So, recently I had a sudden and unexpected career change thanks to the wonderful state of the economy and the lack of business for the consulting workforce. Sadly, I was laid off from my rather cushy software development consulting job. After taking the necessary two weeks to let it all sink in, relax, and basically take a vacation that I've been needing for way too long, I've come to the conclusion that sometimes these things are for the best. As I said before, I really needed a vacation. Three years out of college and I haven't taken more than a week off at a time, none of which I would consider a real vacation. Besides that, though, this gives me plenty of time to catch up on my reading, brush up on a number of skills that I've let fall to the wayside and reinforce things that I should know well already, but probably don't.
So, besides taking time to go to the driving range at least once a week and doing the necessary job hunting, here's my current to do list of books to read:
- Atlas Shrugged (I've tried to read this all the way through on at least two separate occasions since 10th grade in high school, but I always stop around the second part out of boredom or other stuff coming up)
- The Pragmatic Programmer (I've had this book for a couple of years now and have been meaning to read through it)
- Code Complete
- Object Oriented Software Engineering (An old college text book of mine that will probably be useful in reminding me of the basics of what I do)
- Data Structures Using Java (I think I slept through most of this class... so it will probably be a good idea to reread this)
So, there it is. I've always said I never had time to do anything because of work, but now that isn't a problem. At least, not until I find another, which will hopefully be sooner than later.
