High Output Management

High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove

This is an older management book from a boss at Intel. The chip business was booming in the day, though there were plenty of pivots and changes that the company went through. There are some insights that seem funny today. Email was seen as a powerful tool that helped enable communication throughout the company. This would give American companies the similar "real time" communication similar to Japanese companies where everybody sits at a table together. Well that has come and gone. We have even gone through the open office trend, instant messaging and other real time communication tools. Now the college is often to get more focussed.

There was some good discussion on 1:1 meetings. It is good for both sides to take notes. Look at problems. Plan actions and get to the bottom of things.

In spite of the changes in technology many key aspects of management remain similar.

Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons Of A Hardwood Warrior

Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons Of A Hardwood Warrior by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty

Phil Jackson explores the spiritual dimension of his basketball career. He was raised as a child of Presbyterian ministers. However, he never experienced speaking in tongues and felt that he had not filled the jump in the spiritual journey. He later was attracted to Zen and meditation. He still maintianed some of the key Christian teacheings of love with his Zen practice. He used this as part of his early basketball career. His NBA playing career gradually shifted to coaching. When he was coaching the bulls he worked to balance the extreme talent of Michael Jordan with the needs of a team. There were times that players had important life experiences that needed to be addressed. (Such as the death of Scottie Pippen's father.) The book is abridged and ends in the middle of the Bulls run. Much of it is repeated in his later book spanning his entire NBA career. 

Cats' Letters to Santa

Cats' Letters to Santa by Bill Adler, illustrated by Paul Bacon

What would a cat ask Santa for? This humor book presents many cat letters to Santa. Some are attempts to bail them out for damage they have done by scratching, etc. In other cases, they may just want companionship. There are also various interactions with humans, dogs and other animals. One cat wants a new computer. He thought the mouse was a play toy, the fish screensaver was real and the computer a nice warm place to nap. There are many of these small letters that can be enjoyed in bite size chunks.

Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger

Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger by Louis Sachar

This a bunch of short stories that tie together the experiences at Wayside School. The school is bizarre and many strange things just happen without people being concerned. The school has ben built up instead of across, requiring kids to use stairs to get to classes. Elevators are finally installed, but to limit conflict, one will only be used for going up and the other only for going down. These elevators are thus used once, and never again. There is a substitute that is really nice, only somebody reports that she was cruel a long time back and is still after old homework. A teacher also goes after a cruel dentist for old homework and chases her out of town. There are plenty of other bizarre and humorous tales in the book.

Hi, Pizza Man!

Hi, Pizza Man! by Virginia Walter, illustrated by Ponder Goembel

A hungry kid eagerly awaits the pizza man. But then she thinks - what if it is a pizza woman? Or pizza kitty? Or other various different beings delivering a pizza. It is a fun look at how imagination can go from what we see as reasonable to things that appear very wild.

The Magic School Bus Plants Seeds: A Book About How Living Things Grow

The Magic School Bus Plants Seeds: A Book About How Living Things Grow by Joanna Cole, illustrated by John Speirs and Bruce Degen

The magic school bus goes small to hang with the bugs and nectar as plants are pollinated and seeds produced. As a twist, they go back to Phoebe's old school and even see her old teacher. (Thus when she talks about her old school, they respond that they are there.) 

Magic Tree House Books 1-8

Magic Tree House Books 1-8 by Mary Pope Osborne

Jack and Annie stumble across a magic tree house near their home in Pennsylvania. There are books there. When they look at a book and wish they end up in the place shown. They need the book of their home to go back. They go on some adventures and see they are accompanied by some animals. These often help them, and may be people in disguise. They discover that this is a set up form Morgan Le Fay from King Arthur time. She was a librarian with many books and they are able to help her escape from a curse. The books have some charm, but start to get old when read together.

