Odd monday and books.

Coming off of my weekend house sitting I had a few things lined up for Monday afternoon. That easily snowballed into something that left me in poor shape to try and give a post so I figured it was better to skip. Today however I'm a bit less tired from running about.

Today is a little different than usual due to me searching through my old college books for a seemingly absent book. It was an AI class that I took for giggles and dropped due to my minor devouring all the time I had. After looking through a few times I realized I saved a lot of books from the CS field. I never sold back any book from a class that I could get 100% back from, for the most part the bookstore on campus would rip you off on selling back, 5% I think was the most you could ever expect. I usually bought from the bookstore due to horror stories of not getting my books from online sources in poorer condition that advertised to the point that buying books was less of a problem. I still think it was slightly stupid to due but I was burned. With that said it may be mildly entertaining to see just how many CS degree books I was required to get, mind you for the most part Computer Science was a very book lite degree, I didn't have to get much and even had to just buy 2 buck print out packages for some classes or nothing for others, never so in another class.

First up on the stack is : Data Abstraction & Problem solving with C++ by Walls & Mirrors. The Fitfth edition for edition wars. Sticker says this was a whopping $98 for a used copy, ah college books. Book is soft bound and probably enough to bludgeon a drunk frat boy to unconsciousness with if you tried. It weighs in at about 970 pages. At first glace I remember nothing about this book. Though looking inside this is obviously my object orientated design class book. Data structures and a laughably brief list of C++ keywords and statement syntax. Lot of basic things that I could probably look up again for refreshment or some more obscure structures I never actually studied in the course. As most college books go you only look at less than 20% of the entire thing leaving you with something to do if you get all your homework done.

Second on the stack is :Computer Networking A top-down approach featuring the internet by James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross, the third edition of it. This is a nice book actually hard covered with some inexplicable monochrome photography of a bridge with red trim and background on the tittle to make it pop out. Cost me a whooping $87.15 for a used copy of this roughly 820 page book. It was used in my Networking class, had lots of protocol information and ore than a few code examples if I remember right.

Next is : Introduction to Logic by Irving M. Copi and Carl Cohen, the twelfth edition of the book. This technically is a philosophy class book. The wonderful thing though is that it was one of the required courses for the degree though being a CS student I did quite well in the class as there isn't much difference between programing and the wordplay logic that gets used here. Another hardcover book though this one is beat up, features a nice mobious strip on the cover for whatever reason and ran me $89.95. I thank my student aid nightly before I go to bed.

These next ones I'll just group in order : Precalculus Mathematics for Calculus by James Stewart, Lothar Redlim, and Saleem Watson the Fifth edition a hardcover book actually missing it's price. Trigonometry By Lial Hornsby Schneider, Eighth eidtion hardcover that cost me $80 even. College Algebra by once again James Stewart, Lothar Redlim, and Saleem Watson the hard cover 4th edition book that was $89 to get. First thing first, I'm bad at math. I may be slightly better than the average person but I'm horrid compared to what most of the CS programs wanted. I came in doing College Algebra instead of Calculus for instance, I only got out of calculus when I found another degree in the CS department that didn't need it. Second thing, math books and other intro level books love yearly editions. These are the money makers for the college book publishing industry. There are things called electives in college, a thing that you are told is required for you to be  a better rounded more knowledgeable person, which would be fine if credit hours didn't make these books seem cheap. Mathmatics is a popular one along with intro to subject books to reprint with minor changes forever as the school is happy to buy them up and resell them to their students at full price who now can't use the previous edition sitting in their bookstore used. Very skumming inner workings there but it's how it goes.

Well I just noticed how horribly long this is and will save the rest for latter this week.  Looking at the rest of the stack I have a few books where I can tell a few interesting stories with. While I do complain about these books I like having them around if only as some tactile reminder of the college days, and something to look through for information. So a question out there to anyone who stuck with me this far, do you have any books you just won't get rid of?