A change is as good as a rest...

With that in mind, I've taken pity on my bad leg, and have been sorting out books for the last couple of days. I took all the boxes out of my office, and the basement. (Although there are still some down there.) And I'm going through them - paperbacks go to a local prison, hardcovers to the library.

But the ancient computer books? I think they're worth recycling, but little else. Who needs manuals to AutoCAD 97? Or Asymetrix's Toolbox? (Are they still in business? Apparently they are... How about that.) I also have a ton of books - literally, considering the size of these monsters - on some obsolete Borland C++ compiler. I think it compiled for Windows NT 3.5 and Windows 98. A load of manuals to software I no longer use, or even have. The disks were tossed years ago. And some instructional tomes on such diverse topics as Excel, Developing for MS Office XP, Visual Basic, its cohort VBA, and even a manual for Borland Prolog! The DOS version. (I remember that one being so non-standard it was beyond irritating.) Oh, and a couple of manuals for Borland's ObjectVision database platform/system/thingy. Remember that one? I thought it was wonderful, but it was too arcane for many. I remember my boss being very confused when I showed him an ObjectVision database that contained the details (what we now call "metadata") of the network I managed. People thought it was neat when I turned Excel into a drawing program, and drew conceptual and logical diagrams of all the national and international network connections (what we used to call the "WAN").

There's a lot of good stuff in those books. They'll be by the curb on recycling day. :-)

Carolyn Ann