, with only a few people posting. The Goodreads group is planning to read one or two books a month, selected by a poll of the members. For June, we’re reading Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. That works for me, since I’ve had a copy of Sirens of Titan sitting on my bookshelf for at least ten years, unread. I’ve read a few Vonnegut books over the years, including of course Slaughterhouse-Five, but I’ve never read this one. (Speaking of which, the selection of Sirens of Titans rather than Slaughterhouse-Five for the Great American Reads list is curious. But it works for me, since it gives me an excuse to read it!)

Because I love lists, here’s a list of the books from the Great American Reads list that I’ve already read:

  1. 1984 – George Orwell
  2. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
  3. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
  4. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D Salinger
  5. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
  6. Dune – Frank Herbert
  7. Foundation (series) – Isaac Asimov
  8. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
  9. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
  10. Harry Potter (series) – J.K. Rowling
  11. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
  12. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
  13. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  14. The Lord of the Rings (series) – J.R.R. Tolkien
  15. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
  16. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
  17. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

The “rules” for the Great American Read list allow for a whole series of books to count as one entry, so Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter books can be on the list rather than just one book from the series. For each series that I’ve read, I’ve read all of it. (Though maybe not for the Foundation series, depending on whether or not you count the books that came after the original trilogy.) And it’s interesting to see that they included Dune and Hitchhiker’s Guide as individual books and not the whole series. That makes a lot of sense with Dune, since the book stands alone well, and (from what I understand) some of the later books aren’t that great.

So, anyway, I’m looking forward to reading some more books from the list. There are a few on the list that have been on my mental “want to read” shelf for quite some time, including classics like Catch-22 and more recent books like Ready Player One and The Martian.

There’s so much stuff I want to read right now. I’m thinking about adopting Nancy Pearl’s Rule of 50. I rarely abandon books; maybe I should do that more often.

Library book sale

My local library is having a book sale soon, so I’m spending some time this morning gathering up some dusty old paperbacks to get rid of. This turned into more of a project than I thought it would be, since it got me thinking about a bunch of book series that I started but never finished, and whether or not I actually want to finish them. (And if I do want to finish them, do I want to hang on to the dusty old paperbacks, or just get the Kindle version whenever I’m actually ready to read them?) I thought this might make a semi-interesting blog post, so here are some thoughts on all that.

Myth Adventures

This is a fun series that I started reading a long time ago. I’ve read (and own) the first seven books, and have the next three in paperback, but never got around to reading them. For this one, I’m definitely donating the old paperbacks, and keeping the unread ones. I look forward into jumping back into this at some point; it’s a lot of fun. (wikipedia / goodreads)

Ender’s Game

I read the first two books in this series a long time ago, in paperback. I liked both, and bought the next four. This one gets a little confusing, since I think that what I actually have is the first four books of “The Ender Quintet” and the first two of the “Ender’s Shadow” series. I considered just donating all of these, including the unread ones, since Orson Scott Card’s political/moral views don’t quite match up to mine. But he’s not (as far as I know) so horrible that I shouldn’t read his work at all.  So I’m hanging on to the unread paperbacks, and I might (or might not) read them. I can always donate them next time (or just toss them in the recycle bin). (wikipedia / goodreads)

Nero Wolfe

I started haphazardly picking up and reading Nero Wolfe paperbacks a few years ago. I haven’t read one in a while, but I do love them. Both the characters and the setting are really “my thing,” for lack of a better term. I really like reading about New York City in the 30s for some reason. Nero Wolfe stories, of course, can be read in any order, so I’m not making any attempt to read them chronologically. I’m going to donate the few paperbacks I have; I’ve got them all recorded in Goodreads, so I don’t have to worry about accidentally re-purchasing ones I’ve already read. (wikipedia / goodreads)

The Dark Tower

I bought the first four books in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series several years ago. I had never read any Stephen King, but I’d heard so much about this series, I thought I should give it a try. I found the first book, The Gunslinger, almost unreadable. I put it aside after reading about half of it, then picked it up and finished it a year or two later. Then, I started the second book. I didn’t make it very far into that one before putting it back down. For a while, I held onto the idea that I’d give it a try again at some point, but I think it’s finally time to admit defeat. This series just isn’t for me. I’m donating all of my Dark Tower books, including the unread ones. (And I haven’t seen the movie either. That got pretty bad reviews, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like it.) If I ever change my mind, these books are easy enough to find. (wikipedia / goodreads)

Other Stuff

I also donated some Spenser books and Adam Dalgliesh books. I don’t have much to say about those though. I liked reading them, but I don’t remember much about them. I’m sure I’ll read more Robert Parker and P. D. James at some point.

And I looked at my stack of Dresden Files paperbacks, but decided to hold onto them for a while longer. I don’t have a good reason for that. I’m probably not going to re-read them any time soon. I do like the series a lot. I’ve read the first eleven books, and plan on reading the rest. (At least the main novels. I’m not sure I want to worry about the various short stories, comics, and stuff.) I think I might stop buying them in paperback though, and switch to buying the Kindle versions.

 

Learning Statistics

I’m starting to read a book on statistics, and this is from the beginning of the chapter on probability:

If you are reading this book as part of a course in statistics, then you are likely pursuing a degree in higher education. On the other hand, if you are reading this book simply out of enjoyment, then you are crazy. That is one thing we can be certain about.

I guess I’m crazy. Oh well. It’s a pretty good book so far, though I think I’m going to need more to really get going.

I started thinking about learning more about statistics and data analysis recently. It ties in a bit with my attempt to learn how to use Power BI. I have all the basics of Power BI down now, meaning that I can import data and make fancy-looking pie charts and bar graphs, and now I’m poking at the edges of more meaningful data analysis.

It’s kind of hard to figure out where to start with statistics and data analysis. I never took a course in statistics when I was in college, so I don’t really know much to begin with. I did read Larry Gonick’s Cartoon Guide to Statistics years ago, back in the 90s I think. I don’t really remember much about it; maybe I should reread it now.

The book I’m currently reading is meant as a college textbook (per the quote above), and isn’t really meant to stand alone. It purposely doesn’t talk about software tools at all; just the background concepts and a little math. I’m thinking about reading this book along with it, which includes some more practical stuff, using Excel as the tool of choice. (Both books are on Safari, so I can read them for free.)

Of course, as a programmer, I’d eventually like to get to a book that talks about statistics and uses a real programming language for the examples. So maybe Think Stats would be good; it uses Python, which I’ve used before (though I’m probably a bit rusty).

I see a lot of references to R when looking into data analysis and statistics. I know almost nothing about R, so maybe I should look at something like this book.

This is all sort of leading me into data science, which is apparently the sexiest job of the 21st century, according to Harvard Business Review. I’m not really looking for a new job, and definitely not a “sexy” one, but hey, it can’t hurt to learn a bit.