1. Dinosaurs Before Dark - they see animals including a TRex

2. The Knight at Dawn - they go to the time of knights with 40 pound helmets

3.  Mummies in the Morning - they explore mummies and get lost in false passages in a tomb

4. Pirates Past Noon - they help pirates read a map to find treasure. They leave before getting the treasure due to a storm

5. Night of the Ninjas - they see boy and girl ninjas

6. Afternoon on the Amazon - in the amazon, they need to watch out for dangerous animals

7. Sunset of the Sabertooth - back in the time of sbertooth tigers

8. Midnight on the Moon - a future trip to a moon man before they finally free Morgan Le Fey

The Brave Little Turtle

The Brave Little Turtle by Gill McBarnet

Two turtles swim around in Hawaii. One hot shot turtle seems to be "brave", while the other seems more shy. The hot shot turtle goes swimming all over the place and gets some plastic stuck around his neck. He thinks it will just fall off, but it doesn't. Many other animals try without success. Finally the other turtle helps the brave turtle to go to the beach to get humans to take it off. They are at first scared because this problem came from humans. They finally go up and do get it off. The other turtle is the "brave" one who did things smartly and was willing to go help solve the problem. The book is a little long, but fairly good.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin and Other Favourite Poems

The Pied Piper of Hamelin and Other Favourite Poems by Anton Lesser (Narrator), Anne Harvey (Narrator), Katinka Wolf (Narrator), Jan Fielden (Author), John Mole (Author)

This collection has a bit of classic poems. These poems are often "children's" poems, though the originals are often beyond the understanding of kids. The Pied Piper even has the children carried away by the piper. 

Oliver and Amanda and the Big Snow

Oliver and Amanda and the Big Snow by Jean Van Leeuwen (Author), Ann Schweninger (Illustrator)

Oliver and Amanda are two pigs that play in the snow. They build a snow fort and learn that working together is the best way to go. They even build a "snow pig". The book has short chapters to it.

Funny All over: Riddles to Read Yourself

Funny All over: Riddles to Read Yourself (Hello Reader!, Level 2) by Kimberly Shapiro (Author), Larry Di Fiori (Illustrator)

This are simple jokes like "Why did the chicken cross the road". They are easy to read and include illustrations.

The Reasons for Seasons

The Reasons for Seasons by Gail Gibbons

The book covers the reason for the seasons. The small tilt of the earth causes significant changes to the areas. It seems amazing that such a small tilt can have such significant impact. My child complained that there were too many word. However, she was fine reading it. (There are a decent amount of words, but it is not excessive.)

Happy Birthday, Danny and the Dinosaur! (I Can Read Level 1)

Happy Birthday, Danny and the Dinosaur! (I Can Read Level 1) by Syd Hoff

This Dinosaur book lacks the charm of the original Danny and the Dinosaur book. The story and the drawings just are not as good. Danny has a birthday. He invites the dinosaur. There are a few special dinosaur things that are done, but not much that is significantly interesting.

Penguins Through the Year

Penguins Through the Year by Robin Bernard

Penguins live in cold areas and do activities across the various seasons. They build nests, lay eggs and then raise their young. The young then go off into the water for the first time. The book has pictures of the various penguins.

Amber Brown Collection I: Amber Brown is Not a Crayon; You Can't Eat Your Chicken Pox, Amber Brown; Amber Brown Goes Fourth

Amber Brown Collection I: Amber Brown is Not a Crayon; You Can't Eat Your Chicken Pox, Amber Brown; Amber Brown Goes Fourth by Paula Danziger

The three first Amber Brown books are in this audiobook collection. Each book is only about an hour in (un-sped-up) length. The books are a little bit more serious than I was expecting, but has a bit of humor. They deal with a quirky child gradually adapting to challenges in life.

Amber Brown is Not a Crayon

Amber Brown has a name that is a color. She in third grade in New Jersey. Her parents have separated and her dad now works in France. Her best friend Justin is going to move. He gets busy with moving to Alabama and it makes it hard on her.

You Can't Eat Your Chicken Pox, Amber Brown

Amber's third grade year ends. She learns her mom will be dating another guy. She has plans to go to England with her aunt and France to see her dad. However, she gets the chicken pox while in England. There is some conflict with adults not trusting each other.

