Emptying the stack

A few days ago I did a look through my book collection. I didn't quite finish the stacks and while it may not be the most entertaining thing I'm finishing going through. Though it did seem you guys kept a lot of your old books so I don't feel so weird with my mini library anymore.

First of the left overs: Discrete Mathematics and it's applications by Kenneth H. Rosen. Fifth edition hard cover that ran me 99.60, they love these high priced math books. This one of my more hated books. Discrete mathematics was a class all CS students had to go through. What's so important about it? Learning that big numbers are a bad thing. It also has some proofs and logic along with other staples but the real reason was to tell you about big O notation. Looking through the table of contents I see some graphs, trees, Boolean algebra, and modeling computations but none of that came up in class as far as I know. I don't even know much of what I did in this class but I passed it somehow so that's the most I'm going to do for tying to remember.

Second here is : Operating System Concepts by Silberschatz Galvin Gagne. The seventh edition of the series, a hard bound book with a picture water color disnaurs on the cover with electronics running me $93.75.

I wasn't kidding

This is a wonderful story for me to tell. Operating Systems was always considered one of the best classes for students to take. All the stories were of our teacher we all knew finally took us through the nitty gritty of an operating system and we even got to make our own based on a Linux frame. Yes it was a class where we made our own, if primitive, OS. This was a subject that fascinated me even when I got to play with old languages that had register based variables such as BX. But I didn't get him, they had switched up the program by having an old school person who was a TA teach it. This seemed fine, this was a person who was actually in the business with IBM projects and a few other companies where it seemed fine. He was in the process of being intigrated into the school as the CS department only had 3 real professors in it, the rest were math guys who taught low level classes.

It sounded good at first but this old guy effectively had us do high school reports for how some theoretical systems operated. We didn't once touch code or did anything I can remember due to not actually doing anything. It felt like one of the biggest wastes of time in that class, the work I was the worst at memorizing things that are in reality related but do to just memorizing them and throwing them down on paper I can't see for the life of me how they weren't. This was not the worst of it though, this was a very well spoken older gentleman with opinions, and a class he could give his pearls of wisdom to. One of them being to learn how to shoot a gun because the government is going the wrong direction. On top of this how people should quit eating meat, watching TV, listening to radio, or engaging in any forms of entertainment besides seemingly going out to hike, exercise, or traditional family get together around the (vegetarian)BBQ he could do it in such a way you would feel like filth and the downfall of society for not already doing it. Being such an outstanding sounding and looking guy it was hard to avoid that unless you learned to tune it out, which with a professor wasn't something you should do. Now Profs often go about things outside of class but it's usually stories, he is the only one who told us how bad it is to do things.

Rarely did anyone complain as well, he was the professor. Only one student I know of that I worked on a project actually took up to attempting to argue the "violent video games make you bad people and you should feel bad" debate which became an argument of anecdotal evidence and both of them bringing up "studies" to disprove the other. Not the best of times in that class. I had to take one more class from him where it was mostly out of class working on a team with the rest for projects for an out of school project so it wasn't bad. I do hope he tones it down for future students, he knows his stuff but he's not there to be a life coach or a lifestyle preacher.

With that we're to the last book of: Fundamentals of Statistics by Michael Sullivan, III. Soft bound first edition book, came with a CD and was only $65 even. I believe that this is the only math book that I have that doesn't' include an edition and was the cheapest to boot. This is the only field of math I like. I was honestly surprised to find out how much I like it. I may have forgotten most of the advanced things I use but a lot of the principles I use when determining if things work in a game. I may actually give this book a reread sometime.

Wait it's not over, upon looking through the books I discovered my dirty little secret. I have books that weren't class related for classes I've never even taken. Prolog Minimanual, PL/I: Structured programing and problem solving, Data Structures in Java, C++ classes and database structures, Fortran77 Language and style, Introduction to pascal, Computing concepts with java essentials, and Compilers principles, techniques, and tools. A long list but not a single cent was spent on these. The funny story was I hung around CS professors offices so much I could catch them with these stacks of manuals and such that they were throwing out, and I would gladly take them off their hands. I think it went to the point that I was pointed from one professor to another to pick up an outdated book. The worst part is I have not cracked open a single one of these, one is actually still in shipping shrink wrap with the professors address on it.

This isn't even all my books but beyond revisiting this idea with the books I don't care about I think I'll call it done for now. So on a minor related thing, do you people out there have any classes you remember fondly and/or hate?

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?