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My last trip to the library was right around the start of baseball season, so when I saw a new Pete Rose book I figured, why not? While I was a bit too young to know all the details of Pete Rose’s baseball scandals growing up, I was aware that they were going on. So I figured I could learn more about him and recall what all the fuss was about.

I did learn much about his early years and didn’t realize that he grew up right where he would end up playing the majority of his career. Besides his constant hustle which I knew all about, it must’ve been pretty exciting to have a local guy do so well for your team.

What did get a bit interesting was reading about the more modern Mr. Rose. I had no idea of his shady friends and even of his fairly recent reality TV show (didn’t sound too good). I’ve heard some negative stories from those who met him at card shows,etc. and a lot of it was matching up with what the author shared on him.

While I understand how wrong it is to bet on a sport that you are playing and playing/managing in, I can’t say I’m that surprised by his behavior. Not to justify it one bit, but athletes are extremely competitive individuals and for them to find themselves gambling a great deal doesn’t seem very unrealistic to me.

We treat them like their super beings and then eventually they begin to think that the rules of a typical person no longer apply to them. I’m surprised it doesn’t happy more often actually.

While the subject matter wasn’t incredibly interesting to me, the author did do and excellent job telling the story of Pete Rose’s rise and eventual fall from baseball.

Despite working in the tech field for just about 15 years now, I have to admit I really don’t know about the inventor(s) of the computer. I know a good amount about the invention of the personal computer, the Internet, and most modern software concepts. However, the computer itself not so much.

So this book turned out to be very interesting to me. A couple of the names did ring a bell once I heard them, but I learned so much of the early concepts that led to the invention of the computer.

I don’t think I can ever explain just how genius of a concept it was to base it off of the binary system. I can’t imagine how someone could have thought of going that route, when it’s a system that is rarely used in any field that I’m aware of. It’s simply genius, and I will always be amazed by it’s choice. It’s really amazing how it works and how flexible it turned out to be. Amazing.

While the book started a bit slowly for me, once World War II hit is where it really picked up. As horrible an event WWII was, the innovation that came out of the war efforts is astonishing. Not the weapons, and aircraft advances, but the need to compute for those advances that led to the computer.

Though I’ve read about it, I still have a hard to believing how those early computers were developed using the technology that was available at the time. For instance, vacuum tubes to store an on or off value? That’s insane to me, yet it worked! A very interesting read.

I was a bit stumped as to what read next while stumbling through the library and figured to give the massive The Stand by Stephen King a shot. I’ve heard very good things about it.

It was pretty awesome. Despite being easily a two hander book, it was so good that I went through it quite fast. While I’ve read a lot of exciting end of the world type of books (that sounds a bit more morbid than it really is), knowing when this was written it was even more appreciated. I felt like it laid the foundation for the genre that is so popular today.

My favorite character was Kojak the dog of course. Dogs are  great and I was surprised at just how large a role he went on to serve. He reminded me of many a loyal dog I’ve had the great pleasure to know.

While I was bummed by the demise of so many great characters, all had a very interesting path. It was really fun to follow along and find myself rooting for a few of them to make it through to the end.

Like any great book I found myself reading “just one more chapter” many times. Very good stuff! Highly recommended.