Amber Brown Goes Fourth

Amber Brown goes into fourth grade. She finally gets a new friend. However, it was not easy. She had to first adjust to the new friend not being the same as her old friend.

Mythical Man-Month

Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition by Frederick Brooks Jr.

The details of software engineering have changed a lot in the last 50 years. There is a section devoted to memory usage and concerns of the cost of using kilobytes of memory. Documentation on paper was a thing as was talking on telephones. Programs had to be punched into a computer and run. A lot of the slow "overhead" has now been reduced. However, some of the core problems remain the same. Engineers do a poor job of estimating. The focus tends to be on the actual coding process, which is likely only a sixth of the actual time needed to develop. Then there is the root problem of the "man month".

There is a temptation to add more programmers to a project to deliver faster. However, this often fails. When done late in the cycle, this can even slow production. New team members need to be trained in the current project and culture. They also need to communicate with others. This causes immediate reduction in productivity of the existing team before producing anything of value. There are also hidden differences. Every person does things a little bit different. Incomplete understanding may cause extra communication or extra work.

Working as a smaller team may seem like a solution. In some sense it is. Start ups typically consist of a few engineers rapidly producing software. This works great for small projects with limited scope, but does not scale out. These small startups end up becoming large corporations with the struggles of large teams. To work together, they must manage different roles and responsibilities. This book proposes a few ways to manage projects, primarily focussing on limiting architects to design and set the spec, with development teams managing implementation of parts. 

The book includes an update from 1995 - which is still almost 30 years ago. The scope of changes from 1975 to 1995 are extreme, especially in comparison to those from 1995 to today. In 1975 development was on mainframe computers. New computers would often have new operating systems. Customers would have custom software written for their computers. Computing resources were costly and limited. There were few programmers, and most programming was very low level. By 1995, microcomputers were everywhere. There was abundant software that could be purchased as well as obtained for free. It is easy to write software on your local computer. Hardware has become commoditized. The same operating system will run an a large number of different hardware configurations and the same program can often be compiled or run on different operating systems.

In the past 30 years, what has changed? Hardware is faster. More memory is available. There are a greater number of tools and they are more easily available. GitHub and StackOverflow allow instant access to code samples and programming questions. AI has potential to write more code for programmers. The book even mentions AI as being something that people hoped would be "almost there" decades ago. It is still "almost there", but the almost seems to be much closer than it was back then.

Orthodoxy

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

This is Chesterton's positive view on his journey and acceptance of Christianity. He wrote it after his more "negative" book, "Heretics". In it he looks at some of the paradoxes and scientific challenges. Instead of seeing those as challenges to religion, he sees those as extra proof that religion has an important place in our lives and that we should adopt it. The rational approach to religion seems in line with a scientific world-view.

The Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Audio Collection

The Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Audio Collection by Kurt Vonnegut

This audio collection has a few short selections from Vonnegut's popular books read by Vonnegut himself. He does a good job of reading the books and gives you a feel for the books. However, other than the Welcome to the Monkey House stories, these are just excerpts. 

Scorpion Shards: Star Shards Chronicles Series, Book 1

A few teenagers live bizarre lives. They seem to have special powers that drive them to do "bad" things. There is also some related special strengths. One teenager draws girls to be romantically attracted to him. Another can see many paths and thus use a small event to drastically change somebody's life. There are abilities to reverse entropy, age in reverse and other mixtures of good and bad. The kids try to get together. They have been fighting their powers, however, one eventually "gives in". They later discover that there are demons from an exploding star that possess them. They find they can "scare" them out by threat of death, but still remain with "good powers". It is an interesting take on super powers that can be both good and bad.

A Tour of the Calculus

A Tour of the Calculus attempts to explore Calculus from a practical, evolutionary point of view. What can we do with it? What is useful. There are many conversational pieces as the author "talks" with some of the key contributors to modern math and learns what they have done and why. It tries to be conversational, but does resort to a bit of mathematical notation. It almost worked for me. While I did get many key insights into Calculus, I found it got just a bit too much into the details to keep me from being able to focus on the general narrative.