Some of my colleagues have done this in the past, so I figure I’ll share as well.  Here are some technical books that I have read over the past few months (or am currently reading):

• Now, Discover your Strengths – I actually read this early in 2008, but I find myself coming back to it frequently for reference.
  
• Behind Closed Doors (Pragmatic Series) – This is the book I’m currently reading.  So far, it’s… interesting.  The jury is still out on this one.
• Practices of an Agile Developer (Pragmatic Series) – This was probably my favorite book of the Pragmatic Series.  Lots of insightful things in here.
• Pragmatic Unit Testing with C# and NUnit (Pragmatic Series) – I read this after already being familiar with unit testing.  It was a good refresher and gave me several little nuggets of new information and tips.  I highly recommend this for both the novice and seasoned developer.

A co-worker of mine is a big fan of the Pragmatic Series and has been kind enough to let me mooch borrow some of his books.

And, because sometimes I get tired of reading technical books (gasp!), here are some recent books that have kept me from losing my mind in code samples:

• Angels and Demons – I wanted to read this before seeing the movie, since I’ve heard they are taking several liberties with the movie adaptation.
• Star Wars: New Jedi Order – I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a Star Wars fan, though I guarantee you won’t find me at any conventions in a stormtrooper outfit anytime soon.

It’s been a little over three months since I posted on here.  Yikes!  It’s not for lack of things going on, or things to talk about; I just haven’t had the time to sit down and write anything of substance.  I’m going to try to change that.

My biggest difficulty lately has just been trying to put down my thoughts with enough content, but not to write just for the sake of writing.  I read others’ blogs, and some either write several pages worth of content; or write things I could care less about.  As a reader, this becomes a turn-off for me and I find myself frequenting their sites less and less.  (The same can be said for those that don’t post often… err… yea…)

So, with that in mind, I’m going to try to blog more frequently in the coming months; but I’m going to start with posts that are relatively brief , but substantive – I don’t want to blog for the sake of blogging.  It’ll be a balancing act.  Blog more, but blog well.  We’ll see how this goes…

Yikes! It has been a long time since I’ve posted anything on the blog here. I apologize, but I suppose I have been quite busy in the home improvement and work-related areas of life lately.

I have a few posts sitting in my queue that I have started to write, but haven’t had the time to finish and polish up. I hope to start pushing those out shortly.

And, I must give a shout out to my team in the Cardinal and Gold for their September 15th win, despite all the fans who doubted it could be done (myself included). While the rest of the season looks pretty tough, here’s to hoping for a few more good games.

By the way, those throwback uniforms were gorgeous.

I ran across the post A Few Good Managers via another blog and thought it was just plain funny. Just imagine Jack Nicholson giving this speech…

Priceless…